<a href="http://www.826valencia.org/">826 Valencia</a> is <iq>dedicated to supporting students ages 6--18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the literary arts.</iq> They're in San Francisco and take advantage of the strange work hours and free time of the average freelance writer to provide afternoon tutoring to students who need more one-on-one time. The "store" that they run doesn't look like a tutoring center; instead, it's a pirate supply store. There are similar venues in Brooklyn (super-hero supplies) and LA (time traveller supplies). It seems to be working amazingly well, with high participation and fantastic results. It all sounds very cool and is best described by the founder, Dave Eggers, who is both charsimatic and quite funny and well worth watching. <media align="center" class="frame" caption="2008 TED Prize wish: Once Upon a School" source="TED Talks" href="http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html" author="Dave Eggers" src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" args="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/embed/DaveEggers_2008-embed2_high.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DaveEggers-2008.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=233">