Some words from one of our own about Stories in the Making 1

Falling in Love with Writing All Over Again

by Jaime Osorno

On Saturday, April 16^th at the Precita Valley Community Center, we held our first ever poetry night.  The event was called, “Stories in the Making.”  I have worked on and off for Mission Neighborhood Centers for the past 10 years in a lot of different roles.  About eight years ago, we saw a need in our community and we addressed it.  We saw a lot of our youth being pushed out of school with no options and no diploma.  Our GED program gave a lot of our youngsters that opportunity.  When we first began, we held night time classes at least two times a week and we offered food and daycare.  Many young people throughout the years have passed through our doors.  Recently, the need has risen. Instead of 20-30 students we serve per year, we rose to over 50 students.  We now offer five classes in the afternoons, evenings and weekends.  Since we have always paid for our students to take the exam, $75 each, we were finding it hard to pay for our students with our little budget.  So Gabriel Martinez, the GED coordinator came up with the idea of a poetry night.  I didn’t think it was going to be big, but my coordinator did an excellent job at pulling poets from all over the Bay Area.

We had about 12 poets, 4 musical performers and a comedian.  Our honored guest was Lorna Dee Cervantes, who performed her pieces with a bass player.  The highlight for me was Jari Bradley, who had just finished her GED with us and was up on the mic expressing her life quite elegantly.  She definitely has a future in writing and poetry.  Norman Zelaya added some entertainment as usual.  Seeing a comedian, Michael Cappozola, was great relief to break up the night.  We also had musicians from Michigan, Basso from Brazil and Spain.  The event was well represented with different voices.  It was an amazing night of gifted talent that the Bay Area features.  I guess if you build it,  they will come.

Then there was me.  For the first time in at least five years, I was getting in front of an audience to read my work.  It had been a long time and I was nervous.  I was the first to go up because Gabriel felt that since I had been a part of the GED for so long, I should set the stage.  I practiced.  I had some time to myself, but I was working on something new.  I decided on two poems.  “Some Say,” a poem I first wrote when I was about 20 years old and “is this the end?”  The place was pretty full. We were ready for about 100 people, but we got about 50.  It still felt full to me and there was a lot of people in the audience that I knew.  Here I was again on center stage having people listen to my words.  I felt honored.  I felt nervous.  I felt I had to do it.  My inspiration was Octavio O’Campo, who was killed several years ago at a house party.  He was one of our GED students who was turning his life around.

I got up on the mic, looked at the crowd, said some words about the GED and began my poem.  I did very well at first, but I lost some concentration and I immediately started to read again without looking up.  I think I read well, but I remembered why I stopped doing readings, I was never a performer.  I spoke the truth, but I could never act the truth.  When I was younger, I felt an edge over other poets.  Not that it was a competition, but I felt what I was saying had more validity.  I left that night thinking to myself that I needed to re-write more, practice and then practice some more.  On Monday, when I went back to the GED program to help out, I was uplifted.  A student said he really liked my poems and wanted to know if he could have a copy.  At that point I remembered who I write for.  At that point I could care less what anyone else thought.  At that point I couldn’t wait to write again.

I miss writing.  I miss expressing myself.  I miss the audience.  I don’t say much when I’m in a group.  I don’t want to be the leader.  I don’t want the fame no more like I wanted when I was younger.  I just want people to hear my stories, understand my stories and hopefully my stories touch the life of someone.  This event inspired me to write again.

Colors, Culture, Community: Stories in the Making at San Francisco’s Precita Center (via Writing Through the Fog)

This is an amazing story about the GED Program’s home. We are so thankful to Cheri Lucas for giving of her time.

Enjoy!!!

The Precita Center in the Mission District of San Francisco. For years, the Precita Center has been a cultural institution, education center, and neighborhood hangout for kids and young adults in the Mission and beyond. Faced with funding cuts, writer and educator Gabe Martinez—who manages the center's GED program—started organizing a quarterly arts and music show to raise money for students who need to pay for testing fees. The colorful backyard … Read More

via Writing Through the Fog

program updates for July…two new graduates and counting

So, first off, I want to congratulate Angela MacDonald and Terrance Rollins.  They are the first two graduates of this school year.  Angela has been with us for a little more than a year and Terrance joined us in February.  As is the case with so many of our students, both Angela and Terrance overcame a lot to get to this place.  But they got here.  And we are so proud of them both.

Angela MacDonald

Jari “SoJari” Bradley

There is a common held belief about people who don’t finish high school, “those are the kids who just don’t have it in them to succeed.” In my case, I was considered the “golden child”, the one teachers could count on to drop science on the true intentions of Columbus or to start a ruckus about the new slavery system entitled the prison industrial complex and how many black and brown youth get caught up in it. I was that girl who sat in the front of class and while the teachers back was turned, would pen poems on the way I felt trapped in a society that for centuries has denied my voice. An avid reader, I would even dare to read Cornel West‘s Race Matters, in my teachers face if the lecture wasn’t to my interest.

You may be asking yourself at this point, “how could a kid like this, who seems intellectually sound and even conscious of their ability to some degree, not graduate from high school?” The answer is simple yet complex, while I had everything it took to be an honor roll student, I lacked the self assurance and belief that I was truly capable of succeeding in my classrooms. It was an inferiority complex that took me years to break through. The saddest part about many public schools is that they serve as huge sorting machines for the working class and those headed on the track of incarceration. Many students of color rarely see reflections of themselves in the courses they are made to take. I was enrolled in a few AP courses and I was the second Black kid in my class, the third if i was lucky. The textbooks I read in history class dedicated a chapter at most to the contributions of Black and Brown and Asian folks towards the advancement of world culture and the development of the United States. It was in the classroom where I experienced both liberation and enslavement. I was juxtaposed between being able to speak out on the injustices suffered by people of color for centuries, yet, I held on quietly to the notion that maybe I was actually not as competent as other students to succeed.

This fear of failure exists within each student told that they are lesser through the lack of positive representation their ancestors receive in the telling of world history and said students blatantly being told they are lesser by bigoted teachers. My passion to become an educator has stemmed from the understanding of what it means to be among the untapped potential that lives within our public schools daily. Many students considered problems are actually homegrown geniuses who only need to be told THEY CAN and to be shown love and compassion in the process. My aspirations of becoming an effective teacher as well as the best artist I can possibly be for myself, is rooted in knowing how it feels to be a problem and a solution all at the same time. Black and Brown and Asian youth are convinced that where they come from is in direct conflict to where they can go, yet they are the very same kids who have such rich cultural foundations which contribute to their uniqueness and ability to transcend the odds stacked against them, to shatter the glass ceiling constructed by institutional racism.

The Precita GED program helped me to feel comfortable and let me know that I wasn’t on my own. It was a place where as soon as I entered the door, I knew that this community cared for it’s own. Those that had fallen through the cracks of the public school system. I was welcomed by an all too eager man, Gabriel Martinez, whose good natured humor, and sincerity drove away my doubts. He and other students striving for the same as I, helped to remedy some of the insecurities I harbored about being able to pass the GED. It was with them that I found a sense of belonging and the strength to keep pursing my goal of passing the test.

I can now proudly say I am a recent graduate of the program, and I also tutor from time to time when I can. This program is a crucial and integral part of community helping community. The students there are living proof that it’s never to late to rewrite the script handed to you by mistakes and misfortune. There’s always the chance to have a happy ending. I was so inspired by participating in the fundraiser “Stories in the Making”, that I decided to create my own show entitled “Ascension (Transcending the Fear of Our Calling) this fall in the month of September. My show seeks to fund the GED program with funds from ticket sales. More information about the show will be provided real soon.

I can not thank the Precita GED program or Gabriel Martinez enough for giving me the courage to believe in myself, but I thank you.

-Jari “SoJari” Bradley

graduation at the Bernal Dwellings…one year and counting

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It’s been one year almost to the day that we started expanding the GED program at MNC.  The people above, happy and smiling, are all students or their loved ones or supporters of the program, and whatever success we have had this year, we owe to them.  The GED is not an easy way out of a secondary education, contrary to what some might think.   It requires a lot of discipline and a lot of time in class, and for many of my students who have children and who struggle to make ends meet, the process is even harder.  That said, the program takes its model from these hard working students.  If they can come out and do the work, we who try teach them can step up and provide them with the best education possible, and that is what we plan to do as we expand the program over the next year.

Starting in August, we will be unrolling two ESOL classes hosted at Everett Middle School, which means that we will have at least one class a day, six days a week.  These classes will be headed by Prisicilla Cota, a credentialed ESOL instructor who started as a volunteer with us last fall.  Priscilla spent June coming up with a curriculum that I believe will enrich our ESOL students who come to her class.

In August, we will also be continuing with our fundraising program, Stories in the Making.  More on this will follow, but the show on August 6th, like the first show in April, is bringing together a number of fine musicians, poets and artists who are volunteering their time to help our GED students pay their testing fees.  One thing that makes Mission Neighborhood Center stand out is that we are committed to removing all barriers for our students.  Money being one of those barriers, it is important that we keep raising funds to make sure that we can pay for our students’ fees.  If you are interested in helping out, please click here and consider donating.

In addition to fundraising and the new ESOL classes, in the fall, we will be looking to partner up with SF State, UC Berkeley, and Ameri-Corps in order to make sure we have enough volunteer teaching staff.  In a sense, we are attempting to create a private school setting for students who the public school system has failed.  Eventually, we want to have one tutor per student.  That is the goal we will be working towards over the next year.  We are also looking to create a tracking system that helps students after they complete our program.

As you can see, this is an exciting time for the GED Program at MNC.  I hope you will subscribe to this newsletter, and stay tuned.

Be well,

gabriel martinez

GED Program Coordinator

The Place to get info on The GED Class at MNC and all the things we do…..

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