Planning Project and Pilot Progam 2005 - 2006

Planning was the focus of the first year of the partnership, 2005 - 2006. The Planning Project had three components:

• A project-based, arts integrated pilot classroom project;

• Professional development;

• Curriculum development.

The project-based, arts integrated pilot classroom project consisted of three self-contained modular units, each with a self-contained curriculum designed to meet the needs of a transient population. In the first unit four classes of students / inmates worked with writer, scholar Dale Davis. In this unit Davis worked with the students / inmates reading and discussing the lesson plans researched and written for the unit, studying the themes in the literature presented in the lesson plans, discussing assignments. The student / inmates wrote in response to the assignments and revised their writing for a CD and publication.

For this first modular unit of the pilot program, Davis created a new poetic form, the poetic fugue, as a poetic form to address the academic needs of the transient population of a jail classroom:  literacy, the ELA standards, the narrative structure, short attention spans, and themes. The poetic fugue was created to enable the students / inmates to compose a sustained piece of writing consisting of separate sections. Each section is complete within itself, while it also contributes to a longer piece through interwoven themes. Hip-hop beats are the thread that binds the separate sections together. The structure of the poetic fugue fuses the individual sections while it, simultaneously serves as a Baedeker, a guidebook to the lives of the young men whose childhoods have been lived in the system and who came of age locked-up.

The second modular unit built upon the writing the students / inmates did in the first unit. The four classes of students worked with musicians and engineers Jeremy DeGroat and Jeffrey Lewis learning music software to teach them to use the latest technology to produce original music, hip-hop beats, to enable them to improvise musically for transition in their writing. The student / inmates were able to demonstrate competency using the skills of blending, scratching, and juggling in their original beats. A CD was recorded following the second unit. The CD will be released in early November 2006.

The writing of the students / inmates was submitted to The Beat Within, www.thebeatwithin.org/news/ published by the Pacific News Service and was included in three issues, Volume 11:26 / 27, Volume 11:28, Volume 11:29.

In the third modular unit, the students / inmates worked with theater artist Louis Moreno. The students / inmates collaboratively decided upon a theatrical presentation, wrote the presentation, and performed it. Moreno divided the students into teams: writers, actors, and visual artists. This unit culminated in a performance attended by all student / inmates, Sheriff's Deputies, the Monroe County Sheriff, and ten invited guests from the community. Following the performance the ten invited guests from the community were invited to sit down and talk to the students / inmates about the production and about their participating in Arts, Literacy, and The Classroom Community.

The number of students / inmates in the four classes varied for the three modules and within each module, as the amount of time the students were in the Monroe County Jail and able to participate was determined by the justice system, arrest, awaiting, trial, serving a sentence. Approximately 100 student / inmates participated in the Planning Project. Average attendance for the student / inmates was eight days per module. Three students / inmates participated in the three modules and approximately twenty students participated in two of the modules.  

The Professional Development Component consisted of sessions for Teaching Artists on an overview of The New York State Literary Center, ALCC, and Rochester City School District's Youth and Justice Programs by Dale Davis, Executive Director of NYSLC, and Margaret Porter, Program Administrator, Rochester City School District's Youth and Justice Programs, both members of ALCC's Steering Committee; a tour of Monroe County Jail and an introduction to working in a correctional setting by Edward Ignarri, Director of Rehabilitation, Monroe County Sheriff's Department, and a member of the ALCC's Steering Committee; A presentation on arts integrated education in a correctional setting by Frank Dody, Principal, and John Cates Curtiss, Vice Principal, Island Academy, Rikers Island; a planning session at the Monroe County Jail with the teachers participating in ALCC. Three members of the Project Team also attended Empire State Partnership's Summer Seminar www.espartsed.org.