Back in January, I attended a training in Princeton, NJ with People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos to conduct their NEH Grant-funded Story Talk program for teens here in Queens.
I became involved in this grant accidentally. A colleague from Westchester County mentioned having worked with this program (I mentioned it briefly in my 1/28 post) in the prisons in Westchester. They sounded so cool I emailed them and within a couple of days, they had added Queens Library to the list of libraries to be trained under the grant (lesson: it never hurts to ask).
So I did the training and lined up my first partner site, a group home for older teen boys with severe emotional disabilities (say what you will about me, I never take the easy road!). But at the training, the P&S folks talked about the size of the group they wanted and I didn't think I would be able to get that with the boys, so I shopped around for a Queens Library with a big teen population it might work. I found one (which I am not going to name; some of you know, for the rest, it doesn't actually matter) and scheduled the 8 weeks of programs there and also at the group home.
I started at the QL site first. I had a group of about 15 teens, mostly 7th graders, a little younger than the grant's target age of 14-18. The story I selected from the stories P&S supplied for the first series of programs was called "Do Not Attempt to Climb Out" by Anndee Hochman (who, btw, besides being a writer, does P&S programs with adults). I picked this one for a couple of reasons: 1) because I had already worked with it during the training so I felt very prepared and 2) because it has an ambiguous ending that I figured would get their attention. Ever the optimist, I arrived with all my supplies, plus donuts and juice and got ready to be a facilitator.
And then spent the next hour trying to get the teens to stop talking, stop hitting each other, sit down, sit up, etc.. I will admit that I left the library a basket case, went straight to do another program, went home and had a drink. But I also don't give up that easily, so I went back the next week to try again. It took 20 minutes for a slightly smaller group to sign an attendance sheet and things went downhill from there. I did manage on both occasions, to read the story aloud and start a discussion, but both times, the discussion was such a struggle I felt no one, especially the teens, got anything out of it. The second week, I ended early and we decided that it wasn't the right time and we'd try it maybe again in the future.
I was off the next day (that fluky 70 degree Friday) and walked from my apartment across the bridge over the Belt Parkway to walk the promenade under the Verrazano Bridge. I sat on one of the benches and was trying to just meditate about life and suddenly knew I had to try again with the library group. So I am.
This Monday, I did the first session with the boys in the group home. I had 7 participate. I might have had more but 1 who was interested can't be in the same room with one of the others who wanted to attend and another hadn't taken his meds while he was home for the weekend and had to be taken to the hospital. Again, I had selected "Do Not Attempt to Climb Out" and amidst the drama, started reading. Amazingly, there was not a peep out of the group as I read. The discussion, as at the library, was a struggle, but I held on to the listening part as hard as I could, knowing that was the first step (the staff assured me that the fact that 7 boys came in, listened attentively and tried to participate was a HUGE success).
Today, I got the newsletter from P&S and on the back cover is a book review of a memoir by a woman who taught poetry classes at San Quentin maximum security prison. The program manager who reviewed the book included a quote, told to the author by her supervisor: "'To survive and do a good job working in prison, you have to hold onto what it is you want to do and, at the very same time, let go of all assumptions that you're going to get it done the way you first planned.'" I had to laugh because isn't that pretty much what it means to do a good job doing library programs with teens?
It's so easy to forgot that lesson. Especially when we have high hopes and high expectations for a program and have this crazy dream notion of perfectly behaved children sitting silently and attentively (what? you don't have those teens?), reality is such a let down. But it shouldn't be. It is what it is and we just have to keep picking ourselves up, dusting ourselves off and trying again. I know this. We all KNOW this. Feeling it on those days who want to cry in your own program is a totally different thing.
But may tomorrow, at the library story program, I'll remember.
Cash in the Coffee Can: $362
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