How do students creatively express their experience in DC schools?  

 

"I'd been reading George Orwell's 1984 and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death and I was inspired to write about how our culture is influenced by the media," Priscilla says. "We're so influenced by what we see.  Sometimes people just take the information in like robots instead of thinking on their own."
 
As a homeschooled student, Priscilla makes an effort to be sure that she is exposed to many different sources of information and diverse experiences.  "Homeschooling doesn't mean that I stay at home," she says. "So many people think that homeschoolers are conservative, maybe even Amish - just sitting at home all day, maybe baking bread. We're not like that.  As a homeschooler I get to explore."
 
"Home school taught me to balance my school work with my interests," Priscilla says.  She is a member of the DC Youth Advisory Committee, the Wilson High School Varsity Golf Team, the Christian National Forensics League and YPT's Young Playwrights' Workshop. 
 
Priscilla was inspired to join the workshop after memorizing famous oratory for a speech class.  "I memorized Sojourner Truth's 'Ain't I Woman' and Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech," she says. "I enjoyed that and thought I'd like to formulate my own opinions about the things that are going on around me through playwriting."
 
Her play, Twilight, grew from her involvement with YPT. It will form part of the piece Life In School to be shared on Monday, November 24th, at New Writers Now!  "I hope people who see my play will think about the day to day choices that they make and who influenced them to make those choices," Priscilla says.

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