changemakers - Laurie Ann Thompson

7th Graders Changing the World

Laurie Thompson — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 22:10:46 +0000

I recently came across this article about some 7th graders from Owasso, Oklahoma. It says, in part:

Several reading students at the Owasso Seventh Grade Center recently participated in the school’s first “Be a Changemaker” program.
The program – based off Laurie Ann Thompson’s book, “Be a Changemaker: How to Start Something That Matters” – enabled students to affect change in their classrooms and the community through different passion projects.
Eighty six students across five classes combined what they like, what they’re good at, and a problem they felt passionate about to create a campaign that would make a lasting impact in that area.
Language Arts teacher Amber McMath, who led the two-week program, used the premise of “Be a Changemaker” as the foundation for the course, designed to help students in reading remediation improve their skills.
“They’re only assignment was to come up with a venture that would change the world,” she said. “The book inspired us to do that because it had several projects in it, and it also was kind of a guide that walked you through how to do it.”

The kids addressed bullying at their school, started a video game club, collected food for a homeless shelter, and raised awareness of issues including human trafficking and food waste. They engaged in public speaking events and social media campaigns, wrote meeting agendas and press releases, contacted businesses to ask for help, and researched grants and other crowd-sourcing outlets to raise funds.
Way to go, Owasso 7th graders (and their awesome language arts teacher, Ms. McMath)!
Read the full article and see a photo here.

Nonfiction Monday: Courage & Defiance blog tour and interview

Laurie Thompson — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 10:05:05 +0000

As you can probably tell by my books Be a Changemaker and Emmanuel’s Dream, I love writing about heroes and changemakers. It should be no surprise, then, that I love reading about them, too. My favorite kinds of stories are those about ordinary people who acted with extraordinary strength, conviction, and courage, and the book I just finished reading is full of people doing just that. In Courage & Defiance: Stories of Spies, Saboteurs and Survivors in World War II Denmark by Deborah Hopkinson (Scholastic Press, August 2015), the author has clearly done a great deal of careful research to bring us narrative nonfiction about the WWII resistance movement in Denmark from the perspective of some of those who took part in it. It’s a gripping tale of adventure and suspense, and one that has rarely been told.

Deborah has been interviewed on this blog before, and I’m super excited to welcome her back once again as part of the Courage and Defiance blog tour. I hope you enjoy the interview!
LAT: I know I thoroughly enjoyed this book, Deborah. What kind of young reader do you think Courage & Defiance will appeal to? What other books might be read-alikes?
DH: I visit schools all over the country and love to ask students what they’re reading. While fantasy and science fiction are always popular, I’m usually surprised by the number of students – girls and boys – who tell me they like to read about history and like nonfiction. There are definitely kids who read everything they can get their hands on topics such as the Titanic and World War II, but I think readers who enjoyed Number the Stars by Lois Lowry or The Diary of Anne Frank will also enjoy Courage & Defiance.
LAT: This is a story that many of us probably haven’t heard before. Why do you think that might be?
DH: I think perhaps that here in the U.S., we’re most naturally interested in stories that take place after America entered World War II on December 7, 1941. (As it happens, my next nonfiction book about submarines in the Pacific war begins with the attack on Pearl Harbor and will be out in 2016 for the 75th anniversary.) While I did find a number of adult nonfiction books about the experience of Danes during the German occupation, which began on April 9, 1940, almost all were scholarly titles or of interest primarily to historians (including a 600-page book about the SOE in Denmark). I feel fortunate that I was able to find as much as I did in English, but I am sure there is much more available in Danish. We were able to access the photo archives of the Museum of Danish Resistance.

Deborah Hopkinson

LAT: During the research phase of Courage & Defiance, what discoveries did you come across that made you feel like you’d struck gold? Was there anything in the research that came as a surprise?
DH: At author visits, I tell students that my favorite part of writing is the research. And since I knew little when I began several years ago, I felt like I was discovering something new and incredible at every corner. Probably the most significant discovery I made was finding a memoir in English entitled A Letter to My Descendents by Niels Skov. Niels, whom I later had the privilege to meet, came to the U.S. after the war, where he received a Ph.D. and became a college professor. His personal account was so incredibly lively and vibrant – which matched his personality, even at age ninety-four. To my surprise, he had been deported to a German labor camp at the same time as another activist whose story I tell, but they did not meet. It made me realize just how many incredible stories there are in history, and how easily they are lost.
LAT: This one may be tricky, but if you can fathom a guess… What do you think it was about the Danes that made them able to resist the Germans and support their Jewish countrymen so effectively?
DH: Well, I am not sure I am qualified to say, but what comes across in all the first-person accounts I found was that ordinary people shared an unwavering sense of human decency, a love of country, and a commitment to doing the right thing – even at great cost. It seems to me that as the war went on, the confidence and belief that people had in democratic values helped to give them the courage to take risks.
LAT: In the book, you asked Niels what his advice to young people today would be. Now that you’ve done all this research and written such a fantastic book, what is YOUR advice to young people today?
DH: While young people in America now may not be faced with life-and-death decisions as Danish citizens were in the 1940s, we all grapple with difficult personal choices. So perhaps I’d simply give the same advice I’ve often told my own two children: make good choices and do good work in the world. And, of course, I have to add: keep reading!
LAT: That’s great advice, Deborah. Thanks so much for visiting today!
For other stops on the Courage and Defiance blog tour please check deborahhopkinson.com.

Meet Changemaker Edward Jiang, founder of StudentRND

Laurie Thompson — Tue, 27 May 2014 13:30:09 +0000

This is the second post in the series introducing the amazing young people who are profiled in my upcoming book, BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS (Beyond Words/Simon Pulse, September 2014). Today I’m introducing Edward Jiang, founder of StudentRND, and giving some behind-the-scenes details about our in-person interview.

Edward Jiang

Edward loves technology, but he was frustrated by the structured opportunities available to him in high school. He wanted to have the time and resources to just play with technology alongside other enthusiasts and see what they could make out of it. So, right before graduation, he recruited some of his friends to spend the summer of 2009 hanging out with him at his house and building cool technology projects together. He had such a great time that he decided to build a permanent place in the community where any interested student could do the same. He called it StudentRND.
By 2013, StudentRND occupied a 3,500-square-foot office space in Bellevue, WA, with an electronics lab (featuring soldering tools and oscilloscopes), a fabrication lab (with a 3‑D printer and laser cutter), a computer lab (loaded with software packages), and an impressive technology library. When I visited, Edward showed me how he used his Twitter account to unlock the door, and I got to see their custom vending machine and a set of the plasma speakers created at StudentRND by Marshall Meng. Impressive, to say the least!
Edward was one of the first people I interviewed for BE A CHANGEMAKER, and it was an experience I won’t soon forget. To my surprise, he was skeptical about the book and made no attempt to hide his feelings. He politely questioned the need for a book like this specifically for teens, who are perfectly capable of reading books for adults. I’m so grateful to him for raising this issue early on! His doubts guided me throughout the writing process, reminding me to never talk down to my audience as I struggled to include the most useful content in the most directly relevant ways. I hope I’ve succeeded in delivering something worthy of teen readers. If I have, I know I owe it in no small part to Edward and his unflinching honesty.
Now a registered nonprofit, StudentRND controls a six-figure annual budget and receives more than a third of its funding from technology companies like eBay, Splunk, Coinstar, Stratos, and Medtronic. Major online media outlets like TechCrunch, GeekWire, and Mashable as well as traditional media like newspapers, radio, and television have featured StudentRND. And they recently added three technology veterans from companies including Splunk, Amazon, and Google to their board of directors, joining Edward and StudentRND program director Tyler Menezes.
Last weekend 24 cities across the country hosted CodeDay events for hundreds of youth. First launched in 2011, StudentRND’s CodeDay events are 24-hour student hackathons. Young technologists pitch ideas, form teams, and build a cool app or game together in one day. What can a student do in one day? Mohammad Adib created and published Sidebar, an Android app with more than 200,000 downloads! And that’s just one of many CodeDay success stories.
StudentRND and its CodeDay program appear poised to continue growing, reaching more students, engaging them in technology, and making real products. And Edward Jiang made that change happen.
Follow StudentRND on Facebook and on Twitter. Follow CodeDay on Facebook and on Twitter.

If you’d like to read more about Edward and other young people like him who are putting their passions into action to make a positive difference in the world, please pre-order the book at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Powell’s, or Beyond Words, or Secret Garden Books. Ordering from Secret Garden Books can get you a signed copy if you allow an extra week or two for delivery and indicate how you’d like it personalized in the “other notes about your order” field.

Meet Changemaker Charles Orgbon III, founder of Greening Forward

Laurie Thompson — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:00:06 +0000

Today, I’m kicking off a series of blog posts that will introduce you to some of the amazing young people who are profiled in my upcoming book, BE A CHANGEMAKER: HOW TO START SOMETHING THAT MATTERS (Beyond Words/Simon Pulse, September 2014). Each of the 18 chapters in the book includes a short piece about how one or more young people changed the world and their experiences with the chapter topic, in particular. I was able to interview most of them in person, via Skype, by phone, or by email, and I have so much more great stuff about them than would fit in the book–sort of like out-takes, only better! I hope you’ll enjoy “meeting” them here and reading more about them and their work.

Charles Orgbon III

Being today is Earth Day, it seemed only fitting that I start with Charles Orgbon III. Charles is a 17-year-old from Atlanta, GA. His passions are protecting the environment and empowering youth, and he’s been combining the two with ever-increasing success for the last five years.
I had such a great time talking to Charles on the phone, and I feel blessed that we’ve stayed in contact since. Charles is not only generous and communicative, but also well-read: anyone who can accurately quote both Ghandi and Stephen Covey in a one-hour, off-the-cuff phone interview is a winner in my book!
Charles’ journey started when he was 12 years old and needed to complete a service requirement for his middle school. He noticed there was a problem with litter on the campus, so he picked it up. Soon, he began recruiting other students to join him in what he called the Earth Savers’ Club. That grew, too, and soon Charles wanted to empower other students in other schools in other cities around the world to do the same thing he had. Eventually, he launched a website to share his experiences. Today, that organization has become GreeningForward.org, whose mission is “to establish, engage, and empower a diverse global green movement powered by young people.”
One of my favorite quotes from Charles (that didn’t make it into the book) is one that I think everyone can benefit from at times:

“Sometimes you just have to accept ‘I’m lost,’ because that’s what reminds you where you came from in the first place.”

Charles will graduate from high school this summer and head off to the University of Georgia. I wish him the best, and I can’t wait to see what he’ll accomplish next!
For more about Charles, I recommend you follow him on Twitter and watch this talk he did at TEDxAtlanta:

For more about Greening Forward, you can like them on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.
I hope you’ll join me in wishing Charles–and all of his friends at Greening Forward–a very happy Earth Day!

If you’d like to read more about Charles and other young people like him who are putting their passions into action to make a positive difference in the world, please pre-order the book at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Powell’s, or Beyond Words, or Secret Garden Books. Ordering from Secret Garden Books can get you a signed copy if you allow an extra week or two for delivery and indicate how you’d like it personalized in the “other notes about your order” field.