NEW
Library Project
Volume 3, Number 2 - Spring 2005
Growth in the Garden: The
NEH Library Project -
Reflections after two years
by Patricia Andres
In
August 2003, when the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded a
major grant to bring People and Stories–Gente y Cuentos to 24 libraries
in 14 states, a glance at our organizational capacity night have made the
undertaking seem more idealistic than practical.
Our
strategic plan outlined incremental stages of growth before launching a
national expansion. Yet our good fortune positioned us to evolve and grow
by quantum leaps as we established People and Stories–Gente y Cuentos
programs on a map stretching from Nevada to Florida, from Washington to
Connecticut.
As
I reflect midway into the second year of the NEH-sponsored national
library project, I see that while our growth didn’t always proceed in a
linear fashion, but sometimes spiraled outward, taking turns in surprising
directions, there has been a conscious structuring of the library project,
a design that evokes the metaphor of the cultivated garden.
In
the cultivated garden, what is tended will usually grow through the vital
force of nature, with the more subdued design of a well-tended plot. Like
a garden, the library project is growing through a blend of focused
attention and organic flow. We have moved through stages of cultivation,
including tilling the soil, spreading the seeds, tending while those seeds
established roots, harvesting and now, even propagation.
The
first stage of the project involved preparing the soil. English and
Spanish scholarly teams created study guides for each story. We identified
libraries eager to serve new audiences in English and Spanish, especially
basic readers, English-as-a-second-language students and disadvantaged
populations, including at-risk youth.
We
recruited coordinators with the qualities needed to lead our dialogues:
deep and passionate immersion in literature along with strong people
skills. Then we implemented four training workshops—two a year—for
those coordinators, in San Diego, Princeton, Boston and Seattle.
We
focused on content in the workshops, designed to instruct coordinators in
the five-category people and Stories–Gente y Cuentos method for
discussion preparation— identifying the text’s poetics, contrasts,
shadows, issues and moments that resonate with life experience—so that
the sessions about to be launched all across the nation didn’t
degenerate into rap sessions or loosely-structured opinion-voicing forums.
We
focused on retaining the essence of genuine People and Stories–Gente y
Cuentos dialogues, the communal probing of a short story on a deeply
literary level, a democratic dialogue based on the strength of individual
voices and designed to deepen understanding of self, the other and the
world.
Currently
we’re in a multifaceted stage of growth in the garden, with freshly sown
seeds sprouting into a new program in Worcester, Mass., for Spanish
speakers of English as a second language. Other program schedules are
outlined for Spanish-speaking participants in North Carolina, Minnesota,
Washington and Oregon. At the same time, the libraries that completed the
two NEH-funded series of programs last year continue to thrive and deepen
their roots.
In
Crockett, Texas, for example, programs in English continue for adults who
are new to the town and are seeking a sense of community. In New York,
Tepeyac, a learning center serving Mexican immigrants, offers the Gente y
Cuentos program that began under NEH sponsorship while adding a program in
English.
In
Florida, we are working with librarians to secure funding for increased
programming in Sarasota, Hialeah and Naples, where Spanish-speaking
immigrants are learning English by discussing themes and poetics raised in
the stories. Plans for additional trainings there—as well as
conversations about formalizing an ongoing, supportive relationship with
the People and Stories–Gente y Cuentos main office—are underway. And
scholars at Florida International University and the University of Miami
are planning to help bring the bilingual program and Gente y Cuentos to
Spanish-speaking adults on Florida’s east coast.
Growth
brings change. We could not have predetermined some of the uses of the
People and Stories–Gente y Cuentos model that would evolve from audience
needs in, for example, Naples, Florida, where Literacy Administrator
Roberta Reiss found that Hispanics who were advanced speakers of English
as a second language would be able to build their skills with amazing
force and speed if they read and discussed English stories, trying a new
model of hearing the story twice before discussion—read first by a
participant practicing her pronunciation skills and then by the
coordinator.
The
double reading became the basis for self-correction of reading mistakes,
bypassing the humiliating experience an adult has when another adult
corrects her speech. And the compelling themes, issues and poetics
embedded in the stories led to a discussion in which words tumbled out,
burst forth, bypassing once again a critical stumbling block for adult
learners: the fear of saying something wrong in a new language.
Roberta
noted that “our Library Literacy Program teaches English-language
learners the structures of the language as well as life-skills
English—pretty dry stuff even with our efforts to be creative. This
program helps us address the heart and soul of the language for adult
learners. They were hungering for it, no matter their background or
education. We finally met that need with People and Stories.”
Roberta
also told me about Gloria, a participant with intermediate English skills.
On visits to the library she saw fliers for book discussions led by staff.
“I had the desire to speak at these discussions. I was afraid. You made
me brave,” said Gloria, who found herself speaking with jut the kind of
unselfconscious growth this entire project has made possible for our
organization. Taking growth by leaps and bounds rather than in small steps
has been adventuresome for all involved.