Community Project Teaches Writing Skills to Breakthrough Miami Students

Eighth grade IB MYP (International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme) students presented their end-of-year community service projects before a panel of judges on May 1.

Julia Bueno ’23 and Lucia Rose Dahn ’23 created an informative website to teach creative writing. “Around the world, there is a strong need for writers, as writing is the basis for communication and it is a skill that can help others improve their vocabulary and grammar,” said Lucia. “The main community that we would be serving is the online community of middle schoolers who are aspiring writers and understand English.”

Both Julia and Lucia are emerging authors. Together, they’ve written a 300-page novel titled A Cage of Thorns. The girls have also written books individually. Lucia authored Cause of the Dark and Julia wrote Watchman. Julia is also the recipient of the Gold Key National Scholastic Award for her flash fiction short Phonophobia. She will travel to Carnegie Hall in June to receive her award.

The girls used their love of writing and digital design skills to launch their project’s website, www.write-right-now.com. Once the site was live, Julia and Lucia hosted a creative writing seminar for the students of Breakthrough Miami, an organization providing an academic enrichment program serving motivated, under-resourced students. “My favorite part about working with the students was seeing how talented some of the students were and how creative they were when we gave them writing prompts,” said Julia. “I was able to see that some of the students clearly had writing talent. I also really enjoyed seeing them have fun writing since that was the whole point of our project.”

The IB MYP provides a framework of academic challenge that encourages students to embrace and understand the connections between traditional subjects and the real world, allowing them to become critical and reflective thinkers. Through its rigorous curriculum, students develop physically, emotionally, intellectually and ethically.