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Caroline Center Summary conversation circle notes as provided to learners
Our conversation circle met twice. The first day included women from two classes that came together. The second day involved only the women who wanted to participate or who could come for more conversation.
On the first day, we took turns introducing ourselves. We also said something about what we like to read or how we feel about reading. These are some of the things we said:
Books we have read and authors we like
* Magazines
* Spiritual books / devotional / Gospels / Bible / Daily Meditation books
* Modern Woman Magazine, Oprah's magazine
* Adventure books
* Four Sisters fiction stories
* Book by Kareem Abdul Jamal
* Color Purple and other book by Alice Walker
* Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back and other books by Terry Macmillan
* I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and other books by Maya Angelou
* Books by Iyanla Vanzant, especially the book about her life
* $20.00 bill
* Pop-up books
* The posters on the walls at Caroline Center and the other spiritual readings about women that they give us
* and other signs and posters on the street and on the buses
* Books for "dummies" like Computers for Dummies
* Push by Sapphire
* Source Magazine
* Suga
* Right On
General Comments about Reading
* Most of the women in the group read with their children. For some, this is the only time we read.* "I will read if I have to"
* RS suggested that younger women in the group need to read more than just children's books. Maybe it would help them get into reading if it was more about their daily lives.
* "I read all types of books. I love to read."
* "There's nothing sicker than having a book that you have to look up the words in the dictionary every 5 minutes."
Topics
or Book Subjects We Want
(Note: only about one-third of this list came from the first day.
The majority of suggestions came from the smaller group on the second
day)
* Books that enhance our vocabulary
* "Daily lives" &endash; things that happen every day
* True stories and interesting books
* Pictures
* How to improve your credit
* Books with simpler vocabulary that helps to break things down
* Stages of children's development and behavior (but refer to list on books we don't want)
* Jobs, benefits, how to find a job with good benefits
* How to make enough money working at home
* Breast cancer issues for African American women
* STDs. AIDS, syphilis, herpes
* Sickle cell anemia
* Asthma
* Diabetes and high blood pressure in African Americans
* Heart attacks happening to young people
* Babies with arthritis
* Babies having babies
* Abortion / choice
* Gay stuff
* Passing kids through school even if their work isn't good
* Domestic violence
* Child molestation
* Book about fear of driving
* Creative things (stories and activities) for girls 12-16 that tell them things like not to have sex, not to use drugs, staying safe, staying in school, no boyfriends at the age of 10
* Runaway teens
* Patience - knowing what to say at the right time
* Books on the way you say things and how to present yourself
* Mothers & daughters or Mothers & sons
* Grandmothers raising kids&endash;better than foster care; stress on grandparents; mothers need to take responsibility for their children
* When to stop having kids &endash; this is NOT the same as birth control
* Abuse of the welfare system
* Drugs in the community; how to get the pushers on the corners to go away
* Book on respect
Books we DON'T want
* How to make friends* How to become a "better person"
* Parenting books that tell you how to raise your child - "No one can tell you how to raise your own child" (though books on stages of development and behavior would be useful)
* "Don't want people to give me books on how to improve myself."
* Don't like people to read to me !!! For example, if someone thinks there's something I should know about and they just start reading to me, like out of the newspaper or something.
Other general ideas
* Book club* Don't like Oprah's books club it costs too much money (some of the women also just don't like Oprah) We would rather use the library.
* We get our books from Waldenbooks, from the library, from a friend's house
* If a movie is based on a book (like Color Purple or How Stella Got Her Groove Back), the book is always better than the movie. It's better to read the book. If you see the movie, you have to read the book after. Or if you read the book first, sometimes the movie ruins how you thought about it.
* About writing - I can put words together but it's hard for me to get them onto paper. I don't know where to put the periods and stuff
* You always have to read the small print so you know what you're signing. People get burnt if they don't read it all, especially law stuff and social services when they tell you to sign at the X_____ before you can read it.
We also talked about these things (general things we talked about on the side)
* Women who can't read at all* Working at home
* Staying clean and sober
* Parenting issues
* Writing essays for the GED - what the topics are and how hard it is
* GED and math problems - how the test is very different from what we learned at Caroline Center and how they will change the test next year to include calculus
* Friends controlling us
* How we talk to the drug pushers in our neighborhood and how they disrespect us by selling drugs while we're walking our children to school or to the bus
Ideas for a book about women at the Caroline Center
Women in the conversation circle had the idea that we should write a book about women who go to Caroline center &endash; a book about our lives. We were very excited about this idea. We would like to read a book about the life experiences of women who attend Caroline Center. If a book like this had been given to us when we first came here, we would have liked that. It would have been helpful.
These are some of our ideas about what could be in this book and what it would mean to us.
* I could read about women with experiences like mine:* Women who don't know math
* Women who don't read well
* Women who want to get their GEDs
* Women who want to get off welfare* I would like to write my own story
* To know about our different backgrounds
* We can write our stories but we don't need to use our own names.
* It should have lots of pictures
* It would be divided into sections and chapters
* Some women might not want to write their own stories or would find this hard to do. Maybe someone could interview them or maybe they could narrate it on tape and someone else could help them to write it.
* Single parent experiences
* Growing up in their communities
* Survivors of drugs / alcohol
* Getting our independence back
* Dedicated to the Sisters at Caroline Center
* Why are you here (at Caroline Center)? What was it like before you got here? What's it like after you came here? How are you different? How is your life different?
* How do you feel about yourself?
* What gives you motivation and encouragement?
* Are your goals different since coming here? Like deciding to go to college?
Ideas on how
to get the "Women at Caroline Center" book written
We will work with Mev by email. Mev will coordinate it.
Mev will make a flyer and RS will make sure everyone at Caroline Center gets it.
RS will talk about it with women and will help to coordinate.
Some women will get together to make a committee to work on it and to edit.
We will correspond by email.
Women who want to write something will write a paragraph about what they want to do and email it to Mev.
Mev will try to come back in late June or early July.
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Number of learner participants (all meetings) |
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Age Range |
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Race / Ethnicity |
Mixed race: African & Native American -1 |
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How many are parents? |
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