Library Services
Word Journeys
On this page:
What is Word Journeys?
Since 2001, high school and elementary students from the Amphitheater Public Schools have met afterschool at the Woods Memorial Branch Library as a part of the Word Journeys program. They have fun with words and expressive arts, and teen mentors build leadership skills while working with elementary students in workshops facilitated by author Marge Pellegrino. This year's (2007-08) theme was Friendship Across Cultures. Previous themes included Coexistence, Story and Drama, and Art as a Springboard.
Each workshop includes a story, a writing springboard and time for sharing, as well as time for mentors and mentees to explore the library via books and targeted activities. Teen mentors plan and setup the weekly workshops, encourage the younger students, write in their journals and reflect upon the week's experiences.
Participants take several field trips, including to the University of Arizona campus, the University of Arizona's School of Theatre Arts, and the Arizona State Museum. As the semester ends, students exhibit their work at a public reading and display.
Word Journeys is a unique artistic and literary after-school program for underserved youth in a racially diverse and socioeconomically challenged Tucson neighborhood. This year (07-08), Ms. Pellegrino collaborated with school counselors to reach out to the neighborhood's newest members - Bantu refugees from Somalia. As a result, three of the teen mentors and half of the elementary school students were recent refugees from Africa.
Word Journeys' Awards
Word Journeys has received many honors and public recognition. It won the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities 2008 Coming Up Taller award, presented by the First Lady Laura Bush in Washington, D.C., and included a $10,000 prize. Word Journeys also was a semifinalist in 2007.
It was honored with a display at the U.S. Department of Justice's Juvenile Justice Office in Washington, D.C., and was honored in collaboration with Columbia University Teaching College's Comic Book Project.
Read more about Word Journeys in the Tucson Citizen and Arizona Daily Star.
View photos of Word Journeys 2008 on Flickr.
What are the goals of Word Journeys?
Word Journeys has several goals. They include:
- Provide job skills to mentors
- Model and encourage community service
- Bring families, children and teens into the library for programming and services
- Promote literacy
- Celebrate life-long learning
How is Word Journeys funded?
For the 2007-2008 school year, Marge Pellegrino's programming and administrative fees were paid with grants from the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records. Pima County Public Library's Youth Services staff supervise the program, provide the workshop's primary meeting place, seek out funding, obtain writing and art supplies for the workshops, and handle the administrative tasks.
Other partnering organizations and funders have included:
- The Friends of the Pima County Public Library
- YMCA of Tucson
- Arizona Commission on the Arts
- The National Endowment for the Arts
- The American Library Association
- The Arizona Humanities Council
- The Tucson-Pima Arts Council
- Community Extension Programs, Inc.
- AMPHI High School
- The Owl and Panther Project
- Prince Elementary Newcomer Intervention Program
- Tucson City Council, Ward III
Who is eligible to participate in Word Journeys?
Counselors and teachers from Amphitheater Public Schools help recruit Word Journeys participants from elementary schools and its three high schools.
What are Word Journeys workshops like?
This year's theme, Friendship Across Cultures, gave students opportunities to examine the details of different cultures, such as geographically identifying clothing, foods and stories. Each week, Ms. Pellegrino dressed in clothing from different places and the children guessed where in the world her clothing came from, then found that place on a large map and referred back to Tucson. Here is a small sample of Word Journeys activities:
- Beatrice's Goat by Page McBrier is a story that takes place in Uganda where a young girl's life changes for the better, thanks to a goat. It inspired a Then and Now dually bound book that depicts an event in the life of the child author - showing how life was before and after a time that was meaningful in their lives.
- The book Building a Bridge by Lisa Shook Begaye is used to show how a friendship of an "other" in a culture develops through shared play. Students built illustrated poems using the words in the book as the building blocks.
- One of the many things the students all had in common was being born, no matter where that was. Another workshop uses the book On the Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier to set up an activity that asked the students to create a story and image about the day they were born.
Other activities include:
- Face painting. Mentees and mentors look at images of different cultures - Native American, Huichol, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Sudanese and American - that use face painting in rituals, for defense or theater. Participants paint their faces and write from the perspective of the character they become.
- A library treasure hunt. Participants hear about ancient libraries and examine imitation artifacts. They discuss libraries today and each student or team of students is responsible for tracking down one "informational treasure" in the library. The treasured ideas are shared and students write a motto for the current library on a polished bone, the medium of an ancient library. The workshop concluded with the creation of a poster mapping their ideas.
About Marge Pellegrino
Author Marge Pellegrino has published poetry, essays, nonfiction articles and three children's books, Too Nice, My Grandma's the Mayor, and I Don't Have an Uncle Phil Anymore. On the artist roster of the Arizona Commission on the arts, she facilitates writing workshops in Pima County and throughout Arizona.
Her forthcoming young adult novel, Journey of Dreams, will be published by Frances Lincoln Books in London in 2009. It was previewed by the Arizona Daily Star.