We are off to another strong start this year.

New Staff

This semester we are pleased to welcome several new staff members to the CLC:

Dr. Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala has joined our ranks as the co-director.  She will focus her energies on developing our ESL/TESL programs and community partnerships and has already begun to design new opportunities for teaching and tutoring at CORE in north Fort Collins. 

Janelle Adsit is our new assistant director.   She is primarily responsible for managing our office, researching and writing grants, and providing support for our community literacy programs.

We are also delighted to welcome three new interns and one returning intern into our ranks.  Amanda Billings, Kathryn Hulings, and Melanie Witt will be conducting research and facilitating literacy programing at the local jail, a local juvenile recovery residence, and a community center throughout 2007-2008.  Veteran intern Jessi Rochel has returned to us to take the lead on organizing and facilitating this year's Intergenerational Book Club and Writing Project, and Sydney Fox joins us this fall to conduct some research on alternative publishing projects.

Literacy Programs:

Last week marked the beginning of this semester's SpeakOut! writing workshops for women at the local jail.  This year we hope to incorporate a series of guest speakers into our curriculum and develop a booklet on writing for participants.  Special thanks to New Belgium Brewery for providing grant funding to support this year's workshop.

The Intergenerational Book Club and Writing Workshop is in the planning stages for this year.  We hope to offer some writing workshops this fall with key community partners.

Our newest community literacy endeavor focuses on second language learning.  Under the direction of Dr. Fabiola Elhers-Zavala, we are working CORE, a northside community center, to develop a "writer's room" and improve teaching and tutoring connections between adult learners and CSU students.

It's hard to believe that it is already the last day of the semester.  The Center for Community Literacy has had a very fruitful spring and year. 

• The Intergenerational Book Club and Writing Workshop welcomed over 130 partnerships into the program--up threefold from last year.  This project came in second place in the annual ACPA Commission for Commuter Students and Adult Learners "Outstanding Collaboration Program Award" competition. 
• The SpeakOut! Women's Writing Workshops at the Larimer County Detention Center served well over 50 women in our ten week writing workshop and will publish the Spring 2007 journal (titled "The Inside Word") next week. 
• The Writing Mentor Program continued to connect CSU students with incarcerated partners at the local jail.
• The faculty in the English Department are actively engaged in all kinds of community work and outreach.  A few examples...Fabiola Ehlers-Zavala hosted ESL Advocacy Week.  Jen Lamb coordinated this year's Literacy through Poetry program.  Deanna Ludwin's Books for Humanity project resulted in more full bookshelves entering Habitat for Humanity homes. 
• Our spring grant writer, MA candidate Alyssa Von Lehman has been researching and writing proposals for the CLC programs and office.  We'll hope for good news soon.

The Center for Community Literacy is looking forward to spring!  We have gotten off to a strong start this semester with our three programs. 

• After planning and revising the program in fall, the Intergenerational Book Club is off and running.  We have an amazing number of participants registered from literacy organizations across Larimer County--136 partnerships!  That is up threefold from our healthy 45 partners last year.  We are looking forward to hearing readers' responses to our book choices in the next few weeks as the online discussions begin to emerge.
• The SpeakOut! Women's Writing Workshops at the jail have been running for three weeks now.  We've been training and welcoming English major, Valerie Stull, as our newest co-facilitator.  This session we continue to facilitate weekly workshops with new and returning writers.  We are also working to develop a writing resource packet of material to create a more sustained body of support for the writers between our sessions.  More on this program soon!
• The Writing Mentor Program, under the leadership of Aaron Leff, is also making steady progress this semester as our mentors continue to work with returning mentee writers and foster relationships with new ones.

The CLC also welcomes English graduate student, Alyssa Von Lehman, as our in-house grant writer this semester.  We have one application already out and Alyssa has a clear plan for submitting others as we work toward sustainability for our literacy programs.

 The English Department's Center for Community Literacy has had a wonderful fall semester. 

Over 45 women cycled through the SpeakOut! Writing Workshop at the Larimer County Detention Center and the final reading held on Dec. 6 was attended by 60% of all female inmates. This program is popular!  The current journal issue, On Wings of Words, is now available through the Center and will soon be in the local libraries and at the Matter bookstore. 

The Writing Mentor Program trained 15 CSU mentors to participate in a distance writing partnership with writers at the jail under the direction of Aaron Leff.  The program is going well after one semester (at least 18 mentees have participated) and we'll have more to report in May.

The Intergenerational Book Club and Writing Workshop Project plans are well underway.  The Fort Collins Public Library is once again hosting the online discussion site and the Friends of the Library have donated $1500 toward the purchase of the six book titles.  This year's books include The Roadrunner's Dance, Medio Pollito/Half Chicken, Holes, Becoming Naomi Leon, An Unfinished Life, and A Place to Stand.  Two will be available in English/Spanish and Spanish editions.

Our fundraising efforts through the Barnes and Noble bookfairs in Fort Collins and Loveland raised almost $1800 for our community literacy program.  Thanks to everyone who bought books and music with a voucher on Nov. 26 & 27.

As our new staff have gotten settled in over the past month and a half, our community literacy efforts have begun heating up.  We are in the process of creating a Center brochure and advisory board of faculty, students, and community members as we consider the best ways to grow.  Our programs are, of course, at the heart of what we do.  Here's an update on the Speak Out! women's writing workshops, The Intergenerational Book Club and Writing Workshops, The Writing Mentor Program and our involvement with the Larimer County Literacy Network:

The Speak Out! Writing Workshop:

Our workshop began in mid-semester and have been extremely popular so far.  Andrea Spofford, Laura Van Etten, and Emily Silva-Mills and I meet the women each wednesday from 6:30pm to 8:00pm and work with prompts ranging from beginnings" or "a bridge I'd like to cross" to visual and oral prompts to experiments with flash fiction and public writing.  We'll continue to meet weekly through November 15th.  Then Emily will become our publication guru, and we'll create this semester's booklet for a reading and celebration on December 6th.

One of the most exciting things I've noticed is that the women are now referring to the program as "Speak Out!"; that's great because it means that the program is a recognized and valued way for the women to spend their time.  I hesitate to use the word "institutionalized" because in many ways we attempting to offer the women a choice about how to spend their time.  We are one of the only educational/recreational programs the women have available—beyond jail-sponsored rehabilitation and religious programs.

I'm also noticing that many of the women respond well to topics that push them beyond their own situations.  For example, we tried a new kind of writing—letters to the editor—the other day.  What resulted was a bit of writing and some important conversation about the issues that matter most to them.  The following week we read some of their letters and wrote for a few minutes on the idea of "terror"; lots of interesting interpretations emerged.  I'm thinking that this is a useful direction for us to pursue, to incorporate more writing prompts that ask the writers to move beyond their own circumstances and into publicly debated issues.  In some ways, I wonder if this is an issue of respect.  I wonder if we undermine the writers abilities and potential contributions by limiting our writing prompts to the fun, creative—but perhaps too safe—topics for consideration.  I don't say this lightly or mean to contradict my position that we should proceed with care in asking women to write about topics that may provoke actions or feelings that the jail environment cannot support (e.g. writing about their crime, domestic relations, depression, etc.); rather, I'm beginning to turn to public issues as ones we cannot afford to check with our keys and ids as we pass through the metal doors each week.

The Intergenerational Book Club and Writing Workshop:

We're in the process of getting this project up and running for launch in January 2007.  We are again partnering with the Fort Collins Public Library to run the program and will work to recruit intergenerational reading partnerships from many of our local adult literacy and learning programs in town (including The Education and Life Training Center, CORE, FRCC-CAL, Resources for Adult Learners, The PSD Mind Center, Partners Mentoring Youth, and the Aggie and University Villages).  Our current task is to select books—always a great experience as we read through many youth, adolescent, and adult books (fun!) and narrow to six (difficult!). 

We are also working on securing funding for the project through some on and off campus sites.  As part of that work, the CLC will "host" a book fair through Barnes and Noble on November 26 & 27.  We'll hand out vouchers and receive a portion of the proceeds generated by any purchase made on those dates—if the consumer brings the voucher to the store (the challenge!).

The Writing Mentor Program:

In September we trained 15 CSU mentors to participate in the program with writing partners from the Larimer County Detention Center.  So far, we have placed 11 mentors with writers there and one with an incarcerated writer from a prison in New York.  The latter is one example of the experimentation we are doing this semester.  Aaron Leff, the program's co-facilitator, is also working with a writer at the Larimer County Community Corrections. 

This year is definitely a pilot year as we move this project out of the classroom and into its own space as a sponsored volunteer opportunity for English majors.  I'm thinking that it might make sense to offer the mentors some reading on what it means to write in prison in the future.  We are also going to have to address the issue of sustainability since after Aaron graduates, we'll need someone to organize the program and publish the writings online or in print.

The Literacy Network: 

Margie Wagner (Front Range Community College--Center for Adult Learning) led our network meeting at the end of September with a great turnout.  A FRCC-CAL GED math teacher spoke about the challenges GED teachers face in trying to prepare students for the math exam.  We're in the process of getting the new members added to the listserv and website. 

See the meeting minutes at http://writing.colostate.edu/literacynetwork/ for more information on current network activity.  Our next meeting is 8am on December 8^th at McCoy's restaurant in Fort Collins.

After a summer filled with warm weather, teaching, and a bit of fun, it is wonderful to welcome our new 2006-2007 interns to the Center for Community Literacy.  English majors Jessi Rochel (creative writing), Emily Silva-Mills (English education), and Amanda Becker (literature) will work wonders in the Center this year.

In the coming weeks we'll work to get the Speak Out! Writing Workshops and the Intergenerational Book Club and Writing Workshops up and running for another season.

We also have a new program called the Writing Mentor Program, a collaboration first piloted in Spring 2006 with my E465: Prison Writing class.  The Writing Mentor Program will pairs CSU mentors with locally incarcerated men and women writers.  The purpose of the program is to develop working writing relationships between incarcerated writers and writers from a larger writing community in order to promote writing as a powerful form of self-expression, engage in direct literacy training and advocacy, increase public awareness of issues that incarcerated populations confront, and circulate writing in support of individual authorship. Graduate student Aaron Leff has been working hard on revising our pilot materials into a full fledged program for the fall.  We hope to welcome 15 partnerships in the program this fall.

The Writing Mentor Project, our new distance mentoring collaboration, has really begun to take shape over the past month.  In mid-February, we invited participation from writers at the Larimer County Detention Center, Larimer County Community Corrections, and Turning Point Center for Youth and Family Development.  As a result and in conjuction with E465: Prison Literature and Writing, we have now connected 12 CSU mentors with youth and adult writers in this pilot run of the program.  Mentors will work with writers to develop voice, engage in dialogue, and discuss revision through written exchanges throughout Spring 2006.  The project will culminate with the development of a collaborative community publication.

Thanks to our graduate student volunteer, Aaron Leff, for his work contributing to our writing mentor guidelines, publication permission form, and welcome materials.  Aaron will be developing an online publication site within the CSU Online Writing Studio over the next few months to give our participants a place to get their work into the public sphere.

 Other news from the Center for Community Literacy:

• We're are in the middle of the book club portion of the Intergenerational Literacy Project, with 47 reading teams from around the community.  Postcard reminders about the online discussion boards are headed their way this week.  We will announce more news of the writing workshop component of the project in the coming weeks.
• Lisa, Randi, and I are also hard at work writing grants for next year's programming.  We're examining sources like Barnes and Noble, Target, and Starbucks for possibility sponsorship.
• In conjuction with E465: Prison Literature and Writing, we are helping to sponsor a book drive for the detention center library and the read-a-book audio recording program (for parents to send to their children).  If you have books to donate, please find one of the boxes located around the 3rd floor of Eddy Hall.

Now that we have a few weeks under our belts, it is clear that this is going to be a semester full of creative literacy work.  Here are the literacy programs we have planned:

Speak Out! Women's Writing Workshops:  Intern Randi DePriest, volunteer Laura Van Etten, and I are heading back to The Larimer County Detention Center to begin creative writing workshops with the women in February.  This semester we are going to add a few weeks onto the program and try to hold one longer workshop each week instead of two 50 minutes sessions.  Our proposal for the CSU Women's Conference was accepted, so we'll be speaking about our work with Speak Out! on Saturday, Feb. 18th.  Come check it out!

The Writing Mentor Program:  This is a new project for us and an effort to meet the needs of a large group of potential writers with our limited staff and volunteer pool.  We'll be inviting writers from several community locations to submit their writing to be matched with a CSU writing mentor.  The writer and mentor will exchange writing and feedback several times--and ultimately work on one piece to be submitted to a community-wide publication.  Thanks to Aaron Leff, our new volunteer, for helping get this project started.

Intergenerational Book Club and Writing Project:  The book club is off to a strong start thanks to the efforts of intern Lisa Kin and volunteer Holly Mendel--and all of our community partners.  We have over 30 reading teams ready to receive their book and kick off our community-wide dialogues.  We're beginning to think about the writing workshops coming up in April and May and will post more about them soon.

We've also gotten involved with the Kids @ Work program headed by Mary Crow and Elaine Boni and are trying to find ways to get more CSU English students involved.

Our office (346a Eddy) is developing too.  We continue to write grants and are almost ready to turn over the website draft for coding--soon!  Stop by sometime to see the beautiful new posters from the Syracuse Cultural Workers that inspire our work!

Happy New Year!  We are ready for great things in 2006.

Here's an update on our work:

Our two key initiatives are well-underway.  The Intergenerational Literacy Project conducted a pilot session in December with the help of Sue and Maggie Doe and a group of readers through the IB Program at Poudre High School.  The Speak Out! Writing Workshops successfully hosted three workshops with Turning Point, Larimer County Community Corrections, and Larimer County Detention Center.

Thanks to The Hope Fund and The Open Meadows Foundation for their recent grants to support our Speak Out! writing workshops in 2006.

Thanks to Randi's organizing efforts we are almost ready to hand our website materials over to Mike Palmquist for coding.  Check back soon for details!

Things are really moving along with the Center for Community Literacy, and I'm feeling particularly proud of the wonderful interns who I have the privilege of working with this semester.  We have two key initiatives well underway this year: The Intergenerational Literacy Project and the Speak Out! Writing Workshop series.

The Intergenerational Literacy Project is making strong progress under the watchful eyes of Lisa Kin, Holly Mendel, and Blaine Smith.  We've selected six books for this year's project (to be launched in January) and the website for the online book discussion is almost complete (Thanks to Peggy and Tova at the Fort Collins Public Library).  The theme this year is "transitions", one that we hope will invite readers and writers from across several generations to explore (and one that is in line with the theme of CSU's Resources for Adult Learners upcoming events--Check out the upcoming talk by William Bridges).  Our pilot group of readers from the Fort Collins High School IB program is set to begin next week (Thanks to Sue and Maggie Doe) and we'll host a focus group with them in early December to work out any potential problems.  The project also gained some much needed financial support when we were awarded a book donation from the Fort Collins Public Libraries and an adult literacy grant from the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association.  Thanks FCPL & MPBA!

The Speak Out! Writing Workshop is growing as well.  The workshop at the Larimer County Community Corrections Women's unit ended with a terrific reading and celebration in late September.  We had a full room of support and the writers did a wonderful job presenting their work and explaining the workshop.  In October, Amy Keilers and Molly Reid began a six-week workshop at the Turning Point Girls House.  Check out Amy's blog for a weekly report on the ups and downs of facilitating writing workshops with teen girls!  I've been continually impressed with their innovative writing prompts and incorporation of media as they explore the theme of identity and body image with the teen writers.  Nice job, you two!  Speak Out! has also entered the women's pod at our local detention center--a particularly exciting moment for me since my research on incarcerated women writers has been a bit stalled since moving to Fort Collins.  This version of Speak Out is in the form of two one-hour weekly sessions with women from the two pods of the Larimer County Detention Center and is being co-facilitated by Randi DePriest, Laura Van Etten, and myself.  Our two workshops to date have reminded me why I am committed to working with incarcerated people, particularly women writers.

Our Center has also been consulting with individuals interested in promoting or participating in community literacy activities.  Lindsay xx will be starting a parent's problem-solving group (meeting at the Fort Collins Old Town Public Library) to consider ways to share knowledge about surviving the social service system; we'll help out with writing workshops for specific audiences (landlords, social workers, judges) upon her request. 

We've also been working to get our website up and running.  Soon!

That's all for now.

Yesterday I met with our four Speak Out! workshop leaders and we worked our way through an initial training session (and hopefully got excited!).  We are going to offer some kind of writing project at the Turning Point Girls House, Crossroads Safehouse, and the Community Corrections Women in Recovery program.  At this point it seems like we'll be working with hybrid forms of the work we've piloted over the past year.

Turning Point Girls House:  We'll be offering workshops here on alternating saturdays and sundays for the girls.  We are looking forward to an upbeat and creative set of ideas from our new workshop leaders.  We are considering an emphasis on self-esteem and might work to include some documentary films into the prompts this time.

Crossroads Safehouse:  We are working to coordinate a writing project here.  We have some scheduling challenges this semester, but have a couple of ideas.  Instead of hosting the workshop with the Outreach Program as planned, we may experiement with bi-weekly workshops at the shelter itself.  Too, Carolyn, the Outreach Coordinator, thinks we might be able to develop some writing prompts that she could use with her weekly group--especially with a book they are all reading (Why Does He Do That?) on domestic violence.

Community Corrections Women in Recovery Program:  We will continue to offer 8-week writing workshops with the women at this halfway house.  We are currently finishing one session (about to host the reading on Sept. 22nd) and will begin another a few weeks later.  We are exploring the possibility of incorporating more cultural events (like the play we'll see on Sunday) into the curriculum.

It is so exciting to see this project grow and find its way into a wide range of community sites.

After a wonderful and successful summer, the CLC welcomes four new Americorps interns to join its staff today.  As we move forward with the establishment of a strong and active space for literacy research and outreach across our department, I'd like to review some of what we've accomplished over the past six months.

Jan-May 2005

The CLC is in the works.  Our working research continued to meet and plan.  We continue to host meetings of the Larimer County Literacy Network.  This spring we hosted trainings on learning disabilities and literacy and violence with that group.

June 2005:

We have grown materially this month as well.  Our office now offers literacy workers work and storage space, a small literacy research and teaching library (including recent CSU graduate theses), a digital camera for documenting community work, and a recorder for oral history and community literacy projects.

July 2005: 

Our three CLC summer interns continue to host a creative writing workshop with the Turning Point Girls House.  They meet with the writers once weekly for an hour and a half to discuss and practice writing.

We are also busy working on three grant applications to support the ongoing efforts of the CLC.  This month we are working on applications for New Belgium Brewery, The Open Meadows Foundation, and Mountain and Plains Booksellers.

August 2005: 

Early this month, our interns organized and hosted a reading with the Turning Point writers at The Alley Cat Coffee House.  After the reading, one of the Alley Cat baristas invited all the girls to come back for their regular poetry nights.  They were elated!

The CLC welcomes 4 Americorps interns to join the staff for the 2005-2006 year.  Additionally, the office will welcome Blaine Smith (English Education '06) as she contributes to the Intergenerational Literacy Project.  We are also anxious to share our space with other projects across the department, and the Literacy through Poetry project will be the first to join us.

Today Melissa and I worked on getting the Center office into shape.  We are now equipped with a phone, book shelves and filing cabinets.  We need some decor, some chairs, and lots of literacy materials, but we are on our way.

I also met with our groundbreaking team of interns and independent study students.  They have designed a 6-week reading and writng project for the Turning Point Girls House called "Speak Out."  Read more about their experiences on the forthcoming blogs.

Today, June 16, 2005, marks the beginning of the Center for Community Literacy Research and Outreach's blogging.  Our interns will keep reflective accounts of their research and field experience in order to create a narrative account of the Center's development and ongoing community literacy research.