Learning the Joys of Reading and Writing with Laura Brief

• 826 National: https://826national.org/
• Reach out to Laura: [email protected] 
• Buy our charity shirt to help support 826 National: shitposting.fashion

Transcript

Laura Brief: We're working towards every teacher seeing themselves as a writing teacher and every young person identifying as a writer, and that doesn't mean they're going to go off and become a writer, but it does mean it's going to be a tool for them to use in their lives and whatever path they choose and a tool that they can use to understand themselves as well.

Corey Quinn: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn, and this is an episode that I've been angling to get for a very long time. Laura Brief is the CEO of 826 National, which might not mean a lot to you folks, but that is the beneficiary of our regularly scheduled charity t-shirt campaigns.

They are a nonprofit focusing on helping youth creatively write, which is something that I think is deeply important, given that no one seems to know how to write to save their lives in most of this industry. Laura, thank you for joining me.

Laura Brief: Thank you so much, Corey. It is such a pleasure to be here with you.

We've been working with you for so many years now, and it's fun to be in conversation this way with you.

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Corey Quinn: I will say that one of the funniest parts about this is the first year we, we wound up selecting you as the nonprofit that we're going to be supporting, we didn't coordinate with any of you folks at first because we were sort of, seat of our pants style of approach, which is kind of common for how we do these things here. And it was just, at one point we've, so we've sent out the donation, and then we got an outreach from you folks that was a politely phrased version of, "Um, Hello?"

It was awesome, like, like, what is this psychotic thing that you're doing with the sarcastic shirts and the rest? It seems to definitely be benefiting what we're doing here, but are you a dangerous lunatic or not?

Laura Brief: Well, what's the answer to that question?

Corey Quinn: Exactly. I think we found out the answer to that question.

If anyone's listening to this show more than one or two episodes, they probably figured that out.

Instead of my talk with my hands describe the vague shape of the organization, what is 826?

Laura Brief: Thank you so much for asking that question. 826 National is the largest youth writing network in the country.

We work towards a country in which every young person in the United States has the access, has access to the power and joy of writing regardless of the classroom that they are sitting in. We were founded, we have chapters now in nine cities across the U.S. and we have a free platform for teachers called 826 Digital that brings our tried and true ways to teachers and classrooms everywhere.

But we were founded here in San Francisco in 2002 by the author Dave Eggers and the educator Nínive Caligari, and they had this idea. They were aware that writing education was not happening as it should in classrooms. And along with that, they were aware that teachers needed support bringing individualized attention to young people.

So they decided to come together and to give birth to this organization that was about supporting the endless possibilities when you combine young people and writing. And we started at 826 Valencia and have just blossomed from there and serve communities deeply through our writing centers, through our work in schools, and as I mentioned, through this platform.

We serve about 730,000 students around the United States now.

Corey Quinn: That is a significant scale. For those who are not familiar with David Eggers, because I certainly wasn't when I started working with you folks, he is the creator of McSweeney's Internet Tendency, which is far and away one of my favorite pieces of satire on the internet.

It is, it is just so well done.

Laura Brief: It absolutely is.

Corey Quinn: In case you hadn't picked up on this by now, a lot of the writing that I tend to embrace myself is profoundly sarcastic, and satire is generally right there. The problem is, is if satire isn't done well, it just comes across as mean.

Laura Brief: Well, I'll let you know if we veer into that territory.

Corey Quinn: I've mostly been able to steer around that for most of the time, but it's one of the reasons that learning to write and learning to tell a story and to build a cohesive narrative is so deeply and profoundly important. And it seems like, I'm going to be judgy here. I was never much of an academic.

On paper, I have an eighth grade education after being expelled from two boarding schools and failing out of college. It was a fun ride.

Laura Brief: It sounds so fun. I bet you really enjoyed all of that.

Corey Quinn: Oh, it was, it was an absolute blast. My teen years, spot on. Great experience. No notes.

Laura Brief: Were you writing when you were a teenager?

Had you found writing yet?

Corey Quinn: Not yet. No. And that was part of the problem. We were mandated to go to school. 12 years in a grade school in the United States of English classes. And in so many cases, what the English classes themselves focused on, from my perspective, was so banal. It was, read this piece of literature that's hundreds of years out of date, and we're going to basically do everything in our power to drive you away from enjoying reading.

It's like we're gonna pick one of the most heavy handed symbolism-centric books, drop it on top of you, and then wonder why you don't like to read for funsies. My love of reading endured despite that sort of treatment, not because of it.

Laura Brief: Absolutely. And we take a similar approach to writing.

I think for us, writing isn't about the five paragraph essay. Writing is about embracing who you are showing. As you are, and writing about the things that bring you pleasure, bring you joy, bring you sense of meaning Writing for us is not grammar. It is not spelling. It is really the act of being able to take what's within you and put it on a page.

In whatever way you choose and to whatever end you choose. Just listening to your journey and your journey as a, as a young person, your educational journey as a young person, thinking what you were just saying too about, I can't remember frankly whether this was something we were chatting about right before we started recording or not, but talking about the love of reading and how students are, some, some students are developing a love of reading while some are struggling to do so.

And what is especially concerning to us is that reading is, of course, so important. You were talking about your daughter, your seven-year-old, who loves to read. Six-year-old, seven-year-old.

Corey Quinn: Nope. She's seven now and will remind you if you forget.

Laura Brief: Okay, like, yep, they're great at that. They're great at that.

Your seven-year-old who loves to read and what a beautiful thing that is. My guess is she's learned to love to read partially because of who her family is, right? And partially because of what's happening at school. What's happening at school around writing is abysmal. In this country, we are no longer defining literacy as reading and writing.

We are defining it solely as reading. So, you go to school and you can learn to read, but you're unlikely to develop meaningful writing skills anymore. And we have a bunch of theories about why this is. One is, it's hard to teach. Two is, it's hard to test for, right? So you can see, you can easily measure how a student is progressing with reading, but it's harder to measure how a student is progressing with writing.

The impact that that has on individual lives, but also on the course of communities and on the course of this nation, we believe is profound. Reading is so important. Reading gives you access, right? You can travel to worlds through your book.

Corey Quinn: You can borrow someone's mind.

Laura Brief: You can, yes, you can borrow someone's mind, but you can't share your mind, right?

You can't share your mind. Writing is how you share

Corey Quinn: your mind.

It was a crappy comment from some perspectives, but I saw a comic, it must have been 20 years ago now, that showed a picture of a keyboard and a mouse side by side. You'll be remembered for this, pointing to the keyboard, not for this, and pointing at the mouse.

And it's, yeah, you're remembered for what you put out, not for what you consume.

Laura Brief: Exactly. So we really work on this question of who gets to learn to write in this country and what impact does that have on the course of lives and on the course of the country itself. And we're working towards every teacher seeing themselves as a writing teacher and every young person identifying as a writer, and that doesn't mean they're going to go off and become a writer, but it does mean it's going to be a tool for them to use in their lives and whatever path they choose and a tool that they can use to understand themselves as well.

Corey Quinn: If it's even something as fundamental as that is difficult in a business context. How many folks have we worked with over the years that would have dramatically benefited from a remedial business writing course. I have to communicate clearly in writing, especially in the era of distributed companies, and some folks are not particularly adroit at getting their ideas and thoughts across, which is to the point where now we start screening for that during the interview process. We want a writing sample.

Laura Brief: Absolutely. And you just reminded me one of, I was talking with one of our board members earlier this week, and she said, we were talking about writing and the power of writing, and she was saying writing is thinking.

Writing is understanding. Writing is communicating. You can't take those things apart. To write is to be able to critically think. Writing is growth. It is all, it is, writing is the product of what comes out on the page, yes, but it's also this, this really important process.

Corey Quinn: One of the, I guess, big questions of our time right now has been, the rise of AI in this space. I worked with someone who had a, what I will lovingly refer to, and he did as well, as the asshole in email problem, where. Lovely guy, terrific to talk to, but everything he sent in an email made you want to strangle him as a result.

And AI worked to his benefit because he would take the email he was about to send, slap it into ChatGPT or ChatGippity as we in house pronounce it here. And the answer that came out was like, make me sound like less of a jerk. And it worked.

Laura Brief: Great use case.

Corey Quinn: That reminds me of a different comic where it was this person on the one side is like, great, turn these three bullet points into a blog post.

And then the other, like, something like, turn this blog post into three bullet points. It's almost an encapsulation protocol for public consumption.

Laura Brief: I'm curious before we, I have a feeling you're about to ask me my view on it, but before you do that, I'm curious. I, in advance of this conversation, prepping for it, I heard from a little birdie that ChatGPT is something that you have found really useful recently.

Corey Quinn: Indeed, though I've switched to using Claude for most of it. It tends to be the better model as a result. Because I have a couple of shortcomings as a writer, and I'm fully aware of them. One of them that's probably more relatable to most people is the fact that I'm staring at an empty page. That is one of the hardest things for me to start diving into. I just need something to get me started. And the second is that I write like I think, uh, given my particular expression of profound ADHD. I go from thought-to-thought-to-thought-to-thought, and I veer off into tangents. I have a love affair with the semicolon and parentheticals.

Because every thought comes with additional bonus content. It becomes somewhat unstructured, and I found that AI is terrific at both of these from the perspective of, first, it knows who I am, and I'll come up with a few points, like in my writing style. Write a blog post about, about topic X, making points A, B, and C.

And almost everything it says is completely wrong, to the point where I find it borderline offensive. So I go back and I fix the thing, but what I, what's left when I'm done, is I've written virtually every word in the piece, but there's a structure that is maintained to it at the end, which is a crutch. I'm aware of that, but it's one of my weaknesses. I usually have a different crutch in the form of a human editor that goes through a lot of this. She's a developmental editor because my, my grammar and my spelling and my punctuation are on point. Mom was an English teacher and was, it was very important to her.

We got that correct.

Laura Brief: Really?

Corey Quinn: Oh, yes.

Laura Brief: Oh, I love that. I didn't know that.

Corey Quinn: So, it's never been, whenever I've talked to some editors in the past, like, "Oh, okay, let's figure out, like, let me look at this for subject verb agreement." It's like, you aren't going to find anything that we disagree with.

Anything that we're going to disagree with is stylistic more than it is substantive. Like the Oxford comma, I have strong opinions that sometimes differ from other people with a different, flash, wrong, strong opinion. Right. It belongs in the sentence. Great. The But that's just the way that the world works, and that's fine.

But what I would never do is have it write something as me, and then try to pass it off as me. Because what am I going to say about that in defense of it, when someone asks me a question about it, when they deconstruct it? It's, it's monstrous. I mean, I've done the numbers on this. Between the podcast version and the written version, uh, at most people's reading speed, in my normal weekly newsletter, I'm taking roughly a year of human time to consume it. So it's, it's always been top of mind for me to be worthy of that time that people are putting into it. And AI generated slop is not something that is respectful of that.

Laura Brief: Okay, I have a follow up question if that's okay.

Corey Quinn: Please.

Laura Brief: So you write these beautiful, expansive things, and then AI helps you structure it, if I am hearing correctly?

Corey Quinn: Yes, or alternately, it arrives at giving me a structure, and then I fill it with those beautiful, expansive things. I've gone both ways, and honestly, I find that having it edited, It feels more in my voice, initially, when I do it that way, but I also don't like a lot of its edits.

Laura Brief: Well, whether you're going with path A or path B, do you feel like your skill set for structure, or your toolkit for structuring your own writing is being strengthened by interfacing with it, with that prompt?

Corey Quinn: Absolutely, because I see what it's changing. And it makes sense, especially when I tell it to focus on those specific things.

That's handy. The idea of not using it at all and pretending it's not there feels incredibly indicative back to math teachers who said, "Oh, you have to be able to do this all with a paper and pencil because you won't have a calculator in the future." Now in practice, Of course we do. We have ambient calculators in the room.

Say the right wake word, ask it a math problem, you'll get an answer. The real reason you need to know how to do this is so that you understand what a sane versus not sane answer look like. It's okay, what's, what's my tip? 15 percent of $80. Oh, $45. That sounds right. You want to be able to understand how this works as you step through that process.

There's a, uh, That, I think, is the important lesson for the kids. Yes. But pretending these things don't exist? That seems myopic.

Laura Brief: Yep. So, Corey, it sounds to me, like, you are using Gen AI in exactly the way that we are wishing, wanting it gets used in the future. And, not just in the future, actually, in real-time, in writing education and in classrooms and with students as they're doing their work.

You know, you look at, it feels like there's, and maybe it's just working in my field, but it feels like there's a headline, every week that is talking about the end of writing, right? Or the end of human creative expression because of AI. And there's so many people worried that this is the really nail, put the nail in the coffin of writing education.

And at 826, we're not worried. We are not worried about it. We know that writing is very much not just about the product that ends up on the page, but about the process. And about the transformation that occurs in a writer when they go through the process of writing. And while we fully embrace generative AI as a tool to help students become writers, we would hate to see it replace them having the opportunity to learn those skills themselves. So we really, we think writing is an irreplaceable tool. And we think that there's some really smart, careful ways that teachers can use it and young people can use it to deepen their writing skills, but that now is still a good time to write.

Now is forever going to be a good time to write. This is no replacement for the human capacity to write. We're not worried about it. We're very mindful of it, and we're working with it and we spend a lot of our days talking to people about it, but we're not, we're not worried about it.

Corey Quinn: One thing that I've always struggled with is I write the Last Week in AWS newsletter which aggregates not just news from Amazon's cloud stuff themselves, but also from the ecosystem surrounding it. Folks who have written pieces about how to use these things, and I don't know if what I'm seeing is AI driven or just shitty writing that doesn't seem to understand the subject material.

And I don't particularly care, because neither one of those merits inclusion. I read the things that I put into the newsletter, not just the title that flies across my desk. It's a curation question. And I have to believe a lot of this is AI generated. Now, am I not picking up on things that someone did generate with AI?

Possibly. But if it's good enough content that it passes my reasonably high technical bar, I find myself not particularly caring because there's an explicit endorsement. Stamp of approval if you will, on everything that I put in the newsletter saying, I believe this is worth your time to read.

And if I don't believe that, it doesn't go in. And again, there's, there's other size and other constraints as well. So if people are like, "well, I sent you a thing and you never included it." I'm not saying your writing is terrible, though maybe it was. It's just that week maybe there was too much of an overemphasis on a particular thing.

Maybe it just didn't make the cut for a variety of reasons. It's sort of a random grab bag, but something I've found is that by reading what I, by finding things I don't like, it makes me more tuned into what I do like, and I start writing in that direction myself.

Laura Brief: I have another question for you, if that's okay.

Corey Quinn: Oh, you're always allowed to ask me questions.

Laura Brief: So, like I said, we think a lot about the impact that learning to write has on a person, and then the impact being able to write has on a person. And as one of our students at 826 Boston said, which just struck me, is that when we were thinking about AI, the conversation around AI and writing education, The student said that when they're writing, they feel like they're riding their imagination page by page, which is so beautiful, right?

That doesn't happen by typing in a prompt, right? And I'm wondering, when you're writing how does writing make you feel?

Corey Quinn: Depends. I- a lot of the writing that I do that I find myself being the most freeform is when I'm writing conference talks. I write an awful lot of those, and invariably I'll build my slide decks out of a script, more or less, that become my speaker notes.

Usually the night before the conference while I'm crying, but that's neither here nor there. Procrastination is a way of life. Ask me about it later. Yeah, the problem that I have with that is that just, is the time pressure. But other than that, being able to just cast aside, cast about and figure out whatever it is that I want to write, that's freeing in a lot of different ways.

What's, what I found fun is when I'm just writing for me. And I don't have to worry about publishing it or anything else. The grammar is still impeccable because that's the way I was raised is nails on a chalkboard. I can see the typo on the page and almost nothing else when it's glaring at me.

But there's a, but it definitely lets me exercise a sense of whimsy that I feel like in corporate life I never really got to. My career has been whimsy for the last eight years, so I kind of run with it.

Laura Brief: Thank you for sharing that with me. I recognize that I was just thinking about, too, while it's clear to me that you view writing and the capacity to write as important, even with this tool available, right, that can help us put words on a page.

And we clearly, at 826, we believe that, I'm just clear, that people listening may not feel that way. That some of your listeners may feel like I've had many conversations in which people are relieved that this tool exists because they don't have to work.

Corey Quinn: I'm relieved- I want to be clear in some cases, I will use it myself as ways to remove work. For example, I will write a one line sentence like, turn this into, I'll do it myself, turn this into a polite email. Now, I have the good sense not to send the one that makes me sound like an imperious jackass. But there's a, but that is, I will delay on doing that.

Just turn this into something nice. And I still have to edit it so it sounds like my own voice. That is a time saver, because it keeps me unblocked. One area that I would love to use it, if it's even applied to me anymore, which for better or worse, I've gotten to a point in my career where it does not, but I was always terrible at writing resumes.

The AI has got to be perfect at that because it is resumes are fundamentally bullshit and these things are a bullshit generator, But it's a stylistic bullshit that the resume demands. Honestly at this point, I run a company I don't have to be looking for work in the traditional sense anymore. Which is kind of lovely. People will ask me to help them with interview practice. I've got that on lock. I was very good at passing interviews because I was also very good at getting fired from jobs.

Whereas help me with my resume, it's like I can't even help myself with my resume. These things are terrible. Find someone good at that, please. But those, that stylistic approach, yes, absolutely. Very often I will use it as well to just throw something together in a letter to a representative for some topic that I care about where I don't want it to look like the same every other form letter, but I really just wanna register my opinion on a particular topic without necessarily...

I don't believe that there's a chance in, a snowball's chance in hell that my senator is going to pick mine out of the gargantuan mail pile from California and pick that one to read, but instead, it's like, okay, another one in support of Proposition L or whatever it is. Great. Awesome. I don't know what Proposition L was.

Please don't yell at me, San Francisco local politics folks. Have they even had an L this year? I don't know. I just picked a letter out of a hat.

Laura Brief: Well, if it's okay with you, I realize that in this conversation, I'd like to make the case for why writing education is important.

Corey Quinn: Please do. It's something I've internalized so strongly that it doesn't occur to me that there's an entire side of the world that does not agree with that.

Laura Brief: Which is okay.

Corey Quinn: I like to assume people hold my share my point of view, which is a dangerous mistake.

Laura Brief: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that, I think lots of people do feel that way, and I think it's okay, and I'd love the opportunity to help them see it differently, if possible. You know, writing, as I said before, we really believe that writing is as much about the process as it is about the product, and that writing is transformational because it helps students, and not just students, but, you know, adults as well shape not only their stories, but their futures. And writing allows people to put complex emotions and thoughts into words, to reflect on who they are, where they want to go, to discover what matters to them, and it's a tool for personal growth and a tool for, you know, professional or academic growth.

And in our programs every day across 826, across the country, we see students discovering what's possible for them through putting their pen to the page. And they can go on to use it in a variety of ways. You know, some may go on to be software developers. Some may go on to be authors. But they are discovering themselves in that page.

Writing is very much a come as you are. Writing accepts you for just how you are and lets you, allows you to be just who you are. And I think that we have, as Amanda Gorman, a 826 board member and also...

Corey Quinn: the National Poet Laureate.

Laura Brief: Yes, exactly. She puts it, which I find so beautiful and hopefully I'm going to look at it so I don't butcher it.

She says, "Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predict our hopes and dreams toward survival and change." And that is very much how we see writing. It's this intimate, personal tool that can transform your understanding of yourself, but then it's this big, loud, public tool, right?

It can be a tool for democracy. It can be a tool for social change. It can allow people to reflect on their communities and what they want from this country and be able to articulate that. It can also be this personal, right? And we are in a place in our country where young people across this country are struggling with mental health like they have never before.

I think it was this last year, maybe it was even this year, the CDC reported that 40 percent of teens are experiencing feelings of hopelessness and sadness. Which is profound, and we know that writing is a tool that the data shows us, our lived experience shows us, that writing is a protective factor when it comes to youth mental health.

Being able to express yourself in writing helps you find a way through it. It helps you learn how to sit with your feelings, helps you learn how to express those feelings, and it is in that way and in so many ways such an important tool for a young person to have in their toolkit. And then we also think that writing, learning to write creates not just these intangible things that we're talking about, but it creates measurable change.

It changes how students are able to express themselves and their ideas. It changes the sense of pride that they feel around their own stories and their own voices, and I think it gives them a sense of agency, a sense of my words matter. My words can go anywhere. My words belong anywhere, and that is incredibly important as we're investing in this next generation of young people in this country.

Corey Quinn: One of the, I guess, big challenges, I think, is that we have an entire generation of folks, maybe this is a human experience, or that particular age group, always, but a feeling unheard, a feeling disenfranchised, of you're being, spending your entire day, dawn till dusk, being told what to do, how to do it, why you're wrong, etc., etc., etc. For me, it wasn't so much writing when I was a kid, it was reading. Reading was my escape. My parents moved around a lot, and I struggled to make friends. This did not get easier in adult life, by the way, and so my friends were books, which led to a rich inner life, but very much a, like, I would be called on in class, and I would just be sitting there reading a novel, because it was what I did in English class, of course, and they would try and catch me off guard, and I would just answer the question without looking up and keep reading, and it was infuriating, because I was right, but it was disrespectful, quote unquote.

That sort of is an encapsulation of my entire personality. Right, but disrespectful. Yeah, we're gonna lean into that. I don't pretend to be a mental health expert. I historically shy away from talking about the subject on this show, specifically because if I give people advice on what database to use.

Great. If I give bad advice, oops a doozy. We'll figure it out. If I give you bad mental health advice, the consequences are significantly more dire than your website falling over for 10 minutes. So, it's one of those, I try very much to stay in my lane. But this is an area that you are a professional in. You hold dual masters in education and counseling psychology.

You were a former, you're a former therapist for survivors of trauma. This is, you're one of the few people I will, I'm comfortable having this kind of conversation with on the air just because it does not have the high propensity to do harm that an enthusiastic amateur can do as applied to other areas of pursuit.

I don't know how to write code like that, but I'm going to try it. And then we all laugh at the failure. It's like, I'm going to screw up a generation of kids and now we're all going to laugh at that. No, no one will be laughing. That's terrible. Yeah, it's clear that there's a, every generation loves to complain about new technology as applied to the kids.

This happened a hundred years ago with newspapers. It was making people on the train antisocial. There were op eds and screeds written about it. We're seeing it now with technology in varying forms. My kids are the iPad generation, though recently my daughter discovered the love of a Kindle e-reader. So it's, this is fantastic!

Keep going! It's, it's nice to be able to see Like, the glimmers of hope. And the reason she got into reading lately is because one of her friends is into reading and dragged her into it, kicking and screaming and wants to get me to read her same series. It's like, oh great, how many books? Oh my god, there are 28 books in this series.

Okay, I'm not saying it's bad writing. Clearly she enjoys it, and it's a good narrative, but the characters are not deeply complex. There is no mystery as to whether good or evil will triumph in the latest Dragon War. It's, it doesn't hold my attention in the way that it needs to, but that's okay. Part of what I learned with all those terrible English classes growing up is that not everything is written for me.

Laura Brief: It's true, but Corey, the more that I get to know you, the more that I think when you were a young person, you would have loved 826, and that you probably would still love 826. When you were talking, I forget what you just said a moment, of how you said it just a moment ago about, about school and the rules and, whatever you, that's, that reflection on school and how that environment made you feel.

It made me just reflect on 826, and we maybe, it was probably 9 months ago, 11 months ago, something like that, Good Morning America wanted to do a piece on 826. And we brought them to 826 Chicago, where it's, our writing center is hidden behind a secret agent supply company. And we brought in these incredible young people to talk to them about who they are as writers, what they think about writing, who, you know, their experience with 826, all of this.

And the reporter said to one of the students, I think he was maybe 11-years-old, "what's your favorite thing about 826?" And he said, "I don't have to raise my hand to go to the bathroom." And that might sound minor, but to us, that is by design. And that is huge.

Corey Quinn: I've worked with interns before who had to ask permission to go to the bathroom.

It's like, what are you going to do if I say no? Just, just get up and go. Yeah, exactly. This is a workplace. Teaching norms is important. Yeah, yeah.

Laura Brief: Exactly. There's certain norms at school, and those norms are important, right? And then there's norms at home, and then there's norms at 826.

We're a third space that really are intentionally built to be silly, to be weird, to be whimsical, so that students can be their authentic self, whether that's silly, serious, weird, whimsical, and they know when they walk into that space, both by how it looks visually, and by what the rules, quote unquote rules are, that this is a space that is different from any other space in their lives, and this is a space just for them. So when that kid said well I don't have to ask to go to the bathroom, while the reporters might have thought that was funny and minor, for us it was such an indication of, yeah, this space is, outside of the writing component, this space is creating the context that it's supposed to create in which that writing can occur.

We also work really hard to bring imaginations to life in a way that sounds like you would have enjoyed when you were a young person.

We met your partner Mike earlier this morning at 826 Valencia, and we were showing him around our original 826. And it was founded back in 2002, and Nínive and Dave found a space that they thought was perfect. It was on Valencia Street, and it was near, was in the heart of the mission, near so many of the students that they hoped to serve. They found this perfect venue, and they learned that it was zoned for retail only. And in 826 fashion, instead of giving up and moving on, they looked around and they said, well, this looks like the hull of a ship.

Let's turn it into a pirate supply company.

Corey Quinn: And so far, San Francisco's premier and only pirate supply store.

Laura Brief: Exactly.

Corey Quinn: 826 Valencia, of course, is the local chapter. I've talked to people who, about 826 National, they had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Two or three minutes in, they're like, wait, is this like 826 Valencia?

It's- yeah, I need to start remembering to mention that to locals when we get into that topic.

Laura Brief: It is exactly like 826 Valencia. 826 Valencia is our founding chapter. And, um, from there it's grown to nine chapters and digital. So they started with a pirate shop. We now have a hunting supply company in New Orleans.

We have a time travel mart in L.A. But the, what I was telling Mike this morning, and showing Mike this morning is hidden behind this pirate shop where you walk in, and you can dig for buried treasures, and you get to keep the treasure if you trade it for a joke or a song or a story, right? Well hidden behind this shop is this writing center, and the writing center, and the way we approach writing is is intended to be as fun for a young person as that pirate supply company is.

So we have, when students come in for a field trip, as was happening today, we have a very, very grumpy editor named Captain Blue. So I was volunteering there not too long ago, and a group of third graders came in. Three third graders came and sat at a table with me, and they said, oh my god, we've heard no kid has ever met Captain Blue.

Are we going to get to see Captain Blue today?

Corey Quinn: Not technically true. No one, no kid has ever gotten to meet Captain Blue and lived.

Laura Brief: Right, exactly. Didn't say that.

Corey Quinn: No, no, that's apparently called, "traumatizing children," and most people frown upon that.

Laura Brief: Exactly. And I was like, well, you'll, you'll just have to, you'll just have to wait and see, maybe.

And then this big, booming voice comes down from the attic that says, This is Captain Blue. I hear there's children here who think they're gonna write a story. Children can't write stories. And all the kids are all a twitter, and then they get, they're like, "yes, we can. We can write a story," right?

And we lead them through this workshop, right? Where they learn to write a story, they co-create the first half, and then each student writes the second half by themselves. And those stories go up to the grumpy editor, Captain Blue, for him to approve. And these faces of these young people, they sit at the bottom of this ladder, looking up into the attic, hoping to catch a glimpse of Captain Blue.

And Captain Blue goes through their stories one-by-one and reflects back to them something amazing they see in that story, and then says, "Approved." And the student said, "Aye aye, Captain." And just the love of writing that is born in that one experience, and that's only one of our many, many programs. But that is when I think about what you were saying about school earlier and the sort of lack of finding your way into it.

826 is designed for every student to find their way into it and for it to meet that student exactly where they are as creative, wacky, smart, bold, powerful, little creators, you know?

Corey Quinn: What a great philosophy, and what a great approach. And honestly, it makes me feel a little bad now about, I guess, the followup line I have for this is that we are currently, when this airs, still running our annual charity t-shirt drive. This year features AI being force fed through a funnel into a goose, which is how a lot of customers are feeling these days with all of the AI-centric tech marketing being stuffed into them, regardless of whether they want it or not.

All proceeds, once again, to benefit 826 National, and you can feel free to get yours at shitposting.fashion, which is a URL specifically designed to be easy to say on a podcast. Again, that is shitposting. fashion. Please feel free to grab yours.

Laura Brief: Thank you, and thank you so much for partnering with us on this for so many years.

It has supported so many students across the nation. And I do have to say that this year, I don't know exactly how many years we've been doing this, but a number of years we've been doing this with you, and each year, you and Mike very patiently sit down with us and explain the joke on the t-shirt to us.

Yep. And we... in all transparency, we nod. We like maybe understand 20 percent of what you're saying.

Corey Quinn: Year of AMI vs. AMI presentation with the $10 for the wrong one that Amazon used as an internal one. Yeah, that's a deep cut. It requires some very nuanced explanation.

Laura Brief: Yeah, yeah, we had no idea what you were talking about.

We appreciated it. Knew that, that, that, but this year was the first year that we were able to be in on the joke too, so we appreciated that.

Corey Quinn: The best jokes don't generally require a five hour backstory exposition in order for it to make sense. Who knew?

Laura Brief: Well, it depends on your audience. We're not your audience, right?

Corey Quinn: This is one of those that resonates, I think, with an awful lot of folks who are just sick of the hype. I know I am.

Laura, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?

Laura Brief: Yeah, our website, which is, www.826, the numbers, 826national.org, and, if it's okay, people can reach out to me if they have questions at [email protected].

Corey Quinn: And we will, of course, put links to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it.

Laura Brief: Thank you, Corey. This was such a pleasure. Thank you for this conversation and for your partnership over the years.

It means a lot.

Corey Quinn: Likewise. Laura Brief, CEO at 826 National. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five star review on your podcast platform of choice. Whereas if you've hated this podcast episode, please leave a five star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with an angry, insulting comment that never really goes anywhere, because apparently you never learned how to express yourself in writing.