Iceland review - 2006, Qupperneq 40

I’ve been coming to Iceland since 1998, when we first printed our magazine, McSweeney’s, at
Oddi Printing in Reykjavík. Though I’m usually in Iceland for just a few days, for presschecks
at the printing plant, over the years I’ve been able to tour the country extensively, and even
spent much of one summer in a rented house on Hvalfjördur. Iceland is my favorite place in
the world to visit, and it’s difficult to explain why. Much of it has to do with the landscape,
spare and dramatic and unspoiled, and part of it is the feeling of being both at the top of the
planet, and also — due to the volcanoes, geysers and scarcity of people — at some semblance
of its beginning.
I live in San Francisco, which shares a similar palette as Iceland in the summer: electric greens
and yellows, cobalt blues. In San Francisco, some friends and I started a nonprofit in 2002,
dedicated to helping the students in the city. The point of the center originally was to simply
use the McSweeney’s staff and freelance writers to tutor kids in the neighborhood — the
Mission District — every day after school. We rented a building at 826 Valencia because a
lot of interesting groups intersect in the area: a high percentage of immigrant families, public
schools with low test scores and a vast number of writers, students, artists who might be
willing to volunteer. Our first goal — of providing one-on-one attention after school — was
met early on, with about 30 students, ages 8-18, coming in every day for help with their
writing, spelling and other English homework. But the volunteer corps of 826 Valencia grew
quickly, from 35 tutors to 200 in a matter of months, and now that we have 950 tutors, the
scope of what we do at the center has greatly expanded. We send tutors into schools every day,
to work with teachers in helping give concentrated attention to students and their writing.
Every day at the center itself, we host field trips where young students write, illustrate and
bind their own books, and every night, after drop-in tutoring, we hold classes for high school
students who want to learn more about the written word — from poetry to rock journalism
to screenwriting. Books, zines, newspapers and websites result from these classes, making the
student work permanent and available to readers around the world.
Now there are related centers in five other cities in the United States — New York, Los
Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and Ann Arbor — and thousands of tutors are working with
teachers, becoming involved in the public schools, and tens of thousands of students are
benefiting from concentrated, one-on-one attention to their written words.
Some of my own high school students in San Francisco — from a book-editing class I teach
every year — were asked to write about what their lives might be like in Iceland. These are
three examples of the essays they wrote. – Dave Eggers
IMAGINE ICELAND
BY RACHEL BOLTON, ALISON CAGLE AND LIA IRENE MEZZIO
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVE EGGERS.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE REYKJAVÍK MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY
38 ICELAND REVIEW
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