Offering something so small

Dear friends,

What a year! Grad school has been intense. Mills College has been intense. CTP has been intense.

As ready as I was to be a graduate student, I was not prepared.  Ready, because it is time.  Time to have a career renaissance. Time to model for my young daughter that lifelong learning is something we do in our family. Time to learn how to write what has always been inside me.

But not prepared because I did not make appropriate adjustments to my schedule and workload to accommodate all that is required to do this well. And not prepared because I did not know what to expect from workshop, craft, or literature classes.

This state of being ready but not prepared extends to my CTP workshop. I have been ready to design and build this workshop since the idea came to me while tutoring reading in the county jail some years ago. But even with the opportunity provided by CTP, I was not fully prepared to make it happen before the academic year ended.

Leslie and I came very close to running the workshop--we wrote an awesome syllabus and lesson plans and met some great people who are interested in seeing "Take Back Education" happen. And working with Leslie was so good for tempering me and for adding a critical perspective--I only wish she could be here longer to work with.

As I approach my second (but not last) year at Mills, I remain ready for this education and am finally prepared for it. I know now what I need in terms of time and what to expect from intensive graduate-level English courses (I was a geography major). I have some family business early this summer and then plan to turn my attention back to "Take Back Education" to see if I can make it happen before school starts again.

adventure with abandon - first post

my workshop has taken a hiatus. from december until about april i tried to get participants, and tried some different approaches. first, in december, i asked for permission to host the workshop at 27th and broadway at my favorite abandoned building- not to go inside, but just to lead kids around the outside to observe and find inspiration. then i printed out flyers and gave them to libraries and the YMCA to post on their boards, which they didn't. i also emailed about a dozen high schools in december and january asking them to pass on the information to teachers and students who might be interested. OSA got back to me and said they would offer class credit to whichever OSA students took my workshop- which was a great boost, but no one signed up. i was planning on hosting the workshop over spring break, but when no one had signed up just days before then, kiala suggested i work directly with OSA, but soon found out they wouldn't have time during the remainder of the school year. next, kiala set lucien and i up to work together. lucien was in a science fiction literature class and thought some classmates would be interested, so i decided to change the workshop up and have it all take place at mills to make it easier. but only one of lucien's classmates was interested.
im planning on trying again with this workshop in the late summer or early fall, and i know i will start out differently. i want to ask a couple high schools if i can work directly with them, or just if i can come in and plug my workshop. that way, the faculty and the students can have a tangible relationship with me and know that they can count on me and my workshop. from there, ill pass around a contact information sheet for interested students. i dont think i will bring the students to the abandoned building, at least in the first series of workshops, because i want to feel confident in my ability to lead the class and keep everyone organized before, and for their parents to know that im capable of doing those things in an outdoor setting, especially alongside an abandoned building.
so over the summer, ill be revisiting my syllabus and plans, and tweak them if need be, and soon ill begin contacting schools. looking forward to getting this workshop off the ground!

our class description

This is the description that is currently being sent out to parents and prospective participants of our workshop. I hope they find it interesting. I'd take the class, at least:

WIERDNESS AS REBELLION: EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC THROUGH WRITING

This workshop will explore the music of Sun Ra and John Cage through ekphrastic translation.(Ekphrasis is the act of writing through or in response to another art form.) We will encourage each other to investigate weirdness, including our own weirdness, as radical acts of the self. Through procedural, constraint-based writing, we will together invent a new alternative space and time that offers us the ability to embrace difference as a new and hopeful alternative to conformity.

Bio: Ivy Johnson is a poet living and working in Oakland. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Mills College. Her first chapbook, Walt Disney’s Light Show Extravaganza, was published by Boog City in 2011. Her book As They Fall, a collection of fragments published on note cards, was recently published by Timeless, Infinite Light.

Bio: Housten Donham received his B.A. in Literature from the University of Arizona and his M.A. in Literature from Mills College. His scholarly interests have long included modern and contemporary American poetry. He has written on the work of Allen Ginsberg, Robert Grenier, and Rae Armantrout, among other poets. In his spare time he makes digital poetry and writes about horror movies.

good news

Ivy and I have, actually, finally gotten a placement. We will be teaching one class, an hour and a half, at the Bay Area Public School in July. This is part of a larger summer-long session in which participants, who will be 13-20 years old, will engage in poetry workshops. Each week, a different poet(s) will be leading the class. The class we will be conducting is called “Weirdness as Rebellion: Experimental Music Through Writing.” We will be looking at performances by composers John Cage and Sun Ra, and then will respond in a way that is similar to our demo we conducted last semster for CTP. What I really want to stress is for participants to engage with their weirdness, and to understand that everyone is weird and that they should embrace their own unique weirdness and cultivate that. 

It seems obvious that it is all about who you know. And in this case, it's again true. It is only through our connections with the Bay Area poetry scene that we were able to get in on this program. I'm very grateful. That's how things work, I guess. I just hope we can eventually expand this class into something more. Now that we have connections with the Bay Area Public School I'm sure that will all be much easier to do.

Third Post

Before our final class, a dinner reading at my home, I have decided to hold phone meetings with participants to work more closely with them and their pieces. While this is doable for a class size of four, I'm seeing the need to hold more sessions for more writing, revising, craft exercises, and one on one attention from me within the classroom.

It is so clear and evident that participants have been wanting to write their stories for some time, and really took this workshop to jump at the opportunity to do so. The material that participants are coming up with are extremely risky to write about, and I'm impressed with their ability to allow others to give them feedback in a way that both improve their craft AND help them look at their stories differently.

Next steps are:

1. I want to put their stories out there. Beyond the CTP anthology, I want to continue to work with them so that their pieces are made public.
2. I want to guide participants towards continuing to write. Each of them are enrolled in community colleges and I want to help guide them towards the resources available to them there. I also will encourage them to put their own work out in the world and will share with them ways to do this.
3. Beyond teaching this workshop again, there's an idea gestating that would create a platform for writers who are still developing their craft to share their work with their own communities. More to come later. 

Some Thoughts on (Failed?) Attempts

As some of you know, Darin and I’s workshop just didn’t get off the ground this semester. I’m driving to Alaska in a few days for work, so my time in the bay area is coming to the end. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get do the workshop we planned with this community. But I’m excited that I was able to help Darin put something together that he can implement in the future and I’m also excited about someday adjusting this workshop to the needs of a community where I’m living.

I wanted to reflect on some of things that worked and some of the things that didn’t work as well, because I think it might be useful info for future CTP organizers.

     

1.   We found some wonderful contact people! And in some unexpected ways. When we were working in a coffee shop one day, a professor from a community college in San Francisco approached us. She was really excited about our project and sent us some great material that she uses in her classes (including a beautiful essay by Jimmy Santiago Baca that I had never read). She would be a great person to work with and I will hang on to her contact info. Prof. Oparah’s help was also invaluable. I would recommend that anyone interested in working with critical resistance groups contact her ASAP. Prof. Oparah introduced us to another Mills student who was also very knowledgeable and very passionate about our project. Because there are already so many folks at Mills participating in critical resistance in one way or another, I think meeting and collaborating with other Mills students should be a priority for anyone planning a workshop with this focus.

2.       While it was helpful in many ways to have a workshop planned out, I think it might have been better to start by making contact with organizations and asking what they need. With this approach, we would probably have ended up running a very similar workshop, but establishing a relationship with organizations would have allowed us to construct a program tailored to their needs. In other words, because people in non-profit social justice organizations have 500 things to do at any given moment, I don’t think they have time to determine whether or not a workshop might fit into their programming and then go through the scheduling maze of establishing contact with a new set of volunteers (us), while simultaneously wrangling workshop logistics and searching for and communicating with participants. I mean, these are all things that need to be done, but I think that if one establishes a relationship with an organization first, you can learn what their (logistical) needs are and then offer a workshop that is already streamlined to fit in with their programming.

Finally, I’m really excited to have a list of contacts for collaborators, potential participants, and potential locations, a flyer design, syllabi, prompts and lesson plans, as well as a collection of scanned .pdfs to provide as readings. The list of contacts might be useful to future CTP organizers and the workshop packet can be implemented by Darin or I someday, as well as shared with organizations and future CTP organizers.

My Third Session

My third session this past Wednesday was very productive because I thought I might be getting graded and was expecting my instructor Ms. Givehand to possibly pop up but she couldn't make it. We reviewed the material the students had prepared for me and I collected the edits they made to the work from the previous week. I talked about affirmations and recited my  Self -Determination poem for them. I gave them a couple of choice prompts one stated to write a poem called "Because I love myself." One student did exceptionally well with this. What I wish I would have done is to go through the basics of making a poem for those who have less experience. Having students at different writing levels has slowed me down a bit.

Next time I will write down their suggestions so they can see words on the board and help them craft it and if I choose to repeat this all inclusive style of teaching in the future I will make sure I have an assistant. I can't focus on someone's writing and watch for any discipline issues at the same time when there's more than six or seven students. We did an alternative version of red light, green light  so I could plant the seed that they do have good memories and self-control.  Later on we also played the yes and no game to warm them up and so I could briefly discuss that it's ok to say no sometime. Their favorite was questions because it also allowed them to focus on what they wanted to say before they said it. A really great story came out of that. The only problem is I didn't stop them because they were having so much fun. I think I will have someone write down or record the dialogue next time.

My biggest accomplishment in this session was getting Laila's play performed and she was so excited. I read the narration and they came in during their respective parts. I also let one of the student's videotape because she said she wanted to be a filmmaker. Next week I want to gather the poems and stories that will be published, type them up and find out who will be willing to recite when the time comes to put on a CTP show. I'm still unsure of how short the short stories need to be though.

As the project continues I’ve realized a number of things in response to my first post. The retention rate of participants in the workshop has been 100% and are gaining from the strategies I have planned for them throughout the course of the first four workshops. The structures I’ve set up for discussions around the readings have worked both to promote an inquiry based learning environment, and create opportunities for me to be able to impart with them some of the craft strategies I find in the works we are exploring. They don’t find them condescending at all, and in fact prefer being read to aloud, and reading to each other aloud as well. In terms of comprehension, participants are great at synthesizing material and looking for ways that craft and content come together.   

    The writing that participants have been submitting has been so full of courage in that they are choosing to write about sensitive material. While they do need support in terms of grammar and some structure, it is evident that they are making choices in scene selection, dialogue, and reflection based on discussions we’ve had during workshop, although these too need more development. My only regret is that we only meet for five weeks, and students have two opportunities to revise their final pieces, with not much time to do intensive whole class workshopping the second time around. In order to compensate for this with this group, I am offering editing support beyond the workshop, with the goal of getting their final pieces published. My goal with the next workshop is to offer more sessions to do more writing and revising in class. 

Rosa

Hey all! This is my first post.

Late, but it is here. I'll share with you some of the questions and insecurities I had before the first workshop started in terms of outreach, accommodation, and maintaining a student body. My first challenge after having developed the curriculum for the workshop was around outreach. The first method I tried in obtaining participants was to send out fliers and letters of introduction to relevant organizations and mental health providers. This got no results. The more interactive, ground up approach worked. I went into community college classrooms and talked directly to the people who would attend. Although I received about 100 individuals' contact information, the effort resulted in four applications returned to me. These four became the founding participants of the project!

My second concern was coming up with strategies to help adult students with their developing skills in reading and writing. My experience in teaching has been limited to high school students, and I had to think about how to use what I know in the context of an adult classroom. I thought that perhaps the use of graphic organizers, reading prompts, and reading aloud would feel like condescending strategies for adults. I knew that if I were to read that vibe, I'd have to adjust my plans to offer the support they need while still respecting their levels of expertise as individuals who have been learners for quite a while, and as experts of much of the content we would be discussing in class. I knew, that on day one, I'd have to do a quick reading of the class.

I had to assess whether I were challenging participants at the right level, offering rigorous and useful learning experiences while providing the scaffolding structures to allow them to gain from the experiences. If I couldn't manage this, I knew, I'd lose participants, and I had only started out with four. I planned to do plenty of checking in throughout the first day, while keeping the need to be flexible in my planning in mind. In the following post I will detail how I dealt with some of these concerns.

Rosa

Sex Ed at Lyric

So my original project hasn't quite taken off yet- it will take a lot more planning than I am ready for at this time, but fortunately, I was asked to facilitate a Sex Ed workshop at Lyric instead. The workshop is two four hour sessions with the trans youth grup at Lyric, and will focus on self advocacy in both the medical setting and in personal relationships, consent practices, and cultivating healthy relationships. I've been working with both the program coordinator for the youth group, as well as a medical assistant at planned parenthood, and I'm excited about conveying all the information I've gathered in a fun and engaging way.
To that extent, I'm going to have the youth practice some writing exercises geared around their own experiences around engaging the medical setting as a trans person. This is to tease out whether they feel supported and encouraged by medical staff, what their experiences have been so far, what they liked or didn't like, and what they would like to see change. We will be doing the same type of exercises for interpersonal relationships, and consent practices around safe sex. I have a wealth of instructional and educational pamphlets from planned parenthood, and we'll be looking at those as a group and deciding what works for us and what doesn't work for us. Then, we will design educational pamphlets made by the group for other trans youth, as an intervention in the information that is currently available.

This is a little strange to be writing a blog posting about something that hasn't happened and won't be happening--or, at least, it won't be happening in any of the ways I had imagined it to happen. Ivy and I haven't found any placements. All of our attempts to get in touch with organizations and people have failed. Mostly we never got a single response from people, but one time a person sent an email back saying they were interested but then after we sent another email saying "cool, we can do it whenever you want," they didn't respond. Maybe we shouldn't have just tried email. Maybe we should have knocked on doors, demanded them to listen to us in some way. I also think it would have worked better had we began talking to organizations back in the fall, before everyone's spring schedules were full. Anyway, it's all been kind of disappointing.

First Intro Session at Parker

I did two intro sessions for the Lion's Den, which includes the Girls Inc. program.  My first session was with about 20 or so fifth grade boys and girls.  My second was with a group of 13 girls in the second and third grade. What I liked most is hearing them recite poems and I set it up as if it was an audition so I could see where they were. Some of them already had memorized pieces, some made things up on the spot and others were so shy they didn't even want to introduce themselves. If they passed on intros I put them all in the middle and some came up with some movements associated with their names that were worth the wait.  I was genuinely impressed with the talent, energy and potential of the group. It was so hype I had to calm them down with the help of the staff on site. 

I really like the staff on site as well. They made me feel supported and welcomed. They also made me feel safe especially given there was a lock down while I was there around 5:30 or 6 pm. I was asked if I heard anything, supposedly some shots were fired near the school and the kids thought they were fireworks. I didn't hear anything but it was a reminder for me to be watchful and on alert when working at Parker and to remember that kids in what some would consider war zones need love and hope too. My warm up game with the all girls group was yes and no, they also did a name game. Only one of the girls was writing poetry and prepared to recite it. Her poem was about her favorite black female heroes. Given I'm the author of She Rose I was pleased with the synchronicity.  I also felt more compelled to share a tribute I wrote about Ella Fitzgerald after she finished entitled "Swing Jazz Cats." This was good choice and allowed me to allow for a little improv myself given I hadn't shared a poem yet. One girl laughed almost all the way through it in pure delight. Others listened intently as I transformed into her character. I asked them to become one of their favorite singers or performers on paper. I could have had them write in that moment but I didn't have that much time. 

I will likely spend most of my time with the older group but I will follow up with that group just in case someone produced something on their own. I do think I will enjoy working with the boys and girls together though. Our boys need to learn self-control and compassion through these improv and writing exercises too. I will use a time keeper in the future and try to follow a strict schedule so I can get the writing prompts in. Next time I want to debrief after every game and find out what they felt, learned and observed. The goal is to stay on the high impact topics, give them some interview questions for tribute poems and produce or attempt two writings each week per visit. I will write a prompt on the board and have them start writing first thing to ensure I get it in, as we move forward and then give them inspiration to write some more through a video, a skit, or another poem. I'm really excited about this teaching project. The kids are looking for a chance to grow and so am I.

Pre-Parker Intro Session

As I prepare to meet with the students at Parker Elementary I'm a little nervous, this is normal for me though. The best way I battle anxiety is to get organized. I have more than one outline or lesson plan/syllabus and I'm excited to share improv exercises and writing prompts but most of all I simply want to connect with the students. The goal is to make sure that I make an impact and get them interested.

I want the students to improve in the following areas:

Reading, Writing and Presenting

The power of positive thinking, breath and visualization

S/heroes or Honoring Legacy 

Effective/ Clear Communication/ Aggressive vs Assertive styles

Managing their confidence level and emotions

I will be working with different age groups and for me this will be a study on who I prefer to work with. I love to improvise my lesson plans too but the goal is to resist that.  So I can perfect a great line up or get them use to a familiar structure. I want them to get some work written, memorized and/or read. I also want to consider any advice I was given at their appropriate age during each visit.

My focus will always be the importance of self-control if the participants get unruly and I will remind them that life is about having fun and being serious. So we may have them sign up accordingly. I will ask them to bring in monologues they are working on or their favorite poems next week, the poem needs to be 14 lines or less.

I want to introduce myself through poem with a piece called "Copasetic" and I'll end by performing "Poetree" at the end and focus on the word connection.  My biggest concern is not having enough time to prepare for a real presentation or create a decent publication. I also know that I'm working with kids who live in a high crime area. So I don't want to make to many promises I can't keep. If I leave and at least one child sees art as a way to heal and hopefully prevent violence. We all win.