It's a cold, overcast Monday and I'm feeling sick - though my voice did come back recently, which is nice.  This weekend wasn't very fun or productive, to say the least...

Today I'll hopefully get my lesson plan thrown together, assuming I get some prompt ideas emailed to me.  Tobi has sent me hers and Terry has talked to me about a general reading she'd like to use, but I'm not sure in what way.  I haven't heard back from Abby yet either.  As long as I get them by Wednesday, I can throw something together. 

I haven't heard back from AlphaGraphics yet.  I'm not sure if I should call them or send them another email or what.  I'm not exactly sure what I'd say on the phone - maybe it sounds lame, but it would make me nervous to ask for a meeting like this over the phone.  But we need to find out if they'll be sponsoring us soon - the publication needs to be done and sent out by the end of April, which isn't all that far away.

I've also talked to a few people about this internship opening up in the fall, so maybe they'll apply...

That's pretty much the news for now. 

I was singing the title to the tune of "The Ants Go Marching" or whatever it's called.  It's catchy, you should try it.

So I guess I haven't updated this thing since November.  Well, a lot has happened since then:

- The Fall 2008 edition of the SpeakOut! Journal was published AND distributed, finally (shocking, no?)

- We've started up the Colorado Humanities grant thing with the guest speakers and it's been going really, really well so far.  The women love it!  I'm really happy with all of our speakers.  Yay them!

- The turnover rate the jail is still really high, but I think we've done really well with it.

- Terry Northrup and Abby Brunten, our two new co-facilitators, are doing a great job and helping me out with some of my work, which rocks.  They deserve many high fives for volunteering their time. 

- I'm slowly making progress on the prompt archive.  More so than on this blog thing, so no worries about the prompts gathering too much dust...

- I'm trying to get a partnership set up with AlphaGraphics.  More news on that as it comes in.

- Journal design should be starting up soon.  As much as it sucked last semester, I really do enjoy designing documents and publications and am looking forward to working on our new journal. 

I'm going to TRY to update this bad boy more often, but it's about #70 on my list of CLC priorities right now.  Even though this has only taken me, oh, maybe ten minutes to write up, it usually just slips my mind.  I will try to make my mind less slippery, for the good of blogs here, there, and everywhere.  In a box.  With a fox.  Maybe even a fox with sox...

So - long time, no update!

The truth is I forgot about it, which is more a testament to how much work I've been doing rather than an indication of my laziness.  Or at least I'd like to think of it that way.

Unfortunately, ten hours a week of working on CLC projects just isn't nearly enough time to get everything that needs to be done, done.  I barely have enough time to work on SpeakOut lesson plans, prompt research, and archiving as it is - let alone the time it takes to make progress on grants.  I'm sad to say I'm rather behind on grant writing and on contacting those literacy programs...I feel like I need to spend all of my three office hours this Friday getting caught up on those two things, which means I won't get around to writing up next week's lesson plan until this weekend, which means less time for grading and less time for my homework too...etc etc.  I'm sure these are all problems we're facing as the semester snowballs into its final month and a half. 

And it's not going to get better next semester - I'll be taking 12 credits again and I'll still be working at least six hours a week.  Right now I'm working 6 - 8 hours a week at the Writing Center.  So yes.  I'm scatterbrained.  I forgot the blog.  But I had good reasons, I hope!

Well, I've been busy today sending out emails and commenting on women's writing - I think I had five pieces to comment on this week, which is great because I think we only had about six women show up for workshop last Tuesday.  We're trying to work out a compromise with the medical people at the jail - lots of the women are worried that they'll miss out on the 8 pm med cart if they come to our workshop, which doesn't end until 8 pm.  Hopefully we can work something out, though - the women who didn't come last week were still interested in looking at the weekly prompt list that we posted in their pod, so I feel like the interest is definitely there.  A friend of mine asked me if I was discouraged about the smaller group size these past two weeks and I was surprised she even asked - I love facilitating the workshop and I think it would be valuable if only one person showed up.  It doesn't matter to me.  And I like vocal the women are getting.  They're much more open and willing to share their work now, both with the class and with the facilitators to get written feedback.  It's always surprising to see what the women do with our prompts, and I think everything's been working really well so far. 

Next week we have Dana, one of our guest speakers, sitting in with us.  She'll facilitate the week after that.  I'm excited to see what she has planned for her guest session. 

Another thing we're going to try is themed weekly sessions.  We did Ways of Seeing as our theme for last Tuesday and are thinking about something like ways of interacting with the world around us for this coming Tuesday.  I think having themed sessions is a great idea.  I'll see if I can come up with any other clusters of prompts that would work well together. 

Workshop this week went really well.  We didn't have very many women show up, but we still had a solid group.  There were two new people today who were shy at first but really warmed up to it by the end, I think, sharing some pretty emotional and personal pieces with the group.  One woman started crying when talking about her past and drug use, and I think I did the right thing by being sympathetic but keeping the focus of her reading on what she'd written down rather than dwelling on the really charged pieces from her life.  I think it's something I'll get more comfortable with as time goes on, but it really wasn't very uncomfortable or awkward for me when it happened.  We got some new paper but will always need more, it seems like, as well as some new folders for the women to use.  I think the introduction to methods of getting writing - freewriting, brainstorming, and clustering - were really useful for everyone and got us all thinking about our writing.  We had a final writing prompt at the end that I suppose I was confused about - I thought we were going to use the prompt in case we had extra time, but we ended up going over time to get the final prompt done.  I would have made the clustering activity shorter had I known that we were going to do a collaborate poem at the end, and I hope none of the women missed out on the 8 pm med cart because of it.  Our time frame is perhaps something to discuss next Tuesday, as I'm not sure how important it is that we stop at 8 pm or how conscious we ought to be about the time we're spending on each activity.  We also took the women back to their pods after workshop - it was really about how I expected it to look, only smaller.  I still need help finding my way around the jail, that's for sure! 

For workshop next week we're hoping to do a prompt that celebrates women's bodies, a prompt that challenges the women to write from a POV that's very different from their own (like a child or an older adult, etc), and I'm not sure that we've decided on a third prompt.  I think that sounds fun and really interesting.  A few things I want to try soon are bringing in art to spark writing, bringing in that great prompt box we have in the CLC office, and pulling a few prompts from I Never Told Anyone (though some of those would be better for later on, I think, as they start to touch on heavier topics).  I think right now having a mix of playful and the option for serious is good, because it lets the women move in whatever direction they'd like. 

Hopefully I'll have that letter to the guest speakers finished today, too.  Hurray! 

I'm looking forward to next Tuesday! 

I never know what to put for my titles.

We had our first SpeakOut! workshop two weeks ago, and it went really well.  The women were all pretty positive and willing to write, and there's already some solid leaders in the group who encourage others to share their writing.  The writing prompts worked pretty well, and the women seemed happy to be there.  I thought I might be nervous or something going into it, but it really wasn't bad. 

I was really looking forward to having another workshop last week, but unfortunately we had to cancel.  I hope that doesn't make the writers wary of the workshop since we've just started up.  The time off gave me more time to think about the guest speakers we'll be having this semester and next semester, though, and I spent a long time revising the letter that they'll be receiving prior to joining us at the detention center. 

I also finally got my AmeriCorps orientation done.  I think I can't count hours before Sept. 24, since that's when I was officially entered into the system, so I'm trying to include some of last month's hours into my log sheet so I'm getting all of my hours counted for (I believe Tobi said that was the best way to do it).  I learned a few things I didn't know about the program during the orientation too, so that was really cool.

I'm looking forward to getting back into the workshops this week!

I'm really excited to begin working with the women at the Larimer County Detention Center.  Like I've been saying, I'm not really sure what to expect yet...but I'm sure it's going to be great.  I've been creating a list of prompts to use over the semester that I think will work well with this population and our writing goals for workshop.  I've also been going through past weekly activity lists and creating new weekly plans for us to use this semester.

Janelle just emailed Sydney and I about this new guest speaker component of the workshop, and I'm feeling pretty concerned right now about how this will change the dynamic of the workshop group.  Tobi really emphasized to Sydney and I that this is not a classroom and we can't treat it like a classroom - this is a space for these women to find their own voices and learn to share them through writing, and I've been reading up on a lot of different structures that reflect those goals (I Never Told Anybody is a great book on alternative methods of teaching poetry - I have it checked out right now from the CLC library but I'll be returning it next week).  I guess I'm afraid that some of the guest speakers will be presenting topics that are inaccessible or will be presented in inaccessible ways that change the dynamic from having the women own this space to being a classroom/lecture situation.  I think Tobi, Sydney and I need to talk about what these guest speakers need to know going into the workshops, how we can keep it focused ultimately on the women and their writing, and how we can emphasize the ways the women can incorporate these great ideas or methods into their work. 

Another thing that I'm not sure about is how this will change the structure of the weekly lesson plan.  I've stopped reworking them until I know how much time the guest speaker will be taking, what activities will specifically correspond to the speaker's topic, etc.  I think this will dramatically change the way the workshops look, so I'm holding off on updating those weekly plans until I know more.  We won't be having a guest speaker for our first meeting (I'm assuming), so that lesson plan is ready to go and in the SpeakOut! folder under this semester's workshop.  I incorporated past ideas, my ideas, and Sydney's ideas, and anyone is welcome to take a look at it and let me know what you think!

I'm looking forward to Tuesday!

My first week in the CLC office has gone pretty well, I think.  I had my first office hours on Tuesday and asked Janelle, who was busy organizing the office, what I should start working on.  She suggested I take a look at the SpeakOut! desktop and email folder and try to organize them and clear them out.  It took me an hour to reorganize the desktop folder (hopefully I did it in a way that makes sense to everyone...) and I think it let me get a good glimpse at the different materials that go into a six week workshop too.  Trouble came when I got to the email folder for SpeakOut! - apparently I was a little overzealous with the delete button, despite my best intentions...I'm so glad that Janelle found the info that she and Tobi needed elsewhere!  So this is me apologizing again...

Right now I'm still getting used to the office and the different sorts of activities that I'll be doing during office hours.  I spent some time reading through the Intern Handbook and looking at the different creative writing texts in the office, as well as reviewing past writing prompts and workshop ideas.  I think I'll spend some more time going through the SpeakOut! materials and see if I can't start adding to them.

I'm really excited for our first workshop.  I'm not sure what to expect.  I think it's one of those things that I'll just have to start doing to really get the hang of it.