Once upon a time, people read the newspaper over their morning coffee. 

Now? Not so much. Teens? Never!

Today, opinions about celebrities, politics, human and animal rights, science, and the arts are at everyone’s fingertips. On our phones!

Does your teen know the difference between 

     an online rant versus a thoughtfully researched article? 

     a scholarly argument versus a blog post?

Persuasive writing looks different online versus in a college lecture hall. 

Class Overview

Made With You in Mind

Here’s something essential your teen needs to know: “Essay writing” is not one action; it’s the result of many writing choices.

Most students just see the blank page, panic, and scramble to fill it with their opinions in one shot. A writing process that is fast and furious often results in essay RANTING, not essay writing.

We don’t want to skip the thoughtful steps to building a sound argument and cohesive paper. Those need to happen before the first draft.

We focus on the essential essay-writing skills that come first:

  • Exploring and understanding the topic
  • Articulating a logical thesis
  • Gathering quality research
  • Planning an effective structure
  • Writing paraphrases and summaries
  • Avoiding accidental plagiarism ← that’s a biggie!

Over four weeks, we help our students craft an essay that holds water in the academic arena, with strategy, sources, and citations. Students will read a range of sources, evaluate arguments, and then take a position that they defend intelligently, with nuance.

Did you know? 

Once you sign up for this class, you can print or save the activities and readings for you to reuse over and over at home! 

We’re not teaching your student to write an essay one time—we want them to be able to reuse the class materials to write confidently, forever! 

Keep practicing these skills with new topics. You’ve got this!

Brave Writer® specializes in transitioning students from creative, personal experience writing to academic formats. Students should already be competent writers.

We recommend the following progression of courses before taking Essay Writing 102:

Week by Week

Week One

Noticing Perspective. This week we'll explore the spark that leads to all good persuasive essays—taking an informed stance. 

Week Two

Thesis Statement → Points and Particulars. Students sift through their ideas and create thesis statements with tension and plan writing that will tie together their claims, reasoning, and the evidence they found.

Week Three

Paraphrasing and Drafting. With a plan in place, it’s time to draft the essay. Part of this writing includes a need to paraphrase expert source text. 

Week Four

The Persuasive Essay. Here's where we put it all together! Students work through the process of drafting, revising, and editing while incorporating citations following MLA style guidelines.

Registration Details

Join Us!

Tuition:
$249.00 per student
Recommended Ages:

13 - 18

Class Size:
25 students
Class Length:
4 weeks
Class Type:
  • High School

Select from the available class dates below to register for that session:

–
Hanne Bjornstad   Session Full
–
Ethan Jacobs   Registration opens Dec. 9th at noon ET
–
Sarah Kerr   Registration opens Dec. 9th at noon ET
–
Kimberly Misra   Registration opens Dec. 9th at noon ET

Word on the Street

I learned so much and your feedback really helped me grow as a writer. Your positive encouragement made me feel like I was learning from my mistakes rather than just making mistakes.

Yusra, 15

I really wasn't a writing person before taking this class because I was nervous. Now it isn't as bad as I thought.

Connor, 17

There was a HUGE amount of personalized feedback, which was amazing. I was able to increase my writing skills a huge amount during this class and the amount of quality feedback played a large part in that.

Priya, 14

[H]aving a relative structure and way to plan out what I'm going to write before actually sitting down and putting words on a page is something that really helps me. 

Malcolm, 16

More Information

Sample class login

Want to see how our classroom works? Test drive a sample class complete with real class readings, assignments, and instructor comments!

Follow these instructions:

  1. Navigate to class.bravewriter.com. If you are a current student, you’ll need to log out in the upper right corner before proceeding.
  2. Log in using these credentials:
    Username: [email protected]
    Password: Brave1
  3. Next, you will land on our Family Dashboard. You'll find a Parent icon and a Student icon to represent classes where the parent or the student is the primary participant. Click on Parent to view parent participation classes. To find classes with direct student-instructor interaction, click on Student.
  4. Click on the class name of interest and start reading posts!
How Our Classes Work Download a class summary
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