Healing an education crisis
School’s closed; literacy project 826 Valencia is working to help
826 Valencia has been one of the bright spots amid concerns about American students’ reading skills.
For nearly two decades, the San Francisco nonprofit has used a free, funcentric approach to benefit underserved students with the power of imagination and selfexpression, even as data show that literacy levels among young people are troublingly low.
Now, as shelterinplace orders send shock waves through the Bay Area’s education system, 826 Valencia is scrambling to use its tutoring and funding resources to make sure teachers and parents aren’t overwhelmed. The group says it is determined that the kids it has gotten to know in the Tenderloin, Mission and Mission Bay neighborhoods won’t fall through the cracks.
“We know we have a health crisis and a financial crisis,” Executive Director Bita Nazarian told The Chronicle. “But I would put an educational crisis right next to that.”
826 Valencia was cofounded in 2002 by awardwinning writer Dave Eggers, who wanted to support teachers by mustering a volunteer force of working and retired professionals for literacy tutoring.
Eggers said in a 2008 TED Talk that the goal wasn’t just to get kids reading and writing better, but also to “show them the benefits of living an enlightened life.”
The program started at a storefront at 826 Valencia St. in the Mission District, where Eggers’ team helped kids complete homework, learn English as a second language and turn their daydreams into stories on the page.
The organization has expanded since then, opening its writing center in the Tenderloin in 2015 followed by another in Mission Bay last year. In 2019, the organization saw 1,200 of its volunteers tutor 9,000 students ages 6 to 18, while also working alongside teachers at 12 campuses in the San Francisco Unified School District. The program’s model has now been replicated in numerous cities across the U.S., with chapters of 826 sprouting up in Minneapolis, Chicago, New Orleans and Washington, D.C.
When the stayathome order for COVID19 closed school campuses across San Francisco in early March — with Gov. Gavin Newsom floating the idea of schools reopening in late July or early August — 826 Valencia started gauging the challenges.
“Some of the families don’t have WiFi, others don’t have computers, and there are students who have never used Zoom or Google Classroom before,” Nazarian said. “Most of our tutoring right now isn’t focused on writing; it’s about helping them navigate the barriers so they can access their education.”
The team has been recently delivering laptops to students and coaching families on how to access free WiFi where it’s available. The group is in the process of getting corporate partners to donate WiFi hotspots to families, too, and its tutors are holding daily 45minute sessions with their students via Zoom, their work taking on a greater sense of urgency.
“The ramifications of young people not having access to their education can be so intense,” Nazarian stressed.
Coronavirus adds to the existing challenges. Renaissance, an education software provider, conducts one of the largest annual student reading surveys in the world. “Nationally, the problem we have is that reading levels start flatlining at the middle grades,” said its chief academic officer, Gene Kerns. “We’re doing a good job of teaching kids the mechanics of reading early, but by the time they get to sixth or seventh grade, progress is really slowing.”
Kerns said access to free, extracurricular reading and writing centers can be effective. “Kids who read on their own, outside of school, for 15 minutes a day are generally keeping up with expectations,” he said. “If you look at research on what’s called ‘the summer slide,’ most students who had access to even basic tutoring over the summer didn’t experience that slide.”
Peter Albert is a volunteer tutor at 826 Valencia. He described its centers as places where one student might be a high schooler struggling with homework, while another child is a “fifthgrader deep into writ
ing the sixth chapter of her next novel.”
Albert also noted how the playful gateway stores in the centers — a pirate supply shop in the Mission, an emporium of oddities in the Tenderloin and a “woodland creatures outfitter” in Mission Bay — give students a spirited attachment to 826 Valencia that, so far, is carrying over into the virtual space.
“There’s a little bit of a fantasy theme at the centers, but I think what works well about that, and what’s being borne out now, is that whatever connection we’ve already established with students in those settings is prevailing,” Albert said. “There’s this biggerthanlife atmosphere about it for the kids, and that follows with them.”
826 Valencia also engages students by having their creative writing projects published in hardbound anthologies and sold in their own neighborhoods. Some also get scripts enacted as podcasts.
“We want to help them find and amplify their voice, and use writing as a way of processing the world around them,” Nazarian said. “The thing about becoming an effective writer is that it’s difficult, but when they know they’re writing for a wider audience, that element of having a highstakes end product really motivates kids to do their best.”
One student who’s found plenty of motivation at 826 is Itziel Macias. The 11thgrader has been visiting its writing center in the Tenderloin for several years. She says it hasn’t just honed her writing and college ambitions; it’s connected her to a bigger effort to reshape the surrounding streets.
“It’s important because it has really brought the Tenderloin together,” Itziel said. “I feel it’s made kids get involved in the growth of the neighborhood, and it’s done that by focusing on giving the kids a voice, rather than hearing from the adults.”
Chelsea Rodriguez is a high school junior who discovered 826 Valencia five years ago. She said she hopes people will consider supporting the donationdriven nonprofit as it carries on its work through the pandemic.
“Honestly, if it wasn’t for 826, I wouldn’t be writing in the first place,” Chelsea said. “And it’s given me a lot of confidence to put myself out there. It’s played a big part of who I am now.”