Rikers Island Oral histories Come to Life

The Killing the Sky -- Rikers Island Literacy Project grows out of a unique collaboration between The Student Press Initiative and Horizon Academy, the Department of Correction/Department of Education high school at Rikers Island in New York. This writing-for-publication classroom project began by first recording and transcribing the students' oral histories. Student, teacher, and SPI teaching artists then worked intensively and collaboratively to revise, edit, and transform transcript into draft. The resulting personal narratives offer an arresting glimpse at the kind of anger and violence that arise out of the conditions these young men have survived in school and on the streets. There is wisdom and insight in these stories, and most notably a fervent desire to be heard.

Student Press Initiative is a literacy program of Teachers College, Columbia University.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Student
• Press
• Initiative
• Rikers
• Island
• Jail
• Literacy
• Prison
• Publication
• Erick
• Gordon