Educators who participate in MHC programs are ambitious, and some especially so. Jean Hylan, a pre-kindergarten teacher at the Brooklin School and an art teacher in Sedgwick, has been involved with the MHC’s “Views of the East” program for teachers, as well as Born to Read. Both programs introduce educators to new materials, but they serve very different audiences: “Views of the East” is a 30-hour intensive introduction to China, Japan and the Koreas, while Born to Read shares fine children’s literature and scientific early literacy information with early childhood educators.
Hylan participated in “Views of the East” in 2004. She was inspired to apply her knowledge in a big way: with a colleague at the Sedgwick School, Hylan created and coordinated a theme of “China, Japan, and Korea” for grades kindergarten through 8. This theme was prominent in art and literature classes, and many teachers used it for read-a-loud sessions to their whole classes each day. The school held an “East Asia Day” and brought in members of the community to share skills—Chinese calligraphy, storytelling, and mask making, among others-relating to Asian culture. The year ended with a Dragon Dance and banquet.
“Our students are still talking about it,” Hylan said, “and now want to know what the school ’theme’ will be each year! They still remember quite a bit about cultural pieces (red is a lucky color, never stick your chopsticks in a bowl of rice—only for funerals, and how to hold a bamboo calligraphy pen).”
East Asian studies was previously not part of the established curriculum, but with the tremendous response from students, and the enthusiasm of teachers, 3rd and 5th grade teachers have found ways of incorporating it into their curriculums.
Hylan’s interest in Asian studies, and in China specifically, came in part from her adoption of a Chinese daughter eight years ago. Her training in this area is now extensive: she has taken workshops and seminars with “View of the East” and “Primary Source” (a professional development program for teachers throughout New England), and just finished a two-week tour of China for educators during which she taught at two Chinese schools.
While Hylan is an old hand at East Asian studies, she has just stepped into the world of early literacy, attending the Born to Read conference last May. Hylan found the workshop “Storytelling and Storyacting in an Early Childhood Classroom” in particular easy and fun to apply on a daily basis to her pre-school classroom at the Brooklin School. “The kids loved it, I loved it, and I copied the stories for the parents (who thought it was wonderful). I plan on making it a permanent part of my curriculum.”
Note: The MHC co-sponsors “Views of the East” in Maine with the World Affairs Council of Maine with funding from the Freeman Foundation and UnumProvident.
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credit: Diane Hudson
Each summer, the MHC holds teacher institutes that draw educators from around the state and, in some years, from beyond. This year, two Teaching American History Through Biography programs (funded by the U.S. Department of Education) and Views of the East (referenced above) will bring 110 people together for in-depth scholarly experiences. These programs not only help teachers develop scholarly approaches in introducing new materials in their classrooms, but inspire their students for years to come.
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credit: Diane Hudson
This is a new column designed to highlight one funder or group of funders of a MHC program and describe the program under support.
Late last year, the Sam L. Cohen Foundation, the Davis Family Foundations, the Vincent B. and Barbara G. Welch Foundation, and the Edward H. Daveis Benevolent Fund awarded grants to New Books, New Readers in Portland’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes in 2007.
For more than ten years, Portland has been a receiving point for refugees seeking asylum in the United States. Currently, the mix of countries of origin includes Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Armenia, and Serbo-Croatia. Residents of many of these countries have been exposed to almost unimaginable violence. Their will to survive brings them to value highly the opportunities available in the United States and is one of the reasons that Portland’s immigrant community is so driven to grow, learn, and adapt swiftly to their new home. Learning to read English is a critical part of this adaptation.
The MHC uses reading and discussion to help Maine adults who are learning to read improve their skills and New Books, New Readers is an effective model: stories and narrative are a pleasurable and engaging medium of education. This model has worked well with Portland’s immigrant community. It helps people who are first learning to read English-or learning to read at all-feel comfortable expressing ideas that traditional adult education programs don’t focus on. These tend to be the kinds of ideas that people talk about most often in their own languages: how they feel, what they think about, what they remember.
ESOL students in New Books, New Readers use children’s books with adult ideas to help them learn to communicate and think in English. Books used in this program are given to the participants to keep. Their first New Books, New Readers text is, in most cases, the first book in English that students have finished reading, which is a tremendous accomplishment and a milestone in their English language classes. They also delight in sharing these books with their children.
The project funded by these grants started in October 2006 and will continue through October 2007, offering 50 sessions for approximately 700 students and giving away over 1,500 books. This is an increase of 43% over what staff thought it could do this fiscal year, filling more requests for the program. The support from the Sam L. Cohen Foundation, the Davis Family Foundations, the Vincent B. and Barbara G. Welch Foundation, and the Edward H. Daveis Benevolent Fund made this possible.
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During the past year, Let’s Talk About It introduced several exciting new series with vastly different themes. Let’s Talk About It is a MHC reading and discussion program that takes place in community libraries statewide. In very rural towns, it is one of the few offerings that the library can provide to the community since it is free, both to the library and to participants. The MHC puts together series of five books around a theme, lends these books, and sends a scholar to facilitate discussions.
This year’s new series were, as mentioned above, quite diverse. The following lists just a few of them.
“Beyond the Headlines: An Introduction to the Middle East,” shares an in-depth perspective of the history and culture of Middle Eastern states with conversation led by Middle East experts Mahmud Faksh (southern Maine) and Alexander Grab (central and northern Maine). This has been one of the program’s most popular series, with waiting lists at every site. This summer and fall, “Beyond the Headlines” will be offered in Wells and Portland.
David Richards, historian and author of a book about the Gilded Age in Maine, facilitated “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today?” this year. This series explores a post-Civil War America and questions and issues prominent at the time, from race relations to capitalism in the age of railroads and new corporations. This series is currently being offered in Greenville.
“Family and Self: Readings in Twentieth Century Japanese Fiction” explores how the 20th century challenged the “traditional family” in Japan. Through most of the 1800s, Confucian values, the emphasis of group over individual, and even governmental intervention determined family’s role in Japanese society. A fiercely growing economy, rural migration to urban centers, and the introduction of Western values (such as marriage for love) began to change the notion of what family was.
Participants examine three 19th century poets—Whitman, Dickinson, and Longfellow—before delving into those of the 20th century in “American Traditions/American Innovations: American Poetry of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century.” This series, led by poets actively writing, looks at what makes more contemporary poetry, as well as these poets of the past, so distinctly American. This series will take place in Waldoboro this fall.
Expect to see more from Let’s Talk About It in the next six months. “Paradise Revealed: Readings in Caribbean Literature” is a new series that will be available by the spring of 2008. It is being developed by Ericka J. Waters, scholar at University of Southern Maine.
This series examines Caribbean literature throughout the Caribbean archipelago, from the Lesser Antilles to the Greater Antilles, from Trinidad to Jamaica. Using a variety of genres (short fiction, the novel, creative non-fiction, and poetry), the series examines the issues which have shaped the islands and still influence them today: colonialism, island rivalries, politics, the heritage of slavery, connection to Africa, gender roles, and economic development/exploitation. The works emphasize the uniqueness of the individual islands and the powerful and innovative talents of Caribbean writers.
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Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health CareŽ
Alexander Solzhenitsyn set Cancer Ward in a Soviet hospital in Uzbekistan in 1955, with a rich cast of characters from all walks of Soviet society. It is no mistake that the novel takes place two years after Stalin’s death and that many of the people in the ward, medical staff and patients alike, were affected by Stalin’s regime. Oleg Kostoglotov is in exile for life, a recent transport to the ward from a Gulag. A fellow patient, Pavel Rusanov, was a member of Stalin’s secret police. The doctors are mostly female; male doctors were killed in the recent fighting. Some characters brood, and others seek any opportunity for living, however transient it may be. The novel chronicles the death that all patients are trying to avoid and how they and their caregivers face the helplessness all around them. Readers familiar with Russian history will find many parallels between the patients’ experiences and the experiences of those living under Stalin. This is a text being used in Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health CareŽ.
Born to Read
Sarah, Percy and Bill are baby owls who awake one evening to discover that their mother is missing. They discuss where she could be (all except Bill, who can only repeat, “I want my mommy!”). As their concern reaches a peak, their mother returns, and all is well again. This simple story by Martin Waddell features detailed illustrations by Patrick Benson that are as much fun to talk about with children as the story itself. Born to Read encourages its constituents to discuss this book with very young children.
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Rita Charon, M.D.
In celebration of the literature and medicine movement (and in anticipation of the MHC’s national Literature and Medicine conference on November 9 through 10, 2007), Notes from an Open Book is presenting a glimpse of the keynote speakers from this conference and showing how their work supports the ever-important field of literature and medicine. This is the second of this series.
Dr. Rita Charon is a professional expert in the field of literature and medicine. Professor of Clinical Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine, and general internist in practice in the Associates of Internal Medicine in Presbyterian Hospital, Dr. Charon designed and directed Columbia University’s teaching programs in medical interviewing, humanities and medicine, and narrative medicine (she also teaches seminars on the works of Henry James). She has published and lectured extensively on linguistic studies of doctor-patient conversations, narrative competence in physicians and medical students, narrative ethics, and empathy in medical practice. Dr. Charon’s research has focused on doctor-patient communication, methods of teaching medical interviewing, and the outcomes of narrative training in medicine.
In the spring 2007 issue of the MHC’s Literature & Medicine online journal Synapse, Charon said:
“Writing is one of the easiest and most cost-effective methods of exposing the “unthought known,” a brilliant phrase from the work of psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas. We know things that we don’t know we know. We need specialized methods-psychoanalysis, dreaming, and, I suggest, writing-in order to rescue this known from falling prey to boredom, fear, censure, or simply being overlooked. Invariably, when doctors and nurses and social workers write about their patients, they have “aha” moments—“oh, I didn’t know I was afraid of his disease,” or “I want to be like her when I’m dying.” These insights accumulate in the course of sustained writing about practice to let the writer understand the complexity of this interior life as a clinician, to appreciate the bonds formed between us and our patients, and to simply take stock of the magnitude of what it is we do. This is, I think, nourishing, whereas practice without reflection becomes automatic and not unlike starvation.”
Future issues of this newsletter will highlight the other keynote speakers of this conference.
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A quiet corner of a Maine garden.
The MHC is funding events all across Maine this summer. They include a Portland presentation of film and lectures on Cuba, the annual summer lecture series of the Greater Lovell Land Trust, and oral histories of people connected to Swan’s Island’s Burnt Coat Harbor Light Station on display in Rockland. Another Rockland event funded by the Council is:
“Maine Gardens: Nature and Design,” a four-day symposium July 12 through15, 2007, on the history and beauty of Maine’s varied landscapes. Participants will discover writers and artists who have imagined these landscapes and hear from those who continue to do so. They will become acquainted with the work of both the eminent landscape architects and the ordinary people who have shaped and softened the wild terrain of Maine. To register for the symposium, which will be held at various locations in Rockland, please call (207) 230-0142. This is a project from the William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum.
Click here for the full list of grant-funded events.
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Oscar Wilde
Many of the events listed above were grants funded in the most recent round. For a complete list, click here. Here is one project of note:
$1,000 to The Stage, Portland, for Welcome to the Classics: Wild About Wilde
The Stage’s pre-show program, Welcome to the Classics: Wild about Wilde, will introduce audiences to Oscar Wilde, Victorian theatre, and the workings of verbal comedy in an original script written and performed by Equity actor Harlan Baker. This is an introduction to The Stage’s performance of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
“Discussions always flow easily as everyone has a comment. The most common comment has been, ‘If it weren’t for this series, I probably wouldn’t have read the book.’ In essence, the most significant learning experience for our group when reading a series is that we are made to read and appreciate books that we have never read or were ignorant of the title.”
—from the Millinocket librarian hosting a Let’s Talk About It series last spring
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Thank you to our current members. Your support helps to make Maine Humanities Council programs like the ones detailed in this newsletter possible. If you are not a member but would like to make a gift you may do so online or contact me, Diane Magras, for more information.
Notes from an Open Book welcomes feedback from its readers. Please contact Diane Magras by email at diane@mainehumanities.org or by phone at (207)773-5051 ext. 208 (toll-free 1-866-637-3233, ext. 208) to respond.