Jennifer Wade, a social worker at New York City Children’s Services, incorporated Rise stories into each session of a parenting class she taught at Riker’s Island. Here, Jennifer describes how using parents’ true stories improved the classes:

Last year I taught four cycles of a parenting class for mothers at Riker’s Island, New York City’s jail. Many of the women in class had children in foster care or had children they had not seen in months or years. Most of the women were incarcerated on charges related to drugs or domestic violence.

The parenting class curriculum looked at the family from the perspective that everything around them—their neighborhood, schools, the parents’ personal history, their morals and values—affects how parents raise their children. If you live in a poor neighborhood, it can be a lot harder to get your kids what they need than in a more affluent area. The class helped parents look at their daily struggles and deal with the impact of those struggles on their family.

Helping Moms Connect

I co-facilitated the classes with another social worker, Sheila Lacrete. Before we began the first cycle, we talked how we could help the moms connect to the concepts we wanted to discuss. We also needed to adapt the curriculum for mothers in jail. For homework, they couldn’t play with their kids or take them to a movie.

One day Sheila said, “What about Rise articles? Would they work?” We both subscribed to Rise magazine and got new stories sent to us by email each month. The stories are complex but written on a simple, basic level. The stories are inspiring, too. They show how parents work to solve problems in their families. We thought the stories would give the women in our class hope.

I said, “Let’s look through and pick out stories that relate to our topics. We can use them as the homework.”

Developing Mutual Aid

I created booklets to give to the clients in each class. Each booklet included worksheets, notepaper and one or two Rise stories. The booklets helped parents focus on one topic at a time. We handed the booklets out at the start of each class and asked the moms to read the stories for homework. We gave them time during the next class to discuss each story.

Not all of the participants could read. The women were really good at mutual aid. They would read the stories aloud to each other on their own. Other times, we would read the stories aloud in the group. It was easy to see that, despite their problems reading, everyone could understand the story and could participate in responding to it.

Some women didn’t understand English very well. One of the Rise articles was in Spanish on the website, which was great, and other women were also able to translate for the Spanish-speaking moms.

‘I Can Do That!’

The articles that were really important to the participants were about incarcerated mothers, domestic violence, overcoming addiction, reuniting with children, and the idea of being able to make amends. For many of them, their incarceration was the first time in years that they’d been clean, so they were starting to think about the whole concept of redemption. The Rise stories were uplifting for them.

One story, “Education Starts at Home” by Maribel Martinez, described how Maribel, who came to the United States from Mexico at age 14, helped her children with school even though she did not finish school herself and did not speak English. Maribel created a daily homework time, asked her children about school during dinner, had her children translate the homework so she could help them with the concepts, encouraged them to call a homework helpline, and attended meetings for parents at their schools.

The parents were ecstatic about Maribel’s story. They saw that she used a lot of help-seeking behaviors to get her kids extra help at school. They said, “I can do that!’ The story gave them a lot of ideas about what they could do to support their children when they came out.

Building Hope and Skills

Milagros Sanchez’s story, “Breaking a Painful Pattern,” showed the women how she was able to get her children out of foster care and explained everything she did to prevent re-placement after they came home.

Milagros held weekly family meetings where her children were allowed to ask her any questions they wanted, she did activities and made “game nights” for her children, and she sought help when she found herself treating her children as her own mother had treated her. Her story showed how she was breaking negative family patterns so her children wouldn’t grow up afraid.

Many of the moms in the group felt, “I’ll never see my kids again.” Milagros’s story gave them hope that they could reunify and become good mothers to their kids.

We also read Rosita Pagan’s story, “Making My Son Proud,” about reconnecting with her son after treatment. One of the sessions was about communication, and we discussed the way that non-verbal communication sometimes says more than words. In the story, Rosita’s son refuses to visit her because she is drinking. Once she’s sober, Rosita goes to her son’s basketball games and graduation, and he introduces her to his girlfriend. The mothers were able to say, “That’s non-verbal communication! Showing up or not showing up is a way of communicating.”

‘This Is Me’

Finally, the domestic violence articles were especially helpful. A lot of the mothers were in jail for charges related to domestic violence or because they started using drugs and DV was part of the drug use. Some didn’t even realize that the relationship was violent. They said things like, “If I hit him back, it’s not domestic violence,” or, “He did that because he loved me.”

In the class, we explained that family violence isn’t about anger and aggression. It’s about control. Then they read, “I love you, I’m sorry” by Ilka Perez. The same girls who had been making excuses came in saying, “This is me.” They were able to identify with the writer, who realized that she was in a relationship that was becoming dangerous and decided to leave her partner, even though it meant raising her children alone.

Real People, Real Stories

The Rise stories enhanced the parenting class. Our curriculum gave parents good information, but we didn’t have an easy way to get discussions started. To begin each class, we’d just say, “So tell me about the article. Does anyone identify with the writers?” I can tell you, nine times out of 10, every mom would take part in the discussion.

Talking about another person’s real experience allowed us to make the issues we were discussing real for the participants. We told them, “These stories are not made up. These are real people that have gone through these experiences and the system and were able to come out from under it.”

Without the Rise stories, we would have had to come up with some extremely creative ways of connecting with the mothers in the class, and we didn’t have the time to be creative.

Facing Themselves

The Rise stories gave the mothers a way to express feelings that they didn’t know how to put it into words. They’d say, “That’s how I feel,” “I understand how she feels,” or, “That happened to me.” That was very cathartic for them.

One participant’s husband injured her child, and the child died. Reading Ilka’s story brought up some very painful memories for her, but she told us that it allowed her to begin to face what happened and start the process of healing.

When the mothers first came to the class, they acted negative. They’d say, “I have to do this because the judge said so.” Many of them didn’t want to be there. At graduation, they were all crying and saying how great it was and how they felt listened to and cared about.

Beginning to Bloom

The biggest impact of the Rise stories was that they gave the mothers a sense of hope. One of the moms in the group worked in gardening, and one day she talked all about a plant she was taking care of that just hadn’t been growing. Then one day, she went into work and it had bloomed.

She told us, “In the story, Milagros is blooming. She couldn’t grow for so long when she was getting high, and now she’s in bloom. She’s a proud mother. You can feel the pride coming off of her.” Then she told us, “That’s what I’m doing right now. I’m blooming, just like Milagros.”