Tanesha 

Raised in an upper-middle class home I’m sure as a child I had little understanding of how the other half lives.  Years later working in the inner-city I had a rude awakening.

As a newly licensed high school librarian I was assigned by the New York City Board of Education to a small vocational high school in the south Bronx,  a neighborhood made infamous by the 1981 movie Fort Apache, The Bronx.

The neighborhood was sketchy with empty,  burnt-out buildings,  graffiti everywhere,  broken bottles in the street, litter-filled lots,  and one morning a few blocks from our school a dead body found sprawled on the sidewalk.  The local bank where many of us cashed our paychecks was robbed so many times it finally closed.

In fact I came to think of our school – Jane Addams Vocational – as an oasis in the asphalt jungle – staffed,  I soon discovered,  by a faculty of passionately dedicated teachers,  many who became lifelong friends.  And all who shared one mission – to educate kids who were among the most disadvantaged in the city, pulling them up by their bootstraps,  and giving them the compassion and support they deserved.  (See Magazines for the Principal, The Diary of a Young Girl,  The Parking Lot Seniority List,  Mr October, and Educator of the Year – Remembering Milton)

Our student body was predominantly Black and Hispanic,  many were recent immigrants who spoke little English,  and most whose families were on Welfare.  In addition to lunch we served our students breakfast, a meal many would not have gotten at home.

And our school was one of a few in the city that ran a day care program in the building so students who were young mothers could finish high school while their infants were well cared for.

Many of our students were from broken homes or single-parent families, some lived with grandparents or older siblings,  some were victims of abuse and neglect, and some were involved in the court system.

We also had students who lived in homeless shelters,  and one of them was Tanesha.

Tanesha was bright and determined to make it despite all that was stacked against her,  and with the help of her teachers and counselors she did.

Tanesha graduated with honors and would go on to college,  and on the day she walked across the stage to get her Jane Addams diploma there were cheers in the auditorium and few dry eyes.

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

Imagine my shock as a kid when I saw my parents throw a set of luggage into the rising waters flooding our basement.
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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