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![Oberlin City Schools administrators, parents, and community members assembled for the second-ever Superintendent Coffee Chat Thursday evening. The event employed a unique model that uses dialogue and collective brainstorming to discuss potential solutions to problems faced by the district, and was facilitated by volunteers from the College’s Yeworkwha Belachew Center for Dialogue.
“We’re bringing in some different people, some fresh ideas in a space where people are really willing to share,” said William Baylis, director of curriculum for the district.
The Coffee Chat addressed specific facets of the district’s educational programming, including college and career readiness, special education, gifted programs, and medical wellness. Attendees split up into small groups based on their primary area of concern and engaged in discussion with administrators including Superintendent David Hall and Oberlin High School Principal Chris Frank. YBCD volunteers mediated the breakout sessions and transcribed discussion points; these notes will help serve as guides for the implementation of new policies and programs in the district.
“Our goal [was] to provide a context for all who attend to be able to contribute ideas, ask questions, to be informed,” Ombudsperson Kimberly Jackson Davidson wrote in an email to the Review. “We trust that such opportunities lead to informed voting and motivation for engagement that will benefit the students who are and who will be educated in Oberlin City Schools.”
Bethany Hobbs, a community member with a son in the district, expressed her appreciation for the opportunity to directly interact with high-level district stakeholders.
“I think it is really nice to be able to connect with the administration and feel like we’re being heard as parents and community members,” she said.](https://oberlinreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/SuperintendentsCoffeeChat_MallikaPandey_WEB-900x601.jpg)
![The Cat in the Cream was packed on Monday night, as middle schoolers, family members and Oberlin students gathered to hear Langston Middle School students read poetry from anthologies of their work. The subject matter ran the gamut, touching on times they felt powerful, people that are important to them, advice they don’t like to hear, and their relationships with their hometowns, among other sources of inspiration.
This work came out of seven-day residencies in the middle school Language Arts classes, taught by college students through the Writers in the Schools Program. This program, directed by Visiting Assistant Professor in Creative Writing Lynn Powell, is the focus of her Teaching Imaginative Writing course. College students compiled the culminating anthologies of middle school poetry, will be on shelves at the school and the Oberlin Public Library.
“I preach to my Oberlin students that to teach well you must prepare yourself as well as you can, and then go have an authentic conversation with your students,” Powell wrote in an email to the Review. “Staying curious and learning together is what keeps both teaching and poetry alive.”
College third-year Elmo Tumbokon participated in the class last year, and taught again as a practicum this fall.
“If you’ve heard the poems that eighth-graders read, it’s literally the most profound thing in the world,” said Tumbokon. “And [to help] kids have access to poetry over and over again, and all I have to do is volunteer my time. … It means the world to me.”
Another student teacher, College fourth-year Jack McMillin, participated in WITS when he was a student at Langston Middle School. In his final year at the College, he’s come full circle with the program.
“As a middle school student, the program was such a joy because it allowed me to think imaginatively in a school setting,” McMillin wrote in an email to the Review. “For me, it’s early chances like the poetry [residency] where I could play around and experiment with my voice that made writing a liberating world, and the more this expanded during my time at Oberlin, the more I wanted to pursue creative writing.”](https://oberlinreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Poetry_MallikaPandey_WEB-900x601.jpg)
