Do The Write Thing Challenge
In the twelve years that the Do The Write Thing Challenge Program has been in Chicago, over 36,000 middle school students have accepted the challenge to do something to stop violence.
At the beginning of each school year, the NCSV invites the superintendents from school systems in participating localities to select middle schools to participate in DtWT. The superintendents make the program’s guidelines available to their middle school principals, who in turn, make the guidelines available to appropriate 7th and 8th grade teachers. Below are the instruction packets for teachers and principals.
After a classroom discussion about the problem of youth violence, participating students are asked by their teachers to make a commitment not to be involved in violence and provide written answers to three questions:
1
How has violence affected my life?
2
What are the causes of youth violence?
3
What can I do about youth violence?
All responses are reviewed for content by a panel of distinguished readers, the essays are unedited and, if an essay is selected as a finalist writing, it is reprinted exactly as it was submitted. Young people have something very valuable to say on the issue of violence and are searching for an outlet to express their ideas and emotions.
Principal and Teacher Resources