November 23, 2006 Issue                                       

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©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Inner-city kids won over by Springside teacher
by MELISSA HUNSBERGER

Abby Gordon, an English and history teacher at Springside School in Chestnut Hill, had success working with first-time offenders.

This past summer a new course, Young Artists on Broad, part of the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (MAP), gave “adjudicated youth” (first-time offenders) in Philadelphia an opportunity to employ their artistic skills. Abby Gordon, an English and history teacher at Springside School in Chestnut Hill, was hired to instruct the course. Gordon is in her second year at Springside.

Young Artists on Broad was started in conjunction with the Philadelphia School District and Work Ready Philadelphia. All of the students who participated in the four-week long program had been through the Department of Human Services. They were given the choice of which MAP course they wanted to participate in. The purpose of the program, sponsored by Work Ready Philadelphia, was to provide students with job training skills, which included showing up on time, putting effort into their work and, in return, receiving a paycheck. Students also had an academic component to complete in those four weeks.

During the first week-and-a-half of the program, artist and former University of Pennsylvania School of Design lecturer, Don Gensler, had the students working on projects that were later incorporated into the redesigned plaza at Ben Franklin High School in North Philadelphia. Drawings and paintings made by the students are now a part of plaza paving, which was designed by architect Paz Gutierrez.

Abby is seen in her history classroom with Springside students (from left) C.C. Conver, Thierry Jones, Kendyl Spearing and Deirdre Braun. Abby also has worked with inner-city kids in a summer course affiliated with the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

The students worked on such projects as monoprints, block printing and paper collage during their time with Gensler. Gordon also had the students print some of their designs on T-shirts, which they then embroidered. “Those turned out really beautiful,” said Gensler. Each morning the students would embroider while they waited for everyone to arrive for class. “The boys really got into it,” said Gordon, 28, a graduate of Germantown Friends School and Columbia University, with a Master’s degree in history from the University of Delaware.

Gensler would start the students on a project, and then Gordon and her co-instructor, Darien “Flip” Fripps, a local DJ, would take over for the remainder of the day. The program began with 16 students, some of whom ended up having to leave for various reasons, leaving 10 students — eight boys and two girls. The students, ages 14 to 17 and from all over the city, were resistant at the beginning of the program. “The students came from a very different background then what I was used to,” Gordon observed. “They were tough kids. I’ve taught in private schools my whole teaching career, so at first I kind of felt like they weren’t going to want to listen to me.”

Within the first week, Gordon quickly overcame the resistance, and the students warmed up to her and the other instructor, Flip. Gordon was able to get the students to open up and take pride in their work. “They were totally awesome after that,” Gordon says.

During the final two weeks of the program, Gordon had the students focus on mosaic work since that is her specialty. Each student made his or her own mosaic panel out of stained glass. The students even had the opportunity to tour mosaic tile artist Isaiah Zagar’s Magic Gardens on South Street.

Zagar asked the students to sketch him while they sat in the garden listening to him tell of the history of the creation of the Gardens. The students also went on a tour of his studio, which is floor-to-ceiling mosaic. “It was really fun for me to get to lead because I had never taught it before,” Gordon said. The kids enjoyed themselves so much they were still talking about it the next day in class.

Another project the students worked on involved poet Angela Crafton. They wrote poems about life in their respective neighborhoods and their overall impression of the city. The students wrote such things as hearing gunshots around the corner the night before or how a sibling had been held up at gunpoint. Crafton helped the students learn how to express themselves in a creative manner.

The Young Artists on Broad program culminated with an open house exhibition in the plaza at Ben Franklin High School.Nearly every student sold a piece of their collection, which Gordon said was so gratifying for the kids. It was an eye- opening experience for Gordon who says she’d “be delighted to get involved again if I was asked.”