Upgrade Your YWW Subscription to Get A Structured Curriculum & Homeschool Credit
- A Personal Teaching Assistant
- A Structured, Linear Curriculum
- Multiple Choice Quizzes
- Guided Exercises & Activities
- Creative Writing Credit for Homeschool Students
"I’ve gone from writing a couple hundred words fairly often to writing in the thousands of words daily because of Academic."
— Sarah Abegglen
YWW Academic builds on top of YWW Standard, turning the teaching content from the library and different community activities into a structured curriculum.
It consists of a 9-month course during the school year plus a 3-month summer program.
It's perfect for students who would benefit from more structure, accountability, and deadlines to take full advantage of what YWW offers — as well as homeschool students who would like to earn credit for their writing activities.
You'll get everything in YWW Standard — PLUS an assigned Teaching Assistant, weekly assignments, time sheets to track your writing, and more!
What Students Get (in addition to everything in YWW Standard):
- A personal TA that will help keep them accountable for course work.
- A course that rearranges our large instructional video library into a linear sequence that teaches the core tenets of creative writing.
- Multiple-choice quizzes that assess student understanding.
- Guided exercises and activities that help students apply what they learn to their current work-in-progress.
- A path for homeschoolers to get one creative writing credit for their YWW and personal writing work.
"With hundreds of writing hours under my belt, a short story completed and submitted to a website, ideas strengthened and many more in the works, I have grown more in one year than I have in my entire life. And this is merely the beginning."
— Ellie B.
Academic Year at a Glance
Module One: Building Core Writing Habits | January 28 - March 10
In this module, students will learn why it’s important to start writing while young, how to build a consistent writing habit, and how to involve their parents in their writing. The module will end with an activity that helps students understand what environments work best for them personally to write.
Module Two: Building Your Core Community | March 11 - May 19
In this module, students will learn why great writers don’t rely on themselves and work on putting together a team of writers around them that will help them grow as a writer. Non-fiction writers will start a private or public blog in order to build their consistency as a writer. The module will end with an activity where students find and reach out to a more experienced writer to mentor them in their journey as a writer.
Summer Module: Honing Your Personal Style | May 20 - August 11
In this module, students will learn how to imitate other writers and use that experience to hone their personal writing style. This is a less intense module than the other modules to give students more room to breathe during the summer.
Module Three: Studying the Craft | August 19 - November 3
In this module, students will study the craft of writing, including outlining, suspense, character development, and editing for fiction writers, and blogging, plagiarism, and editing for non-fiction writers. The module will end with an activity where students write and submit a short story or article to a larger publication or website.
Module Four: Thinking Through Future Steps | November 4 - December 22
In this module, students will explore what it looks like to have a career as a writer and how the publishing industry works. They will also be encouraged to reflect on how writing fits into their larger vocation in life. This module will end with an activity where students put together a plan for how they want to continue to grow as a writer moving forward.
Upgrade to Academic By January 25th
FICTION
TRACK
- A Personal Teaching Assistant
- A Structured, Linear Curriculum
- Multiple Choice Quizzes
- Guided Exercises & Activities
- Creative Writing Credit for Homeschool Students
QUESTIONS? [email protected]
NONFICTION
TRACK
- A Personal Teaching Assistant
- A Structured, Linear Curriculum
- Multiple Choice Quizzes
- Guided Exercises & Activities
- Creative Writing Credit for Homeschool Students
QUESTIONS? [email protected]
YWW Academic is by far the best high school writing course I’ve ever taken. The assignments weren’t pointless or boring; I wasn’t forced to write about subjects that didn’t matter to me. Instead, the course felt exciting, and because I had my own TA, it was tailored to me! I would definitely recommend this to any young writer!
— Natalie Davis
Try The Program Risk Free With Our 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee
- Join Today And Spend 60 Days Inside The Workshop
- Meaningfully Engage With Everything The Workshop Offers
- Get A 100% Refund If You Aren't Happy With Your Experience
This is a "do the work" guarantee -- meaning refunds are only granted to students who fully engage with the program, follow our instructions, and fail to make meaningful progress.
Frequently Asked Questions
How are grades assigned?
YWW Academic is run as a pass/fail course, so we don't assign letter grades for student work.
Creative writing assignments are famously difficult to assign objective grades to in traditional schools, and we want to enable student choice within the program. Whether that's writing a novel, running a blog, crafting short stories, etc., we want students to write what they’re passionate for instead of assigning specific assignments.
As a result, the family/student picks the writing topics, and we simply help students follow through on writing regularly each week.
What kind of writing will students do?
Fiction students can choose whether they want to write short stories or work on a longer project like a short story or a novel. Non-fiction students will be learning how to run a blog during this course (though they can keep the blog private if they or their families doesn't want it to be public yet. In both cases, however, the students can choose what topics they're writing about.
What kind of feedback do students get?
To receive feedback on their writing, students are encouraged and required to connect with other students on our virtual community and exchange writing with each other for peer feedback.
Because of the number of students within the program, instructors/TAs don't give direct feedback on the student's work except for a few activities.
How much time does it take?
Students can expect to spend 45-60 minutes a day on work for the Academic program (this includes two hours per week of work on their personal writing).
What kind of credit will students get?
Homeschool students will get one high school creative writing credit for completing this course and earning their completion certificate.
There are a few private/online schools that may also accept this for credit, but this will vary between schools and most will not due to the self-paced component. Please email our program director ([email protected]) if you have questions about doing this program for credit with a traditional or online school.
Can I enroll if I'm currently on scholarship for YWW?
No. Because of the personal attention we provide with our teaching assistants, we unfortunately do need participating students to be paying full-price for YWW Standard along with the Academic upgrade.