The Dickens Day of Writing, the Dickens Project’s high school essay writing undertaking, has grown in the three years since it was established. Now, it is taking another step by expanding the curriculum for the program and increasing participation in the event.
The expansion will be realized with the help of Molly Bingham, the 2024 Dickens Project Educational Partnerships Intern for the Dickens Project. Molly, a former UC San Diego student who transferred to UCSC this year, has a background in working with community groups that started in high school, where she worked with One Planet, an organization focused on climate change. She also founded her high school’s Theater Club and was vice president of the student government, in addition to being involved in other student organizations. She has also acted in many community theater productions and has been a costume intern at Transcendence Theater Company in Sonoma. At UC San Diego, she majored in theater and psychology before she declared a literature major at UCSC. Her internship is through the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Intern (CUIP) program at UCSC.
Molly’s plans for the Dickens Day of Writing include developing additional material for the students in the Dickens Day of Writing Program. Held on Dickens’s birthday each year, the Day of Writing asks high school students to read an essay by Dickens and then respond to it in writing. The essay the program has been using for the past three years is “Night Walks,” which has a prominent theme of homelessness. While Molly’s literature focus is Shakespeare, she has also studied Victorian literature and will focus on selecting essays from Dickens’s works that cover other themes that are significant to today’s high school students. One option high on Molly’s list is a writing prompt that dovetails with her background in theater, which was also important to Dickens. “Theater is a great way for students to develop a deeper understanding of a text,” she says. “I hope to develop a program in which students get to engage with Dickens' work off the page and on their feet. Finding ways to read aloud and embody some of his characters is a great way to gain a deeper understanding of Dickens’s work.”
Molly is also working on increasing participation in the Dickens Day of Writing. Currently, the Dickens Day of Writing is offered to students in Santa Cruz; San Mateo; Cleveland, OH; Atlanta, GA; and Dunwoody, GA. Molly says she hopes to increase outreach both to new high schools and to the community. “I am really focusing on building partnerships with local businesses and finding ways to establish long term relationships with the Santa Cruz community,” she says.
According to its website, the Chancellor's Undergraduate Internship Program (CUIP) “provides full-time students the opportunity to learn valuable professional skills while supporting student resources. Interns work within programs and departments throughout the university, and attend a two-unit leadership seminar during the academic school year.” Students are assigned to university departments, in this case the Dickens Project Office, and mentors.
Molly says she is “thrilled” to have this opportunity to work with the Dickens Day of Writing. More information about the program, and a link that provides information about participating in the event, can be found at https://teachers.ucsc.edu/dickens-day-of-writing/.
