Sign up
If you’re a person between the ages of 7 and 19 (or the parent/guardian of such a person), you’re in luck! Signing up is easy, and our classes are free of charge. There are four ways to register for Story Lab classes and events:
1) Email our Story Lab Coordinator, Jenna Steckel, to get your name on the list — jenna@iialaska.org.
2) Call us at 907-747-3794.
3) Visit the sign up page on this website.
4) If you haven’t signed up in advance, show up at one of our events and register there! We’re always happy to see new faces.
Volunteer
Interested in volunteering for the Story Lab? We’d love to have you! We welcome absolutely everyone—whether you’re a published author or not sure that you can consistently spell the word “weird” (wierd? wiard? wouordu?). Our volunteers fill a variety of roles and there’s a place for everyone. Here’s a sample of what you might do:
Assist or teach after-school: We’ll often need adult helpers to make our after-school classes run smoothly. You might be serving as a space cadet captain for a lesson on extraterrestrial exploration with our Tuesday class for elementary school students, or helping read over autobiographical stories with our high school classes on Thursday. You might also be taking the lead on a class, if you’re able to commit to a regular volunteering schedule.
Help run a workshop: Similarly, we need hands to help make our Saturday workshops a success. You might proofread an essay at one of our College Essay Boot camps or help use our bookmaking gear to bind a book of newly-written Mad Libs.
Teach a workshop: Can you teach a great lesson on songwriting? Journalism? How to tell a story through cooking? We want to hear from you. You’d work with Jenna, our Story Lab coordinator, to put together your class, then teach it to a roomful of eager students.
Educators: Partner with Story Lab!
Are you a teacher looking to offer extra creative writing opportunities for your students? A principal or other administrator looking to create an after school or elective class? A volunteer offering a writing-based program for youth in Sitka? We want to hear from you. The Story Lab works best in close partnership with all of the other storytelling and writing opportunities going on around town. We’re hoping that people who believe in the importance of youth storytelling can use the Story Lab as a platform to build upon.
Thus far, we’ve been engaged in a variety of projects at schools in Sitka. During the 2014/2015 school year, we offered a Friday elective writers group at Pacific High. We teamed up with two sixth grade language arts classes at Blatchley to offer support as they worked on their story submissions for the Alaska Day Writing Contest. We taught screenwriting to Blatchley seventh graders and memoir writing to gifted and talented 4th and 5th graders at Keet Gooshi Heen.
We’ve also partnered with many other organizations around town. We ran a partner program on podcasting and interviewing with Kettleson Memorial Library and Raven Radio (Radio+Food), sponsored a session on song writing and gender dynamics as part of a program run by Sitkans Against Family Violence, and, alongside the Sitka Native Education Program, co-ran a break-out session for kids at the Sitka MAPP Community Health Summit.
We’re always looking for more connections and projects. Please contact our Story Lab coordinator Jenna Steckel at jenna@iialaska.org or 907-747-3794 to talk about the possibilities!