WriterCoach Connection

Read all about it: Oakland Local spotlights WriterCoach Connection

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has a big idea, and WriterCoach Connection is a part of it. As reporter Barbara Grady writes in today's (March 30) edition of the online Oakland Local, on her inauguration day in January, Mayor Quan "...opened up City Hall to volunteers who would sign up to mentor and tutor Oakland’s youth, particularly at-risk youth. 

"'The first thing I want to do is put the children at the heart of the politics and the business of Oakland,” Quan said on inauguration day. 'Every volunteer group that helps the Oakland city schools will be there, every volunteer group that loves our parks, loves our libraries or loves our city.'"

Barbara Grady's Oakland Local article spotlights WriterCoach Connection as part of Mayor Quan's volunteer initiative. Check it out!
WCC volunteer Dale Rogers Marshall works with Media Academy sophomore Alejandra Lopez on a writing assignment for The Color Purple. Their collaboration is described in Barbara Grady's article in Oakland Local.

 

Bob Menzimer

Teachers tell why they love WriterCoach Connection

Teachers today face daunting curricular loads and badly overcrowded classrooms. Imagine trying to cram in the required instructional material while attempting to give individual attention to up to 30 students in a class. Virtually impossible. So imagine the impact on a teacher who has a team of trained coaches on hand to offer one on one writing support to every student in class.

No need to imagine it. Here's what the teachers say.

Remarks Caitlin Alastra, a Longfellow Middle School teacher in Berkeley who serves students in Read 180 classes, for students performing below and far below grade level:

"I taught my students last year in 6th grade so I can say from experience that my Read 180 students   are producing much more high-quality writing as 7th graders, thanks to the support of the writer coaches. On several occasions my students have returned from meeting with their coaches elated by words of encouragement from their coach.  For these students, being able to express their ideas in writing is a huge victory.  I'm deeply appreciative for the positive experiences with writing the writer coaches have facilitated with these emerging writers."

Caitlin's Read 180 teaching colleague Nina Ziskin notes:

"Many of the Read 180 students were initially resistant to the idea of working with the writer coaches. I believe they are afraid of exposing their low skills to strangers. However, as the year has progressed, the students are more willing to receive assistance from the coaches, and have even begun to state that they find it helpful. 

"The students' increased willingness to take advantage of an opportunity for assistance, despite the risks to their self-esteem, is one of the benefits I have observed this year. I think this improvement is at least partly related to the coaches' willingness to modify their approach to meet the individual needs of each student. I am hopeful that the students are learning the value of taking a risk and accepting help when it is offered. 

 "One academic difference I notice from last year (when Read 180 didn't have coaches) is that the students are writing longer paragraphs, with more detail.

"Finally, it must be obvious, but there is no way the students could get this much individual attention   from just one teacher." 

 And from Albany Middle School teacher Jamie Heans:

"Considering the number of students in a classroom (thirty or so students, one teacher), it’s a real challenge to teach writing.  One of the best interventions to overcome that ratio is WriterCoach Connection. I couldn’t give students this kind of one-on-one attention at this point.

 "I’ve noticed that with writer coaching, the students’ papers are dramatically better. Students respond to the coaching and will tell you that they enjoy it. I’ve heard them  make comments like, 'My writer coach really liked my piece! She wrote lots of comments about it.' Students feel honored and valued as writers when volunteers come in and give them this one-on-one attention.  

"This is valuable contact time. The student-coach pairing is a great relationship."

We're deeply grateful to these dedicated teachers who go out of their way to craft writing assignments for writer-coach support and represent a key factor in the success of WriterCoach Connection.

 

Bob Menzimer                                                                                                                                                                  

 

 

 

 

Meet them where they at

Once or twice a week, as a member of WriterCoach Connection, I tutor kids in local middle and high schools.  Most often it's an invigorating, rewarding experience, ...but sometimes it's absolutely demoralizing. And sometimes, as I recently learned, it's a dizzying rollercoaster.

I first met the student I'm writing about four months ago. She is a freshman at Berkeley High. It's the kind of school where if you stay on the straight and narrow, you can get a terrific education. But if you're among the 90% who fall off that narrow path, you might as well be in East Oakland. 

When I first met her, I could barely hear her. She spoke in a whisper.

"I'm kinda nervous. It's my first day back in three weeks," she told me after I introduced myself.

Okay, I thought, another deadbeat truant, but at least she has the decency to feel sheepish about it.

"A funeral messed me up."

I asked whose funeral.

"My best friend. He was the leader of a gang with me."

"What happened?"

"He got shot."

I dimly remembered reading something in the paper about a Berkeley high student who had been killed.

"Was he the football player?" I asked.

"Yeah. Quarterback." Age 14. Shot in the head by his 17 year old friend at 3:26 p.m. on Saturday, October 30, 2010. Lingered for a week on life support before passing.

The assignment was a free write. It could be about anything. She wanted to write about her friend's death and funeral. She wanted to write about how everyone held a candle at his memorial service and recounted stories about him. At the time of his service, she herself was too shaken up to speak, but now, in this paper, she'd get the chance to talk about how she really felt about him, to deliver the eulogy she was not ready to deliver in person, about how his life - and death - had affected her.

I thought about my own sons - sixth and ninth graders at Albany high - and how the biggest trauma they'd experienced in their fourteen years on this planet were a broken ankle and being spat on by the school jock.

"I'm so sorry, I can't imagine what it's like to lose a friend. It's never happened to me. And so young. So young. It's so...wrong."

"My dad died this year, too."

Cancer.

I was stunned. I feared anything I tried to add would come across as trite or insincere or simply inadequate. I was hoping the expression on my face would say it all.  What I really wanted to do was lean over and hug her, but I'm quite sure that's against all kinds of school regulations, and I'm even more certain she wouldn't have wanted me to. "I'm really sorry."

She nodded and we started working on her paper.

"Had nothing to do with the gang," she told me. "We just do stupid stuff like go dancing and talk s___ and have parties.  I think it was an accident." She sighed.  "I didn't want to come to school today."

"I'm impressed that you did. And you have a great idea for this paper, by the way."

"In this paper I want me and the gang to pay respect to my friend. He was like my big brother."

It was a quiet session. She did good work. And my stereotype of the indifferent, disrespectful 90% had been violently realigned. I thought about her the rest of that day, and shared her story at the dinner table.

Flash forward four months: I'm assigned to tutor the same class, and I'm given her folder. I'm thrilled. We'll get to work together again. My star pupil. My star human being.

We coaches stand in a line at the beginning of class and call out the names of the students with whom we'll be working.  When it's my turn, I look right at her, smile and say,"I'm Alfredo, and I'll be working with - " and I tried to remember how to pronounce her name.  

She mimicked back my pronunciation. She was doing an impression of me, and it wasn't meant to flatter. Other kids snickered. I had tried to strike a mixed note of professionalism and warmth in my voice, and she skewered it.

I was taken aback, just a bit. But I thought, okay, she's just showing off for her friends. I get it.

The teacher that day was a sub who spent the first few minutes of class droning on about how "the pursuit of happiness" were the most beautiful words in the constitution, perhaps the most beautiful words in the English language. I looked around. One girl was asleep, her head resting on her textbook. Other kids, my student included, had their desks turned every which way.  The teacher was unfazed.  By now he was sidetracked and asking the class if they knew how many words the average person has in their vocabulary. Even if they did know, they certainly didn't care and weren't going to give him the satisfaction of their attention.

I turned back to find my student but she was gone. A bathroom break? I waited a minute. No sign of her. Then a teacher I recognized poked her head in the class to say something to the sub.  I caught up with her and asked if she had seen my student.

She looked back at me and said, "Why?  Do you really want to find her?"

"Yeah, I'm supposed to tutor her."

"Good luck," she said, and left.

I stepped into the hallway and spotted her, giggling with a group of her friends.

"Hey, come on, let's get started."

She slunk behind me into the classroom. I grabbed two desks by a window (all the rooms in Berkeley High are mercilessly stuffy, and I need the air to keep from passing out), and looked over the day's assignment. The kids had to make two claims about "Lord of the Flies," and back them up with analysis and citation. She couldn't have looked more bored. "So what did you think of 'Lord of the Flies?'" I asked.

"Didn't read it," she answered, without the least hint of the sheepishness or fragility or modesty so clearly on display last time I saw her.

"Not any of it?" I asked hopefully.

"Nope. Sounded boring." She was looking everywhere but at me.

"Kids crash landing on an island and fending for themselves sounds boring to you?" I asked, unable to conceal the irritation I felt building.

"I dunno.  We did watch half the movie."

I perked up.

"Did you like it?"

"I dunno. There was Ralph and Piggy and some other kids, but I fell asleep."  Did she fall asleep - entirely possible, judging by this class - or was she just goading me?

"Do you remember me? We worked on your paper about your friend?" I asked. She shrugged.

Was this really the same girl I had connected with so profoundly four months ago?  Could I have been so deluded as to think our conversation meant half as much to her as it did to me?  Was I just another nameless authority figure drifting past her world?

I was annoyed, royally and righteously annoyed.

On the carbon form where we make notes of the work we accomplish during our session, copies of which I will leave with her and her teacher, I wrote, "She has not read book, and has watched half the movie, but fell asleep."  This was my silly little attempt to jab back at her.

"Are there any books you do like?" I asked, not without a hint of condescension.

"I like gangsta stories."

Thinking I detected an opening, I jumped in.

"Have you read 'The Outsiders?'" I asked. She shook her head.

"Yeah, it's way before your time, even way before my time," I replied, this time defeat and resignation creeping into my voice.

"I liked a book called 'Bitch,'" she tells me. Okay, maybe not destined for the Western Canon, but it's something. I asked her what the book was about. She sat up a notch.

"It's about this girl who plays guys for money, then moves on, but one day she falls in love, which she not supposed to do, and her friends turn their back on her, but she stays with the guy outta love."

I could see where that might interest a girl from South Berkeley. Without any prodding from me, she continued.

"And then there was this other book I read about this really good kid, never been in trouble, always sober.  But then one day he tries crack, and just off that one time, he becomes addicted and turns into this big time drug dealer with lots of money.  But someone then kills his mom and his woman, and he tries to find out who it was. And he finds out it's his number two in the gang.  His number two betrayed him, so he kills him.  Then he tries to leave the life, but this other guy kills him."

She likes gang stories. Got it. Clearly she can read. And she can summarize just fine. She just needs to find material that feels relevant.

But, of course, in school, as in life, you sometimes have to work on things that seem completely irrelevant. That's why work is called "work" and fun is called "fun."  So I try to steer the conversation back to the task at hand.

"You mentioned Ralph and Piggy.  Why did you remember them?"

"Ralph was like the leader, and everyone made fun of Piggy."

"Okay, so there are two claims you just made: Ralph is a leader, and Piggy's, what, a loser?" She shrugged. "Can you back that up?"

She gave it some thought. "Ralph, he told everybody to get sticks and food, but then a ship came while they were gone, and he was alone and couldn't make a big enough noise and nobody on the ship heard him, but then when the others got back, he blamed them for missing the ship. That was bull____."

 

I was going to ask whether it was right to blame Ralph for sending the others for food when he had no way of knowing a ship was on the way, but she kept talking.

"And Piggy, he actually was the one who figured out how to use the conch shell, and he was gonna make a sundial, but everyone teased him and so he didn't." I could see my question about Ralph and the ship wasn't getting to the heart of her point. She wasn't talking about our ability to predict rescue, she was talking about something much more universal.

"It wasn't fair," she said.

This she instinctively understood: fairness, and unfairness.

"So do you think Ralph was a good leader or a bad one?"

"Bad."

"Why?"

"He wasn't cool with his crew."

"You're the leader of a gang.  What do you think makes a good leader?"

"You gotta make decisions, take charge," she answered.

"Didn't Ralph do that?" I responded.

"Yeah, but you also gotta be cool with everybody, y'know?  Meet them where they at."

"Meet them where they at." Right. I have to confess, by this time, goose pimples were rising. I self consciously covered my forearm, lest she see the hair standing on end. Meet them where they at.

"So Ralph wasn't a good leader, in your opinion?" I asked, hoping to draw her out a bit more.
"Piggy would've been better."

"Okay, so there's a thesis: even though Ralph was the leader, Piggy would've been better at it."
She nodded.

"And tell me why again?"

"He was smarter than Ralph and Ralph made unfair decisions."

Meet them where they at.

I had to fight the urge not to jump out of my seat and scream, "Ohmigod, Hollywood has it right after all!  Relatively privileged people from the suburbs can come into urban schools and have miraculous breakthroughs, right on the spot!!  This cheesy s___ actually happens!!!"

But I kept my composure and instead asked her about the Sponge Bob and Patrick key chains she had hanging from her backpack.

"I love Sponge Bob," she said. "Everything Sponge Bob. I have Sponge Bob pajamas." Now I happen to be a fan of the show too, and I asked her who her favorite character was.

"Patrick."  Okay, so she likes the simpler, broader stuff, that's fine.

"What about Mr. Krabs and Squidward?" I asked, revealing my two favorites.

"Mr. Krabs is hella funny," she said. "He's all about money."

"Do you think Squidward is gay?" I asked. "Nah, I dunno, but I think maybe Spongebob and Patrick are."

I was intrigued.

"Really?"

"Did you see the one where Spongebob and Patrick were like mommy and daddy to that clam?" Indeed I had.

"That was pretty gay," she added. I nodded non-committally, because even though I happen to think Spongebob and Patrick are more asexual than anything I else, I didn't want to diminish the bond she and I were building. Or at least the bond I thought we were building.

The class bell rang.

"I like your sweatshirt, by the way." The back of her sweatshirt was covered in photos of her slain friend.  One of them showed a little boy and girl sitting together in an old fashioned Radio Flyer wagon.  

The boy appeared to be about three years old in the picture. "That's him and his big sister. She died when she was seven."

Good god, the hard knocks just kept piling up. Again I didn't know what to say, but I wanted to let her know I wasn't indifferent.

"And I remember you lost your father recently, too. You've been through a lot, young lady."

She gathered her books and stood up.

"Was exactly a year ago today."

I told her I hoped I'd see her next time.

"Bye, Alfredo."

Meet them where they at.

 

Alfredo Botello

Stimulating donations for WriterCoach Connection

Mark Pasley, WCC site co-coordinator at Longfellow Middle School in Berkeley, is also a licensed masseuse, and he decided to generate donations for WCC at the opening of his new massage studio in Oakland on March 20. Raffle tickets for two free 75-minute massages generated $125 in proceeds!

Here's Mark and his friend Sharon Bass, demonstrating their expertise. The beneficiary of Mark's attention is a fellow yoga teacher and one of the raffle winners. The ultra-relaxed client in the chair is our own Karen Larson, WCC"s Oakland site coordinator.

Bob Menzimer

View outdoor sculptures by world-renowned artists and support WriterCoach Connection!

Oliver Ranch, home of one of the most ambitious private collections of site-specific sculpture in the United States, will be open in April to friends of WriterCoach Connection for a rare visit that will benefit the WCC program.

Steven Oliver and his wife Nancy began commissioning large works of art on their Sonoma County ranch in the mid-1980's and found an innovative approach to supporting artists, becoming partners in the creative process as artists planned and developed projects inspired by the landscape. The Olivers generously donate tours as fundraisers for nonprofit organizations.

A quarter-mile long staircase by Bruce Nauman, massive steel blocks in a Richard Serra series, sound sculptures by Bill Fontana, and Roger Berry's steel arcs may, as Steve Oliver asserts, "lead you to learn about yourself and the world."  Works include the visions of Judith Shea, Ellen Driscoll, Jim Melchert, Martin Puryear, Jim Jennings, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, Ann Hamilton, and more. 

The Oliver Ranch Art Tour to benefit WriterCoach Connection is scheduled for Saturday, April 16, 9:00-1:00 pm.Tickets for this memorable experience are $75 per person. Guests drive to Healdsburg to meet a chartered bus that will take us to the Ranch for the 2-3 hour tour led by owner Steve Oliver. The bus will return guests to their cars at the end of the tour.  Limit:  50 persons. 

To reserve a space, mail a check (Memo: "Art tour") payable to Community Alliance for Learning (or "CAFL") to:

CAFL

PO Box 6098

Albany, CA  94706.

With your check, please include the name, email address, and phone number of your party's contact person.

For more details, call CAFL board member Loretta Kane at (510) 558-3377.

Checks are a donation to the WriterCoach Connection program; no refunds. Directions to the point of embarkation and additional instructions will follow. Be prepared to walk on unpaved paths in moderately hilly terrain. No seating or restroom facilities are available during the tour.  

CAFL is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.  PO Box 6098, Albany, CA 94706; 510-528-5066. 

Here are some views of our last Oliver Ranch tour, in 2009. It was a glorious day.

Not your everyday walk in the country.

How did sculptor Richard Serra manage to get these massive blocks to the Ranch? Steve Oliver will tell you.

 Steve Oliver has a lot of 'splainin' to do about this piece!

Heading down Bruce Nauman's long staircase, an experience that will surprise you.

We hope to see you for lots of art and lots of fun on April 16!

Bob Menzimer

New Scully Foundation grant supports expansion of WriterCoach Connection

The Irene S. Scully Family Foundation has presented a generous $10,000 grant to Community Alliance for Learning (CAFL), the parent organization of WriterCoach Connection, to support the expansion of WCC in West Contra Costa County. We expanded to West County for the first time this year, serving students in English Language Development classes in the fall and branching out to also cover a mainstream class this spring. For 2011-12, we hope to expand to serve all ninth-grade students at ECHS with writer coaches.

Portola Middle School in El Cerrito is in line for WCC, lacking only funding for the program. We have also met with the staff at Kennedy High School in Richmond, where the program is badly needed and wanted, but where district and school funding for a literacy program like ours is non-existent. Support from the Scully Foundation helps create the momentum to carry us to deeper involvement in El Cerrito schools and into Richmond as well.

The Irene S. Scully Family Foundation invests in programs that provide educational and developmental opportunities to economically disadvantaged communities. We deeply appreciate their faith in the capability of WriterCoach Connection to further that mission!

Bob Menzimer

 

 

Coordinating writer coaches and your ch'i

Mark Pasley, with his site partner Annie Stine, coordinates WriterCoach Connection at Longfellow Middle School in Berkeley, supervising more than 60 community volunteers who guide Longfellow students to more effective writing. Mark is also a massage therapist, and has incorporated fundraising for WCC into the celebration of the opening of his new massage studio in Oakland. Here's how Mark describes your chance for a festive time and a great massage from a skilled practitioner at a rock bottom price:   Let's celebrate spring with some good food and massage!

 

Open House with Mark Pasley, CMT DATE: Sunday March 20, 2011 TIME: 2:00-5:00pm   Please join us on March 20th, the first day of spring to celebrate the opening of my new massage studio in Oakland! There will be tasty treats for you to eat, and free mini-massages for your hands, scalp, etc.  You'll also receive a coupon good for $10 off a massage, which you can use for yourself or give to a friend.   As if that's not enough, there will also be a raffle for two 75-minute massages with yours truly! Tickets are just five bucks, with all proceeds benefiting my favorite local non-profit WriterCoach Connection, which currently sends 400+ trained volunteers into East Bay schools to help kids with their writing.    www.RelaxedEnergy.com   Relaxed Energy 2939 Summit Street, Suite #204 Oakland, California 94609 510-295-3591 Google map directions   So help Mark celebrate the opening of his new studio, pick up a chance for a bargain-price massage, and help support WCC!   Bob Menzimer