Andover Bread Loaf A Phillips Academy Outreach Program
Spring Newsletter 2014
From the Director Andover Bread Loaf transforms students, teachers, schools, and communities by igniting a passion for learning through written self-expression.
Community Organizing for Educational Renewal One of Andover Bread Loaf’s key strategies for strengthening schools and school systems is to develop methods that bring the community into the schools and the schools into the community, thus bridging the gap that frequently exists between the two. This newsletter highlights two types of ABL programs that have proven highly successful in inspiring school/community collaboration: citywide writing conferences and Family Literacy Nights. While these programs were first developed in Lawrence, Mass., they have since become models for ABL teachers in other sites, such as New York City and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. ABL’s citywide writing conferences, which are hosted by various community organizations (see inside, left page), feature public school teachers as guest artists and workshop presenters. Bringing teachers into the community for educational programs creates a new dynamic between schools and the community, especially since many of these organizations work with youth who are disenfranchised from their classes and their schools. Through these conferences, teachers learn how to re-engage young people in their own education. ABL’s Family Literacy Nights (see inside, right page), held at schools and community organizations, focus on families writing together. The long-term goal of Family Literacy Nights is to bring families into the very center of their child’s education, not only so that they know how to support their children with their schoolwork but also so they can understand the most effective school pedagogies.
Students at ABL’s “Write the Promise” fall conference gathered at the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence for a workshop offered by the staff of Phillips Academy’s Addison Gallery of American Art.
What’s Inside? BGCL Partnership
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How to Eat a Poem IV
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Teacher Highlight
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Family Literacy Nights
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Current research shows that the only way to achieve sustainable educational excellence in a school system is through “community organizing for educational renewal.” ABL is committed to building the capacity of communities to engage deeply and authentically in the schools that serve their children. We embrace the challenge! Middle school and high school students at the “Write the Promise” conference took their own portraits and explored the idea of “who you are today and who you want to be.”
Lou Bernieri
ABL in The Chronicle 4
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Photographer: John F. Hurley
BGCL Partnership
Creating Programs for Youth of All Ages
Teach
The Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence (BGCL) serves more than 3,500 youth each year. Five years ago, Andover Bread Loaf began a vibrant partnership with the BGCL, and since then, the club’s writing and arts programs have proliferated.
Major programs include ABL’s Saturday citywide writing conferences for students in grades 1–12 (see story at right), which are offered twice during the school year. During the summer, the BGCL runs a two-week intensive writing and arts program for grades 1–4 called “Slice of Bread Loaf.” And when the children asked for more Bread Loaf, the BGCL opened “Mini-Slices,” two-hour workshops offered twice a week throughout July and August. Due to their popularity, Mini-Slice programs also run during the school year. ABL’s College and Scholarship Essay Writing workshops run nearly every week, from September through May.
Thanks to the vision of the BGCL staff— including Education Director Karen Kravchuck and her assistant, Rhandy Audate—and ABL’s partnership, the club has become a center for writing and literacy in Lawrence.
How do you see yourself? How do others see you? Here, a student writer is challenged to answer these questions and write a letter to her future self.
As this young Lawrence student shares her poem in Spanish at the mic, Jineyda Tapia, a teacher from the Oliver Middle School, translates each line into English.
Lawrence Writers Conference
How to Eat a Poem IV On March 29, ABL and the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence (BGCL) ran the 4th annual “How to Eat a Poem” conference for grades 1–4. Sixty students and 25 teachers, BGCL staff, ABL Writing Leaders, and BGCL Keystone Club members participated. Guest artist, former ABL Writing Leader, and Guilmette Middle School Assistant Principal Roberto German kicked off the event, performing his own work and giving students prompts that sparked their imaginations. We knew this was a special day when 30 students immediately begged to share what they had written. After Roberto’s presentation, students chose one of four workshops run by Bread Loaf Teachers Network members. When the workshops were done, everyone came together to eat lunch and share. The sharing went on for 45 minutes, the longest we’ve ever had at any conference. At the end, the students got together for a group photo, punctuating their day by jumping in the air and yelling “Bread Loaf!”
Teacher Highlight
A Celebratory Approach to Education “ABL changed my life,” Lorena German says of her experience in the 2010 Writing Workshop for Teachers. A Lawrence High School English teacher for the past four years, Lorena will be graduating from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English with an MA degree in English in August. The teacher workshop opened doors for her to develop in her profession, but also renewed her interest in writing poetry, nonfiction essays, and short stories. Lorena considers herself an ABL teacher in the sense that its celebratory approach to education is what shapes her teaching: “I believe that my students should be at
the center of my teaching and classroom,” she says. “I also believe in welcoming and celebrating who they are in an effort to affirm their identities. I believe in a culturally sustaining pedagogy, where students feel fully human in my classroom.” Each year Lorena takes what she has learned at the Bread Loaf School of English back to her Lawrence High School classroom. Teaching can become an isolating profession. Through ABL, she stays connected to other teachers. “ABL helps me as if it were a heartbeat,” says Lorena. “It keeps me going and focused. Current trends in education can make this profession seem dismal and somber, but the network offers rhythm and tunes. My partners in this network are doing amazing work, and it inspires me to continue developing my creativity and sharpening my craft.”
Family Literacy Nights
Getting the Whole Family Excited about Writing
Julia was the first of more than 50 people— including parents and grandparents—who shared their work at the open mic that evening, each one receiving a rousing applause. While adult family members are much shyer about reading their work aloud, every single one joins in on the writing. And now that we’ve done several at the same school, more and more parents are willing to share. The writing that is produced at Family Literacy Nights (FLNs) is characterized by the imagination and compassion intrinsic to immigrant communities such as Lawrence. “I dream of a world where no one goes hungry” (7th-grader); “I hope to go to college and learn how to help my community” (6th-grader); “I wish my grandchildren to live a happy and healthy life.” (grandmother). The serious sentiments are always balanced by funny ones: “I want to live in a world of ice cream and candy” (5th-grader); “My favorite time of day is recess” (6th-grader); “My hero is SpongeBob SquarePants” (3rd-grader). Throughout the 2013–2014 school year, ABL has collaborated with dozens of Lawrence Public School teachers, administrators, and staff to offer FLNs. While each one focuses on a K–12 grade level or similar levels, whole families are invited to join the party. So far this academic year, FLNs have drawn more than 2,000 participants in eight different schools.
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Create
It’s 6 p.m. on a cold and windy November night in the cafeteria of the Robert Frost Middle School in Lawrence, Mass., and more than 300 grandparents, parents, brothers, and sisters are sitting at tables, writing poetry in Spanish and English, and then sharing what they’ve written with each other. When writing time is over and the open mic begins, Julia, the 6-year-old sister of a 6th-grader, jumps up and down, burning to come to the mic and share her poem that she dictated to her mother. While this is a middle school Family Literacy Night, at Bread Loaf events the last shall be first and the first last: “I dream of being a mermaid, I dream of living in a house of red jello, I dream of being with my abuela forever.”
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ABL Director Lou Bernieri (second from left), received the 2013 Jeannie Melucci Award in November for his four years of volunteerism at the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence.
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From The Chronicle of Philanthropy
Writing Program Helps Students Learn to Lead and Go on to College A nonprofit writing program in Lawrence, Mass., teaches young people in the beleaguered former mill town to tell their stories—and in the process inspires them to go to college and become leaders in the community. The Andover Bread Loaf Writing Leaders program, a project of the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and Phillips Academy, in Andover, has been helping students find their voices for 27 years. The workshops are run entirely by students who have already been through the program. “The ‘writing leaders’ are the same age and come from the same community as the students they’re mentoring,” says Edwin Santana, who became an instructor in 2004. The writing leaders attend a daylong training session and receive mentoring from public-school teachers.
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Michael T. Cahill ’84, Chair New York, N.Y. Timothy P.F. Davenport ’80, P’17, ’18 New Canaan, Conn. José A. Dobles ’98 Brooklyn, N.Y. Ricardo Dobles ’85 Holden, Mass. Richard B. Gorham ’86 Andover, Mass. Cynthia L. Greene ’87 Newton, Mass. Donald M. Kendall ’85 Weston, Conn. Tucker Levy ’88 Charlestown, Mass. Abby J. Shuman ’84 Cambridge, Mass. Gabriela Poma Traynor ’88 Cambridge, Mass. Scobie D. Ward ’84 Hong Kong Sturgis P. Woodberry ’84 Darien, Conn.
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Here, writing program participants share their goals for the future.
Among the more than 600 students who have been part of the program, nearly all have completed college—an accomplishment in a struggling community like Lawrence, where almost half of all students drop out of high school. That sends a powerful message to students, says Mr. Santana: “ ‘They came from exactly where I came from. I can be as smart as they are. I can go to college.’ ”
Program alumni arrive at college armed with invaluable tools, says Lou Bernieri, executive director of Andover Bread Loaf and an English instructor at Phillips Academy. “They have a voice, they believe in their voice, and they’re comfortable in a world where literacy is the key to everything.” Andover Bread Loaf’s $200,000 budget comes from foundations and a handful of individuals. That money pays for small stipends for mentors, occasional travel for students, and Mr. Bernieri’s part-time salary and benefits. Many former students now have good jobs back in Lawrence, says Mr. Bernieri. “They’re in the schools as teachers and administrators. They’re running nonprofits and local businesses. They’re leading Lawrence.” Frederico Pereyra is one example. He signed up for a writing workshop in fifth grade and says he never looked back. Today the 28-year-old is back in Lawrence teaching math at a middle school, coaching track, and mentoring young writers in the Andover Bread Loaf program. Says Mr. Pereyra: “During my first three weeks in the program, something in my personality changed and led me down a path I never would have traveled.”
This article, originally published on February 27, 2014, is reprinted with permission from The Chronicle of Philanthropy, www.philanthropy.com.
Andover Bread Loaf Phillips Academy 180 Main Street Andover MA 01810-4161 978-884-8452 lbernieri@andover.edu www.andover.edu/breadloaf
—Jennifer Berkshire
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