Stephanie's Mini-Autobiography

If you want to help her out - please make a check out to "People to People" and send it to me (email me or leave a comment and I'll send you my address). I'll get it to her. Tomorrow I'll put up her picture (with her dad's permission) and a copy of the letter that the leadership forum sent her so you can see that this is for real...

She really is wonderful if you want to do something good with some of your money.

Hi, my name is Stephanie and I am in the 7th grade. I go to one of the new smaller schools in Oakland called Coliseum College Prep Academy and I'm a straight A student at the school because of the help off some of my previous teachers and my family. Some of my teachers that were helpful to me during this were Ms. Harris, my third grade teacher, Ms. Smith, my fifth grade teacher, Ms. Cofield and Ms. Knole my 6th grade teachers and my principal Mr. Townsend.

I have two brothers and one sister. My brothers are 18 and 6 and my sister is 4. My family is also a big influence, especially my parents pushing me to do well in school and make something of myself while taking care of me at the same time. My dad is really involved with my school and my work. But both of them are a big support to me.

My religion is Christianity and I go to church at International Faith Center, a non-denominational church that is also in Oakland.

I live in Oakland, CA. It's all right because now I'm used to it so I've been here all my life. You have to get used to it. There are some distractions but they don't get me off track. I know how to ignore them. I was only far from here once when I went to Washington on the other leadership forum. But this time I get a chance to go even further, out of the country. Actually, I hope I can go. It would be a really good experience for me.

Thank you for reading my Autobiography.

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Stuffed Animals

There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals. This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle. For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people. It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them. Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how

A Loss

(I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why) Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me. He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me. We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class.

A New Prison, Part Two

Second very long part of the prison visit report. After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk. First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other prison but I still

Bronwyn Harris, Author

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