Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part XX)

For beauty is but

the beginning of terror, that we are yet able to bear,
and we adore it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us.
Duino Elegies — Rainer Maria Rilke

In the mid eighties the Office of Alternative High Schools and Programs transformed many New York City small alternative schools that had been neglected by the larger bureaucracy. City As School, the child of innovative educators from John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, had established itself as a school without walls by placing students interns throughout the city. West Side High School set up in a dance school by West Side activists, like Doris Rosenblum, for students refusing to attend the larger public high schools.

Traditional public high schools were unable to serve to all students. Some students were certified for special education, others were forced out of overwhelmed schools. Alternative Schools and Programs offered a means to include school phobic teens, immigrants, parenting teens, incarcerated youth, children in homeless shelters, chronic truants, and low performing students who were aging out of the system.

Beginning in 1986 the Waterways Project of Ten Penny Players, in partnership with Offsite Educational Services and the Office of Alternative High Schools and Programs, brought small press poetry publishing to adolescents attending public school classes in drug rehab programs, teen parenting programs, and community centers. Barbara and I worked with Richard Organisciak, the principal of Offsite Educational Services (OES), to visit sites and develop small press literary magazines for his students. The New York State Council on the Arts helped fund the project. In our first year, we visited LUCHA, East Harlem Music School, PRACA, Muse School, Harvey Milk School, DAYTOP, Veritas, Phoenix House, Project Contact (Educational Alliance), Odyssey House, and the YWCA Teen Parent Program.