We have so many ways to connect. Email, Text, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Vine and good old-fashioned telephone. And still we often don't find time to meet each other more than for a quick "hey." The good work you do with community writers each week is so important -- to the writers, to you, to the SpeakO ut! team, to the university and to the community. We hope that this quick newsletter will give us one more tool to connect with the support of our larger community of SpeakOut! volunteers and interns. WITH YOU IN MIND SpeakOut! November 4, 2015
Transcript
We have so many ways to connect .
Email, Text, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Whatsapp, Snapchat, Vine and good old-fashioned telephone.
And still we often don't find time to meet each other more than for a quick "hey."
The good work you do with community writers each week is so important --
to the writers, to you, to the SpeakOut! team, to the university and to the
community.
We hope that this quick newsletter will give us one more tool to connect with
the support of our larger community of SpeakOut! volunteers and interns.
WITH YOU IN MIND
Speak Out !November 4, 2015
Cindy Grif f in?s CSU Civil ity Class partnered with the women writers of LCDC to experience a new kind of collaborative writ ing. The ideas of Nelson Mandela inspired both the imprisoned women and the CSU students, who read his speech at left, and responded to the prompt shown in the green box.
At f irst, many of the women were a litt le suspicious of the prompt and its motives, possibly because they felt it was prying into the reason they were currently in the jail. The facilitators reassured them that their misstep could be anything, even just the consequences of choosing the wrong soap. They laughed and got down to the serious business of writ ing after that.
Both the class and the writers then got to read and respond to each others? writ ing, opening their eyes to someone else?s life experiences. The topics ran the gamut of emotions and events, lending to a deeper understanding of each other. The women enjoyed being viewed positively by complete strangers, people who happened to be in a dif ferent position of the life right then. The fact that the students? responses were not negative or condemning was a relief.
col laborat ing w i t h civ i l i t yConsider a specif ic moment when you real ized a misstep happened in your l i fe. Think about this moment (here, now) as a chance to rest and look
back on the distance you have come. Describe what happened and what you see now.
The f inal activity was the creation and sharing of collaborative group poems. Starting with ?My long walk is not ended? ? the f inal l ine in the quote from Nelson Mandela, everyone wrote about the aspects of their own long walk. The ladies truly enjoyed this, probably more than anything else in this project and have been asking for more collaborative experiments to do as a group. As of yet, they have not seen the students? collaborative poem, but that will happen in an upcoming session. Hopefully, this f inal act of sharing will be just as unique and gratifying as the previous ones! READ THE COLLABORATIVE POEMS HERE!
Writers from SpeakOut! workshops this fall participated in choosing representative voices from journals produced since SpeakOut! started in 2005. The pieces chosen by current writers will be re-published in a retrospective volume that celebrates ten years of Speaking Out!
Here is an audio file that we will include in the journal with technology that wasn't so accessible ten years ago.
Listen to Why I Write, by Brandee Frickin Sue
DID YOU KNOW? November is Native American Heritage Month. If you want to try some
prompts to honor this, your Dropbox has a handout on "Spirit Animal Traits" that could provide a helpful beginning.
NOVEMBER 6Manuscripts for publishing in SpeakOut! journal due in Dropbox
DECEM BER
w hat ' s Happening
DECEMBER 15
Reading at Wild Boar
DECEMBER 16
Reading at LCDC
Stay tuned for details on an informal December get-together
The only reason for t ime
is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
Albert Einstein
CONFERENCE ON COMMUNITY WRITING:
Building Engaged InfrastructureI was eager to hear scholars Paula Mathieu, Steve Parks, and Tiffany Rousculp at the inaugural Conference on Community Writ ing in Boulder, as well as CSU?s Dr. Tobi Jacobi, who led a workshop on our SpeakOut! program and a Deep Think Tank about poverty, homelessness, and prisons. In workshops that examined the process of developing relationships between universit ies and communities, I often heard the idea that a ?sustaining? relationship is inadequate; as advocates for community literacy we want people and empathy to be at the center of learning, and we should not look at this type of work as only something to ?sustain.?
Later, the Keynote speaker, Eli Goldblatt, asked the audience to think about how partnerships between higher education and non-profits can create meaningful change. He defined community literacy succinctly as ?the study of and support for literate conversations that communities want to have.? During this celebratory lunch he also brought up Deborah Brandt?s idea of literacy sponsorship, a concept SpeakOut! has explored in its own biweekly meetings.
I left the conference as most people who leave conferences do -- very t ired and inspired. In one of the Deep Think Tanks, Dr. Jacobi challenged us to continue f inding ?ethical and intelligent ways to share stories beyond these conferences.? Echoing this sentiment, Eli Goldblatt encouraged us to try the best we can; he reminded us that mistakes are part of the job, and even of writ ing too.
Sarah Rossi talks about her experience at a recent conference
The Community Literacy Center has received two recent grants of note:
From Mountains and Plains Independent Booksel lers Associat ion, $500 toward the publishing of our Tenth Anniversary retrospective volume.
From Campus Conference of the Mountain West , $1500 for the design and implementation of a study to measure the impact of SpeakOut! programs on writers, collaborators and the community.
social m ed ia
The SpeakOut! Facebook page
is back! Click on the Facebook icon then...
- Like Us!- Add a comment- Share with your friends- Post something you like- Invite more friends to like the page
