In her classroom in the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Home in Alexandria, Virginia, Cheryl Duckworth’s students have begun posting their creative writing on a blog, http://room5c.blogspot.com/. Dr. Duckworth, who is also a professor at George Mason University, spoke to WKCD about her blog-oriented curriculum.
“I focus my classroom around daily journals that we keep. I draw most of the theory for the curriculum from Paolo Freire. His ideas were based on critical inquiry into the students’ own lives. It won’t surprise you that many of these kids come to the classroom with a lot of baggage and unmet needs. They been the victims, as well as the perpetrators, of violence.
“To begin with, many of them are just intimidated by the process of writing. Sometimes they come with very low skills or say, ‘I don’t have anything to say.’ So one part of this project is just breaking down those walls and doing a lot of discussion, reading and creative work, art and drama. Once those walls start to come down, the project that I’ve found most successful is the blog. The idea of publishing, for them, has just been huge.
“Every couple of weeks we’ll do what we call a ‘blog check.’ If I forget, they’ll remind me, because it’s so powerful to see their own words right up on the Internet. It’s anonymous, so they don’t know who has written what. But to see other students who have so many similar experiences and feelings has been important for them. They are writing in an authentic context, which allows them to become authors.
“They have opened up in ways that I didn’t dare to imagine when I first put up the blog. I thought that it might be intimidating. But they have taken to it and have chosen to write about difficult things rather than just go through the motions.
“I wanted to find a way for them to publish, something the Alexandria public schools could handle economically in these tough times and that would take advantage of how the kids are already so familiar with and engaged with technology.
“There have been administrative and kind of logistical difficulties. I sometimes have up to eighteen kids in the class and five computers, so we have to work out how the kids are going to access the computers. Of course, it’s a controlled environment. Many times, especially if it’s a kid who has had special restrictions placed on him or her, they’ll write it and I’ll just type it up.
“My advice to other educators who might want to do a similar project: trust yourself. Trust the kids. Get a lot of support. I’m blessed with a wonderful principal and other teachers who are fantastic. I would say in order for this to work, you’ve got to build community, because otherwise the kids aren’t going to open up. I never judge. Some of the things that have brought them here are probably well worth judging, but that’s been done, they're here. So every day they come into my classroom, they come in with a blank slate. They know that and I think that helps them open up.
“Be prepared for what you ask for. If you want them to open up and tell they're stories, know that many times their stories are not pretty. Seeking the support of the administration has been important to me. Keep in mind that you’re a mandated reporter. I’ve been sure to keep a close relationship with our mental health worker and our nurse, and I’m up front about respecting their privacy. Be prepared to take care of yourself emotionally. Have specific people you can to reach out to, because it’s going to be hard to read some of the things they're going to put down. Definitely don’t do it alone.
“One young man was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. His family fled the Taliban. That was what he chose to write about. Many of the other kids, Americans, knew, kind of, what the Taliban was—that they were bad and that we were supposed to be at war with them. But the immediacy of the kid next to you writing about the night ‘they knocked my front door down when I was four’ was just amazing. The room was silent as he was reading. It was education in far more than just writing. It was an education in making current events real, and it was an education, I think, for the young man in how powerful his voice could be.
“Another young man, who struggles with learning disabilities as well as choices he’s made that resulted in his being in my classroom, would never share out loud. He just didn’t want to; he felt the need to keep his front up. But in his journal, he would talk about how much he missed home and his family. In his last journal, he wrote to me saying this whole experience had helped him see himself in a different way. He added, ‘Ms. D, make sure you put this up on the blog!’”
Learn More
The students’ Tell Your Story blog
Cheryl Duckworth’s Teach for Peace blog
The Beat Within, a magazine of writing and art by youth in detention
Free Write Jail Arts and Literacy Program at Chicago’s Cook County Juvenile Detention Center
The Ella Baker Center’s Books Not Bars campaign
