Halloween Masks–Writing with Youth In Juvenile Detention

Each week, I volunteer and facilitate a writing workshop with youth at the Denney Juvenile Justice Detention Center. The following is an excerpt from my memoir in progress about the experience:

Halloween Mask Writing

“We’re going to write about masks,” I say to the twelve young ladies who are clustered around 100lb tables in the unit of the juvenile detention center on the afternoon of Halloween. Handing out white paper, I suggest that we start by drawing a mask. “What type of mask do you wear in your life?” I ask them. “In here? Can you draw it?”

The room erupts in giggles as twelve voices cry out, “We’re PUMPKINS!”

It takes me a minute to figure out what the girls are telling me, and then Ashley, pulls hard on her detention issued orange t-shirt with the v-neck and says, “See. Pumpkins. Orange.”

I study their orange t-shirts, orange pants held up by elastic, thick orange socks, and orange plastic sandals. The plastic soles of the sandals are always the first thing I hear as the youth walk with their hands behind their backs, and the orange sandals, click, click, click on the floor.  Sometimes my heart beats just a little faster before the faces appear, and I remember that I know these kids. Week after week they show up for writing workshop where the youth become writers, and I forget that we sit surrounded by guards, barbed wires, and doors that lock and have to be opened by electronic monitors from guards who watch through cameras posted on the concrete walls.

“Pumpkins.” The girls in detention giggle as they begin to draw.

The girls continue to giggle about their pumpkin outfits as my eyes wander to the windowsill where generic bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and even boxes of tampons line the sill. There is no privacy in the detention center. Drawing my attention back to the girls, I suggest that we write poems about masks. What masks do we wear in our lives? What do those masks hide?

The chatter subsides for a few minutes as the girls clutch small, stubby pencils and start to write. As they write, my thoughts drift toward the upcoming Halloween evening. At 4:45, it will already be dark when I leave the detention center, and trick-or-treaters will begin appearing at my doorstep soon. I will spend my night, opening the door to small costumed children who will hold out small pumpkins to be filled with goodies. As the night progresses, the trick-or-treaters will get older.  Instead of small pumpkins, there will be pillow cases to fill with goodies. And then at the end of the night when my candy is near the end, the high school kids will arrive, some looking sheepish as they stand on my doorstep with only a mask thrown over their heads. “Trick or treat.”

Meanwhile, across town, at the juvenile detention center, the teens in orange will sit behind their locked cell doors that don’t allow for trick-or-treat, and they will tell themselves, “We don’t need costumes. We are orange pumpkins.” As I hand out candy, I will think of those teens, trapped behind their cell doors and dressed in orange. I will think of the teens who creatively find a way to celebrate Halloween– regardless of where they happen to be.

National Book Award Finalists for Young People

The National Book Award Finalists for Young People have been announced.

I’m thrilled to see Kathi Appelt’s, The Underneath, on the list! I first heard Kathi speak at a Seattle SCBWI Conference. Later, she became my fourth semester Vermont College MFA Adviser–meaning she helped me work on that all important creative thesis–my young adult novel, Girl on a Thin Wire.

I had the privilage of working with Kathi again when she was my Highlights Foundation Chautaqua mentor. Kathi has always impressed me as being both fabulous teacher and a fabulous writer! Congratulation Kathi!

Draft Complete

On Sunday morning, I finished my current Work-In-Progress draft–a young adult romance novel told in alternating view-points. Next up, is a run-through of the draft with Darcy Patison’s book, Novel Metamorphosis. A friend from graduate school and I are going to work through this revision process together.

Just to prove the draft is complete…here are a few pictures…Along with real-life research which is a part of this book–weaving a scarf.

Weaving Magic--A Young Adult Romance Novel Draft

Ready for Revisions--Fun Heart Stickies!

Real Life Weaving Research for the Novel

Continue the Story for Young Writers

THE WEEKLY WRITER
http://www.weeklyreader.com/wys/weeklywriter.asp
—
Welcome to the Weekly Writer where well-known authors provide
the opening to stories. The stories are updated every week by
students of all ages. The Weekly Writer is looking for creative
submissions and most of all–for kids to have fun reading and
writing.

The Call to Serve–Volunteering with Youth in Juvenile Detention

In his “Call to Serve Speech” Barack Obama says, “It is time to recapture that sense of a common purpose: I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.” 

Three years ago, I began volunteering at a Juvenile Detention Center.  At the time, I was leaving teaching and trying to branch out into writing.  I needed something to fill the long hours of beginning in a new direction. And so, I sought out volunteer work at the local Juvenile Detention Center.

I had always been interested in work in prisons. As a pre-teen, I attended a church that most of the time felt more like a social club, a social club where I didn’t fit. But, one Sunday, a woman stood up and said she was writing to prisoners and she wanted to know if anyone else wanted to join her. Something inside me paid attention. There was a glow about this woman. And, I felt myself drawn to her. My Mom and I signed up and for about six months, we wrote back and forth to a young man in prison.

Years later, after I had earned my MFA in Writing for Children, I attended an AWP Conference and listened to a panel talk about teaching writing to prisoners. Again, something inside me sat up and listened. There was something drawing me to this work, but I wasn’t sure what or where it was going to take me.

When I got home, I called the local juvenile detention center and asked to speak to the Program Director. Without really knowing what I was doing, or why, I suggested that I could volunteer to work with the youth for two-hours a week in a writing workshop that I would run. The Program Director was over-joyed and the next thing I knew, I was standing before the locked doors of the units, my heart pounding, and waiting to be allowed inside where a group of twelve girls in orange clothing glared at me and demanded to know: “Who are you? Why are you here? And most important…WHY do you want to volunteer to be with US?”

It was this last question, “Why do you want to volunteer to be with US?” that I have asked myself over and over for the last three years. And what I have come to see is that like Barak Obama says in his “Call to Serve” speech, “Through service, I found a community that embraced me; ….citizenship that was meaningful; the direction I’d been seeking,” I too, discovered a direction I’d been seeking.