Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LVIII)

¡Que cerca y que lejos
estan nuestras almas..!
Silencia - Eddie Velez

(so close and so distant/are our souls)

When I arrived in September of 1986 at the Harlem site of the Puerto Rican Association of Community Agencies (PRACA), Oprah Winfrey was on the TV in the administrator’s office. Her new nationally syndicated show was helping minorities talk openly about their lives in an America, to which inner-city kids could relate. Raul Seda, the site administrator, enjoyed the TV and promise of technology. He envisioned bringing more tech into the classroom, and spoke to me about the emerging digital divide between middle class adolescents and the poorer students from the community that came to PRACA. He complained to me that Vanna White was paid thousands of dollars for smiling at a TV audience while the impoverished parents of his students couldn’t make enough money to keep it together in the city.

Raul wanted the students to learn how to use the computer. He saw the city forcing out the poor, the students he worked with. Manhattan was becoming a place for only the very wealthy. His students were “undesirables”. They would be arrested and sent away. It seemed to be happening. Could we effect the economy by teaching the students to be poets? They may learn to use words, but poets famously starve in the name of their craft.

Publishing a small press magazine may have meant different things to the agencies I visited. Many saw the publications as opportunities to promote their programs. They wanted to use magazines to help generate funds from beneficent donors. Barbara and I saw our school based magazines as vehicles to motivate students to write and read peer writing. They would also serve as models for the agencies demonstrating how they could use available inexpensive technology to do their own publications. That was our project. We felt that all students had an intrinsic desire to write, create and compose. We would provide these small sites with a vehicle for students to present their creative writing and art through small press publishing.

We saw our work as a catalyst. We visited newly opened alternative program sites with small budgets. Many were transition classrooms, preparing students who had not been attending school to return to school. We hoped to show students and teachers how they could use the tools on their premises to create magazines and to pass on the skills that would inspire more publications.

In November of 1986, PRACA’s first site based publication came out. It would continue for many years under the title Expressions.

In that first issue Pierre wrote:

My name is Pierre. I got this name because of my father. He named me Pierre because a long time ago he had a French girlfriend. When he was 20 he was full of love for this girl. After a few years passed, the girl got pregnant. They were going to have the baby and then get married.
Months passed and she was ready. My father took her to the hospital in his car. A truck driver crashed into the side of my father’s car. The girl that he loved so much died in the crash. As my father went though her personal things. He found a letter that said if she didn’t make it while giving birth, he should name the child Pierre.

A few more years passed and my father met my mother. They went out for three years and then got married. Then they had me, and named me Pierre.

I grew up a good kid, but I started to mess up. I went to jail for trying to kill someone and I spent three years of my life in jail because I’d been doing something crazy and stupid. After I got out of jail I went out on my own, got a job, started to go to school again, and I’m learning a lot of new things.

I have a son named Pierre and a nice girlfriend named Lise. I care for her a lot. My goals for the future are to become a police officer for the courts, to buy a nice house, and to live a nice, rich life with my wife and kid.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LVII)

Just like everyone else we live on this earth with you, so please don’t talk about us.

from Raymond's poem, Gay Rights,

One Saturday in 1984 Rochelle Wall, a member of the West Village Committee and Community Board 2, found Barbara and me at our usual post managing the Committee’s used bookstore beside the White Horse Tavern on West 11th Street. Rochelle had learned from Steve Ashkinazy, who was also a member of Community Board 2, of the plight of troubled gay youth and Steve’s desire to open a school for them. Barbara, an officer of the West Village Committee, had served as parent advocate on Community School District 2's Committee On the Handicapped. Rochelle asked her to help gain education services for the youth, many with emotional and physical disabilities, who were truant and hanging out on the West Village piers.

After consulting with Marcia Shelton and Steve Phillips at the Office of Alternative High Schools and programs, Barbara connected Steve Ashkinazi and Wayne Steinman (representing two interested agencies) with Offsite Educational Services. This was also the beginning of Ten Penny Players involvement with the Office of Alternative High Schools and Programs.

The controversies that accompanied the opening of the school were exacerbated by the local press. Headlines in the News and features on TV brought more reporters, who gathered outside the original church site. For the students who sought asylum from the negative attention they were getting from their family and friends, the hostile attention from the media contributed to a feeling that their classroom was under siege.

The Harvey Milk site was a refuge from an angry world, but the gay youth were segregated. Could the schools learn to protect the vulnerable? The alternative superintendency took on the challenge. Fred Goldhaber became the public school teacher at the Harvey Milk program, and I was asked to visit the site once a week as resource room teacher working with students who were certified for special education intervention.

As with the other agencies and parents the school’s concern for the mental health of the students sometimes came in conflict with the agency. Joyce Hunter, a social worker, expressed her concern when I let the school know of a student’s mental health issues. The agency wanted to take care of its own clients without the Board of Education questioning their ability to provide services.

The site based Waterways publication came out in November ’86. It was called Lifestyles. Five students offered contributions of essays, poetry, reviews and fiction in English and Spanish. Betsy wrote an essay, Report on Homophobia in Parents, which concluded:

This is why parents treat us the way they do. This is why parents talk about gays in a negative way... hardly ever in a positive way. Parents often believe in the sex roles, but sex roles do not determine a child’s sexual orientation. The most masculine men just might be gay. The girl that plays the role of one who could steal any man’s heart just might be gay/lesbian. The normal well-intentioned parent has these fears about raising their kids free: that sex roles determine sexuality; that specific ingredients make a child homosexual; and that homosexuality is one of the worst things that can happen. Some of the things that parents look for that tell that their child will come out queer are: a girl doesn’t date boys and does not want to associate with them; a boy doesn’t show that he likes a girl; a boy is a mama’s boy then he can’t be a woman’s man. Believe it or not parents do look for these things, and if they find them then they try to change their child’s behavior as soon as possible.

Knowing this won’t change your parents’ ways or their thinking, but will help you understand your parents a little better. Maybe with a little time and understanding your parents will learn to accept you. Just try to be yourself. It might help a little. Or a simple, I love you, might do the trick.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LVI)

I am a captive

in a city of war and hate.
Will good and love ever
conquer our enemies?

Forgotten were the days
of love, many worlds ago.
Today a new world, a new life,
a new love.

I hear the music
of the wind.
It sings of lost worlds,
a lost hope and a lost city.

(from “My Thoughts of the City” by Selena)

One afternoon, an NBC News reporter stood outside the Upper West Side building. The camera was on and adolescents were leaning out the fifth floor window waving. When I asked the reporter if he’d like to see some of the students poetry, he apologized and said his report on the rehab was negatively slanted, driven by that neighborhood’s version of nimby (not in my backyard).

10/28/86
Nick, the OES teacher assigned to Phoenix House, on crutches due to multiple sclerosis, was being helped into his car by Arthur. I gave him a copy of the site magazine and went up to the fifth floor. There was another class already in session in the room. The social worker removed the group and the writing class entered. I handed out the magazines. Janet was very excited by seeing her play in print. Selena was doubly excited at seeing her poetry and ran through the offices shouting, “My poems are in a book.” Minerva came and sat down to read her work. I suggested we invite other students so they could act out Janet’s play. Janet returned with the students who were the actual characters in her play, and they read their parts. The students were told that if anyone wanted to contribute to the next issue of the magazine, he or she is welcome to do so. All the students from the site stayed to hear the whole magazine read aloud. Minverva’s article was on Maya Angelou. Janet said she sounds like a white person. I’ll bring in the anthology, Black Voices. Selena said the illustrations were perfect for her poems. That’s what surprises me -- how the students enjoy the old etchings. (copyright free pictures that Barbara found in Dover and other old publications).

This was the fourth site based magazine Waterways put out in that first year of working with the alternative programs. There were seven more sites to go. Students who were reluctant to be identified while they were in a program asked that only their first names be published.

Inspired by their own publications, students wanted to get their message out. Janet's essay, “Being Homeless,” began: Being homeless is rough. I am homeless. I live in one room in a welfare hotel. I live with my mother and little brother who is four years old.

11/25/86
Full class today with excitement over the new texts: “Black Voices” and “The Voice That is Great Within Us”. The assistant director, came to class to see the texts. I collected written materials from the students. The exercise for the day was to write interviews. First Janet interviewed Dennis (originally from Virginia, his father was a jazz musician). Wes interviewed Selena (her family was originally from Cuba). Minerva interviewed Arthur and Dennis was interviewing Wes when the bell for the fire drill rang. I assigned Paul Laurence Dunbar and Robert Frost for next week.

There was a time I tried to get to a higher truth, or in touch with my muse through the use of drugs that helped me write through my inhibitions. As a teacher, I urged the students to quit their drug use.

Midterm there was a turnover in staff.

2/17/87
The class read Louis Reyes Rivera’s poem for Malcolm X. Students spoke about times they saw someone shot. Minerva and Selena were at a party when a drunken friend fired his gun willy nilly from his window. Robert wrote about the tragedy of his friend’s death.

One day I was hanging out and something happened. Something that would remind me of the dangers in the street. My friend, dear friend, was shot down in front of me. It was one of the worst experiences in my life. He was so innocent and likable. I just could not understand why it was him.
The person was on drugs and didn’t have any money. He just came out with a gun and started shooting at everything that moved. I got up and started to run.
When I realized that my friend had been shot, I ran up to him. He said, “Please turn me over, so no one can see me.” So I did as he said.
Ever since then, I knew he was fighting for his life. The next day he died. I was very unhappy and suffered a lot afterwards.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LV)

I explained to Herb Goldberg, the teacher in charge of the NYC Board of Education program situated in Odyssey House and UFT chapter chair, that I intended to visit as many OES sites of the more than sixty in drug rehabs, treatment centers, youth outreach, and shelters as possible (I wound up visiting ten a week). At each site I would introduce expressive writing workshops and act as the catalyst to generate site based magazines of student writing. Each site based magazine would appear regularly (monthly if possible). At the end of the year a collection of work from all the site based magazines would be published in a perfect bound anthology called Streams (rhymed with dreams, and first appearing in the spring of 1987). Many rivulets of alternative urban learning would flow into one mainstream.

“Alternative education” has different meanings. What it means to me is a non standardized approach to learning. It means a curriculum that is individualized to best employ the talents of the teacher and respond to the needs of the student. It was in this spirit that I was able to work across the curriculum. Computers often fell under the province of Math teachers. I was able to work with Willie Almadena, the Math teacher at Odyssey House’s residential setting on East 4th Street. His classroom was the computer room. It was where I could conduct weekly expressive writing workshops. Students wrote at their own pace, using Bank Street Writer software on Commodore computers. The innovation was to use the computer in the place of a pen or pencil. But a different writing tool would bring about different approaches and results in writing. Sometimes it would produce a group poem like, Ghetto Life

Did you ever go to school and did not want to learn?
You got money in your pocket that is ready to burn.
So you raise your hand to receive a pass
even though you know you’re gonna cut class.
You go out the building and around the block.
You head for the nearest cheba spot.
You get your tre-bag, and your quart of brew.
You know you already got your small bambu.
Then you walk in the park and you light it up.
Next thing my man you’re all banged up...
without no money and no place to go.
You know you don’t even have no radio.
So you try to kill time by bugging in the streets.

But not all writing in the Waterways publications came from using the computers. Poetic encounters between pen and paper were encouraged. One afternoon, Herb handed me a handwritten manuscript of poems by a resident. The first issue of Streams also contained Sabrina’s meditations, her odyssey from the memory of substance abuse to a new beginning:

(excerpt)
Feelings are sensuous, demanding, converting, jealous, stingy, kind, and unreal;
No sense or thought, no thinking really;
A pattern designed for some --
Talk, bad talk, no time to think, no premonitions,
No awareness or care for after affects,
Listless, no sign of feelings,
Able to hurt or kill,
Despise enough to turn into hate.
Know no one,
A body functioning on one thought --
Myself;
A face, no eyes or mouth,
Feelings neutral to others.
Transformation -- able to express --
a mouth appears, lips move in a rhythmic pattern.
Feelings emerge, some good, some bad,
Problems -- some are not able to cope with them,
Haven’t found out the use of a tongue,
Never recognized -- crying, internal feelings
Trapped inside...

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LIV)

In 1986 New York City schools struggled with the responsibility of educating neglected students. They were those whose intellectual, emotional, and physical responses were not readily understood. Special educators, advocates, parents, community agencies (in some instances acting as loco parentis), social workers, psychologists, educational evaluators, teachers and school administrators sought to effect comprehensive instructional plans through which to reach all students.

At that time the Waterways Project began began a small press program with the Office of Alternative High Schools and Programs, which was then located at the Bayard Rustin High for the Humanities on West 18th Street. We were told by our friends at the District 2 COH that Marcia Shelton, the Deputy Assistant Superintendent for Alternative High Schools and Programs, was at the cutting edge of educational reform. She found space within the schools for creative and innovative projects. Working with her, Bob Diario promoted the arts in schools and programs while maintaining a strong belief in the talents of alternative school students.



Marcia introduced Waterways to the principal of Offsite Educational Services, the largest alternative program. Richard Organisciak, a former English major and guidance counselor believed in the importance of expressive writing in the schools. When we began the project, it was hoped that Waterways would act as catalyst to inspire sites to print their own student literary magazines. Richard Coar, OES’s special education administrator, helped Waterways address student Individual Education Plans. Marcia Klein, an administrator overseeing OES’s curriculum, purchased poetry books to use as texts, held creative writing contests, and tutored students in poetry. Together we motivated the OES students to write.

I began visiting ten OES sites at least once a week. Each site produced its own magazine. Barbara printed 100 magazines per site on our leased photocopier. We collated and bound each issue by hand. In the spring I selected work from each of the sites to appear in the Streams anthology. The writing streaming from isolated sites throughout the city would come together and reflect the many student moods of the era. Over time Streams presented writing by students in gifted program in traditional high schools together with the writing by students with traumatic injuries in hospital settings. We chose not to identify the student by site, and let their writings speak for themselves.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LIII)

Some of the rehabs used poetry as part of their cognitive therapy. At Odyssey House, the poet, editor, and publisher of The Croton Review, Ruth Lisa Schecter, was employed as full time poetry therapist in the early ‘70s. A certified poetry therapist, she wrote about her work in an essay, “Poetry: A Therapeutic Tool in the Treatment of Drug Abuse” published in Jack Leedy’s 1985 book, Poetry As Healer (Vanguard Press).

“By trial and error, I stumbled into an emergency curriculum relative to “live or die.” Since survival was the theme, emergency treatment of priorities might work, offering poetry, not as a lulling tranquilizer, but rather as an urgent “telegram” applied much as a respirator or cardiac message--intense, dramatic and immediate. Of necessity then, literary techniques, forms, grammar, spelling, rhyming, philosophy or history of literature, were neglected. Although as the program continued, all techniques emerged naturally and spontaneously via exposure. Attention span was extremely brief due to physical weakness and emotional exhaustion. Depression, loneliness, withdrawal, morbid suspicion and disorientation from drug abuse were the pervading symptoms.”

Although she was no longer working at the site during the years Waterways visited the program, the staff remembered the positive effect of her work on the residents. In the Spring of 1987 she read at the “Last New York Book Fair.”

My master’s thesis at NYU had looked at the work and history of blind poets. I was fascinated by the question “Does a poet’s inner vision compensate for physical blindness?” The notion of healing through the arts, though, has philosophical footing in Aristotle’s writing about catharsis in The Poetics. There have been varied interpretations, but an aesthetic study of "Inspiration and Katharsis" by the Swedish professor of Aesthetics Teddy Brunius helped inform my work. In that study, Brunius traced the idea of poetry purging fear and pity from Aristotle through Milton to Freud.

Through the Waterways publications students were able to share their work with counselors at alternative program sites. In that way the Waterways Project benefited the students, the agencies, and the schools. The psychologists on Riker’s Island were astonished by their successes in using poetry therapy in their work with troubled inmates. The two prison psychologists I met were frustrated because of their inability to fully realize the potential of the therapy. They were responsible for serving thousands of prisoners. The paperwork of the bureaucracy took precedent, and despite the lack of official support they were able to schedule groups of inmates to discuss and read aloud their poetry.

Teaching the Terrified Tongue (Part LII)

Barbara and I read through the material for Streams. Barbara typeset the first three issues on an IBM Selectric. She also added copyright free public domain illustrations.

Barbara was not drawing any salary. A grant from the New York State Council on the Arts paid for the printing, the paper (bought from Gem, a cluttered shop behind a discount clothing store where Gabe cut and wrapped the stock), and school visits by Louis Reyes Rivera.



Thomas was graduating from high school, photographing the program, and delivering messages on bike around the city. He was also helping out at the special education committee for District 2.

I traveled around the city visiting the alternative high schools and programs. Many of the offsited residential rehabs I visited were engaged in behavior modification, using punishments, ridicules, and social pressure. Some residents could not take the punishments and ran away. The programs also conducted probes that explored the residents’ deepest thoughts in a forum of peers.

Streams 3 contained “Elegy” by Neshia

O, my brain, it’s not the same.
I cannot comprehend.
For the things I learned today;
I learned them yesterday.
Today I’ll find a new way
to help me move ahead.
I’ll stop the drugs
so I can think
and move along instead.

and “Epitaph” by Monique

Before you read this epitaph know that this is a tale of a lonely poor child who needed help for she had an addictive personality. But, she never sought help.

THE UNKNOWN

They all were fooled by me
because of the masks I wore.
I wore a thousand masks
but none was me.
I gave the impression that I was secure;
that all was sunny and unruffled;
that confidence was my name
and coolness was my game.
And, all believed.
Beneath dwelled the real me in confusion,
in fear and aloneness.
But I hid this
for I did not want anyone to know.
I would panic at the thought of my weaknesses
and the fear of being exposed.
This was why I frantically created a mask to hide behind.
It was such a nonchalant, sophisticated facade,
I wish I could have assured myself that I was worth something.
I was always afraid of people thinking less of me;
that people would laugh at me;
and that their laughter would kill me.
Look at me. Six feet under this dirty earth.
I disliked hiding; I honestly did;
that superficial game I was playing;
that phony game;
I really would have liked to be genuine
and spontaneous and me.
But, I needed help.