Motivating tough teen girls to write
The punch came in an unlikely setting: a writing workshop at a girls’ high school in South Los Angeles where I was volunteering as a mentor.
It was a small county-run school, a sort of last resort for girls who hadn’t succeeded at regular schools, and they were a tough bunch. Still, I hadn’t expected classroom violence. So when Gabriela, who was one of the class’s most enthusiastic writers, slammed a fist into the cheek of the girl next to her, I froze, stunned. Did I see what I just saw?
All doubt was dismissed when the victim lunged at her assailant. As other mentors and myself vainly tried to pull them apart, they tumbled to the ground, joined by fury and fistfuls of each other’s hair. The principal rushed in. They were yanked out, mothers were called.
After a year of mentoring those workshops, my respect for inner-city school teachers has doubled. Make that tripled. Just getting the students to pay attention was a monumental task. They would simply refuse to stop looking up Chanel handbags on their cell phones or chit-chatting about acrylic “coffin-style” nails. Every class there was at least one student who laid her head on the desk and napped, one who pulled a vanishing act after asking permission to go to the bathroom, one who assumed the role of disruptive clown.
