Literacy for Incarcerated Teens 

When I retired after my long career as a high school librarian,  my friend Karlan called me.  Karlan was recently retired herself after working for New York Public Library as a young adult librarian.

“I’m heading a new organization called Literacy for Incarcerated Teens / LIT “,  she said,  “it’s a good cause,  won’t you join us?” 

LIT,  Karlan explained,  is a community-based non-profit committed to combating illiteracy in court-involved children and young adults.  Partnering with New York’s city and state agencies and school districts,  LIT raises and allocates funds for the creation of libraries and book collections in juvenile detention centers.  And equally important is the funding LIT provides for teachers and librarians to create literacy and arts programming including read-ins,  poetry slams,  museum trips, and art, music, and writing workshops led by visiting artists and authors.

Having worked for decades at an inner-city vocational high school,  I’d seen too many of our students with reading and other deficiencies who were in dire need of remediation.  Our faculty worked hard to help them,  and we celebrated those who graduated and went on to good jobs or to college.

But hard as we teachers and support staff would  try,  the deck was stacked against many of these kids and they took the wrong path,  sometimes landing in detention centers like the ones served by LIT.   So this organization was indeed a good cause and one dear to my heart,  and I joined Karlan on the LIT board.

Once during a writing workshop at one of the centers,  a visiting author read aloud to the kids from one of his books,  elicited their responses,  and then encouraged them to write short pieces of their own to read aloud.

One student, very pleased with the piece he’d just written,  eagerly asked the author if he could come back and lead another workshop.   The author said that indeed he would be coming back in two months.

”Damn,” said the kid disappointedly,  “my time will be up by then and I’ll be out!”

Hopefully he stayed out.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

The Great Jane Addams Library Flood

I’ve written about my years as head librarian at Jane Addams,  a New York City public vocational high school.  (See Magazines for the Principal,  The Parking Lot Seniority List,  Shelf List, The Diary of a Young Girl,   Early Session Commute  and Educator of the Year:  Remembering Milton)

Here’s another story.

Because of our large student body for many years our school had two sessions and all students and faculty were either early or late.  It happened I was on late session the year of the great Jane Addams library flood.

That fateful morning as I parked in the teachers’  lot I thought it was strange that no students were in front of the school or on the steps waiting for the late session bell.  For a minute I thought I may have made a mistake – as I once did! –  and had gotten up and headed for work forgetting it was a Saturday.   But there were other cars in the parking lot and so surely it was a school day.

And then I saw Eileen, my principal,  standing at the front door.    “I was waiting for you to break some bad news.”  she told me.  “Overnight something triggered the sprinkler system in the basement and I’m afraid your library is flooded.  We had to evacuate the building, and a cleaning crew is already down there.”

Our school had recently undergone an extensive renovation and the library had been relocated to a larger space in the newly refurbished basement,  where there were also several new classrooms and offices.  Eileen walked me downstairs to see the extent of the damage,  and that day and for many days to follow I felt I was in shock.

Then while the cleaning crew sent by the Department of Ed did their work,  my library colleague Merlene and I had an enormous task of our own.  We had to check every one of the thousands of books for even the slightest bit of mold.  Because mold can be a health hazard for some,  all the wet, smelly and moldy books had to be discarded,  and thus probably two-thirds of our collection had to go.

I applied for a grant to replace what was lost,  the new books arrived,  and eventually the library looked and functioned normally once again.

But for quite some time I had nightmares about that great Jane Addams library flood,  and I saw myself floating in the sea surrounded by thousands of moldy books!

– Dana Susan Lehrman