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Broadview University for Teens |
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| Organizers |
Amy Reddinger (English) and Georgia Roberts (English)
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| Overview |
Broadview University for Teens will focus on building practices of literacy for homeless teens through a summer reading group centered on hip-hop culture. These sessions will be co-facilitated by graduate students Amy Reddinger and Georgia Roberts, and will engage teens through the relevant popular cultural realm while simultaneously challenging participants to read and think critically about the readings as well as the larger issues these readings evoke.
  
Broadview teens preferred to read books that were relevant to their lives.
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| Broadview University article from the Simpson Center's 2006 Newsletter |
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Two years ago doctoral student Amy Reddinger (English), received a Simpson Center grant to organize a reading group for women in residence at Seattle's Broadview Emergency Shelter and Transitional Housing Program. The book group created a "buzz" throughout the shelter. For homeless women whose lives are marked by severe disruption, simply finding the time to read presents a serious challenge. Wonderfully, the project succeeded in creating a culture of reading and discussion that continues to thrive. Reddinger found herself being asked when she was going to do another one.
"Perhaps the most exciting thing to come out of that first program was that some of the teenage residents, inspired by their moms' reading group, approached me to have a book group for themselves," Reddinger reports. Many of these teens had been homeless for years, while others were newly homeless refugees of war or family violence.
Reddinger worked with them, using books donated by a large national chain. But it turned out that the teens found most of those books culturally inappropriate and less than inspiring. African and African-American teens reading Harry Potter, for example, responded with a strong objection to its reliance on magic. "They wanted to know, 'why can't this book be more real?'" says Reddinger. "They found it hard to engage because it seemed irrelevant to their lives."
This past spring Reddinger received support from the Simpson Center to run Broadview University for Teens in the summer of 2006. Together with fellow doctoral student Georgia Roberts (English), they co-taught a book group for teens on literature and hip hop. Texts included The Moments, The Minutes, The Hours, a book of poetry by Jill Scott, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and The Art of Emcee-ing by hip-hop artists Dead Prez. Reddinger also presented participants, age twelve to seventeen, with artist journals and encouraged them to keep notes and develop their own creative voices by responding in writing.
Results from the discussion sessions and journal-keeping have been exhilarating. "The group has so much to say!" says Reddinger. "Participants are making powerful connections to the literature as well as connections with their own desires for creative self-expression."
Reddinger, who has worked at Broadview in various capacities from volunteer to caseworker, thinks that her long history with the shelter has been crucial to the program's success. "It helps that I've been affiliated with Broadview for nine years," says Reddinger. "The staff knows and trusts me and that trust helped me get in the door. They know I'm not some green do-gooder looking to make some vague difference. I think I'm seen as someone who is drawing on her resources to help the agency in the ways that I can. Other staff do this too, but most of the time those resources are other social services. I just happen to be the academic."
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Undergraduate Courses