Workshop 1: March 22, 2011
Workshop 2: May 5, 2011)
Mixed HS Grades (Grades 10-12)
A mix of high schoolers (from grades 10 to 12) at Harvey Milk High School completed a Behind the Book program focused on Staceyann Chin’s memoir, The Other Side of Paradise. Before Ms. Chin’s visit, the students watched a YouTube video of the author performing a section of her memoir, and observed how the words came alive differently through performance than through silent reading. For the written component of the program, students identified a significant change that had happened in their lifetime, and wrote a poem about what had triggered that change.
Ms. Chin started her visit with an ice breaker and then asked for volunteers to read their writing aloud. She then led the students in a discussion of her book and its title. She described her own writing process and emphasized the importance of having other people read the work in progress. Ms. Chin went on to discuss the language of love in poetry, taking references from the Bibl and T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and challenged the students to get the same effect from texting.
Calling writing her “tool and weapon,” Ms. Chin explained that language enables a writer to describe traumatic experiences (which can lead to the forging of bonds with readers who have had similar experiences), release emotion, and come to new understandings of past events. Students then lined up to have Ms. Chin sign their books.
Poet Samantha Thornhill visited the students in May and discussed poetry and performance. Ms.
Thornhill later critiqued their work.
