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Winter/Spring 2024 Classes


(Check back for art classes tba soon!) Rhizome is pleased to offer a range of in-depth programming, facilitated by practitioners, for homeschoolers and afterschoolers. These will be small, friendly, relaxed classes focused on creative collaboration and open-minded engagement with the material. Please email info@rhizomedc.org with any questions. Scholarships available.

Writing For Flow | Ages 9-12 | Mondays 4:30-5:20pm | Jan. 22 - May 20 *option for remote participation*

Experimental Writing Lab | Ages 15+ | Wednesdays 10-11:30am | Jan. 17 - Apr. 24

High School Language Arts: How to Read Like a Writer | Ages 14+ | Wednesdays 12-1:30pm | Jan. 24 - May 15

No classes February 19 or March 25-29.


Writing For Flow
Ages 9-11
Mondays, 4:30-5:20 pm
January 22 - May 20 (no class Feb.19 or Mar.25) - 16 classes total
Fee: $160-240
* option for remote participation *

This is a play-based practice class for 9-11 year olds. Creative prompts, group writing activities, and in-class writing sessions-- great for enthusiastic writers but designed to entice the reluctant or inhibited writer too. Writing as a form of play helps shorten the distance between the thoughts in our heads and the words on the page. Go wild, and go for the giggles, while building stamina, confidence, and appreciation for the possibilities of the blank page.

Instructor: Anna Josephson

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Experimental Writing Lab
Ages 15+
Wednesdays, 10:00 -11:30 am
January 17 - April 24 (no class March 27)
Fee: $280-360

In this 14-week workshop we will engage with practices, prompts, and constraints to generate innovative writing. Our aim is to discover the unexpected — to bypass habitual thinking and writing in favor of language that will surprise us and lead us into new creative territory. We’ll read the work of contemporary poets and writers; experiment with asemic, automatic, and collaborative writing; create our own language games and constraints; and perhaps write a manifesto.

Instructor: Leslie Bumstead

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High School Language Arts: How to Read Like a Writer
Ages 14+
Wednesdays, 12-1:30pm
January 24 - May 15 (no class Mar.25) - 16 classes total
Sliding scale: $320-400

Using fiction, nonfiction, and texts that trouble the fiction/nonfiction binary, this class explores the real and nonreal– everything from responsibility and independence to ghosts and the divine. Socratic discussion daily. Writing explorations occasionally.

Instructor: Anna Josephson

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About the instructors:
Leslie Bumstead is a writer and educator who teaches literature, composition, and creative writing in the DC area. She has taught in various settings: homeschooling cooperative, public high school, AIDS clinic, university, prison, and summer camp. Her collection of poems, Cipher/Civilian, was published by Edge Books in 2005. Other works, including essays and translations, have appeared in anthologies and literary magazines. She loves to collaborate with students and facilitate their own engagement with literature and writing.

Anna Josephson is a homeschooling parent in the District. She teaches academic writing and composition at the University of Maryland. She grew up in Alaska, where she received Socratic seminar education starting at age 12. She is a published author currently shopping her first novel.

Caroline MacKinnon is a parent, artist and educator who lives in Takoma Park, MD. She teaches ceramics classes to children and adults at the Takoma Park Community Center. She also holds art workshops for small groups in area schools and has previously run arts camps at Rhizome. She likes meeting people, making art and collecting things.

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Earlier Event: January 14
Electronic Music Lab
Later Event: June 17
2024 Summer Camps