by ALISTAIR BOMPHRAY
A few months ago, Tameeka Kelly, the Programs Director of the non-profit, Engage Her, “a national organization dedicated to educating and activating multicultural women,” contacted me in hopes of starting a girls group at my school. Would this work? Is there a need? Will you put together a group? I was floored. It was the teacher equivalent of an immaculate conception. I hadn’t exerted so much as one ounce of energy in this direction, and now here I was heavy with child. A miracle.
Her vision was to create a space for the girls to talk about the kinds of things they don’t feel comfortable talking about around their Young Weezy worshipping, muscle car coveting male counterparts (a generalization of the state of masculinity in my classroom, but you get the point). Once or twice a month they would meet to talk about pertinent issues, and then, with her and my help, they would write a blog about one of those issues, from a personal or policy perspective.
Even more miraculously, some of those blogs would be published on the Engage Her website—an organization, by the way, which pulls speakers such as Dolores Huerta and Gloria Steinem at their annual leadership conference. The experience (and, therefore, pressure) of being published is a tough one to simulate in the classroom. Class websites/blogs are great, but who really reads those, you know? This was for real.
It’s too early in this partnership to speak to its success(es). All I know so far is the girls love it, my barometer of that fact being the amount of times they ask, Mr. B., when’s the next meeting? It’s a girls group, so I don’t sit in on the actual meetings, but they tell me there has been a substantial amount of story sharing and group hugging thus far. If that were all that happened, it would already be a boon for these young women’s lives.
And they’re writing too. I should add that I’m not giving them a grade for these blog posts. Which means they’re doing it on their own, with no carrot or external motivation beyond the approval of myself (not so important) and Tameeka (very important—she’s essentially the responsible and sophisticated older sister they never had, who, in addition, is from the community, in fact, graduated from this very school ten years ago).
Oh yeah, and there’s that publishing thing.
On a personal note, I’m reading this whole girls-group-sent-down-from-the-heavens episode as a testament to the importance of staying at a school for an extended period of time. A little background: Tameeka is the older sister of one of my journalism students—a student, incidentally, who went to Nicaragua with me last summer. She conceived of the girls group only after reading the first issue of our student newspaper, and, ostensibly, after confirming with Kevin that I wasn’t a gigantic asshole. I really believe these kinds of synergistic opportunities multiply exponentially with each year of commitment to a school. It’s like a fruit tree. How many years before that tree really starts to produce fruit? I don’t know, but I think it’s a lot.
In a time when you have many young people “trying out” teaching like it’s some kind of exotic destination to check off a list, it’s important to affirm the benefits of committing to a school and a community for the long haul. Perhaps more on this in a future post.
So without further adieu, here are links to four of my students’ posts on the Engage Her site. Please please please go and leave a comment: Gaby on divorce/ Kim on higher education/ Adriana on “The Dream Act”/ Miru on social pressure on teenage girls.
Alistair teaches English and Journalism in Hayward, CA.
Alistar – you never cease to amaze me. Loved the article and hope this program is a hit!