WASHINGTON — A group of D.C. high schoolers will get to see a long awaited project come to fruition this week, as they become published authors.
Over the summer, students at Anacostia High School worked with literacy consultant Caroline Brewer to pen a book about the envionrment. On Wednesday, “Through My Anacostia Eyes: Environmental Problems and Possibilities" officially launches.
“This book is a reflection, mostly in poetry, of children's experiences in nature," Brewer said. "It's based on the Nature Wise program for which I developed the curriculum, and Conservation Nation was a sponsor of my work with the students all summer."
Xavier Brown, the Anacostia Ambassador at University of District of Columbia, helped make the program possible. He likened it to a summer internship.
"Anacostia has two academies: Engineering Academy and Public Leadership Academy, and we got students from both academies," he said. "Essentially, we wanted to kind of immerse them in environmental leadership and environmental justice from their perspective and kind of diving in and looking at their community and kind of speaking for themselves. We see like the light and the students, but they might not see that lighting themselves so a big part of it was trying to kind of pull within them inside them and let everybody else see that.”
The students are preparing to read their poems and essays at the book launch happening this Wednesday. Their poems include titles like “What You Don’t Know By Looking At Me” and “If I Were..." The essays detail the experiences the kids had in nature.
The book is available for purchase at all bookstores and online. You can click here to check it out.