Evening before teacher workshop...

Wednesday August 9, 2017, 5:44pm

It’s 5:44pm at Casa de Izel and I just came back from a nearby gift shop, where I bought a painting, a paired set of cast heads (male and female), a coffee cup, a refrigerator magnet, and a small wooden bowl, for a total of $60. All handmade, of course. If I had bought the same items in the US? I am guessing $300-500. Where would the extra money have gone? Not to the artists who made the items.  We have a pretty messed up economic system.

Today was planning day. We spent the entire day at the ConTextos office. We opened the day by writing a reflection on the past two days, then sharing our thoughts. It was moving. Several people wrote poems. All have been deeply affected by the experience so far and understand the significance of the work we are doing. Those of us with limited Spanish expressed our frustration at our inability to communicate fully without translation – but we’re making it work.

Anne reviewed our schedule for the next few days, then I spent a few minutes outlining Bread Loaf’s philosophy of teaching and learning. Rex helped me complete the thoughts.  We shared our theory of culturally relevant pedagogy; the notion that students are not problems to be solved but resources to be tapped and are the most underutilized resource in education, and the Six Bread Loaf Rules (Be kind; write in any language, there are no mistakes, speak your truth, share if you want to, and have fun!). We also explained how everything we do is fundamentally about love: Love for ourselves, for each other, for the content we teach, for the world.

After we finished, Rex and I agreed that we need to write a short article outlining these principles, which govern all of our work, regardless of grade level, academic discipline, or country. I wrote a draft this afternoon. Stay tuned.

We also had a pretty interesting discussion about one of Bread Loaf’s rules, and ended up modifying it. We have a rule that states, “Write in any language.” The idea is to make clear that it’s okay to write in Spanish, or English, or Khmer or Urdu or whatever language you wish – we value and honor all of the world’s languages.  Enrique pointed out that perhaps “all forms” would also be important – it’s okay to write essays, poems, plays, etc. We also discussed “register” as an idea – that it’s okay to write in dialect, or to code-switch. Several people also pointed out that the world “language” is a broad term that could encompass all sorts of art forms, mathematics, etc. Ultimately, we agreed. Our rule for this conference will include “Write in any language, form or register.”

Thursday, we will leave from the offices at 6:30am for the one-hour ride to the venue for the teacher workshop. Registration begins at 8am. We expect close to 90 participants. The workshop will open at 8:30 with introductions by Jen and I, then we will move to breakout sessions from 9am-12noon of about 30 participants each, where participants will engage in writing and arts workshops. Lunch is 12-1, followed by a 30-minute session back in breakout groups to discuss the classroom applications of what we learned, followed by a performance and sharing session, from 1:30-3:00, facilitated by the masterful Enrique Quintanilla.

There are three sessions: “La Melodia de Tu Palabra” (The Melody of Your Words) with Alan, Lily, Esmeralda, Berfalia and Ixkik; “Tejiendo Nuestras Historias” (Weaving our Stories) with Rex, Maria, Melvin and Jennifer; and “Memoria y Teatro” (Memory and Theater) with me, Carlos, Celena and Lorena.

The Memory and Theater workshop I will help facilitate is based partly on the work of Barry Press and Annie Scurria of Living Literature, formerly of the Bread Loaf Acting Ensemble and the Trinity Repertory Theater of Providence, Rhode Island. Barry and Annie do a workshop for Bread Loaf teachers in Andover every summer, and Carlos  was enthusiastic about adapting it. In this workshop, we will spend time on theater games, then use the “Re-create a Photograph” model from Barry and Annie to activate the memory, before writing to the simple prompt, “Yo recuerdo…”  (I remember).  Later we will split our group of 30 into six groups of five to create short performances based on memory. I am also eager to see the work of Celena, who will lead part of our theater games, with activities designed to activate the voice and the body.

We spent from 9:30-12 this morning planning the sessions in our working groups. So, for example, one group included Alan, a Chilean music teacher who lives in New Jersey; Lily Lopez, a Puerto Rican college student from Lawrence; Esmeralda, a Salvadoran ConTextos staffer; Berfalia, a Salvadoran teacher; and Ixkik, a Guatemalan teacher.

Dixie Goswami, director emerita of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network and our continual inspiration, has exhorted us for years on the need for, as she puts it, “intentional communication across difference.” This is the essence of the Bread Loaf International Peace Network: create opportunities for teachers and students to work together to communicate across difference and discover common ground. Best of all, we had fun doing it!  My own group consisted of Celena, a Guatemalan teacher; Carlos, a teacher-trainer from El Salvador; Lorena, a Salvadoran classroom teacher; and me, a bald white guy from Massachusetts. We worked together to co-plan, and tomorrow will co-present, a professional development workshop for teachers. Rex’s group included Rex, a Navajo from Arizona; Maria, a Dominicana who teaches in Queens; and two Salvadroans, one of who (Jennifer) just returned from studying at Oxford. These are political acts in their essence, and if we study them, we have much to learn.

I captured two cool quotes of the many today: “A day without laughter is a wasted day” – Melvin, and “all these things create a new story” – Zoila.

Zoila’s line is echoing with me in deeper ways than might be initially evident. As I wrote in a previous blog post, this Whitman-esque notion of America as a poem that is never finished; Lin Manuel-Miranda’s idea of “American, you great unfinished symphony,” and the thinking that came out of the “Weaving our Stories” planning session today are all of a piece.

I will briefly tell the story Jennifer told today – I have asked her to write it in more detail. This past spring, while visiting schools in Perquin, Jennifer heard the story of a young woman who in 1990 took her small baby to the river, and was caught in the cross-fire of the brutal Salvadoran civil war, and the baby was killed. This story struck Jennifer particularly hard because she was born in 1991, and feels a kinship with the baby and the mother.  Last year, the mother hanged herself, 26 years after the event, having never recovered from the grief. War has many casualties.  This summer, Jenn went to Oxford to study as part of her Bread Loaf master’s degree program. She took a class in memoir, and read Edward Said, among others. Reading those memoirs and reflecting on the terrible story of the mother and her baby, brought Jenn to, as she put it, “the realization that my story lives in history.” She has returned to El Salvador more committed than ever to help her students and others write their story into history – to weave their own stories into the dominant narrative that too often marginalizes or outright excludes the stories of people. So when Zoila observes that “all these things create a new story,” it has resonance.

And so the poem is unfinished. What will your verse be?

Part of the workshop, as Jenn puts it, will be to explore how our personal stories fit into the national narrative. It has echoes also of the work Rex and Ceci Lewis are doing on the Navajo Nation called “Stories Walking: Reclaiming Rhetorical Sovereignty” which works with indigenous groups to help them reclaim the power to tell their own stories.

At lunch we met other ConTextos staffers, then discussed Friday’s trip to Perquin, a rural area some five hours drive away.  We will drive up Friday morning, and in the afternoon conduct writing workshops for about 100 youth. We reorganized ourselves into new presentation teams and planned those workshops. Lily and Maria’s group will do an extended I Am poem; Alan’s group will write and do drumming; Rex’s group will write Odes inspired by Pablo Neruda; and my group, with Enrique, Lorena and Celena, will do a modified version of the theater workshop.

One new ConTextos initiative I haven’t yet mentioned is “La Horno”, a three-room space that is part of their offices, but dedicated to hosting community literacy events. “La Horno” means “The Oven” – i.e., a place where good stuff is baked. Very Bread Loaf. The space has cushy sofas and fun art and lots of books and a meeting space. So far they have done some arts workshops and hosted community meetings, and are exploring new uses for the space. Much like an El Taller Café in Lawrence.

This evening we headed out for dinner to El Peche Cosme, where we feasted on traditional Salvadoran fare, including tamales, pupusas, bread pudding, and lots of stuff I didn’t know the name of. It was mad good.

Thanks for reading,

Rich