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Saturday, Nov. 29, 2008

Student writers find their voices

"Go forth and write, write!" teacher and project director Ocean Jones called after a departing student at the Valley Voices Writers Club meeting on a recent Wednesday afternoon.

The remaining students sat quietly, sipping juice from purple plastic Halloween glasses that appeared to have skeletal hands in place of stems. The meeting was scheduled to last from 3:15 until 5 p.m., and there was a lot on the agenda.

Several students had just returned back home from a weekend trip to Yosemite with other Valley Voices clubs in the Merced Union High School District. Photos from the trip circulated the room, fresh from Jones' printer.

The group's Poetry and Blues Coffeehouse event featuring author and musician Brandon Cesmat was coming up fast. On top of that, the club's members were working on blues poems themselves, and several had writing to share.

It was all in a day's work for the Valley Voices Writers Club, which is now in its 10th year in the high school district. The club's mission is "to foster, encourage and promote creative and thoughtful multilingual and multicultural writing through observation, process, reading and study."

The emphasis on multicultural and multilingual writing is no nominal statement: the club's annual book of collected poems includes work in French, Spanish, and Hmong in addition to English and other languages. Many members come from multilingual backgrounds as well.

Senior Gabriela Torres, who serves as the club's president, recalled, "I never wrote any kind of poetry in Mexico. Seventh grade was the first time I wrote anything and it made the teacher cry."

Jones said that Torres' experience was similar to others'. "Poetry is a gift," she said, "it's a talent, but like anything else, they need an opportunity."

For many of the club's members, Valley Voices is just the opportunity they need. Part of the group's vision is "to provide a venue to publish and perform student work," and the group goes out of its way to make this a reality.

A major emphasis is placed on sharing writing, not just within the club, but also with others outside the club's walls.

"There's this really cool bonding thing that happens," Jones said, "you can see it when they're holding hands out in nature, but then in the dressing room when they're getting ready to perform, it's even more. You can feel the energy when you enter the room and it's magic. It's the coolest thing to see that moment when it happens."

Valley Voices began as a way to share poetry with students across the district -- and to allow them to share their own work. "Students were disconnected," Jones said, "that sense of not fitting in reminded me of myself in high school. Poetry saved my life, even though I didn't show my work to anyone."

As part of her master's thesis, Jones, who is herself a published poet, built on the focus on poetry she had already developed in her classroom.

She then moved beyond it to establish a curriculum that would share poetry with even more students -- and then she went to the district to see who else might be interested.

Golden Valley teacher Marilynne Pereira was interested, and the club now boasts membership at Atwater, Livingston, Turlock, Hilmar and Clovis West in addition to Golden Valley and Merced High Schools. A new club has recently formed at Central Catholic in Modesto.

Pereira has seen the club's development firsthand.

"It changes year to year," she said, naming the author visits as a highlight of most years. "Having them come in and having students interact is great," she said, "the end product is amazing."