Published authors: want to help judge my 9–11 year olds who built tools for writers?

I teach at a nontraditional school where instead of tests, students have to build real things and put them in front of people who actually know what they’re talking about. If the work holds up, they pass. If it doesn’t, they get honest feedback and grow from it.

For the past six weeks, five of my students (ages 9–11, grades 3–5) have been building writing tools: story idea generators, character builders, plot outliners, feedback engines, etc. Each kid picked a real problem writers face and built a tool to solve it. The tools are live on the web, and they’ve each recorded a short demo.

Now they need real published authors to tell them how they did.

I’m looking for 2–3 published authors who also know what it’s like to help other people write—coaching, teaching workshops, mentoring, anything in that lane. Authors who write for kids or teens would be ideal since a lot of these tools are about sparking story ideas and getting unstuck creatively, but if you’re published in any genre and you’ve helped other writers find their voice, you’re exactly who we’re looking for.

What I’d ask you to do for each of the five tools:

• Watch a ~4 minute video demo the student recorded
• Spend 10–15 minutes playing with the tool (all are live, no install needed)
• Answer two questions:
  1. Would you actually use this in your own writing or coaching?
  2. Is it meaningfully different from just using GPT?

This is not a participation trophy situation. I don’t expect every student to pass, and I’ll be thrilled if even one does. The whole point is that the feedback is real. Students who don’t pass will get specific, constructive feedback they can grow from, which is just as valuable as passing. So please don’t feel pressure to say yes if the answer is no.

The bigger muscle we’re trying to build is simple: you don’t have to go find a tool to do something for you—you can build it yourself. Same way we all had to learn at some point that you don’t have to go to the library; you can just Google it. That’s the mindset we’re training.

Everything will be ready to share in the next few days. It’s all async; you can do it whenever you have time over the next couple of weeks.

If you’re interested, drop a comment or DM me and I’ll send details, links, and demos. Happy to answer any questions.