The English hallway sits arranged with a variety of decorations and projects. One of the stated goals of Ladue Writers is to be able to allow for students to continue expressing their voice, creating new projects. “We want to match people up with opportunities, whether those be national or regional writing contests or Student Publications outside of the Ladue community,” Frank said.

Ladue Writers — a newly created club — had its introductory meeting Sept. 30 and a second meeting Oct. 14. The club is intended to foster greater engagement with English, giving students more opportunities to take part in creating and sharing their writing. The effort to found the club was largely spearheaded by English teacher Jonathan Frank.

“I think our main goal is to just provide a community for people who are interested in writing, developing, and exploring their own writing projects, “ Frank said. “A community to help encourage each other, help each other with writing, give some people some accountability with their writing projects, to kind of keep them on track with some of their goals.”

The club was established by Frank, alongside various other faculty sponsors including: Sarah Kirksey, Jennifer Tuttle, Cheryl Ogolin, Lori Vaughn, and Amy Logan. While the club is currently teacher-guided, Frank aims for it to eventually be student-led.

“There obviously needs to be some teacher guidance and teacher leadership, but we’re really hoping that we build up some some loyalty to the program,” Frank said. “I would say there’s more teacher leadership right now than what we’re hoping [there] will be eventually, and hopefully we’ll gradually release some of the responsibility to some of our student leaders.”

The club’s leaders have a variety of ideas for its future, and are communicating with students to cement its legacy. The next meeting will be held Oct. 28 in room 2157.

“We’re already talking to students about what they want to name the club and when they want to have their meetings,” Frank said. “If we have students who want to lead some little workshops and mini lessons during some of our meetings, and actually lead those meetings [they’ll get the opportunity].”

Under the guidance of interested teachers and students, the club has the capacity to make a significant impact. Frank attended a conference for the National Council of Teachers of English last year, and was motivated to establish a similar club at Ladue after seeing the impact it could make. 

“I was really inspired to think about how possible it would be in the Ladue community,” Frank said. “Because we already have so many students who are interested in writing creatively outside of their schoolwork… It seemed like it would be maybe not an easy thing to do, but something we should definitely have at our school.”