What brought him here?

That was the first thought I had when I realized exactly who I had struck up a conversation with. He was a talented, older, highly educated man. I was a young girl in high school, who had ordered an Americano instead of a cappuccino because the extra 75 cents still meant something to me. It had been like any other day at my favorite local coffeehouse, but that day, I feel impulsive enough to talk to someone new.

What could he be doing?

I met a young boy online once. He was kind, talented, and very broken. We did nothing more than talk through the phone, yet I understood the pain and the weariness he felt. I sympathized with his emotions and I adopted them as my own in order to grow closer to understanding all the components that made up his consciousness.

I move a lot. I currently live in New York City, but I was born in Arizona and have lived in multiple homes between then and now. Moving is mostly fun and exciting, but it has its difficulties. Perhaps one of the more arduous, painstaking difficulties is keeping contact with old friends.

         When talking about Mary Louise Pratt’s Arts of the Contact Zone, we, members of ESEM 026, were uncomfortable with sharing our thoughts on our classroom as a contact zone. Thirteen of us sat there, some avoiding eye contact while others shuffling in their seats. We were not quite ready to become a social space “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power…”(Pratt 34). New to Bryn Mawr and new to each other, we had not yet established the patterns I observed year after year inside and outside of my middle and high school classes.

Dear 360 folks,

First, thanks for such thoughtful work in our classes yesterday afternoon!

Thurs. group, we look forward to hearing about your first session at Riverside.  Fri. group, we’ll see you soon for our first session!

We’re writing with some updates about our initial conversation yesterday with Sheila, your Sunday night post, and your research proposal, which is due this Wednesday.

As Sheila suggested please start keeping a word file about your responses to our sessions at the jail, discussions in class and with Sheila, dreams, ideas, concerns, etc.  Let yourself be intuitive, free associate ideas, write down words and play with words. Make this your “incubator page,” an uncentered space for ideas and feelings.

            We encounter new people and new situations on a daily basis. It comes with being human. Most of these encounters are shallow and meaningless; they are brief and do not impact our lives in any way. Sometimes, after repeated encounters with the same person, a more significant connection can occur. In Octavia Butler’s Bloodchild and Other Stories for example, the main character Gan encounters T’Gatoi at a very young age. He develops a connection with her despite their different backgrounds and her supposed dominance over him. As time passes, Butler describes this connection as more of a codependent one than one of superiority and inferiority.

A Classroom is not a Family

J.C. Todd, a poet who teaches in Bryn Mawr's creative writing program, and a friend, sent us this article, about the poet Dwayne Betts:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yes-one-book-can-change-your-life-even-in-prison_55e630dbe4b0aec9f3551027
You'll note especially that, when Betts was moved to his cell block, he "carried the only thing he had shown up with: a book by James Baldwin."

Here are notes from our discussion with Sheila and then the brief conversation afterwards.

Class Plan for Friday Group 09/11

Checklist:

1. ID
2. Proper Clothes
3. Proper Materials

11:50 Meet at ROCK ARCH

Leave Bryn Mawr at 12:01

As women walking in, welcome them, ask them to sign in and design a nametag

Meera (Intro to the course) (15 min)

-       Keep the women who come in late updated

-       Introduction to the course

            “We are a group from Bryn Mawr and Haverford College, and this is a reading, writing, and discussion group. This group will convene on Fridays for approximately 11 weeks.”