During her middle-school years, Jessica Freeman-Slade, class of 2006, was a student at a summer writers' camp in her native Massachusetts. A few years later, she returned to the camp to teach creative writing and drama. Now, as a Kenyon student, she is helping to ignite a love for writing in Gambier's children.

An English and sociology double major, Freeman-Slade works as a student associate at the Kenyon Review. Through her position at the Review, Freeman-Slade led the way in developing the Wiggin Street Writers' Project, a community outreach effort through which Kenyon students are teaching local elementary children to be better writers. As the project's leader, she developed exercises to teach children strong writing skills and coordinated the schedules of other student volunteers.

"Writing is a solitary act, but you can't just be on your own," she says. "You have to have someone set you on your own." Freeman-Slade organized the project around that guiding philosophy. She also reached back into her own past, using experiences gained as a student and a teacher at the Massachusetts writing camp as inspiration in developing the program at Kenyon.

Freeman-Slade credits her own preparation, beginning in middle school, with giving her the tools she needed to develop a love for writing. "I had really amazing middle-school teachers," she says, noting that they made writing classes "innovative and fun."

As a result, Freeman-Slade understands that an interest in writing must be sparked in children at an early age, before social pressures turn them away from creative interests. "If you start when they're younger, if you work with kids long enough in the right ways, they won't be embarrassed to be artistic," she says.