Recovery, Reconciliation, And Resilience

By Author: Cynthia
Total Articles: 95
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The following email message reminded me of the power of texts in the lives of young people and the need to identify texts that speak to one's humanity even when that humanity has been soured by turmoil.
I've been teaching in a [state] Prison for sixteen years and prior to that in the [state} public schools .... My purpose in writing is to request a list of recommended titles for my students to read and discuss in class. As you can imagine, motivating individuals doing long terms or life without the possibility of parole Omega Replica is very difficult. The majority of my students is doing a minimum of fifteen years and came to prison at ages 16—21 years. None have much to say positively about their public school experiences and quit attending by the seventh or eighth grade. . . . When I teach them to read, their chances of not returning are enhanced. The men, in turn, go out to the yard and tell others that [I] help them.

Strikingly, many of the incarcerated youth did not have much to say positively about their public school experiences. At the same time, they go ...
... out to the yard to talk about the texts they discuss in the prison classroom. The prison educator has recognized that one of the roles of texts, both literary and non-literary texts, is helping troubled teens recover a part of their humanity in hopes that they become renewed with the aim to remain steadfast in the midst of the accumulated odds they have created against themselves. The challenge to engage these youth with texts is mediating them in ways that pay attention to their hourly, daily, weekly, or yearly need to recover, to become reconciled to balancing promising and stark options, and becoming resilient within a negative context. Similarly, nonincarcerated teens are in need of texts that add meaning to both their schooling experiences and lived experiences because of the out-of-school contexts affecting their lives. The discussion of the impact of Tag Heuer Replica Watches community displacement in some large urban cities because of the change in housing patterns, natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Ike, school shootings, homelessness, broken homes, drug use, teen pregnancy, and other vulnerable-producing conditions can serve as a productive starting point for examining how texts are identified for the high school English/reading classes. Several ques?ions can guide the examinations:

1. What are the roles of texts for our troubled teens?
2. What are some effective ways to mediate texts with troubled teens?
3. What are the characteristics of texts, both literary and nonliterary, that engage troubled teens?