BOSTON IS known for its writers, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Phillis Wheatley to the more than 75 authors who will appear at the inaugural Boston Book Festival in Copley Square on Saturday. But there are thousands of other writers who are as diligent, creative, thoughtful, and articulate as their more famous peers. They are Boston’s high school students and their powerful stories, arguments, opinions, and analyses can be found in classrooms, newspapers, and literary magazines all over the city.
Students are doing all kinds of powerful writing, from personal narrative to analytic essays to journalistic exposes. They are using writing to understand everything from their school experiences to biology, literature, and history.
For example, at the Boston Day and Evening Academy, one student labored for weeks on an essay about the death of his younger brother and how his debilitating grief derailed him at school; when he read the final version aloud to his class, his peers and teachers gasped in sympathy at its powerful representation of his loss and pain. The essay was eventually published in Teens in Print, Boston’s student newspaper, and read by youths and adults across the city.
Another student wrote an account of the digestive process for biology - from the point of view of a cheeseburger being swallowed. Last year at Boston International High School, where all the students are recent immigrants for whom English is a second language, 10th-graders read Lois Lowry’s Holocaust novel, “Number the Stars,’’ and then wrote additional chapters for the tome, showing what happened to its characters after the book’s conclusion.
When WriteBoston brought Lois Lowry to the school as a visiting author, the students were thrilled to present her with a collection of their own chapters. They peppered her with queries about the novel, her life, and her writing. Through writing, they were able to connect to another culture, another historical moment, and another writer.
At Boston Community Leadership Academy, seniors have been writing college essays. One student wrote that when her father was laid off, she started working six days a week. Her grades slipped, and she never had fun. She described how she lost her right to be a teen.
Another wrote about how his brother was shot and how he was inspired to get more serious about his future after watching his mother’s strength in the aftermath.
Teachers are dazzled by the intensity of the experiences their students describe and the way their writing illuminates and educates its readers.
But, some may ask, what about the MCAS? Isn’t that how we measure student writing in Massachusetts? Boston students are certainly achieving on the MCAS. Between 2003 and 2006, for example, 10th-grade English Language Arts MCAS scores improved more rapidly in Boston than across the state. But while MCAS scores are important, they are only part of the story.
The rest of the tale is about Boston students writing stories and essays that move their readers, and will ultimately help move all of us toward a society comprised of thoughtful, passionate, articulate citizens. That’s reason enough to place Boston’s high school students in the company of our city’s greatest writers.
Betty Southwick is director of WriteBoston. 
