Dale Davis  founded The New York State Literary Center (NYSLC) in 1979. NYSLC was one of the first upstate New York arts organizations to send writers into the public schools to teach on a regular basis. In the past thirty-one years, over 300 writers and artists have worked with over 32,000 youth in more than 600 different schools that span from rural, suburban, and urban schools to alternative educational settings.  

Starting in the early 1980’s, the successful residences became the first step that led Davis to further NYSLC’s mission through comprehensive programs that included visual, media, and theater arts as part of in-depth, long-term, project-based, interdisciplinary arts projects that addressed real, concrete concerns of students and transformed the writing that went on in school from a solitary, mechanical process into vibrant interactive communications.  Students wrote about their own experiences and concerns, and the projects drew individual student expression into collective publications, videos, CDs, installations, and events to achieve presence.

NYSLC’s programs addressed topics ranging from AIDS education, identity, stereotypes, racism, and popular culture. In theater, with the production by a high school of Dale Davis’ play, like we call it home, adapted from the writing of teenagers, NYSLC brought in an audience of over 2000 students, parents, and educators. like we call it home, with a cast of high school students, toured high schools throughout NYS. High school students in a NYSLC program performed the world premiere of William Carlos Williams’ play, Tituba’s Children and high school students in a NYSLC program performed William Carlos Williams “Hymn for Rogation Sunday,” with music by Thomas Canning, at the Harvard Club in NYC at the invitation of the William Carols Williams Centennial for the Modern Language Association.

A high school student who participated in a NYSLC project accepted an internship by Bill Moyers that was offered on the basis of the research and writing she did for the NYSLC  project. Another high school student’s video was selected for inclusion in PBS’s Point of View / NewViews. NYSLC’s peer directed AIDS ‘N US project was cited for excellence by The Center for Disease Control National AIDS Clearinghouse. The project was replicated nationally.

Octavio Paz	Robert Duncan
Hugh Kenner	Robert Duncan and Thomas Meyer
Jonathan Williams	Kenneth Burke

Davis’ belief that all young people have strengths expanded NYSLC’s programs to reach students at the highest risk for educational failure.  In the 1990’s, NYSLC began work with youth at highest risk for educational failure, those young people in residential placement, long-term suspension, juvenile justice facilities, and jails. NYSLC’s pedagogy built upon developing the intellectual abilities of high-risk young people by providing them with the tools necessary to construct meaning in their lives and in their academic tasks. NYSLC connected youth to positive values and provided them with the opportunity to actively respond to events, rather than to passively react to them. NYSLC made the connections between what is learned in school and the students’ lives. NYSLC’s programs built a bridge from the rhyme book to the classroom.

Two students won national poetry competitions; one student had an article published in a national magazine; another student’s writing was included as part of an article on juvenile violence in Gannett Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle.

In 1998, NYSLC collaborated with an on line service for journalists to inform the public about children’s’ issues. The service’s website cited NYSLC as an example of the type of project for youth at-risk that was promoted by The President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. A student’s writing was featured on the website, both as a hook for journalists and as an example of how to write a story. The student’s book, Black Men, was published by the NYSLC and made available through Amazon.com.

In 2000, Davis produced a CD of students in residential placement reading and performing their poetry as a way to develop reading and writing skills. Davis saw producing a CD as another opportunity to extend the students’ academic knowledge, social skills, and personal behaviors through art. Young Souls Speaking was the first CD she recorded and produced. It was produced as a NYSLC pilot program. The pilot was extremely successful. Adolescents with low reading skills who refused to read aloud became comfortable reading and performing their writing by the time they went to the recording studio.

NYSLC has published over 600 books of writing by young people, twenty issues of a news journal, seven videos, thirty CDs, and thirty children’s books. NYSLC’s programs have been the subject of an article in New York magazine, honored by The President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities, The Center for Disease Control National AIDS Clearinghouse, the American Council on The Arts, The National Alternative Education Association, The National Dropout Prevention Association, the Annenberg School of Communication, Arts In Criminal Justice, and a documentary by Columbia University’s EdLab.

NYSLC’s programs focus on inquiry to discover who the young people are and what is important to them through collaborative art projects that not only improve literacy skills, but also inject a sense of community belonging, give young people power over the narrative of their lives, and enable youth to reach out with strong, clear voices on personal and social identity and articulate a compelling vision of how communities and schools can be better places. NYSLC’s mission is to bridge the space between the classroom and the larger community, deepen young people’s understanding of the forces that shape their lives, and help society better understand the needs and concerns of all children.