Abstract
In this article, the author uses a “humanizing research” framework to analyze longitudinal data collected over the course of 10 years during a multi-sited ethnography of youth poets in a poetry collective called Power Writing. Using qualitative interviews to understand the role that literacy continues to play in the lives of Power Writing alumni, the author demonstrates how Power Writing continues to influence youth poets’ views on education as they continue their lives as college students, workers, parents, and partners.
Keywords
This is a story about literacy. This is a story about resilience. This is a story co-authored with a youth collective who often received messages from both inside and outside their communities about how important it was to attend college, be literate, well read, and well spoken yet did not always have access to opportunities that supported these objectives. This is a story about how a community of young poets and writers, who called themselves the Power Writers, learned to access their “funds of knowledge” (Gonzalez, Moll, & Amanti, 2005) and “funds of identity” (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014) that were not merely culturally relevant but “culturally sustaining” (Paris, 2012) against the backdrop of under-resourced schools and neighborhoods in the Bronx, New York. Becoming literate or unearthing one’s literate identity for many of the youth in this story was inspired—in part—by a classroom teacher, Joseph Ubiles, and his comrades and co-teachers, Amy Sultan and Roland Legardi-Laura, who co-facilitated a process called Power Writing in which young people learned to resist colonization and being confined to monolithic identities. Therefore, this is also a story about teachers who keep the classroom circle open to students even in the absence of a formal building or institution. The purpose of this study is to examine how alumni from one high school writing community, the Power Writers, continued to integrate the values and practices from their poetry class in their lives as college students, workers, partners, and parents. Using multi-sited ethnography and case study methodology, my study is guided by the following research questions:
In the fall of 2003, I was “admitted” to this community of youth and thinkers in the Bronx, New York (Fisher, 2005a, 2005b, 2007; M. T. Winn & Ubiles, 2011). I journeyed with these young people—African American, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and West Indian—and their teachers, who defined themselves as Black Puerto Rican, Jewish, and Italian through the labyrinth we call New York City as they claimed the entire city as their classroom. Like many scholars, I immersed myself in this writing community and exchanged my instinct to know it all for an opportunity to be schooled by Joseph Ubiles—or Poppa Joe—and his students who used the Power Writing class and method to exchange their original writing, give (and receive) feedback (read and feed) (Fisher, 2005a, 2005b, 2007). What began as a “study” became an opportunity for me to decolonize my own research methodologies through a “humanizing” and collaborative process (Paris & Winn, 2013). At first glance, one might refer to Power Writing as a “program”; however, it became a worldview embracing multiple languages and literacies of all people, exalting students’ (and their families’) ways of knowing and being, and embodying the notion that all people have the “right to be literate” (Lunsford, Moglen, & Slevin, 1990; Plaut, 2009; M. T. Winn & Behizadeh, 2011). In addition, Power Writing adheres to the belief that youth can and must tell their own stories and define themselves or risk being subjects in a monolithic story crafted by others. The notion of Power Writing being a worldview is evidenced by the activity systems its alumni engage in that support their growth beyond the original circle once they graduate from high school and begin lives as college students, workers, parents, and partners. Power Writing alumni continue their work in the world as writers in a variety of settings including small liberal arts college campuses and universities, workplace settings, and for two poets in and out of prison cells. Every Power Writer’s story is layered and nuanced in the way they experienced building and sustaining a literate identity. To be sure, the documentary, “To be heard,” details the lives of three Power Writers mostly capturing stories of longing and despair (Sultan, Legardi-Laura, Martinez, & Schaffer, 2010). The lack of attention to curricular and pedagogical impact of Power Writing presents a limited vision of what Power Writing has been and can be in young lives. For the purpose of this article, I triangulated qualitative interview data and observed practices of Power Writing alumni to understand both their “call” and “responsibility” that comes with their artistry and craft as spoken word poets (Fisher, 2003, 2004; Weinstein & West, 2012). Betwixt and between lives in the context of this study include the stories of first generation college students who matriculated through underserved schools, emerged from under-resourced neighborhoods, and pursued academic excellence while maintaining linguistic diversity, love for their families, and relevance to communities that shaped them. These are young people who found the “dreamkeepers” in their schools and communities—that is, they connected with teachers and adult allies who patiently worked with and for them with a firm conviction that these young people had gifts to offer the world (Ladson-Billings, 2009). The lives of Power Writing alumni demonstrate that education and literacy are not synonymous with “acting white” and that being designated as low socioeconomic status does not mean that there is no one in your home or peer group who values reading, writing, and thinking (L. T. Winn & Winn, 2015a, 2015b). In fact, Power Writers—past and present—draw from their sociocultural resources for inspiration including families, teachers, and, most importantly, each other.
First, I provide a theoretical framing that supports efforts to decolonize qualitative inquiry by focusing on stories and themes of resilience. Next, I discuss my methods including the ways in which my epistemological framing of this work has changed over time. And, finally, I do my best to move to the periphery as “ethnographer learning” (Heath, 1983) in qualitative interviews that were structured more like oral histories that focused on literacy narratives or stories of how participants’ thinking about literacy and what it means to be literate have changed over time.
From “Damaged” to Determined: A Framework for Resilience
This story, or collection of stories, rejects an overwhelming body of “damage centered research” (Tuck, 2009) by using a humanizing research framework that privileges the hard work of youth and their families (Paris, 2011; Paris & Winn, 2013). Tuck argues that there are consequences when scholarship relies on the hard luck stories of individuals or communities that support stories of inequities and gaps in academic achievement. This “pathologizing approach” to research, according to Tuck, “operates, even benevolently, from a theory of change that establishes harm or injury in order to achieve reparation” (p. 413). Elsewhere, research and scholarship examines lives of youth in urban settings missing opportunities to understand the temerity and tenacity of youth who excavate pathways to education. This study uses a humanizing research framework by illuminating the multiple trajectories of the Power Writers. Paris and Winn (2013) argue for a program of research that is guided by “reciprocity and respect” while positing that “humanizing approaches as those that involve the building of relationships of care and dignity and dialogic consciousness raising for both researchers and participants” (p. xvi). Using a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) framework to examine the literacy practices of Power Writers over time, this multi-sited ethnography seeks to understand how youth traverse the various spaces youth poets occupy. CHAT insists that scholars consider the historicized lives of participants and the ways in which these histories both individually and collectively contribute to the spaces in which they engage. I have argued that Power Writing is a worldview that can be transported across space and time; therefore, I have followed Power Writing alumni into a variety of contexts. Vossoughi and Gutierrez (2013) suggest that equity-oriented researchers use a “multi-sited sensibility”—that is, a process that would involve approaching the out-of-school spaces of young people occupy and create with the guiding assumption that one will find complex intellectual activity and then stay long enough to gain a deeper understanding of the developmental demands participation in such settings requires. (p. 612)
The initial 1-year ethnography (2003-2004) was primarily focused on the Power Writing classroom; however, in this longitudinal study, I collected data in multiple settings to understand past, present, and possible lives of Power Writing alumni. Literacy scholarship needs more longitudinal data of literacy classrooms that are seeking out equality and using reading, writing, speaking, thinking, and doing while expanding the scope of a traditional English and writing classroom.
Method
This is a multi-sited ethnographic case study of Power Writing alumni. My unit of analysis is the experience of each Power Writing alumni, which allowed me to examine each participant as an individual case and look at the points of convergence and divergence across cases. Participants in this study were also participants in my initial ethnography of the Power Writers during the 2003-2004 academic year primarily at University Heights High School on the Bronx Community College campus. For the purpose of this study, I observed the literate practices of Power Writing alumni at Power Writing public events (e.g., workshops and conferences in the United States and Puerto Rico; panels following the screening of a documentary made about Power Writing) and private events (e.g., Saturday classes at one of the co-teacher’s homes; informal poetry ciphers or circles where poets shared their work with each other). In 2004, I moved from New York City to Atlanta, Georgia; my objective was to spend time with Power Writing alumni twice a year in New York City (ideally one visit in the fall semester and one visit in the spring semester), which I was able to do for nearly a decade (see Appendix A). One focal participant lived in the Boston area; however, he visited New York City frequently to attend Power Writing events, and I visited him in Boston. For the past 10 years, I have maintained a close relationship with the Power Writing co-teachers including the lead teacher, Joseph Ubiles (known in previous work as Poppa Joe), Amy Sultan, and Roland Legardi-Laura. I served as an “advisor” of the documentary, “To be heard,” that featured three Power Writers and continued to work with this dynamic team of educators to find ways to cultivate and sustain the program. Power Writing changed a lot in the last decade. Power Writing at one point was housed in the Nuyorican Poets Café, and Power Writing teachers have taught iterations of Power Writing in public and alternative schools in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Long Island, and Connecticut. Power Writing alumni have returned, both paid and voluntarily, to teach Power Writing at the original site and University Heights High School where the class originated is no longer on the Bronx Community College Campus but in a building near a juvenile detention center. 1 What has remained the same is that whenever there is a Power Writing event, current and former students converge, and it is like a class reunion of sorts with journals, book exchanges, and new poetry. I relied on the teaching team as well as alumni to inform of “must attend” events to plan for travel to New York City. In addition to being a participant observer in Power Writing events and/or observing literate practices of Power Writing alumni, I conducted interviews with Power Writing alumni and, in some cases, facilitated small group interviews.
Data Collection Procedure
I collected ethnographic field notes as a participant observer in Power Writing events including classes at various schools in New York City and special classes at Power Writing instructors’ homes (which were typically rehearsals for public performances) as well as small ciphers. In addition, I collected ethnographic field notes at Power Writing classes at University Heights High School where Power Writing alumni returned as guest poets and/or guest teachers. When and where appropriate, I collected ethnographic videos of Power Writing alumni as they engaged in literate practices such as public readings or small group gatherings in which Power Writers came together to share and exchange poetry much like what they did in the original Power Writing class (Pink, 2013). I conducted 60-min interviews with Power Writing alumni, and that began with “Share something that makes you proud” 2 and concluded with “What are you currently reading/writing/thinking?” I also asked alumni to “define literacy and what it means to be literate” (see Appendix B). Between visits, I sent out update forms as a “check-in” with Power Writing alumni (see Appendix C). Exit interviews took place in December 2011 and ranged from 60 to 90 min in length. All interviews were videotaped and transcribed.
Participants
Focal students in my study are Amanda, Arline, Ramon, and Ron (see Table 1)—however, there are other students and other stories that are equally valuable, alive, and full of wisdom; their voices will also be included on these pages. In Table 1, I provide abbreviated updates; however, there are more details about participants in the findings. Elsewhere, I have written about each participant as youth poets in high school (see Fisher, 2007). Choosing to focus on four Power Writers was a difficult yet purposeful decision. Amanda, Arline, Ramon, and Ron, in many ways, represent the “betwixt and between” lives of Power Writers, which range from being a Gates Millennium Scholar to a prisoner on Rikers Island (M. T. Winn, 2010). My decision rule for selecting focal participants was that I needed to have organic access to their lives; that is, there was a mutual commitment to maintaining contact and keeping each other abreast of development in our lives. I also wanted to select participants who represented the range of possibilities in the Power Writing alumni. These four poets were consistent with meeting, responding to inquiries for updates, and providing samples of work. Because of space limitations, I will focus on interviews with Arline and Ron.
Participants.
Data Analysis Procedures
In the first phase of analysis, I coded field notes from observed practices with a focus on how Power Writing alumni positioned themselves through introductions as well as how they talked about their work in Power Writing and beyond. In the second phase of data analysis, I transcribed interviews and looked for significant statements about literacy, the use(s) of literacy, and values associated with literacy, and used these statements to create “clusters of meaning.” I was also able to collect some literacy artifacts, such as poetry and other writings, from participants. Some of these writings were performed and, therefore, I had to transcribe them. Triangulating data from these three sources allowed me to create a case for each participant and look at that case independently before looking across cases for patterns and themes. There are two ways to look at the data; Power Writers worked out in the world (e.g., formal events, conferences, performances) and they worked at home (e.g., with family, at work, in college). In the following sections, I will present findings both “in the world” and “at home” beginning with Power Writing alumni co-facilitating Power Writing opportunities in Puerto Rico in conjunction with a conference titled “English as a Field of Change and Flow.”
Power Writers at Work in the World
Gathered in a brightly lit media center in a vocational high school in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, Power Writing “alumni”—Amanda, Arline, Ron, and Ramon—asked a group of approximately 40 students to form smaller groups to create “read and feed” circles. In these intimate circles, high school students exchanged poetry and prose about their lived experiences and, more specifically, their neighborhoods. Using the “footprint maps” of the neighborhoods and communities they largely associated with their acquisition of language and literacy that they drafted in the first half of the workshop, students articulated their ideas about the ways in which the environment could affect one’s individual growth and transformation. As it was my first time to Puerto Rico, I was so overwhelmed by the warmth and generosity of everyone I encountered including their patience with my struggling Spanish, the piercing blues in the sky, vivid greens, and the yellows and oranges of the sun that I had not imagined many of the contrasting images students painted of addiction and violence in their narratives that some would argue were the consequences of colonization. Students offered testimonies that illustrated their desire to rise above it all and almost a sense of peer pressure and determination to not be defined by the under-resourced communities in which many of them lived. One of the high school students, Emilio, 3 began his reading with a story about being moved from one part of the island to another, enduring his parents’ divorce, and trying to resist tempting offers to get involved in the drug trade to provide for his family. When Emilio offered his map, there were areas outlined in green “(safe spaces”), blue (“neighbors”), and red (“danger spots”). “I painted with safe zones and the danger spots. We don’t have too many danger spots but they are really dangerous,” began Emilio. “And I work here (pointing to a ‘safe space’) and I live here (again, pointing to a ‘safe space’) . . . and I train here (pointing to a baseball park which he indicated as a ‘safe space’) so I need to be moving near those dangerous spots. And I have two younger brothers and sisters . . . when my parents got separated I was—” Emilio paused searching for the word he wanted to use. A fellow student offered “tempted” while another offered “torn,” and Emilio chose the former to describe the pressure he was feeling to bring money into his household to support his mother and his siblings. “I started attending the church and thank God for that . . . there’s no better place than your home, than your house. And I believe things around you can influence you but they don’t determine what you do. The things around you are not an excuse to what you do.”
When I received an invitation to be a keynote speaker at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez’s (UPRM) “English as a Field of Change and Flow” conference sponsored by their English Department, I was clear that the only compensation I needed was to bring Poppa Joe and as many Power Writers as they could support. Building on Joe’s tradition of going out into the world with his students, he boarded a plane with Amanda, Arline, Ron, and Ramon in New York City on February 19, 2009, as I boarded a plane the same day in Atlanta, Georgia, and we met in San Juan, Puerto Rico. We were charged with the mission of facilitating Power Writing workshops and, thus, translating the objectives of Power Writing in two vocational high schools in Mayagüez as well as facilitating workshops for students, teachers, and faculty at UPRM. It never occurred to me that the trip to Puerto Rico would be the first time one of the Power Writers, Ron, flew on an airplane. When Poppa Joe first started teaching in the Bronx, many of his students journeyed to visit family in the Dominican Republic (affectionately referred to as the “DR”) and Puerto Rico but seldom, if ever, visited the other New York City boroughs prior to Power Writing. Poppa Joe insisted that all of his students travel “off the block” and become “train warriors” accessing worlds both familiar and strange. Puerto Rico was new to all of us with the exception of Joe who was of Puerto Rican descent and who defined himself as a Black Puerto Rican; however, he had not been able to get back to Puerto Rico for longer than he cared to think about. All of us nervous about “translating” Power Writing to students in the Mayagüez high schools about having spent more time getting to know students, teachers, school culture, and their communities. However, the Power Writing pedagogy lends itself to such scenarios; students serve as facilitators and guides, and through the process we did, indeed, learn a lot about the young people and they learned a lot about us. Power Writing pedagogy is less about teacher teaching and more about listening to students and gauging when and where to enter as a co-facilitator. Poppa Joe and I got out of the way; it was evident that Arline, Amanda, Ron, and Ramon had a sense of how they wanted to introduce the work. As a classroom teacher, Poppa Joe always found it revealing when observing his students present Power Writing in other contexts because it helped him understand what they were hearing in class and became a part of his praxis.
This was not the first time Poppa Joe and I faded into the background as teachers, removed our teaching selves from the circle, and witnessed the transformation of the Power Writers from students to co-facilitators of a participatory literacy community. Amanda, Arline, and another student poet, Jonathan, conducted a writing workshop at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention in New York City in 2007. The Power Writing session had at least 50 attendees who engaged in writing original poetry as well as giving and receiving feedback. On a separate occasion Amanda, Arline, and Ron were panelists in a graduate class at New York University; they discussed the Power Writing process while engaging preservice English teachers. Mayagüez presented a new opportunity; Arline, Amanda, Ron, and Ramon were invited to engage students and teachers at “vocational” high schools in Mayagüez. Here, they had the opportunity to build with students who they believed shared similar lived experiences with and introduce them to a pedagogy of possibility that often redirected negativity and feelings of hopelessness into being proactive and exercising agency in one’s education. The term vocational seemed to be code for students who were not college bound and perhaps unmotivated academically which we quickly learned was misleading and misguided. Arline referenced this in her introduction at the beginning of the workshop:
I’m a student at City University of New York. Right now I’m an English major . . . I was once in your position where no one believed in us but now we’re college students and we’re on a track to be—I guess—professionals . . .
I graduated from University Heights and I went to Brandeis University and now I work in Boston helping high school students get into college and graduate.
Joe: I was a high school teacher. All of these people were my students in high school. Now I’m a Director of Power Writing at the Nuyorican Poets Café. It is a very famous spoken word setting. The objective of the program really is to teach young brothers and sisters to read, write, and think. Some [students] make a little money. Some [students] get themselves published but the main work is to read, write, and think and take ownership of this space. You did have one good teacher (looking at Arline).
[Laughter]
I grew up in the Bronx. I go to Hunter College studying psychology, and I want to work with high school students.
I’m a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m originally from California. I lived in New York City and spent time with this amazing group of student poets and worked with Joe and all of them and watched them since they were your age in high school. Now they are in college doing so well, and we’re all still very close. We go all over the country and throughout New York City to do workshops and presentations with teachers and work with students. We’re so happy to be here. This is my first time in Puerto Rico, so thank you for having me.
Elsewhere, Joe and I discuss the four phases of “serious inquiry” or what we refer to as “worthy witnessing” (M. T. Winn & Ubiles, 2011). Because Power Writing is a place where life stories are exchanged, everyone present participates in a form of witnessing. We initially conceptualized worthy witnessing as a tool to understand the positionality of teacher researchers and university researchers collaborating in classrooms. However, we have come to think of everyone in the Power Writing circle—teachers, students, and participant observers—as a worthy witness of sorts. In the first phase of worthy witnessing, “Admission,” facilitators introduce and even “expose” themselves to the community. Arline chose to position herself as a college student who experienced teachers undermining her academic and intellectual abilities in high school. She named this in her introduction as a way to build rapport with students and send a message to the teachers in the room to resist underestimating students. Ramon, quite humbly, mentioned he graduated from college but focused on the fact that he was working with high school students to get into college and graduate from college. Poppa Joe, teasingly, asserted that Arline had at least “one good teacher” (referring to himself, of course) as a way to acknowledge there are always teachers who believe in their students even when the school culture seems stifling. Poppa Joe also made it a point to highlight that while some of the Power Writers came back to teach or “make a little money” and some “get themselves published” that the critical component of the program was to “read, write, think and take ownership of this space.” Amanda punctuated her brief introduction with her ultimate objective to work with high school students. In my introduction, I chose to underscore the relationships in the Power Writing community between students and teachers. In addition, I thought it was important to let students know that it was my first time in Puerto Rico and that I appreciated them “having me” in their space positioning myself as a guest and showing humility for my hosts. Ron continued the introductions and flowed into the purpose of the work that day:
I’m a student at Bronx Community College and I’m taking up liberal arts as my major and when I’m finished I’m taking up English so I can be a teacher. And let me break down what Power Writing is . . . it started back in 2003 and been running for 7 to 8 years. I was a student at University Heights and started writing poems there and it just expanded. After I graduated, I kept coming back seeing the class expand with more students coming into the class interacting and writing out their lives . . . Basically the main point of Power Writing is writing your own life story so nobody else will be able to write it for you. 4 We find ways to be better readers, writers, to be literate and to learn everything about the world itself. So, I just want to first say it’s a great opportunity to be out here to experience this movement and this moment with y’all . . .
Ron understood Power Writing to be a “movement” where everyone—including students and teachers—found ways “to be better readers, writers,” and “to be literate.” One of Poppa Joe’s objectives for the Power Writers was for students to own the word “literacy” and “literate,” and Ron demonstrated this in his “breakdown” of Power Writing. A pedagogy of literacy in which teachers deliberately and explicitly discuss literacy and its power encourages students to grapple with its multiple definitions while creating transformative spaces in which youth build endurance in their quest for literate identities. It was Ron’s introduction that set the tone and objective of the day’s work:
Where did you learn to read? Where did you learn to write? Just explain your neighborhood. What is it about? What’s happening in that neighborhood? Just map it out give us an idea of how you live.
Students drafted footprint maps of their neighborhoods and communities, which they associated with acquiring language and/or literacy. Students were also asked to write a piece, which could be poetry or prose, conveying how they experienced their map. Once they completed this task, Ramon and Arline took one small group, and Ron and Amanda took the other. In both circles, students were invited to talk through their maps in Spanish, English, or both and share their written product. Prior to reading their piece, each student had to select at least one “feeder” to provide critical and specific feedback to their work. In Ron and Amanda’s circle, a student, Ya-ya, shared her map and short essay that discussed a life moving between New York City and Puerto Rico. She chose Ron to “feed” her:
I moved to Puerto Rico because my family moved here. I miss my hometown because things are very different over here. I love where I live because it’s private and peaceful. In this experience I have learned many things. I will always have New York in my heart. I am very happy in Puerto Rico because all my family are together. I would like to live in New York but I did not want to leave my family and friends behind.
I liked the fact that you expressed that you miss your hometown but you love being here too. You’re in the middle and I like how you expressed that . . .
Ya-ya asked Ron whether he planned to share his work as well which is a tenant of Power Writing. The “teacher” writes when students write. The teacher reads when students read. Teachers are what I have referred to as “practitioners of the craft”; assignments are not what Amanda called in her initial interview in 2004 “the school’s work.” Student work is prime real estate; the expectation is that students are creating work that will contribute to a body of work they are proud of and will build over time. Teachers are readers and writers who are prepared to share their work and, most importantly, work in progress to demonstrate how important the process of creating can be. Although Ron had created many maps over time, he excitedly created another and shared it with the circle:
I used to live by Yankee Stadium. Over here is the 4 Train. Any of you who’ve been to New York you’ve got the train going over—
Is that the old one?
Yeah, the old stadium. I used to live around there. I moved over here that has housing projects and where lower income people live and I moved around Soundview. We have the Cross Bronx Expressway. It’s a highway that goes over people’s communities so you can see a bunch of cars pass while you’re sitting in your house drinking coffee. Then we have the Brooklyn Expressway which is another highway that goes between neighborhoods.
Many students in the circle, like Ya-ya, were familiar with New York City whereas others saw it as a more desirable location than Puerto Rico. It was evident that Ya-ya’s New York City connections gave her a particular kind of credibility with peers. Ron did not take it for granted that everyone was familiar with his city and the Bronx in particular. Therefore, he focused on how the expressways and highways were built without any regard for the families in his community. After sharing his map, Ron teasingly sat down as if he did not have a poem or piece of prose to share. As soon as students in the circle began to protest that this was “not fair,” he jumped up with a smile and proudly shared a piece he was in the process of workshopping. One student quickly pulled out her camera phone and began recording: Little black Debbies in the schoolyard The schoolyard not too far from my street corners Some even say we destined for prison yards The elders are looking at our children They callin’ ’em lazy The schoolyard is as wild as a village With no medicine for the sickly The minds linger in the clouds Pockets full of Airheads
5
Mouth is stuffed with so much candy Because they’re scared of citywide tests There’s a starvation in the bellies In anticipation of a lunch Sponge-like pizzas
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When Ron finished, he promptly sat down and his circle cheered. Conjuring images of a pipeline between schools and prisons, Ron’s poem indicts the community for comparing the “schoolyard” to the “prison yard” as well as the “elders” who are merely observing and watching (while calling the youth “lazy”) but not actively disrupting this pipeline. Ron is keenly aware of the testing culture that permeates New York City and the rest of the United States. Troubling the fear of “citywide tests,” Ron conjures images of children stuffing their mouths with candy (“Airheads”) with nervous energy and a particular kind of hunger that cannot be satisfied by school lunch (“sponge-like pizza”). For Ron, this was a straightforward poem where he explicitly named issues in contrast to his stream of conscious approach that dominated his early body of work (see Fisher, 2007). His personal growth as a writer demonstrated that he never left the Power Writing circle; in fact, he continued to participate in class, and when he was unable to attend, he created his own poetry circle at his community college.
As a culminating event at the UPRM conference, Arline, Amanda, Ramon, and Ron were invited to give a poetry reading to close the conference. It was more than appropriate that they had the last word. Typically, at the end of a conference, people are exhausted, sometimes participants leave early or use the time for socializing; however, all of the faces we saw throughout our visit were present and hungry to hear from their “teachers” that weekend. Poppa Joe made one final introduction and observation of the Power Writers for this particular trip:
Buenos tardes. Here it is. I’d like to welcome you to a performance by the Power Writers. We are presently housed within the famous Nuyorican Poets Café. It’s a small poetry circle; we have approximately 40 students across two high schools and the university. And I will try to be super brief. I have four of my former students here who continue to be my students. It is a lifetime circle and they would like to perform so I would like to introduce them . . . (February, 2009)
In Poppa Joe’s introduction of Amanda, Arline, Ramon, and Ron, he underscored that Power Writing is a “lifetime circle.” Embedded in this particular introduction is the philosophy that sets Power Writing apart from just another literacy program; the real work of Power Writing begins when students are out of the classrooms and in their homes, communities, and communities far from home. The following sections examine the ways in which Power Writing alumni work at home.
Youth Poets Working at Home
“A Full-Grown Sense of Humanity”: Poppa Joe, Eli, and Arline
Arline and her daughter waited to greet Poppa Joe who I was meeting, and Arline decided to stay for what was initially conceptualized as a one-on-one interview. What actually happened was better; Poppa Joe arrived with one of the original Power Writers, Eli, who he hired to co-teach with him at a literacy center in a Connecticut housing project. They were fresh from their gig and extremely energized. Poppa Joe was deeply humbled by having both Arline and Eli by his side during our conversation. Over the years, I have learned that there can be no interview protocol with Poppa Joe because he is going to begin where he wants:
I do really want to say this, Maisha, I feel the desire to learn, expose them to the culture, and I believe that the process of life in a stratified society takes that away from children, steals that from children. There’s a famous Picasso poem that every child is born an artist. It’s our duty to see that it remains such. I would like that circle to exist for my students . . . the freedom that we are talking about comes with great responsibility to self, family, neighborhood, subset, and ultimately for all the people in the world. That’s what I want for my circle. A full-grown sense of humanity. If we cannot demonstrate to our students that we are capable for love and care for each other, how can we expect them to love and care for each other and find a way to love themselves?
As Poppa Joe spoke, Eli was furiously taking notes in his journal. It was amazing to witness Eli continuing with this practice that I observed him engaged in a decade ago. Eli had a reputation among his Power Writing peers for eating books for lunch; Eli preferred to spend his lunch money on books instead of food. He maintained his serious countenance over the years but could always be convinced to smile or laugh from time to time. Eli and Arline sat with and listened to Poppa Joe as if they were back in the original Power Writing class in high school. Poppa Joe continued to discuss the teaching experience he and Eli were having in Connecticut. Students in this Power Writing circle were self-segregating and seemingly disdainful of each other when they had more in common than not. Eli continued to struggle with examples of this self-segregation and what he referred to as “self-hatred”:
We are having this wild experience in Connecticut where our students are crabs in a barrel . . . to the extent that Haitians are completely contemptuous of African Americans and African Americans are contemptuous of Africans [from the continent] . . . there is an equal opportunity to be disrespected.
I also want to add that some of the students are self-hating. There’s a self-hatred—I actually started to write a poem about it today—
Poppa Joe, Arline, and I encouraged Eli to share his piece as it was obvious it was fresh and conveyed his frustration from the day’s class. Eli agreed, “My poem is called ‘You People/Crabs in a Barrel’” (see Appendix D):
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How many times have you heard them say “you people” While grown women and men come at you with this “Don’t trust so and so” and “Mire. Mire”
8
Look how strange they do whatever the hell they do These are the statements of the blind Qualities of a people whose imaginations failed We brown folks play the stereotype game to the omnipresent audience And through the systemic Clanks of chains Whatever you hold dear gets swept away and taken away Cause by them we’re all marked You people are we people Though we fail to see My mother failed to see the first love of my life was the color of coffee beans No milk, just sugar sweet, and black Black like you ain’t never seen that And people acted like that was unseen of Was black . . . and indigenous man with an indigenous mind with a dark skinned girl Phenotypes of the forgotten old world And they say it ain’t right because it ain’t light But we ain’t never been white because the mirrors they held were tinted white and we took it as a synonym for right Long ago I never trusted my own because I was the brunt of much of their self-hatred Latinos hating Latinos failing to see we were all indígenas
9
But tell that to the brown skin man Who came at you like, “You’re nothing more than a monkey” And then act like a fool in the George of the Jungle playground Everyone and their mother was under the microscope You people are we people And the “we” tend to fight amongst the we As though it was easier to climb out of the bins and barrels we were climbing and grinding and trying to get out of We fail to see
At the end of Eli’s poem, Arline wept openly. We all quietly reached out to her and just sat in silence together as Eli reminded us that as Brown people, “We’ve always had to fight.” Eli’s poem summarized the conversation that Arline and I had about what it would mean to raise her multi-ethnic and multi-lingual daughters against the backdrop of racism and colorism. Many of the themes explored in Power Writers’ work were no longer words on a page but had become contending forces in their lives.
“I Always Try to Educate Myself”: Arline
Arline’s husband dropped her and their daughter—a playful, inquisitive toddler who enjoyed chiming in throughout our interview at the Institute for Urban Minority Education (IUME) Edmund W. Gordon campus in Harlem.
10
Arline and I marveled over the fact that we were beginning our journey as mothers together. I told her about my parents completing school when I was her daughter’s age and she lit up; You mean I am kind of like your parents and my daughter can be like you . . . I am parenting and going to school but my daughter can just go straight through like you did because I am doing this now.
Beginning with my signature opening question, requesting Power Writing alumni share something that makes them proud, Arline launched into an unexpected discussion of Power Writing. For Arline to begin with Power Writing as a source of pride even as Arline walked in the world as a new mother, wife, and part-time college student spoke to how this class became an ideology as well as a way of living and being in the world:
Share something that makes you proud.
I’m still practicing Power Writing even though I am not in school, Power Writing class per se right now . . . I still practice the teachings of it such as quiet time and feeding . . . I was just doing this with my little brother the other day. We were working on the power of public speaking . . . how to articulate just because he needs to learn that . . . I find myself quoting Joe and quoting Power Writing even with my friends and even at work myself on giving advice to my co-workers.
Arline did not need to be in the actual Power Writing class to value its tenants especially when it came to educating her younger brother and encouraging friends and colleagues at work to have a larger vision for themselves:
The other day my friend said she wished she was at another job and [she just didn’t] feel like [herself]. [I said] you are not of this place. Allow yourself to shine in a place where you are not recognized and still shine beyond your years, your requirements, and qualifications here at this job. This is something I learned from Joe. [Pause] Me being from this Bronx they say you can’t let this place be you or internalize this place. You can’t let this place be you. You need to shine beyond that.
I was always conscientious of the Bronx narrative in which Power Writers undermined or simply did not see the ways in which their families and communities instilled values around education and learning in spite of living in an under-resourced community. At times, it was difficult for youth to see beyond the deficit models that were imposed upon them by others. I intentionally asked Arline to articulate a pattern of resilience in her family who migrated to the United States from the Dominican Republic and community that cultivated her artistry:
Tell me what it is about the Bronx and your background that also gave you the resilience and ability to be a poet.
I always realized I was not of that place that we migrated [to the Bronx]. We stayed [in the Bronx] and we made our home [Bronx] . . . so I didn’t internalize [Bronx] culture. I didn’t internalize [pause] the day to day. I took more of what my family brought to it and took from it . . . you use it for positive.
Do you see [the Bronx] as a negative space?
It would be negative in terms of what we want our lives to become . . . it’s what we want our lives to become. I am a mom now and I am married. I never thought I would be saying that first. That is a priority. I am still a student. Upper Junior and about another year to go. I am studying African American/Latino studies with a minor in Spanish at Hunter College. Right before I got married, we were going to take a little break. It’s not time that’s wasted. I have not wasted any time.
Arline’s compelling analysis that her family lived in this place without accepting the labels it carried was an agentic moment for her and while she associated this with the immigrant experience, I would argue that Power Writers—both immigrants and U.S. born—were able to speak to the transformative experience of growing up in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual neighborhood where one had to strategize and negotiate daily. And turning lessons into assets for strategizing and negotiation other spaces.
The fact that Arline specifically referred to being a wife and mom has important implications as well. When I first worked with Arline in 2003/2004, she wrote a poem titled “Wifen’” (see Fisher, 2007, for a full explication) in which she depicted heterosexual relationships in which men did not make full commitments to their female partners yet “wifed” them or gave them just enough of their attention so that the female partner maintained her commitment to the relationship. At 16, Arline was determined not to be someone’s “wifey” or a diminutive version of a wife. Becoming a mother and wife was very important to her, and it was no surprise that she carried her Power Writing values into her new role as a wife and mother. Arline was proud that her husband noticed many of her knowledge-seeking and producing qualities. Arline’s viewed literacy as synonymous with education—something she planned to pass down to her daughter—and she continued to embrace Poppa Joe’s belief that education was ultimately one’s responsibility to obtain by any means necessary:
What kind of literate practices are you engaged in currently?
I’m still writing poetry. I’m trying to write stories for children or short stories for [my daughter] so when she gets a little older she can read my writing.
How would you characterize your writing?
Historical or autobiographical. I usually—without knowing it—every class I take, I end up writing two to three poems about the class like my class on slavery, Latino Studies, and Puerto Rican studies. What I learn inspires me to write. I use what I learn in my poetry so the history part is in my poetry.
Define literacy.
[Literacy] is so important. I think literacy in terms of life, in terms of learning is the most important thing you can do. I always try to educate myself. I always try my best to make myself better. Literacy is the most beneficial, most—I would say—the most inspirational thing you can do for yourself because if there is something you don’t know about your family history [and] culture you will probably try to find a solution to a problem . . . a solution that you never knew existed. If you knew your mom had [particular experiences] you will investigate. My husband says, “You are always on Google or in a dictionary.” I always say, “You might as well stay equipped using your smart phone, your computer, whatever tool you have” only because we are literate or taught to be literate which is not only reading or writing but that’s also going to your grandparents and getting oral histories talking to your aunts, uncles, and friends. Literacy is not only reading.
So I am hearing a lot about ownership. You are talking about “self-literate”
[Education] is not schooling. Joe would say he did not go to school to be schooled. He learned at home.
Arline underscored the positive peer pressure she felt from Joe and her peers. Power Writing alumni were expected to be engaged in literate practices and no alumni wanted to show up empty handed to a Power Writing event; either one carried a book he or she was reading, a journal, or came prepared to share a new piece of writing.
There is kind of this pressure. I know Joe’s always going to ask me, “What have you been reading?” So I know I have to read something new in between the times that I see Joe. He haunts me [laughter]. I’m always reading poetry and always sharing with my friends. We email each other about our writing or text . . . [Arline’s daughter now sat on her lap].
Arline journeyed with me, Poppa Joe, and three of other alumni, Amanda, Ron, and Ramon, to Puerto Rico to conduct Power Writing workshops in vocational high schools and with teachers at the UPRM. This experience, according to Arline, reignited her identity as a writer and poet:
You were a part of a journey to Puerto Rico . . .
[Teaching] Power Writing is like going back home or going to class is like going back home remembering the days that you were there and I was in the same place. In Puerto Rico, it reframed something that was kind of dormant for a while but always remembering that. But it reminded me that I always want to be teaching and handing down something that was given to me. I want to keep that web going. That web of literacy. That web of knowledge. You take what you know for granted because you don’t think you can teach it. You don’t think it’s of value to anyone else until you teach it and then they use it back on you and then you are like, “Oh!” I am looking forward to [my daughter] talking and quoting me and letting me know that what I’ve learned is not in vain.
More specifically, Arline discussed her creative process for a piece she began for the Puerto Rico work but continuously revisited. “Mother’s Tongue,” was an ode to Arline’s mother (and a nod to learning about odes in Power Writing using Pablo Neruda’s work) who passed Spanish on to her children who became fluent speakers, readers, and writers. Arline was grateful to be bilingual:
I wrote “Mother’s Tongue” as a working woman in college. It was a poem that I wanted to write for so long but did not know how to until Joe said, “You know we are going to meet Maisha in Puerto Rico . . . what has literacy done for you in your life?” “What is the history of your literacy?”
I realized that most of the reading, most of what I have done, I’ve been helping my mom. Helping my mother has been my gateway to [literacy] whether it be through forms. Thinking back on it my “Mother’s Tongue” piece was an ode to my mother [and] what she taught me whether she knew it or not. She taught me to value language because language to her was very limited and still is now. My mother has been in this country for 25 years but her language is limited.
Her English may be limited but not her language. Your mother has language—
Yes, English because her English was limited it allowed mine to go a step further in terms of where I wanted to take it because I saw where she couldn’t take it. I was able to kind of gear myself around her not having the ability to communicate with other people. Because her going to the deli store or the Bodega is not intertwining herself with the actual world she is in her own culture in her own comfort zone. I saw that opening myself up to a language that I would say is my second language was not only beneficial to me but beneficial to my mom as well. I needed to master English just because she couldn’t.
But you’ve also mastered Spanish.
Because of her—if she hadn’t spoke Spanish, I wouldn’t have it. I can never be mad at her. I would never have mastered Spanish without her.
Arline viewed her mother’s journey as her “gateway to literacy” that allowed her to master both Spanish, her native language as a Dominican immigrant, and English. Throughout her life, Arline saw her mother create and live in a Spanish-speaking world. Now as a young woman raising a multi-ethnic daughter (Arline’s husband is Jamaican), Arline was determined that her daughter would be multi-lingual speaking Jamaican Patois, Spanish, and English. Ultimately, Arline did not want to be limited to any particular world. For Arline, establishing a literate identity included not only her bilingualism but also her ability to be fluid in her various roles as a student, mother, wife, big sister, and teacher.
Removing the “Shackles of Shame”: Ron, Eli, and Joseph
Ron and I made plans to meet on a Saturday evening. When Ron arrived, he brought Eli and a newer generation Power Writer, Joseph, who I never had the pleasure of observing in class. Joseph, they believed (and I agreed), would offer some new insights about the Power Writing circle. All three of these young men—African American (Ron), Columbian/El Salvadorian (Eli), and Dominican (Joseph)—greeted me with big smiles as they embodied their literate identities Ron carried Ralph Ellison’s unfinished second novel, Three Days Before the Shooting, while Eli held tightly to his black journal and pen taking notes throughout our conversation, and Joseph sported his T-shirt from the famous Strand bookstore boasting “18 miles of books.” The three of them were giddy from their previous night out. When I inquired where they went the night before, they proudly boasted they hung out in Barnes and Nobles. “That’s our club,” Joseph explained followed by a lively conversation about how surprised and delighted they were that women actually liked smart, literate men. What I found most compelling about the Power Writing this trio of friends and colleagues was their sincere desire connect and build solidarity around writing and reading. Here, it was a Saturday evening in New York City, and these three young men took time out of their lives to discuss and debate definitions of literacy, what it meant to be literate, and how Power Writing continued to support them in creating and sustaining literate lives.
What makes you proud? 11
A lot of [my pride] has to do with the passion for teaching. I really, really have tremendous respect for the teachers I’ve encountered. I was just thinking about my third-grade teacher who was this woman of color who was really trying to get us to her level. I also had a creative writing teacher who would say, all this belongs to you like Joe, “This is yours.” “You have a duty if you are going to become a writer and a teacher.” Obviously I could say a lot about Joe. We can talk about his compassion. [Compassion is] not taught. I don’t know where that comes from. [Compassion] has to be a characteristic of a person. I finally realize that I have that same quality.
[I’m proud of] the basics. Making it into college coming from a family that didn’t even graduate from high school. I am actually the first. 12 That’s what motivated me. I wanted to break that mold. Just being a poet and expressing myself. I had a teacher before Power Writing in my creative writing class who got me into spoken word. [This teacher] asked who wrote poetry, and I was the only one who raised my hand. We watched the film Slam 13 and that’s how I heard about the Nuyorican in the first place because he was in the slam finals.
I’m fortunate to have a lot of moments I’ve been proud of in the span of this last decade or so but one of the major things has to be this poetry group that branched out of Power Writers called The New Message School Society and us putting together events—a group of young poets—and watching them grow and manifest into this incredible sphere of life and being poetic. These are like 15-, 16-year-olds. We are giving it back to the community and we are teaching people about the issues in the world. What we did with our profits was we purchased books and went to the high schools and gave them away so that the younger students can [get the] spark to be literate people and to educate themselves. We said to be educated you have to be self-educated you cannot just depend on the school system. So it was beautiful see those younger people progress and blossom into highly poetic people and just taking it in so many different ways in terms of slam poetry and open mics . . . joining other organizations and groups. So I feel like played a particular role in that because that was one of my goals when I decided to do poetry/non-profit work.
Building on each others sources of pride while also demonstrating their unique pathways, Eli, Joseph, and Ron provided four key features of Power Writing alumni: (a) The aim of Power Writing was always to create a new generation of poetry teachers. Eli was co-teaching with Poppa Joe at a Connecticut housing project literacy center and with Ron in the New Message School Society that Ron founded; (b) Power Writers were often the “first” for many things in their family like going to college or graduating from high school as Joseph explained and they felt immense responsibility to train and teach younger siblings and cousins whatever they believed they did not but should have learned prior to getting to high school; (c) Power Writers learned to recognize the great teachers and mentors they encountered along the way who served as advocates. It was almost as if their experience in Power Writing helped them connect the dots of their learning trajectory and discern between schooling and education; and (d) Power Writing alumni often embraced the notion of being “self-educated” or proactive about one’s learning. Ron discussed being “self-educated” whereas Arline referred to being “self-literate” in her interview which was a key tenant in Power Writing that Poppa Joe encouraged by sharing his story that his mother did not send him to school to “learn” but sent him to school to “rehearse” what he learned at home.
When I asked Eli, Joseph, and Ron to define literacy, Ron begin enthusiastically with a thoughtful contrast between how he viewed literacy when I first met and observed him in class some 10 years ago and his current views:
I was just thinking about that. I was so inspired by my conversation with my peers that I went back home and started writing my thoughts and feeling on being literate. Ten years ago I looked at it differently. When I’m reading or comprehending things it’s always been a competitive atmosphere for me because I was trying to catch up to people who were more literate than me. I was trying to be a step ahead of people . . . I didn’t want to be in an environment where people were talking over me and I wasn’t aware of that and that gave me that zeal and that drive to really force myself and push myself into my stories and teaching myself and going at it so I could be a literate person. There are a lot of people I encounter who are not highly literate and do not know about material that plays a particular role in how they live and how they function and they don’t understand it. [We must] make sure that people are not taking advantage of us. I take literacy very seriously. One of the most important things to me is reading and to be able to comprehend anything that you throw at me.
Ron transitioned from a competitive and even defensive relationship with literacy that was about being a “step ahead” of others or not wanting people to “talk over” him to a self-awareness that he characterized as a drive to push himself. Joseph continued with a view of literacy that consisted of feeding himself intellectually and passing skills on to younger generations in his family:
Being literate is to keep my mind stimulated. Nowadays what I see is that kids are not literate. One of my little cousins could not spell a word, and she is in seventh grade already, so I gave her a spelling test and she was terrible. I don’t know if it’s her but more of the system. So now every time she wants to play a video game on the computer I have her do spelling first. When I was their age, I had spelling tests a lot and actually enjoyed it!
I wanted to learn more about the seemingly conservative approach to education and literacy that Power Writing alumni took when it came to younger members of their families. Ron elaborated on the need to see the beauty in language and also be skillful:
Can I push back about the spelling? In Power Writing, it’s more than just the spelling. I’m curious if you are pushing against the standard definition of being literate . . . Are you seeing literacy beyond perfunctory skills or—
It’s beautiful be literate. With literacy as far as us being people of color, there is a difference. We need to be highly skillful and deciphering what we are reading. We need to carry a dictionary with us, “Let me underline and write this down.” Joe would talk about the etymology of the word. To be literate, to be Black, and to be Latino we need to be able to realize the beauty of the word but we need to be skillful in breaking down the word too because our education can be completely different than an upper class person because we don’t always have the instruments. It’s not as common for us to be around highly literate people. We owe it to ourselves. I tell my [younger] brother, give me your phone, turn off the television. I just know how hard it was for me, and I don’t want to see my brother go through that. I want it to be second nature for him and have a smooth ride through so he won’t become an adult playing catch up.
Joseph and Ron underscored a consistent theme in the interview data; the younger siblings of Power Writers were going to have to work harder because their older siblings were committed to making their younger siblings’ education experience one in which they would read, write, and speak with confidence and great skill. As much as Ron loved poetry, he did not believe that finding the beauty in words and language was enough. Rather, Ron wanted to see Black and Latino youth master the skills needed to be successful readers and writers. Eli built on Ron’s point while recalling Poppa Joe’s urging that his students become “singers” and learn to hear words and language the way they learned to listen to music:
I always felt like sitting down and doing the reading was a struggle for me, before I was actually involved in the Power Writing Circle, I went to Joe’s music class. Words were like music like jazz songs, and when I discovered jazz, I fell in love with it but it was so complicated. The writing became music to me. When I understood [writing] like that I said, this is how I can understand it . . . then literacy became our goal not a challenge or an obstacle. [Paraphrasing Poppa Joe] “You’re a singer. Sing your song.” Literacy then became my goal . . . whether I understood something or not . . . striving toward understanding it . . . understanding phonology, the linguistics now. The root words have a history so the power of the word became that much more grand.
Like Ron, Eli made a transition from literacy being synonymous to a “challenge” or “obstacle” to it being something you strive toward understanding complete with tools such as learning about the phonology of a word, root words, or the history of a particular word. Eli went on to say that prior to his entry to Power Writing, he had Joe as a music teacher and more specifically Jazz Appreciation. In the music class, Poppa Joe learned he could reach students with his music metaphors that encouraged students to view their relationship to literacy the way they viewed their relationship to music.
In what ways did the Power Writing experience—I don’t want to call it a class at this point—in what ways did what you learn help you maintain a literate identity. Your parents gave you something when it comes to language. We all get something from our parents and families. What I saw in Power Writing was Joe saying, “You all come here with something and we are going to do all kinds of thing with it.” So he really valued everyone and it didn’t matter who in your family went to college or did not go to college—
Power Writing gave me a lot of habits—good habits. Habits I did not have before—
Yes!
Before if I was reading something, I would skip over a word and I’ll know what the book is about but I guarantee there were parts of the book that I missed and I always felt embarrassed about going back. I was looking at myself as ignorant. [Pause]. But I would say, “I’m smart” and I’ll never go back to it. What Power Writing gave me—Joe was always like, “Look, you need to stop if you don’t know that word and go find it and see what the word means.” And I began to do that more and more. I began to underline things and concepts I didn’t get. I would look them up and try to figure out what the author was talking about or speak with Joe about it . . . So [Power Writing] gave me a lot of good habits as far as stopping, reread it, underline it, or ask questions.
I want to add on to that . . . [Power Writing] removed the shackles of shame. We were welcomed and in an open environment. We were in a free environment where we could say, “Oh, that question or word or that statement that you said or this context in history or this writer or this author I don’t know who that is . . .” you’re in an environment where people are challenged to listen. That’s the other function of literacy that I forget about and everybody else forgets about. There is an open environment to say, “I don’t know.”
Removing the “shackles of shame” and eradicating the fear of “going back” into a text or looking up a word or understand a concept were part of the decolonizing mission of Poppa Joe in the context of Power Writing. “Going back,” according to Eli and Ron, at one point in their young lives did not belong in an academic setting. They had not been taught that it is the “going back” that makes strong readers and strong writers. More importantly, they became members of a learning environment where there was an open invitation to say “I don’t know” and not be criticized or judged. In fact, saying “I don’t know,” was objective because it gave fellow students an opportunity to learn and the teacher the chance to be clear.
“A Lifetime Circle”: Final Thoughts
Power Writing alumni in the context of this study provide valuable insight about what is possible when literacy educators are explicit about their objectives with students. Poppa Joe’s “Joe-isms” or vocabulary, declaration statements, and classroom values he conveyed in the original Power Writing class have remained with Power Writing alumni as they navigate college, work, families, and other spaces. One of the prevailing values is to seek out information by reading, talking, and asking questions. The latter, asking questions, is critically important. Ron and Eli asserted that Poppa Joe’s encouragement to ask questions, re-read, and look up words helped them understand that learning was a process. At some point in their education trajectories, they learned to feel shame for revisiting words, concepts, and ideas that they had yet to master. Arline’s notion of being “self-educated” evolved from Poppa Joe’s value that the learner was equally as responsible for his or her learning as the teacher or facilitator. Self-reported data and observed practices demonstrated that Power Writing alumni continued to read and exchange books with each other or book titles in addition to writing for a variety of purposes, and seek out information by going to cultural institutions. It is also important to note that unless students received a full scholarship, it was impossible to complete their undergraduate degrees in 4 to 5 years while working full-time in New York City. However, the journey was far too important for alumni like Arline, Amanda, and Ron who continued to work toward their undergraduate degrees over the course of a decade.
However, it is this notion of a “lifetime” circle that has the strongest implications for literacy educators. Poppa Joe argued that his students remained his students beyond graduation and, thus, created a “lifetime” circle in which they continued to feel supported, challenged, and inspired when facing obstacles which were often economic hardships preventing them from focusing solely on their studies. A “lifetime circle” is restorative in nature in that it allows students to know that in the absence of a formal classroom that there are values they can carry with them across time and space. This Restorative English Education (M. T. Winn, 2013) invites youth to become civic actors in their homes, communities, and beyond by sharing their work ideas much like Arline did in the workplace and like Ron, Eli, and Joseph did with younger children in their families. A “lifetime circle” is the foundation of Restorative English Education because it is regenerative and can be sustained through learned practices and values around becoming critically literate and engaged.
Finally, literacy scholarship needs more studies that look at the lives of young people over time and across contexts. Longitudinal studies will help us understand the long-term impact of innovative, boundary-crossing literacy teaching that advocates for children and youth to use writing and reading to speak back to systems of inequality through their work and their practices.
Footnotes
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.