500 Words says it all
As a high-school English teacher, I came to realize that many college essays fell short of their potential for one reason: students, who had been trained to justify their thoughts in academic essays, need not qualify their reasons for writing about one thing or another in the personal-essay form. I started Red Bank Writing Co. to serve students writing college essays with little or no practice in writing personal essays. RBWC's organizational methods help them tackle the college essay with the same confidence that they have written five-paragraph essays for so much of their academic careers.
I graduated with a dual bachelor’s degree in French and English from UC Santa Barbara (2003), after which I immediately pursued an interdisciplinary master’s in the humanities at The University of Chicago (2004). I have been teaching high-school English for almost five years and at various levels, including AP English, college prep, modified English courses, and two summers in residence at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire (2007-8).
It was this experience in teaching the personal essay at St. Paul’s Advanced Studies Program (ASP) that helped me develop the organizational ideas behind the RBWC approach. In total I have been able to help almost 200 students improve their college-essay writing with these techniques. It is my goal for each RBWC student to develop a sharp sense of the possibilities of the personal essay and to write comfortably in it.
In addition to teaching, I have ten years’ experience freelance-editing and -writing numerous products, including editing a pedagogical book and a volume of poetry both now in publication, and writing items for a major standardized test. I am currently seeking publication for an instructional manuscript based on RBWC techniques.
Justin Nevin
2010