‘Good for the world … good for the soul’: New Sonoma County youth magazine features Juvenile Hall poetry

The game is up.

The streets took me

in at 12 years old.

Older homies introduced me to

a lil something called a drill —

a sorry sight.

Back-to-back bending blocks.

— anonymous author

When poetry teacher Pamela Michael walks into her classroom at the Juvenile Justice Center on Rancho Los Guilicos Road in Santa Rosa, things look different from the other classrooms where she’s taught for decades.

In this room, as Michael describes it, all students are dressed the same in county-issued olive green garb. No phones are allowed here. Students don’t have access to computers. They cannot bring in their own pens or pencils. Instead, they “check out” shortened pencils that they must return by inserting into a block of wood at the end of class.

Throughout the class, a guard stands to the side of the room.

Juvenile Hall can feel a world away from other places where Michael has led young students to explore poetry, but in some aspects, there is a universal feeling to this room, she said. Just about every student wants to be seen, wants to be heard and wants their experiences validated.

Poetry can help make that happen, Michael said.

“Poetry helps you see the world through new eyes, and it helps you perhaps help others see the world through new eyes,” she said.

In this day and age, that is no small thing. And Michael knows it.

“It’s good for the world,” she said. “It’s good for the soul.”

It’s with that in mind that Michael and others are celebrating the release of Sonoma County Office of Education’s Sonoma County Youth Voice magazine. The inaugural issue features the poems of students at the Juvenile Justice Center.

The poems in the magazine’s first issue came to be through a partnership between SCOE, the juvenile division of Sonoma County Probation, and California Poets in the Schools, a group Michael has worked with for years.

What can kids do to stay

out of juvenile hall?

Who can help find

an easy way to stay out?

Where can we be ourselves

without being confined?

When can cultures not be hated?

Why do people not take

responsibility for their actions?

— anonymous author

The first issue of the magazine came to be with good luck and even better timing.

While Michael was looking around for ways to give her Juvenile Justice Center students a hard copy of their collective works, Jacob Ramírez and staff at the Sonoma County Office of Education were working to launch a literary magazine for student voices.

Ramírez, social justice and equity project coordinator at SCOE, was alerted to Michael’s work and connected with Angie Scardina, the director of alternative education at SCOE. SCOE operates the educational programs for youth in grades 7 to 12 at the juvenile justice center. It was Scardina who brought Michael into the curriculum lineup.

Turns out that all of these voices, all of this student poetry was right there ready to share with the world. So after some discussion it was decided that Volume 1, Issue 1 of Sonoma County Youth Voice would feature student work from Juvenile Hall exclusively.

“It became perfect alignment,” Ramírez said. “This first issue sort of symbolizes all of our kids having so much to say. They just need an opportunity to say it.”

I fear of loving someone too much

and then leaving.

I fear of not having a job

because of my tattoos.

I fear not being financially stable. I fear of being unhappy.

— anonymous author

For Scardina, the project falls in line with key goals of alternative education, not least of which is meeting students where they are and working to bring them back into the educational fold. Sometimes it is just one class that will keep a kid engaged, she said.

Michael, a visiting poetry teacher, coming to the center 12 weeks at a stretch struck a chord.

“It was something that had been done before and we saw success,” Scardina said.

It’s not just about English lessons, vocabulary and meter, Scardina said. It’s about the whole student.

“It’s another way to teach them, ‘Hey here is one way to work with some emotions, here is one way to process things,’” she said.

And nearly everyone, young and old, wants to be validated, she said. To see their words and their work in print? It’s special, she said.

For the first issue 300 magazines were printed at a cost of $15 a piece, Ramírez said. They can be read online at the SCOE website.

But there were certain issues that arose because of the nature of incarceration.

“I obviously wanted to protect their rights. What can I do? What can I share?” Scardina said. “I was just kind of trying to find the right way, to respect them, their privacy and acknowledge the good work they did.”

The answer, in this issue, was to publish the works without the names of the 40-45 students whose work was featured. In future issues, submissions will be credited.

For Michael, too, there are unique challenges to teaching in an environment this purposefully restrictive.

For one, some of her students aren’t with her long.

In many cases, she’ll have a student for a few weeks, and one day they are released.

“Some kids are there and gone,” she said. “Some kids are there for quite a long time. It’s an usual learning environment to be sure.”

There are also rules of engagement in the highly structured classroom that don’t lend themselves to Michael’s usual way of free play with words and chiming in without permission.

But those small hurdles aside, Michael said, the rewards can be immense.

“My goal is to have them writing as much as possible,” she said. “They have a lot to say.”

And sometimes that takes just a little nudge.

“I just want to give them access to their own words and ideas and emotions and hopefully have them understand the words and ideas and emotions of others,” she said.

The deadline for the next issue of the magazine is Feb. 28.

All Sonoma County high school students are encouraged to submit their work in three categories: poetry, flash fiction and autobiographical narrative, using the prompt “When I Need to Nourish Myself.”

“Right now we are going to do two issues a year,” Ramírez said. “We would love to do as many as four a year.”

The more the better, advocates said.

There is value in the process of writing, Michael said, but there is another kind of value in seeing those words on the page and in the hands and minds of others.

“This is their life and these are their words and it’s important for other people to read it and it really means a lot to have it out there in the world,” Michael said.

Now, I think about my future.

What am I going to do?

Who am I doing to cut off

to make my dreams come true?

— anonymous author

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.