by Ryan Oishi

First, I would like to thank Tradewinds for asking me to write something about (after)words.  It’s a pleasure to be able to share with the Department some of my experiences with (after)words, and some of our goals for the future.

For those of you not familiar with the program, (after)words is an after school creative writing program that seeks to engage high school students with Hawai‘i’s rich literary tradition, and develop their ability to analyze and produce creative work.

I became involved with (after)words two years ago, through Aiko Yamashiro, a talented and highly motivated undergraduate student who many of you may already know. When I met Aiko, she had already run (after)words at Castle high school(her alma mater) the previous year, with great success. It was her vision that the program could be expanded and applied to other high schools as well.

In our second year, we did exactly that: expanding the program to Farrington and Roosevelt high schools. We put out a call for motivated UH students interested in serving as mentors, and the response was overwhelming: 20 students showed up to our first meeting. There was great excitement, as we discussed the potential of the program, and the benefits we saw for both high school students and mentors alike.

For the past two years, I have been mentoring at Farrington high school.  It has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my graduate career.  To see many of my students exposed to Local literature for the first time, to see them recognize themselves in the literature, and feel empowered(in the same way I felt empowered the first time I read Local literature), has been deeply satisfying for me.  Please visit our (after)words webpage and check out some of their poems:  http://after.words.hawaii.googlepages.com/home

Of course, with any bold new endeavor, obstacles have arisen:  establishing contacts with local high schools proved more difficult than initially expected; UH students, though highly motivated, often came from disciplines unrelated to teaching, and many were unprepared to go into the classroom immediately. Though (after)words was expanding, and our second year was by all measures a success, it had not yet reached its full potential.

The next step, I believe, is to institutionalize (after)words, or some variation of the program, within the English Department.  Institutionalization would provide(after)words with the legitimacy needed to establish additional relationships with local high schools; the stability needed to sustain the program over the long run; and the resources and instruction needed to prepare student mentors to go into the high schools.

In this respect, the idea of institutionalizing (after)words follows upon the previous efforts to institutionalize the Poets-In-The-School program in the mid-90’s.It’s my hope that (after)words can serve as a vehicle to restart that conversation.