LP's One-of-a-Kind Typewriter Class Clicks With National Media

Writing and publishing majors at Lincoln Park did all their writing on vintage typewriters in the school's new Analog Writing class.

Who could have predicted it? By ditching digital media and turning instead to the typewriter, a class at LP has brought the school national attention.

CBS Mornings devoted a special segment to Lincoln Park's Analog Writing class, where the only writing was done on typewriters from instructor and author Frederic Durbin's collection of nearly 100 vintage machines.

Correspondent Lee Cowan visited Midland earlier this year to interview Durbin and students from the Writing & Publishing Department, which offered the class.

Instructor Frederic Durbin came up with the idea of a class where all the writing would be done on vintage typewriters.

One of the class's projects was writing letters to actor Tom Hanks, who's also a typewriter aficionado. To the students' delight, Hanks wrote back individually to each of them--using a typewriter, of course.

"Glad you took the time to type me a note," Hanks wrote to senior writing & publishing major Sarah Cowan of New Castle. "Took only a minute or so, right? But it might last for 500 years."

Senior writing & publishing major Sarah Cowan of New Castle reads the typewritten letter she received from Tom Hanks to CBS Mornings correspondent Lee Cowan.

For Durbin, the course was also about focusing attention--especially in the increasingly digital world in which today's students live.

"You can't check your social media. You can't scroll. You're just writing," said Durbin. "A typewriter just has one purpose."

Well, maybe more than one. Writing and publishing sophomore MaKayla Ciminella smiled as she read her letter from Hanks, who confessed that his "horrible penmanship" was one reason he turned to typewriters.

LP's Analog Writing class and its back-to-the-future approach has caught the attention of multiple news outlets. The course was previously featured in USA Today, PEOPLE Magazine, and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

And CBS Mornings hosts Gayle King, Vladimir Duthiers, and Nathaniel Burleson were taken with Durbin's description of teaching students that "writing is like a superpower." Regarding the responses the class got from Tom Hanks, Durbin observed, "If you can reach for the stars and a really big star reaches back, what can't you do as a writer? Where else might your words end up?"

The hosts of CBS Mornings are the latest national media representatives to focus attention on LP's Analog Writing course. The special segment about the class aired on June 11.

"We were just marveling over that line," said Duthiers. Those students "are going to have that letter on their wall for the rest of their lives."

Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School is a tuition-free public charter school located in Midland, PA, and open to all Pennsylvania families. Students grades 7-12 are bused from more than 90 different school districts to study the arts concentration of their choice: theatre, writing and publishing, media arts, health science and the arts, music, dance, and pre-law and the arts.

For more information, visit lppacs.org or contact: admissions@lppacs.org