When I was asked–allowed–to untie my tongue in What’s the Story?, I began to understand that I was my own creator. I began to peel back my understandings of education and consider deeply what learning was. I worked for two years on multi-media campaigns exploring the experience of gender non-conforming students in Vermont middle in high schools. With that came an endless stream of events that have since changed my life.
During the car ride home, we Vermonters reflected on the immense strength and possibility of NextGen. The Hazhó’ó Hólne’ Writing Conference would shape our social action work in Vermont as well as our personal roles in our communities for the rest of our lives.
For the past few years my younger sister and I have been displaced, moving from house to house, never getting too comfortable or being too sure that we’d sleep in the same bed for more than a week. After being displaced again this past Christmas and feeling entirely alone with the weight of the world on my shoulders, I just mentally needed a place to go, a place where my situation didn’t exist, a place where I could be a kid—something I didn’t have the luxury of doing in my everyday life. I found that in NextGen.
As a group we all proposed ideas to stay in touch and ensure that NextGen survives. We owe that much to the youth that will come after us.
Thanks to the conference, I realized it’s ok for me to be vulnerable with myself, and that the voice of the youth matters. Interacting with the individuals from NextGen really opened my eyes to how big of an impact the youth has on their communities, from bringing families together to write, to showing the importance of monumental institutions like Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, to strengthening the voice of the youth from the LGBTQ community. People really overlook how important it is for the voice of the youth to be heard.
…BTLN NextGen challenged me to not become a better me but to bring out the best of me and to use that and pour it back into my community and the world.
by Tim O’Leary BLSE 2016 Co-Director, What’s the Story? the Vermont Young People Social Action Team Technology Innovation Specialist Shelburne Community School Shelburne, VT We are thrilled to be immersed in another year of a free Bread Loaf program for middle and high school youth across Vermont: What’s the Story? The Vermont Young People Social
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The Next Generation Leadership Network (BLTN NextGen) is a collaboration between Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English (BLSE) and Ivan Allen College at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Working with underserved youth in six sites across the United States, the network is currently funded by the Ford Foundation. The network seriously engages the question:
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Dewight Leupp 2018 BLTN NextGen Summer Intern University of New Mexico The capacity and willingness to learn is great among my generation. I know we can influence the next generation to be agents of change. I had a chance to build and test this theory this summer as an intern for the BLTN Next Generation
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Since 2014, the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN) has partnered with the Navajo Nation and Partners in Health to provide writing and mentorship opportunities for the Navajo Community Health Outreach Program. As writing mentors, BLTN members have provided writing workshops for the NCHO Youth Leadership Program where we combine, creative, analytical, and reflective writing to
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