WritersCorps: A Look Under the Hood

By Judith Tannenbaum

Beto’s is the first check-in. He reports on his poetry classes at San Francisco’s ISA High School, and then pauses. “Yesterday, a girl stopped by the library to see me at lunch time. She showed me one of her poems, and while I was reading it — my eyes on the page — she looked down at the table and listed everything that’s messed up in the world and her life. She told me she’s not sure she wants to keep living.”

Each WritersCorps teacher in the circle, each staff member too, sends Beto a verbal or non-verbal sigh-from-the-heart. I imagine we’re each recalling a similar story, a similar student, a similar questioning of what we — as a teaching artist — might do to be useful. I’m WritersCorps’ training coordinator and my responsibility in this Wednesday meeting is to make room for each teacher, and also to move things along. So I scan the scene. I’m as sure as I can be that teachers will individually approach Beto during the break to offer support or suggestions, so I let the silence — a silence that holds pain, anger, confusion, belief, hope and probably dozens of other emotions — extend a moment or two longer. I smile at Beto, thank him, speak a few words of fellow-feeling, then nod at Chrissy who sits to Beto’s right.

Chrissy tells us stories from Everett Middle School, and from her new Mercy Housing site at Britton Courts. She describes the five-year old in this after-school program and her own melting heart when the little girl says, at the end of her first afternoon writing and drawing with Chrissy, “You’re nice. I love you.”

Mahru tell us about Thea, a WritersCorps intern working with her as a student teacher at Ida B. Wells Continuation High School. “Thea rocks,” Mahru reports, detailing the teenager’s skills, and describing a lesson Thea taught using her own “I Bit into Life” as model poem.

Michelle describes the “Learning English is Like” lesson she taught Monday at Newcomer High School. Although the teenagers Michelle works with are so new to English that many don’t yet know the difference between “she” and “he,” some have written lines like, “Learning English is like swimming in an ocean with many sharks.”

Chad tells us that he took his student, Robin, to an open mic Friday night. Chad’s glee extends to the group as we imagine Robin amazing the house with lines from his “The Neutral’s Wake-Up Call”: “I am the ‘let be’ in between bygones and bygones./I am the battlefield/Iraqis and Americans die on…”

Kim talks about a Log Cabin Ranch alum and the pressures he faces now that he’s back on the streets. Many of us remember this young man from his presence at the Poetry Night Kim holds every month at the juvenile lock-up facility, and I can feel the group silently wish him safety and good choices. Kim says that the inevitable happiness she feels when a young man leaves the Ranch is always mixed with worry about his survival on the outside.

Gloria lets us know that she had been searching for girls from Sisters4Life, the Sunnydale after-school program that hadn’t met for two years. And where did she find the young women? Just guess, Gloria invites. On MySpace.

Beto, Chrissy, Mahru, Michelle, Chad, Kim and Gloria are all WritersCorps teachers. WritersCorps’s primary purpose is to provide opportunities for youth to discover, develop, and share their writing; the program’s success depends on contracting with teaching artists who have the skills, knowledge and heart to encourage youth to write well. All our teachers are published writers, active community artists, and experienced teachers. As teaching artists with WritersCorps, they join youth at sites in San Francisco. Some go to public school classrooms, others work in after-school programs, public libraries, juvenile lock-up facilities, community centers, or affordable housing projects. This year’s seven teaching artists will work with 400 to 600 San Francisco youth.

WritersCorps began in 1994 as an AmeriCorps program — thus the name — in San Francisco, the Bronx and D.C. The program still operates in these three cities. In San Francisco, we’re a project of the San Francisco Arts Commission, and nine years ago, transitioned from being a federally-funded and administered organization to existing as an independent program supported by a collaboration of public and private partners. Janet Heller developed the program in San Francisco, and she’s the captain of our WritersCorps ship.

WritersCorps is one in a field of programs — run by nonprofits, universities, and governmental agencies — that spring from a vision of art as an activity that belongs to all of us, an activity that is a human birthright. Most of these programs share a model in which practicing artists go to the places in our communities where people are already gathered. Some programs work with youth, as WritersCorps does. Others work with elders, or people currently without a home, or people whose lives are made harder through drugs or drink, or people in prison.

Central to the shared vision of community arts programs is the belief that each of us is the expert about our own life and story. Those of us working in these programs know the importance of sitting around the table with people who have mostly been told — in word or deed — that their opinions and observations don’t matter, that their insights and imagination mean nothing. We are privileged to do work that lets us say: you matter, we all matter. Community artists, teaching artists — all of us doing this work — know the importance of what we do, though I suppose we’re all trying to convince the world at large that children are more than test scores, that people in prison are more than their crimes, and that those of us without a home of our own are more than merely losers.

I could now wow you with poems by young WritersCorps poets; I could sing the praises of our teaching artists and the many gifts they bring to their students. However the readers of Teaching Artist Journal already know a great deal about the process of sharing drawing, dactyls, dancing and drums. You each know what it is to extend a sincere invitation to the artist inside most human beings. So I’m going to be specific, not sexy, and describe how our program’s structure puts vision into practice. I’m going to lift the hood of the WritersCorps car and show you the engine.

WritersCorps’ model is “long term, in depth” which means our teachers work at least 25 hours each week, at one or two sites, for eight or nine months of the year, sometimes for multiple years. Teachers work with each student a minimum of ten sessions, and most often for much longer. Most of our sites have had a WritersCorps teacher for many years, so in addition to the relationship between each current teacher and his or her site liaison, there is often a longer historical relationship between staff at a site and WritersCorps as a program.

In practice, many youth work with a WritersCorps teacher for more than one year, and many young people have worked with one WritersCorps teaching artist at their middle school and another at their high school, or one at Newcomer High School, a public school for recently arrived immigrants, and another when they move on to a mainstream high school, or one in school and one at an after-school program. Many youth also have a multi-year relationship with WritersCorps as a program through our publications, readings, special events, internship program, and media attention.

WritersCorps teachers are independent at their sites. They design a program that addresses the needs and realities of the particular youth and staff they work with, as well as their own teaching style and intentions. WritersCorps teachers come to the program with experience, and are not asked to teach from a predetermined curriculum or to submit lesson plans for approval. They have time — each week and over the year — to get to know many of their students as people and artists. From this solid base, WritersCorps teachers are able to become real mentors to the youth that they work with.

But our teachers not only independent. They are also part of a group (one that includes other teachers and WritersCorps staff), and this whole group meets frequently. This particular aspect of WritersCorps — that teachers are independent at their sites and also part of a group with a great deal of interaction and support — is unusual in my knowledge of community arts programs. It is a structure that I think works very well.

The whole group meets for a four-day training as the program year begins in October; for a two day mini-training in January; for a two day over-night retreat in March; and for a three hour bi-weekly meeting. The purposes of our gatherings are varied, and include:

• Sharing program information (for example: detailing necessary changes in paperwork to meet the needs of a funder)
• Making internal WritersCorps program decisions (”Who will volunteer to serve on the committee to judge our Martin Luther King Jr. Poetry Contest?” “What’s the best line up for our reading next month at Intersection?”)
• Collaborating on joint projects
• Teacher check-ins regarding work at their sites
• Problem solving (”Chrissy wants ideas for working with seven- and eight-year-olds. Let’s do one quick go-round, each of us giving a suggestion.” Or: “I’ve asked Chad to share again the presentation he gave two years ago on classroom management.” Or: “Perhaps we’re putting too bright a spotlight on too few students, displaying them more than their work. Think about this, and we’ll brainstorm at our next meeting.”)
• Sharing writing lessons and curriculum building (teachers’ #1 favorite)
• Holding conversations about teaching, community arts, and social service issues
• Hearing from experts who have specific skills (such as tax advice for independent contractors, or hands-on learning from a book artist)
• Professional development (presentations on the history of the field, information on programs and events teachers might want to take advantage of, reports from professional conferences)

Our bi-weekly meetings help develop the relationships that allow teachers — and teachers and staff — to work as a team. The knowledge is definitely in the room, and to the extent that I can, I design the meetings so that teachers share what they know with each other. Meetings also allow us a brief glimpse of each teacher’s students, classroom, and neighborhood, thereby giving us a window in which we can see the WritersCorps whole we’re each working individually to create.

Teachers call on and support each other, as I’ve been saying, and they can also call on me as a mentor teacher. I’ve been doing work similar to the work they’re now doing for over thirty years, and so as I tell our group, I know a lot just by virtue of being old!

To strengthen our teachers’ abilities to reflect on their work, we ask them to write memoirs instead of year-end reports. I make time during Wednesday meetings for teachers to think about this memoir, to discuss ideas with each other, and to share drafts in pairs. Each meeting I offer a prompt to which teachers respond in their journals. These prompts have included:

• See one moment at your site, and write as many details as you can in five minutes.
• What is the invisible thread running through the story you have to tell? The invisible, underlying truth, you want a reader to know?
• Teaching can bring out our best self — we put on a smile and open our hearts to our students. This is a blessing, and also a challenge when we’re feeling our own suffering and pain. Write about this gift and the cost of this aspect of teaching.
• Think of one person in your life, and write for five minutes telling him or her what’s most important to you about the work that you do.
• Write about a playful moment — between youth, or between the youth and you. Some quick, light, click of understanding or connection.
• What kind of energy do you naturally — almost unconsciously — use in front of a classroom?
• What do you rely on when the work load’s intense (will power? treats?).
• Respond to slam artist Lisa Buscani’s dictum: “The difference between a rant and a prayer lies only in the position and delivery.”

Clearly a lot is asked of our teachers. In turn, they are given what’s required to do their job. Elements include:

• Adequate pay for all hours worked, including the non-classroom work necessary to program success: preparation (class prep, reading and responding to student writing, preparation of material for publications and events, research, etc.); one-on-one mentoring with individual students; meetings with staff on site, WritersCorps trainings, consultation with program staff and other teachers; evaluation and paperwork.
• Funds for materials, supplies, and guest artists
• Funds, program support, and group knowledge to create both site and program-wide publications and events
• Recognition of teachers’ lives as practicing artists, including a small stipend to allow time for their own writing
• Health care

WritersCorps is a free gift to our sites, but we ask a few things in return. Primary among these is selection of a site representative who will work with our teacher to assure he or she has what’s necessary to do the best possible job. Site reps themselves meet twice each year, and over time, have formed their own informal group, one that allows — for example — Betsy, Teen Librarian at the San Francisco Public Library, to let a dozen classroom teachers and after-school program facilitators know about library programs their youth can participate in.

As is true for most community-based literary arts programs, WritersCorps is committed to putting student writing into the world. We publish site publications and program anthologies, and have also partnered with publishing houses who have wanted to share our work with a larger audience. In 2003 Harper/Collins published “Paint Me Like I Am,” an anthology of work from all three WritersCorps cities, and a second volume is in the works. San Francisco’s Aunt Lute Books published “City of One,” an anthology of poems WritersCorps youth wrote on the theme of peace, in 2004, and “Solid Ground” at the time of the centennial of San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Jossey-Bass published our book of lessons, “Jump Write In!: Creative Writing Exercises for Diverse Communities, Grades 6-12,” in 2005.

WritersCorps is successful because of the excellence of its teaching artists. WritersCorps is unusual because of its program structure which gives excellent teaching artists what they need to shine. But the heart of the work — WritersCorps work and the work of similar programs — is the vision and voice of those we serve. So I will end with a poem instead of pragmatics. This beautiful verse, published in “Solid Ground,” was written by WritersCorps poet, Sandro Haro, when he was nine years old.

Put me somewhere else

where it is dark and there is no sun,

so I can be bright

and see how well I shine.

This essay was published in the Teaching Artist Journal