To download a complete program brochure, click here.
To download a press release for Passing Along the Dare to Care: A Mini-Memoir Course for Younger Writers, click here.
Herstory’s compassion-based methodology for teaching writing offers resources to guidance counselors and teachers, providing much needed tools for the development of skills, while helping those who impact students’ lives to locate the hidden stories that too often become obstacles to students’ flourishing. Some examples of Herstory’s work in school-based settings include:
Women of the Future
Herstory piloted its work with at-risk adolescents in conjunction with SNAP Long Island’s Women of the Future after School Program in 2007. The two-year program began in Bay Shore High School and progressed into Wyandanch High School. It culminated in a workshop which reached guidance counselors from across Long Island at which SNAP coordinator Sabrina Fearon and Herstory facilitator Lonnie Mathis shared the results of this collaboration with counselors who wished to incorporate the Herstory method into their own work in the public schools. Herstory also provided a bilingual workshop for teen mothers, which brought a long-term member into one of our community groups. Now our workshops and special programs are available for teachers, guidance counselors and students from grades 7 – 12 during the school day. This program is registered with BOCES of Eastern Suffolk County.
Click here (http://www.esboces.org/AIE/AIE_Program_Search.cfm) and enter Herstory as organization.
Readings in Schools
Herstory authors are available to schools for readings and classroom visits. For example, author Elizabeth Heyn shares her growing up as a half-Jewish child in Nazi Germany, her escape leading to her coming of age as a refugee in Franco’s Spain, and finally to trying to become a typical American teenager. Her book fosters lively discussions of displacement, injustice and survival in an outsider role.
Beyond Journaling: New Approaches to Personal Writing in the Classroom
This is an intensive in-service colloquium available to school districts. In six sessions, participants begin their own memoir, following the Herstory approach, while exploring applications of the method to particularized classroom needs. Curriculum includes the use of empathy-based methods to bridge the gap between honors students and those whose main means of storytelling is oral, and the social and educational value of writing so another can hear.
Journeys to Justice/ Writing of the Moments that Made Us
This workshop will help students pinpoint the moments when they became aware of injustice in their lives, as they plan how to write about them for a reader. Through creation of scenes designed to dare a reading stranger to walk in their shoes, students will learn how writing can be used to fight hatred and discrimination, celebrating roots, history, aspirations and dreams. Spanish, English or bilingual model presentations—as well as multi-session residencies—are available.
This is part of a larger initiative, Herstory’s ‘Plan to Fight Hate’, launched as Long Islanders grieved the tragic death of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero, victim of a vicious bias crime in Patchogue. This is the worst of a series of attacks against immigrants that have taken place in Suffolk County and spurred Herstory to strengthen our mission to celebrate diversity and prevent racism through the writing process. We now offer these bridge-building workshops to help any school district where students have been touched by hatred to begin its healing process.
Ethnic Pen
Herstory has been an integral part of Bay Shore High School’s nationally recognized Ethnic Pen Student Writers’ Conference, offering memoir-writing workshops for mainstream and bilingual students. The annual conference whose mission is to celebrate diversity and to prevent racism is hosted by Bay Shore Schools and attended by 1000 students and teachers from across Long Island. Tailor-made to fit the annual conference theme while teaching students to understand how writing can enhance their lives, Herstory workshops such as “Breaking Barriers: Shaping Lives Through Our Tales,” and “Building Bridges,” underscore Herstory’s ability to reach out to the community to foster self awareness and effect change. |
