San Francisco

My Spring Break was spent in San Francisco, California – if you didn’t know that, where have you been? I was working with Streetside Stories, an arts education and literacy non-profit organization.
Some facts about Streetside:
Over 1000 Students served in 05-06
Over 1600 in 06-07
Over 60% have failed to reach basic mastery of literacy skills
67% are low-income
26% are English language learners
90% are youth of color


I got to see my grandmother and aunt for dinner one night, we went to dinner at Japan town, which has a bunch of Japanese restaurants and stores. We had a blast in a dollar store looking at nifty things. Dinner was really good and I really don’t get to see my family often enough.

My group went to an amazing play at a tiny theater, the play was “Jesus Hopped the A Train.” If you’re in San Fran, you should go see it.

It was amazing how much the classroom changed while we were there. Do you remember Fridays in middle school? It was almost impossible to get any work done. Now imagine in a classroom where some kids never do any work, Fridays should be pure hell. Friday in our classroom, the kids were noisy and rambunctious but all definitely were working on their stories. It was amazing how much character those kids had – very full of life. A lot of them have experienced more in their lives than I probably ever will.

R’s cousin had been shot and killed 4 days before we were in the classroom with her writing her story. We realized how recent it was on Friday upon seeing an article in the newspaper about her cousin and how she stayed out of trouble and was involved in college prep classes. One of the other kids in the classroom knew the friend that got shot in the leg at the same time with her cousin – different perspectives of the same event, different ties. I don’t know if she’d have any grief counseling other than the ability to tell her own story through streetside. The morning program I worked with was called Tech Tales – the kids write and illustrate an autobiographical story, record their voices, and draw illustrations of their stories. Emphasis is placed on detail and getting the story out there, not grammar or spelling. The many different media forms are digitally entered into Mac laptops and turned into movies. Some kids who do no homework all year get very excited about this project and excel.

Many kids wrote about falling off their bikes. B wrote about falling into a lake when he was three. T wrote about a tapping outside the window. Several had family members who had passed away. One student took her paper home and worked for probably hours writing out her story.

It was amazing how moving some of the stories were. How funny others were, and how real these kid’s lives are. It was interesting looking at how some things never change and how much has changed since I was in middle school. We didn’t worry about global warming and terrorism – though I think in middle school we did have a couple of gun/bomb threats at school. LTMS was a good school, for me, but in downtown Lexington. Maybe we didn’t have as many drugs and gun violence and gang violence but it was all there, somewhere. We had a drugged out guy walk into our school with a hoe and a hammer and try to get in the classroom in 8th grade – the vice principal tackled the guy. I had my first migraine in 6th grade. My cat died in 7th grade, my mom passed away in 8th grade.

The afterschool program was interesting to work with too – we got to sit in the first day, where the students fill out contracts and set ground rules for the program. There is a huge emphasis on respect and community – very similar to what Erin Gruwell and the freedom writers fostered. The kids write poems and freewrites and share their stories, and eventually get paid for publishing a story at the end of the 8 week program. It’s really cool to hear 6th graders talking about community and doing icebreakers and the like.

I think I definitely have to do Teach for America now. At least give it a shot. The idea of running a non-profit sounds fairly appealing though – I guess I’ll have to sort out and find where I’d make the biggest difference. I learned a lot about the San Fran education system – they don’t really have school districts, they apply for high school and can go anywhere they can get themselves to school everyday by public transit. We heard a few kids talking about where they’d been accepted and whatnot, very interesting, especially through Lexington watching how redistricting affected the quality of the schools and the diversity.

Compliment circles are amazing. People can say the most touching things about you, and they’re people who only have known you for a week – but you don’t really tend to be that honest with your friends you see all the time, and talk about their character. I mean we didn’t talk about the negative parts of people’s characters, but dude, everyone on my trip was amazing. I want every single one of my group members to site fac or be on board or just be more involved with ASB and the campus in general. I really hope we have a post-break coffee talk. I want to hear about the other trips. And how to incorporate the experience in your life and instill passion in other people and everything that ASB is about. The coffee talk we had was very focused on why people do ASB and what it means and who it affects. Our trip was almost as much about homelessness as it was about education, just based on the location of our housing and public transportation and daily experiences.