Acknowledgements

In our Young Writers Publish program, 826NYC works with classes of students and teachers on creative writing projects around and beyond New York City. 11th grade students from the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering explored poetry across multiple forms, including centos, erasure poetry, metered poetry, and more. Our Worldview: We Are Who We Are is a compilation of the original work of these students.

A huge thank you to the 826NYC teaching artist, Daniel Jackson, for creating classrooms where students were able to play with language and line breaks, themes and settings. Your support, encouragement, and consistency helped our young writers tap into their imaginations and memories to produce such moving work, and your care in helping them brainstorm, write, and revise throughout this project was invaluable.

We are particularly grateful to BASE teachers Nikita Patel and Louis Reed for their vision and support of this project. Thank you for inviting us into your classrooms and working so closely on this project, for highlighting the brilliance and interests of your students at every turn, and being so generous with your time and enthusiasm. Your hard work and steadfast dedication to your students allows them to flourish as young writers and thinkers.

Thank you to our writing mentors, Dov Alpert, Arrianne Bautista, Olivia Ensley, Susan Evans, and Holly Settoon, for keeping up with these young writers and nurturing their growing texts.

At 826NYC we depend on the dedicated volunteer editing and design cohort that make our publications a reality. Thank you to Vanessa Friedman for overseeing the editing, proofreading, and design of this book. Thank you to Adi Kwiatek for designing such a beautiful book for our students. To copy editors and proofreaders Rakhee Bhatt, Kora Fillet, Tiana Moe, Dave Rublin, Carly Schnitzler, Lauren Stefaniak, Alyssa Thibodeau, and Stephanie Whetstone for their careful attention to each of the student’s pieces, thank you.

Very special thanks to BASE student artist Jerald Parten for the beautiful original artwork of a rose growing from concrete featured on

the cover, representing the passion and power of growth and beauty in the Bronx.

A big thank you to the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, The Jane Friedman Anspach Family Foundation, The Find Your Light Foundation, The Hawkins Foundation, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Kettering Family Foundation, The Minerva Foundation, The Pinkerton Foundation, The Resnick Family Foundation, and Youth, Inc. The program is also made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Additional support comes from the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov. 826NYC is grateful to the many individuals who support our work. To see our full list of supporters or make a donation, please visit https://826nyc.org/donate-us/.

Thank you especially to the 826NYC staff for their behind-thescenes support of this project, from curriculum development and the book-making process to volunteer recruitment.

Finally, thank you to the students at the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering for taking risks with your writing and sharing your words with us. While the process of writing and revision poses many challenges, we hope you also found excitement and joy in creating this work, as we do in reading it. Your dedication to your craft and your vision shines through in these pieces. We are all excited to see what you’ll write and create in the future!

826NYC and The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. 372 Fifth Ave Brooklyn, NY 11215 718.499.9884 www.826nyc.org

Staff

Joshua Mandelbaum, Executive Director Jesusdaniel Barba, Programs Coordinator Janna Cisterino, Development & Communications Manager Rico Denard, Store Associate Chris Eckert, Store Manager Vanessa Friedman, Publications Associate Julianna Lee Merino, Programs Coordinator Summer Medina, Volunteer & Programs Coordinator Stella Raffle-Wax, Store Associate Mandy Seiner, Volunteer & Programs Manager Naomi Solomon, Director of Education

Teaching Artists

Gillian Adler J’miah Baird David Ewalt Willie Filkowski Daniel Goulden Varud Gupta Daniel Jackson Jaydra Johnson

Board of Directors

Michelle McGovern, President Ted Wolff, Vice President Ray Carpenter, Treasurer Kathryn Yontef, Secretary Michael Colagiovanni Jen D’Ambroise Liza Demby Jamal Edwards

Amir Mokari Sheila Peluso Katie Schwab Danielle Sinay Andrew Sparkler Alyson Stone Maura Tierney Thom Unterburger

826NYC Programs

Write After School

Reading and writing go together like peanut butter and jelly. Write After School students work alongside 826NYC staff and volunteers to build their reading, writing, social-emotional skills and unleash their imagination as they play and learn about the power of language. Three times a year, students revise their creative writing for publications that are printed in English and Spanish and shared with families, volunteers, and community members at celebratory readings.

Write Away Workshops

Young writers come together in Write Away Workshops to explore a multitude of genres and subjects and to develop their voices. Groups write freely and participate in imaginative writing activities and lessons. Whether it’s a song, a piece of climate justice sci-fi, or a nature guide, young writers leave the workshop with a piece to be proud of, as well as a newfound understanding of the topic, and new friends.

Write All About It

In Write All About It, reporters from grades 5-8 learn how to conduct a great interview, how to write a classic news story, and more importantly, how to sniff out where the great untold stories of Brooklyn are hiding. We focus on hyper-local news to see how it connects to what’s going on across the country and around the world. Student work is published regularly in The 826NYC Post on 826NYC’s Medium page.

Young Writers Publish

Turn your classroom into a creative writing lab. During Young Writers Publish residencies, 826NYC teaching artists collaborate with educators on creative, impactful, curriculum-aligned projects that transform students into published authors. Residencies run from six weeks to a full year, depending on the project. Each Young Writers Publish culminates in a book, newspaper, zine, podcast, film, or performance featuring your students.

Write Together

826NYC hosts classes across New York City for Write Together: an interactive writing experience that encourages creative expression, explores the elements of storytelling, and strengthens writing skills. Elementary-aged classes collaborate on illustrated children’s books, middle schoolers choose their own adventure, and high schoolers learn the art of memoir writing during a fast- paced and whimsical 90 minute narrative program.

Teen Writers Collective

Teens are the next generation of literary leaders. That’s why we launched the Teen Writers’ Collective. The collective brings together young writers from around the city to explore the art of writing and literary citizenship. They are a community of passionate and creative peers, serve as 826NYC youth leaders, and inspire younger students and peers across the network.

Dungeons & Dragons & Writers

Dungeons & Dragons, the epic fantasy role-playing game where players craft characters to take on magical quests that can change with the roll of the dice, has a home at 826NYC. A band of adventurous authors in grades 5-8 play out an entirely original tale and chronicle their fantastical deeds in character point-of-view journals, histories, and scene writing. Sometimes the greatest gift is the friends we make — and make up — along the way.

Student Publications

Through our programs, our volunteers work with students to help them create stories, poems, and ’zines. Because we believe that the quality of students’ work is greatly enhanced when they are given the chance to share it with an authentic audience, we are committed to publishing student works. By encouraging their work and by guiding them through the process of publication, we make abundantly clear that their ideas are valued.

In OUR WORLDVIEW: WE ARE WHO WE ARE, the talented and thoughtful writers at the Bronx Academy for Software Engineering share poignant insights into their lives, showing the reader that their lived experiences and cultural capital are not to be brushed aside. How wonderful it is to be given these glimpses into the worlds of these young people, and ask ourselves: is this the world as we see it? What do we miss or gloss over every day that these writers are boldly, caringly, and creatively reckoning with? Many of these writers are first-generation immigrants; multicultural voices that have long been silent rise up here to remind us of what we’ve always known: that the relationship between people and places is always an essential story to tell. Proceeds from the sale of this book benefit 826NYC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students, ages six to eighteen, with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

A NOTE FROM JERALD PARTEN ON HIS FEATURED ARTWORK:

I thought of a rose growing from concrete but with that, what's forming the rose itself is more passion and it's seen as powerful because of it. Which is why I put some glow around the concrete and the cracks. The particles around were gonna be looked at as rain and the particles coming from the broken concrete further show the passion.

ISBN 978-1-948644-87-7