When Literacy Came
Clark, Crystal (2010-03-13)
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: My name is Crystal Robinson Clark and for the most part born and raised in Columbus. I did spend some years in Sunbury, Ohio so I graduate from Big Walnut High School but the most of my being brought up in Columbus. Now I am a professor at: the Columbus State Community College, I teach English so my heart really belongs in the area of writing and reading, reading and expressing self.  When I think about literacy it takes me back to those early days and being an elementary school student at Gladstone elementary school, which is a small school, not too far from downtown Columbus.  In fact it's off of Cleveland Avenue.  The building still stands but students are no longer in attendance there because the school was closed down several years ago.  What's interesting about that is that the school was built, I think, in 1965 and it was just a beautiful building, put then at the time in a black neighborhood.  And I just loved it, I loved the grounds, I just really felt privileged to attend the school.  But we didn't have a library and so there I was attending school, I think I started there in 1972, and we didn't get a working library until my fourth grade year, which would have been 1976.
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: When the library came it was gorgeous, but when it came they hand selected which students would be allowed to use it.  So in the class, I think from our class, there may have been three or four students who were allowed to make this a special trip to the library.  And then we were assigned different books to read and when we were given those books we had an art project that we were supposed to do.  And what I remember were sheets of felt, different colored felt, and thick yarn, and heavy needles.  So I must have read a book about spiders or something because then I crafted this felt piece of art that had glued pieces and then a stitching with the yarn.  Now what happened to that art to do not know.  As an adult now looking back, I have reason to believe that all of those efforts were really for other people, and not really for the students there, even our families.  I'm sure that art and put it on display somewhere, for outsiders to come in and evaluate it and our literacy.  The majority of the population wasn't even allowed to go to that library.  So that's the story, then, I remember.  And I don't ever remember going to the library on any other locations other than that opening day and then spending time doing that our project.  I do not remember doing class visits; I don't remember that all for that particular library.
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: We had access to books but we didn't have "let's go into that facility".  
>>INTERVIEWER: Right.
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: so we'd be, because I remember in that same class we read, it was fourth grade, and we read Tales of Fourth Grade Nothing.  My teacher, Mrs. Harris, she came in with a box, and in the box she had books.  So she handed us individually our books, and we had middle of the day sustained silent reading. She would pass this hour books after lunch for sustained silent reading than you would get to read it and you would pass it right back and she would put it back in the box and put it back in the floor underneath her desk or whatever.  And we didn't make trips to the library; we had that special occasion for the selected few to go to the library and that was it.
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: I think my experiences at school we're really different.  I was often the pulled out child.  So I was pulled out a lot, I was pulled out to take a special test or was pulled out to go on a special trip.  So I was always one of the one and only that got pulled out for special things and I never thought anything of it.  My mom usually said that I could, I mean there were certain tests that she clearly said I was not allowed to take.  So she said “if they try to come and get you to take an IQ test, you are not allowed to take it.  You call me and I will come and get you or whatever, but do not take an IQ test.” But I was pulled out a lot for special things.  What that meant I don't know.  I mean, they were programs that were openly-and paperwork that came were offered to me-there was something called the ABC Program, which meant – it might have been called ABC, I'm not sure what it's called now.  But there is a special program where they took kids from really poor areas and then they would send to boarding schools on the East Coast.  So I was one of the children selected to do that.  I didn't go of course because my mom thought that was ridiculous, like “I'm not sending my child across the country!  She's going to get whatever kind of education she can right here!”
>>CR YSTAL CLARK: So there were those kind of programs that were, I don't know, more full disclosure about what it is they were offering, but there were some in house things as well that would happen.  Somebody would come and offer special subjects there was an even talk to everyone and I would be one of the kids selected for the specials subject, like violin lessons.  I was one of the kids selected to have I listen lessons but they didn't select everyone or they didn't give access to everyone to choose whether or not they wanted it or not.  
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: For this particular quarter I am on a sabbatical and I bring that up because I have been working on a project that really deals with creative writing.  I wanted to make a creative writing workbook, not a textbook that gives you all the rules, not a book that would catapult me into some kind of fame and fortune because that wasn't the goal.  I really wanted to write for the community.  Years ago we had a grant and what the grant allowed us to do was to go into settlement houses and to teach creative writing for whomever showed up.  These are people who weren't necessarily high school graduates who were very retired, retired long-term, been at home for a long time, so nowhere near a school or academic environment.  And what we did is we built relationships with the Southside Settlement House and we went and took the skills that we have for creative writing and gave it to the community.  It was done via grant so I did, I think, three different projects at three different community centers and established relationships with those people.  And what often happens is sometimes when we would have the quarterly poetry and fiction readings they would come to the poetry and fiction readings.  Or when we started having in our department an annual creative writing conference those people would come from their homes, and they would come up to the campus and there would be a part of it. 
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: so I'm not really talking so much about the student creative writers as much as I'm talking about the community creative writers.  And so when I started putting together the creative writing project, the workbook, it really is for those students.  I am the cook at the local elementary school but I write short pieces on the side or I do go to OSU or I do go to Columbus State but I am a comic book writer.  My project was really geared towards encouraging that. 
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: When I delivered my daughter in July, I didn't know that all kinds of trauma broke out, but trauma broke out.  So at some point when I was being prepped for the delivery I passed out.  I'm talking and of course I'm complaining about what ever as pregnant women often do, and that I was just out cold.  When I came to, I thought I was in just the recovery room and I thought: “Oh, it's just all good! They've got great drugs in the recovery room! Just go on back to sleep because you know it doesn't hurt!” So I went on back to sleep and then when I woke up again I wasn't so sure that I was in the recovery room and that was confused. I don't think this is the recovery room and no one is coming to talk to me, so I'm not sure where it is I am.  I knew I was tubed in some kind of way because I had all this stuff attached to me. So at some point I'm fanning and waving to get somebody to come in and talk to me.  And I happen to be in ICU and I didn't know I was in ICU and when they came and I'm trying to explain something to them I don't understand why I can't, talk, but I'm tubed; I've got tubes out of my nose, I've got two down my throat.  I managed to communicate with the attending nurses.
[WHISPERS]
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: “I need something to write with!” Because it's not encouraging me, I'm in a bad way, this is a bad situation!  So the nurse goes and gets me the yellow writing pad and she gets me a pencil and of course arms stretched out like this, and I'm trying to write like this, and I'm tubed and I'm wired and I am writing “What is taking so long?” and I think that they are almost tickled by me because they're so surprise I would request this paper and pencil.  I'm thinking: “I'm a literate person, I'm a writer.” Not like they know this. I'm like, my first trip I'm going to tell them: “Hey I'm a writer, this is what we do!” And they said: “You already have the baby; you had the baby the day before.” So then of course I'm like: “Well what happened?” And of course they tell me what happened and I'm just really shocked about what they explain.  And then I write down: “Well what did I have?” 
[Laughs]
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: Because I don't even know the gender of the child and they told me “You have a little girl.” But all of this I am writing out these lines and I'm writing in cursive and sometimes they can't read the writing, so I'm trying to rewrite it.  And they've got the little oxygen thing here, and I've got IVs in my arms, I got all the straps in all these twos and I'm writing out, what it is that I think.  And at some point when they were reeling me down to get some X-rays done, and of course I had everything taken out and it has been a really traumatic experience.  But god brought me through.  At some point sat them: “I think I am just being overly smug, do you often get people who are asking you to write with?” And they are like: “No, people are on drugs, they don't ask for things!”
[LAUGHS]
>>CRYSTAL CLARK: And they kind of stopped, and I go: “Well I'm an English instructor!” but I don't think it had sunk in for me exactly what I had been through and I was really just being optimistic and I guess the first thing that I really wanted to be able to do was communicate and when I couldn't talk, I wanted paper and pencil.  And I am so grateful that they brought it to me.  So before I even saw my child, I got to have paper and pencil.