Chicago Sixth Graders Are Composing Groupon Deals

Groupon had a misstep earlier this year with their controversial Super Bowl commercial, but when it comes to helping connect students to real-world work experience, they might be on the right track. Their Chicago editorial team recently partnered with writing nonprofit 826CHI to teach sixth-graders how to write the copy for the site's daily deals. This wasn't just a mock exercise. Groupon put 10 of the write-ups on their site on June 28.

The Groupon editorial team held a series of workshops to teach the students, who come from mostly low-income backgrounds and already learn creative and expository writing skills through their participation with 826CHI, how to write the deals. McDade Classical School student Kelim Clark's deal for the Chicago Park District, for example, sold 240 golf rounds for $96. And the final deal in the series let Groupon users donate $10 to 826CHI to help defray the publication costs of a book of student stories written in the nonprofit's workshops over the past school year. Sixty-three people took advantage of the opportunity to support the students in this way.

Real writers looking for jobs might not be too thrilled with this because it does seem a little bit like Groupon's just getting cheap labor, but it's certainly not as bad as last year's partnership between Walmart and the Detroit Public Schools where students learned how to work at the retail stores. And besides, it seems like a great way for interested kids to get experience writing in a professional context. Who knows, some of these students might join the next generation of copy writers and editors.