WriterCoach Connection

WCC joins Albany community in reaching out

Last year, the Albany community began a tradition of celebrating the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. with a Commit to Serve Expo in the city's community center, where volunteer-based organizations and the citizenry mingle to create partnerships to further the social agenda represented by Dr. King. This year, WCC's site coordinator in Oakland, Karen Larson, a longtime Albany education activist, teamed with CAFL Associate Director and Volunteer Coordinator Lynn Mueller to staff the WriterCoach Connection recruiting table at the event. Here they are (Karen on the right), staying dry on a wind-blown and rainy Monday.

 

Karen, Lynn, and I made a number of valuable contacts for WCC at the event, helping to rev up the action for the beginning of writer coaching in Albany this year. In the absence this year of the parcel-tax funding that has been available to support WCC in Albany in previous years, the Albany Middle School Site Council and PTA contributed enough funding to support a limited coaching program this spring at AMS, helping eighth graders with their I-Search projects.

There is still time to sign up for the current round of coach training, which runs into early February. Visit the Volunteer registration page of the WCC website here.

Bob Menzimer

Moneyman Marty dispenses financial wisdom and raises money for WCC

WCC coach Marty Schiffenbauer has been managing funds in the marketplace, and teaching and writing on the subject, for a long time. And he has a list of friends that reaches over the horizon like a parade of hedge fund managers heading for the hills in the other direction. Hmmm. Long experience managing funds, long list of friends. Sounded like a fundraising recipe for WriterCoach Connection to Marty, so he put together an investment workshop called Too Small to Fail, and invited his friends to come, soak up his advice, and make a donation to WCC. They did all three.

Twenty-five people gathered Sunday, January 10, in Berkeley for a lively session. Marty's experience bringing financial information to people and making it really accessible was in clear evidence, as he had his audience simultaneously taking notes with a fury and rocking with laughter.

Here's Marty in action (photo below) with his guests for the session.

This fundraising workshop was a significant event for WCC, bringing awareness of the program to a whole new audience. We even recruited a couple of new coach volunteers!

Deep thanks to Marty, Community Alliance For Learning board chair Kathy Kahn, and WCC coach Pam Fadem for organizing this event. We hope to do it again down the road!

Bob Menzimer

How a jar of jam sweetens the future for WriterCoach Connection

Janis Barbour  won't admit it--she may not even recognize it--but she's a fundraising whirlwind. And she's the most powerful kind.

Almost from the first day that she began as a WCC volunteer  at Media Academy in Oakland last year (that's her below, coaching student Estela Garcia), Janis has been telling people about WriterCoach Connection. Friends. Family members. I'm guessing she tells the checkout clerk when she buys groceries.

As a result, donation checks linked to Janice have been piling into the WCC mailbox, from the Bay Area and from far beyond.  Here's what she has to say about it:

"I am certain I gain more than I give. That said, however, I will be forwarding to you a contribution to WCC from my chapter of P.E.O. (Philanthropic Educational Organization), an international women’s organization which supports continuing education of women through scholarships, grants, loans, etc.  This year our chapter  raised about $2,600 through a community garage sale and sales of homemade jellies at a holiday boutique.  Since all of our PEO commitments had been met, at our meeting today we decided to share some of our bounty with local organizations, and I of course championed the cause of WCC.  As a result, I will send you a check for $150.  I like to take every opportunity I can to sing the praises of WCC." 

I told Janis that this contribution is more heartening than she knows. It is, of course, immensely gratifying when a large foundation responds to our program with a five-figure grant. These funders know what an effective program looks like and the imprimatur of an established and respected foundation generates the momentum that keeps us growing. But when people raise money for WCC by selling homemade jellies at a holiday fair and household goods at a garage sale, the impact on the people in our organization—board and staff members, site coordinators, trainers, and coaches—is electrifying. After all, one-on-one connection is the heart of this program, and we all feel it when someone makes up a jar of jelly, stands at a table at a holiday fair to sell it, and offers the money to support us as we sit down to work with our students. It’s impossible to overstate how important a contribution like this is.

One of my favorite comments about WCC came from Longfellow Middle School (Berkeley) teacher Mary Patterson, who said, "Let me tell you what WriterCoach Connection is like for me. It's like a miracle!" The dollars you donate to WCC, the heartfelt words of Janis Barbour to her colleagues at P.E.O., the jar of jam sold at a holiday boutique--they are the miracles that light up a student's eyes when she learns from a WCC volunteer that she can reach out to the world with her written words, and the world will read them.

Bob Menzimer

 

Epic Teen Poems: “I am the Silence the Screams the Truth.”

The words “teenagers” and “poetry” have, in past years, sent me screaming for the exit, because I know precisely what horrendous things can happen when they meet. I know. I did them in my teen years: “Doom don’t talk to me about doom, I have seen it in the ice fields of my heart where the goblins dwell…etc. etc.” Thus, it was with some trepidation that I approached the final presentations of Ms. Totten-Harris’ Epic Poem assignment at the Media Academy, part of Oakland’s Fremont Federation of High Schools, on January 8, 2010.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. There is still a little tightness in the back of my throat from the emotional resonance of the epic poems created by Ms. Totten-Harris’ 10th graders. The students came out with deep, moving, heartfelt stanzas that not only amazed the tutors, but the students themselves. Their template was “I Am Joaquin/Yo Soy Joaquin” www.latinamericanstudies.org/latinos/joaquin.htm an epic poem by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales. What they came up with was a reminder that anyone is capable of greatness given enough attention, time and interest.
 
Some, in their readings, were like bantams, others quietly defiant, some shy and still others determined. Shima, the very first student up, a young woman from Yemen, had a green and beige veil, shy smile and big eyes. She started with a bang and a challenge.

“My generations have kept the cycle and I am going to break it.
The cycle of women not going to college.
I am going to break it….
I am a fast learner as fast as a bullet.
I am the next generation of Einstein’s.

Declaring her determination to be a doctor Shima asserted:

I hold a skill saw.
I break a head open.
It is cured.
I dream like a surgeon.
I am a surgeon. This is me.

One after another they stood up to tell their tales, some quietly, some hiding behind their papers, others strong and confident, moving with the poem's flow, grinning, laughing, even grim. Each opened places in their life and hearts most of us hide. After it was all over Alianna, a 10th grade Filipina, said how surprised she was at her classmates' efforts, adding, “You look at people differently” after hearing the poems.

There was pride, as one Mexican American concluded his poem with a rousing “Viva Mexico!” In many there was anger at being prejudged for who they are even before opening their mouths. Said Matreca, an ebullient student with coffee skin and a shock of bouncy frizzy pony-tailed hair:

“I’m tired of being categorized,
So I break the rules.
I am loud free and proud.
I love me who I am.
I am rock and roll.
I am like Elvis,
Stealing a culture back that is not mine!”

Students talked of reading and learning about Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, as well African kings and cultures from which some of their parent’s families were torn. Alianna explained how she was both the bomb “that blew up Pearl Harbor” and the Filipina guerrilla general who fought for her homeland against Ferdinand Magellan. Alejandro Vasquez, who ended his poem with “Viva Mexico!” also declared:

I am like a balloon blowing up with knowledge,
I am also a boy who loves to write poetry.

The latter statement was perhaps a risky one, given that Alejandro is a big burly teenager with slicked- back wavy dark hair who does not look like a young man prone to admitting his feelings. There were, however, surprises all round: unexpected self-awareness, difficult admissions and determinations to do better. Brandon, a small fierce Cambodian student, stood wearing a black hoody. Then with feet splayed, he said:

I have seen guns, bullets, drugs and things
But not love.
My parents taught me to do right
But I do wrong.
I have love for my family and want to be a better man.

If there was one consistency in the presentations it was family, and the importance of family. This even caught site coordinator Karen Larson a bit off guard, reminding her of the impact she has on her 10th grade children, even as they are in the midst of teenhood. One girl said — much to her own surprise — that she wanted to make her mom happy. Another admitted to scolding and yelling at her little sister, but only so she could learn to stand up for herself. Another lauded her mother, but of her father, said cuttingly: “I have nothing to say.”

These students, however, had plenty to say. Hailing from Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South East and the Pacific Islands, they represented for the United Nations of East Oakland, an area that gets a bad rap and not enough recognition. When one Writing Coach noted lauding their hometown, the room broke out in applause, cheers and hollering pride. Another coach praised the students, noting: “You have the power in your words and you use them!” Unbidden the students returned the favor, one thanking her coach by name before reading her poem.

Alianna, the feisty yet shy, confident yet uncertain Filipinam blurted in the final moments of the class: “I like working with my writer coach. She helped me realize that I can be a good writer and I did not think I was. I have the potential to do good work!”

What more could we ask for as coaches?

Tim Kingston

Albany poets to connect with students on behalf of WCC

This spring, local poets will work with students to raise money to keep WriterCoach Connection in Albany classrooms. School district budget cuts have taken WCC away from Albany High School this year, and at Albany Middle School it took the generous allocation of scarce dollars by the school's Site Council and the PTA to maintain a limited coaching program in support of the eighth graders on their I-Search projects.

The East Bay Nation of Men (EBNOM) is determined to help keep WCC alive in Albany and, in conjunction with community members, has organized a fundraising project called "Hear Me Out!" Over a period of seven weeks this spring, local poets will work with students at Albany Middle School, reading, writing, revising, and reciting poetry. The extended poetry workshop will generate an anthology of the students' work, which will be unveiled at a poetry reading event in late March. At this Hear Me Out! finale, our young poets will read their works and coaches, teachers, and parents will share their stories of how WCC has impacted students and enriched the community.

The Hear Me Out! poetry reading will take place on Sunday, March 28, from 4 to 6 p.m. at Thousand Oaks Baptist Church, 1821 Catalina Avenue, Berkeley. (Click here for map.) Admission to the event will be free, but guests will be respectfully invited to make a donation to WCC.

Click here for Information on the Hear Me Out! poetry reading event and to RSVP or donate. And click here for information about the East Bay Nation of Men (EBNOM).

The team organizing Hear Me Out! is headed by poet Robert Martin, pictured above working with Berkeley High student Dariann Barnett. Robert is a poet, filmmaker, photographer, songwriter, playwright, and self-described "one-time ventriloquist, altar boy, expert rock-skipper, and newtist." He has acted as the coordinator of educational programs for San Francisco State University since 1989. He has a B.A in English Literature from UC Santa Cruz and has advanced studies in film production from SF State. He published his first book of poems, titled The Carrier, in 2008. Reach Robert at robert269@comcast.net.

Laura Riggs directs the publicity for Hear Me Out! Laura is an architect and writer who lives in Berkeley. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in print publications and Web journals such as Alimentum, AlterNet, BluePrintReview, The East Bay Express, Exquisite Corpse, Monkeybicycle, Rivets, The SoMa Literary Review, Verbicide, and Waccamaw Journal. Laura describes herself as "the road grunt, curator, creative director, and CEO" of Speckled Egg Studios, which designs and publishes poetry broadsheets and produces literary readings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently at work on her first novel. Reach Laura at speckledeggstudios@gmail.com.

Phillip Garrison, the Hear Me Out! project manager, is a long-time resident of Berkeley, and enjoys participating in EBNOM's community service efforts. After subjecting others to the occasional bad haiku or limerick as a child, he decided as an adult that he prefers dancing, and can oft be found cutting a rug at local dance haunts. But he's a strong believer in literacy and taking good care of our youth!

We are so grateful for the commitment to WCC by Robert, Laura, Phillip, and the membership of EBNOM, and Albany Middle School English Dept. Chair Robert Pressnall and his eighth-grade English teachers. We hope you'll support Hear Me Out! and help keep WCC in Albany classrooms!

Robert Menzimer

Executive Director

Community Alliance for Learning

Why I'm a coach: Bob Gomez's story

You can find veteran WCC coach Bob Gomez working with students at King Middle School in Berkeley, where, he says, "I like coaching because wherever the student is in their preparation for the assignment, there is something I can offer them, whether it's helping the student come up with an opening paragraph and an outline for their essay or offering suggestions for improving a final draft. To me, it's important at the end of the coaching session to let the student know that they did a good job and that I enjoyed working with them."

What Bob says about his connection with students is key to the success of WriterCoach Connection. Students get that coaches are there because they want to be, and the trust that arises out of that realization lays the groundwork for the communication that makes WCC effective.

Here is Bob in action with King student Alejandra Alas in December.

Bob says, "I was drawn to coaching partly because it gave me an opportunity to help students discover their creativity when it comes to the translating of their ideas into the written word." Watching Bob work with his students, you can clearly see what helping students in this way means to him.

Bob Menzimer