Even as educational administrators across the city have taken the scalpel to arts courses in order to preserve academic classes in public schools in the face of deep budget cutbacks, an after-school program housed at a Bushwick middle school is demonstrating the key role that the visual and performing arts can play in helping students learn and keeping them off the street.
GOSIP (Get on Something Innovative and Positive) was started by three teachers and a parent coordinator in 2007 at Public School 377, 200 Woodbine Street, a pre-K to eighth grade school whose student body, teacher Ricky Singh perceived, was thirsting for an opportunity for self-expression in a neighborhood where gang involvement on the part of young people was leading to what he called “a cycle of violence.”
A hip-hop producer before he switched gears and went into education, Singh fervently preaches the gospel of allowing adolescents the opportunity to immerse themselves in the arts, under the guidance of teachers who understand their dreams and aspirations, and who also demand commitment to their academic pursuits.
“Ever since we started, we have basically been acting almost as second parents,” Singh explained. Every week, he said, the students who participate in GOSIP have to do progress reports detailing how they are doing in all of their classes.
“There’s no way they can get around having to maintain their grades,” he asserted, adding that simply passing isn’t good enough.
And, Singh said, it’s not just the adults who keep tabs on program participants. “Everyone works really well together, so kids check up on kids,” he noted.
Students who get involved with GOSIP can participate in any of five disciplines that the program offers: Hip hop, community art, dance, stepping and videography. And, while they spend two afternoons a week pursuing artistic endeavors, the other afternoons are focused on academics, Singh said, with teachers offering tutoring and support services.
“We try to cover all the bases,” Singh remarked.
Kids are attracted to the program because it offers something they enjoy doing, Singh said. However, rather than taking on the negative airs of so much contemporary self expression, the program is resolutely positive — putting an upbeat spin on student-favored street-savvy art forms including hip hop and graffiti.
“Most after school programs denounce hip hop and graffiti and things that kids like as negatives,” Singh remarked. That, however, is not the approach taken by GOSIP, which guides the adolescents to rethink the media they gravitate toward.
For instance, when the students rap, they do so as a means of “positive self-expression,” said Singh — “not like the stuff you hear on the streets,” noted 12-year-old Bryan Reynoso, an eighth grader at P.S. 377 who has been in the program for two years.
The same is true with respect to the visual arts. Rather than defacing private property with unwanted graffiti, the youthful artists in the program do “legal graffiti,” said Singh, applying their talents to bare walls by invitation only. Last year, the students repainted old murals within the school building. Now, they are casting their nets wider.
“Right now,” Singh noted, “we are reaching out to a lot of organizations to do murals in the street.
“We are trying to get kids involved in the world outside Bushwick,” he went on, “so they can see there’s a world outside the blocks that surround them.”
Among the fledgling program’s achievements in two short years have been the restoration of local murals that had been defaced by gang members; the free on-line release of a hip-hop album, which has been downloaded more than 200 times; and a variety of performances for student audiences and within the greater community.
“It gives me imagination,” Reynoso attested. “I like to act, dance and rap. I write my own raps, and it’s an easier way to express myself. We talk about problems, what’s right and what’s wrong. Everything is positive and it’s a lot of fun.”
Tenisha Edwards, 13, agreed. She has just joined GOSIP, she said, but was extremely excited about it, because it is giving her the opportunity to perform.
“It’s cool,” Edwards said. Where she lives, she added, there are “A lot of kids on the street. That’s something I don’t want. I want to be an actress.”
In 2007, the year the program debuted, about 40 students took part. Last year, between 50 and 70 students participated. This year, said Singh, they are expecting a minimum of 60 participants, between the ages of 10 and 14. “We are growing in increments,” Singh explained.
So far, the students who have taken part in the program have benefited in multifarious ways. Some have focused their interest on a particular art form, honing their skills in order to apply to high schools where that talent is nurtured.
But, the rewards go beyond academic advancement. One student, Singh said, had been the butt of bullies. He went from “being picked on,” to “becoming the most popular kid in the school,” Singh recalled.
Another student “didn’t have the best home family life,” Singh recounted. “He found he could rely on the mentors and the people in the program like a family.”
Amazingly, the investment in the program has largely been one of time, rather than money. Other than about $500 used to create a studio where the student artists could perform, little money has been expended on it. “We’ve been running well totally unfunded,” noted Singh. “At this point, we are reaching out because we want people to know about the program and to know about these kids in Bushwick who are doing amazing things.”
They also want to serve as a role model, Singh said. “We want to send a message to New York that if you want to do something with kids, you don’t need money,” he emphasized.
Nonetheless, looking ahead, Singh said he is hoping that the program could attract significant attention that could “propel it to a bigger level.” One school in Manhattan, he noted, is “sponsored by Def Jam. That’s exactly what we need.”
They would also like their own space. While the school has been a gracious host for the program, the fact that it’s housed in a school limits participation in the program to that school’s students, Singh said. If they could get a space in a community center, they would be able to open the program up to students from across the borough. To that end, Singh said, he has been reaching out to elected officials and others, and looking beyond Bushwick, as well.
For further information on GOSIP, log onto the program’s website, http://www.gosipap.org, or email them at [email protected].