We treat our fellow men so wrong
Then blame it on some one else
Following stereotypes
And racist sayings
About people of a different color
What is the American Dream?
Just as it says it's all a Dream
The real question is, when will we start living it

Seventh, eighth and ninth grade students from Roosevelt Junior High School gained a better sense of their talent, creativity and potential from the Young Women's Writing Project, presented by Hofstra's Reading/Writing Learning Clinic at the Joan and Arnold Saltzman Community Services Center.

These are the last few lines of a poem titled "The American Dream?" by Jennifer Farquharson, an eighth grader from Roosevelt Middle School who participated in Hofstra's Young Women's Writing Project. Read during the program's closing celebration on June 10, 2005, it was just one of the works to elicit cheers, tears and laughter from the standing-room-only audience of parents, siblings, grandparents, Hofstra reading instructors and faculty, and Roosevelt school administrators. Representatives from Planned Parenthood of Nassau County, Inc., and Joan Saltzman of Hofstra's Saltzman Community Services Center Advisory Board were also present. It is a program, now preparing for its fourth year, that has helped dozens of teenage girls find both their voice and potential through the process of journal keeping and creative writing.

The Young Women's Writing Project was born out of a longstanding partnership between Planned Parenthood of Nassau County, Inc., and Hofstra's Reading/Writing Learning Clinic at the Joan and Arnold Saltzman Community Services Center. Planned Parenthood, through a New York state-funded initiative titled Community Based Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (CBAPP), had been providing funding and working closely with Roosevelt students and Hofstra on a series of literacy support services to help young people think in more creative ways about their future and set higher goals for themselves as readers, writers and learners. Clinic Director Andrea Garcia says that "the Roosevelt district was chosen because it was identified as a community with a high risk for teenage pregnancy."

"In the past," says Dr. Garcia, "we offered after-school services that were co-ed and more one-on-one oriented. Attendance was an issue. It was hard to motivate the students, who felt they were coming for remedial purposes."

Still, the enthusiasm of some of the girls impressed the Hofstra instructors. They modified the program, so for the 2002-2003 school year it was reborn as the Young Women's Writing Project for seventh graders. Dr. Garcia says the revised format worked much better. "That first year was very successful, and by the second year, the original young women, at this point in eighth grade, were asking to come back to complete the work they had started."

Dr. Garcia explains that the girls' desire to return for a second year prompted Amy Gaddes, the literacy specialist working with them, to rethink the program model yet again. "We came up with the notion of a mentoring program so that the eighth graders would be able to participate in the program with the new seventh grade students. This added another tier."

In the early days of the revised five-week program, the eighth graders received mentorship training, and their younger peers were asked to read poetry, coming-of-age stories and books to help stir their creativity and get them ready to write.

"The mentors are asked to think of themselves as guides and find ways to facilitate the writing process for others. They share their success stories and things that worked for them as writers. It's very goal-oriented," says Dr. Garcia.

"One of the things we noticed early on," Dr. Garcia says, "is that when you provide a space for these young women to express themselves, the conversation quickly turns to the things that matter most to them: their community, friendship, loneliness, attention, love or the lack of."

It was no surprise that for 2004-2005, several ninth graders, who had participated in the previous two years, wanted to come back yet again. Dr. Garcia, Ms. Gaddes and a new reading and literacy instructor, Melissa Cody, allowed those older girls to serve as expert writers. The returning eighth graders remained mentors and a whole new group of seventh graders were brought in, bringing the program participation up to 24 students.

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