A rt s

Serving the needs of agencies,

artists, students, teachers,
educational administrators,

Abled
parents of children with
disabilities and others
engaged in special educatioN
programs throughout

Network New York State

by gathering, organizing, and
publishing information about
the current arts in education
News & Reviews experiences of, by, and for
October 2007 Vol. 1, No. 2 persons with disabilities.
The Ten Penny Players’ arts in education programs are made possible with partial support of individuals,
NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and NYS Council on The Arts.
Breaking Through the Ice
In an Incarceral Special Education Setting
Barbara Fisher, co-director Ten Penny Players
(Excerpted from TUMMELING BEHIND THE CURTAIN IN THE LAND OF OZ)

School year 2005/2006 the principal of Island

Academy, where we worked at the Rikers Island jail,
asked us to concentrate on students and teachers at The
Annex, the site serving disabled male students. We held
weekly poetry workshops in 2 classes, a picture book
workshop at another class, provided professional devel-
opment, and published the students in either antholo-
gies or their own chapbooks of visual art and/or expres-
sive writing.
At the beginning of the spring term the ESL
teacher said that she also wanted to participate.
Planning a program with a teacher who has never part-
nered with you is only the first barrier a consultant
artist needs to get beyond. I speak no Spanish, and the
ESL students were equally illiterate in English and their
native Spanish. They also exhibited diverse learning
BY FRANKLYN
problems. Team teaching was a must.
continued on page 2

Ice Breaker Writing Exercises

Patricia Kelly, a/k/a Roswila and hosts a dream and poetry blog: http://roswila-dreamspoetry.blogspot.com
Years ago, I used to teach creative writing. The two populations who were most burdened
with labels that I taught were the blind — actually this class had mostly seniors, so there’s a second
label — and those with life theatenening illnesses. I used the same sorts of “ice breaker” writing
exercises with these folk as I did with any other class of folk with less obvious labels. I say less
obvious because I think it’s a human tendency to label everyone.
I would use something to seed a group poem. Sometimes I’d lead a guided meditation.
But only with folk I was fairly certain understood how to relax and get into a state of fantasy. (E.g.,
one blind student had a very difficult time doing this and I had to spend extra time helping her with
it. The time was not a problem for me, but I was concerned with how distressed she seemed.)
continued on page 4
 Even teachers that ask to work with us are sometimes prickly when the reality of sharing space
and classroom time hits them. But I lucked out because she was a working visual artist, comfortable
with art language and tools, used to team teaching, willing to share the stage of her classroom,
change her day’s aim, goals, lesson, and tools as the atmosphere in the room and mood of the stu-
dents shifted. This is no small feat when you’re working with disabled students in a prison. It’s
never quiet enough for concentrated effort although exhausted students who’ve been up all night
defending themselves in the dorms often manage to sleep through shouting students in the class-
room, sirens, bells, the frequent droning of overhead airplanes approaching or leaving the nearby
LaGuardia airport, and Corrections Officers bursting aggressively into the room to call out students
who needed to get meds, counseling, meet with their lawyer or make a court date.
In January, after Richard Spiegel had done a workshop on Claude McKay and the Harlem
Renaissance, we met with her and she introduced me to the class. I gave her a copy of the ‘Picture
Book’ curriculum we use and sample publications. http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/nysatl/Art/pictureb-
ooks/html/index.html . However, I didn’t have a chance to observe the class and learn about the stu-
dents by seeing their behavior when she worked with them. The meeting was aborted when the
smoke detectors went off and were followed by a downpour of water from the sprinkler system. The
students were sent back to the housing area. We went home.
Because of scheduling conflicts we were not able to meet again before the next week’s work-
shop. Prison schools have rolling registers. Students come and go as they are moved from a NYC jail
to an upstate facility or leave after serving their time. There are no guarantees that the student with
whom you worked one class will still be there when you return. It’s difficult working with a stan-
dardized curriculum; and makes the job of a consultant teaching artist that much more difficult. It
makes the decision of what to teach and how to break the ice of a
first class that much more tricky.
At the beginning of that first class a Mexican student very
excitedly told the teacher that I looked familiar. He lived on Staten
Island in a building across the street from our veterinarian and had
seen me either on the street with the dog or at the nearby branch of
the NY Public Library. The book we later published for him con-
tained pictures of our Stapleton community. Like the other ESL
students he didn’t have enough grasp of written Spanish, English or
the alphabet to sound out his words so he dictated his story. He
was in the country illegally and his writing and drawings spoke to
the issue of his sadness that his release would be followed by depor-
tation. He told me that he would be back because his mother lived
here. by José
As it turned out 7 students were Mexican, Dominican or
Puerto Rican and one youth was African American with a very different skill set and needs than the
others. He had been placed with the ESL youngsters as protective custody because this was consid-
ered the safest class in the school. His problem wasn’t literacy. He had good skills, but physical dis-
abilities made his gait irregular; one eye wandered and he was frequently the target of other students’
jibes. He also had a hair trigger temper. His teacher and I tried to keep the temper in check before
he had a flare up that would bring COs in to the classroom. The fact that we spoke the same lan-
guage made my job no easier. In fact it made it harder as he could communicate easily only with the
two teachers and we needed to work with all the students not just with him.
A marathon talker, he spoke to me about his writing and desire to be published. He talked to
me while the ESL teacher explained what we would do in Spanish. Because the students had differ-
ent types of learning disabilities she spoke more slowly, used short, sentences and repeated her state-
ments to make sure they were following her. To my delight I was for the most part able to follow her
Spanish. All the years of studying French and Latin really helped.
 He talked while I was talking about what we would be doing and she translated. He talked a
lot. It was disruptive. The fact that his skills were better than the other students was a problem. He
hated to wait while I had to individualize the work I gave him, read and critique what he wrote while
at the same time also walking from table to table trying to help the other students with their alphabet
and writing. I smiled a lot and when words didn’t communicate drew pictures.
Music CDs were the first icebreakers we used to help create a more comfortable atmosphere.
The first class was prefaced by a group decision about what we would listen to while working. I dis-
covered that one student, able to retain information only briefly, and who needed constant verbal
stimulation, was able to maintain concentration solely when music played in the background. We
would use music at each workshop. It helped lighten the atmosphere and provided focus for the stu-
dents beyond their own mood swings.
I had brought with me examples of pictographs and some of the picture books that I had writ-
ten and illustrated for young children as well as books created by younger students. I didn’t worry
about whether or not they were too babyish. They were nonthreatening books obviously written for
younger persons who were beginning readers. It was important that no one felt demeaned. And they
didn’t. Teens like comic books and that was how I presented the exercise.
Among the books was ‘Jolly Molly Molar’ a book I’d written as part of a nutrition curriculum
created for Community School District 2 in 1979 with funding obtained from the US Department of
Agriculture. I’d written the book for K-2nd graders but it had been used in a New England school
with 5th grade learning disabled ESL students. The book had worked well with older ESL and learn-
ing disabled students because it had a lot of drawings; the vocabulary was basic; the sentence struc-
ture was simple; and the story presented a real problem and factual information about nutrition and
teeth. We all have teeth and none of us liked going to the dentist.
Serendipitously, their teacher also had been working that week on a nutri-
tion unit and there were pictures of food and teeth hung around the room. We
together slowly read the book, stopping to talk about my illustrations and joke
about the characters and problems. There was much laughter and teasing about
teeth, food, and the difference between what they ate in the jail and what life was
like at home. Together we created a list of words and then they drew symbols
that related to eating, nutrition, dentists, and teeth. Before the class ended the
students made drawings that later were included in their publications.
It was slow going because of their literacy deficits and disabilities. The
youngster who could retain information only briefly needed much repetition.
Another wanted only to draw because writing frustrated him. As he is a very by Franklyn
talented artist we let him draw and helped him label his artwork. It relieved his anxiety about read-
ing. In every class there was at least one youth who slept through the workshop. The nights at the
jail are long and dangerous. Sometimes there is no rest until they come to class.
There were interruptions in every class by CO’s appearing in the doorway to call out the names
of students that needed to go for meds, for exit counseling, or to talk to a therapist. There were
moments of tension when the young man in protective custody felt someone had dissed him because
of his appearance or he’d come to class hyped up from a fight in the cafeteria and needed to be talked
down or hugged if he curled up on the floor while fighting tears. He’d jump from his chair, get ready
to hurl a punch, had to be talked down.
One morning a fight was averted when their teacher put a salsa CD on the machine. We were
at opposite sides of the room grinned at each other and both of us did a quick dance step. It broke
the tension and one of the boys snapped his fingers, pointed, and laughed about teachers being able
to dance. Probably the best icebreaker of them all.

The crucial educational problem is that of procuring the postponement of immediate action upon desire until
observation and judgment have have intervened.
John Dewey
 Writing Exercises by Patricia Kelly Arts Abled Renga #1
continued from page 1
Usually I’d bring in one of my musical instruments, Patricia Kelly, Poet and Blogger
one that was somewhat unusual sounding, like a did- Richard Spiegel, Co-director, Ten Penny Players
jeridu, and play that a bit as the class just listened with Barbara Fisher, Co-director, Ten Penny Players
Kathy Barlow, Program Coordinator-Wildwood
closed eyes. (BTW, this may be applicable only to School
the blind folk in the class I was teaching at the time,
but I asked them, too, to close their eyes if they want-
ed to, to see if that made a difference in the quality nervous fingers type
and type of their experience. And they said it did.)
on my computer keyboard
I’d also sometimes just read a few very evocative
poems to seed the writing. Students tended to like hope energizes
Patricia
this because they could enjoy the poems and not worry
about having a “correct” understanding of them, as I’d
state we weren’t going to analyze or interpret these a distant author
poems. They were just to be enjoyed/experienced. outlines character and plot
After the “seeding,” I’d lead them in a group an inner voice sighs
poem writing exercise, sometimes with a theme such Richard
as “Our First Day In Class” or “First Day of Spring.”
Asking that they become aware of what they were words seep through the web
thinking or feeling right then, whether it made sense of dreams wrought by an orange
or not, whether it related to what we’d just experi- moon’s spare shifting light
enced together or not. Then I’d ask that they each Barbara
write one line for our group poem. With the blind
folk, I’d have them dictate their lines to me as they had eclipsed moon
them completed in their minds, as I only ever had one
the palm sized dog
student who had a palm-size brailler. With sighted
folk, they’d dicate them to me from their own notes. touches my heart
Patricia
Then I’d read all the lines back to the class as a dreamku: haiku-like
many times as needed and we’d discuss if it required poems about dreams
any rearrangment of lines to make better sense or to
produce a better “flow.” The response at this point my pulse runs
in the “ice breaker” varied greatly from class to class, it dances before me
and with how experienced or unexperienced the vari- playing with friends
ous participants were with writing (therefore, how Richard
ready they were to speak up). I always contributed
a line, too. Sometimes the capping line, but usually rarely do I share
I’d just put it out there when I felt the urge to at some random words via computer
point in the poem. And we always produced a
suprisingly coherent group poem.
another new day
Kathy
Arts Abled Network: News and Reviews -- Richard Spiegel, editor
Articles published by Ten Penny Players in Arts Abled Network: News & Reviews reflect only the opinions of the editor and writers
and do not imply approval or endorsement by any other individuals or agencies.
Arts Abled is a reinvention of ARTSPAES under the administration of Ten Penny Players, Inc.
Steering Committee as of September 2007
Stephen Yaffe Barbara Fisher, Ten Penny Players Inc Thomas Perry
Arts in Ed Evaluator and Consultant Pearl Rosen teaching artist, Ten Penny Players Inc.
Jean Newton Access Consultant Richard Spiegel, Ten Penny Players Inc
Dean of Students and Faculty at Music Lecturer in Art Education, Artist
Conservatory of Westchester Mo Chamble Thomas
Director of Special Education at Arts Horizon