THE CITY LITERACY COMPETITION – STAGE 2
Your group is charged with developing a presentation designed to be effective in the rhetorical situation described below.
Exigence:
Roughly 1,000 school-age children in Denver are homeless. 45% of homeless children do not attend
school regularly while they are homeless; at least a fifth do not attend school at all. Homeless children
are twice as likely as other children to repeat a grade; twice as likely to be diagnosed with learning
disabilities and language impediments; and four times less likely to graduate high school. As a result,
larger numbers of Denver’s homeless children do not acquire the literacy skills needed to escape
poverty as adults, and the cycle of homelessness continues.
To address this problem, the University of Denver and Denver’s Road Home are sponsoring a
competition open to all DU students: the City Literacy Competition. Contestants will propose a plan of
action for making a concrete, long-lasting, and positive impact on homeless children’s literacy in
Denver:
Purpose and plan:
Students in WRIT 1133 are proposing a pilot program, to take place in the fall quarter of 2010. If it is
successful, we will seek to continue it year-round and permanently.
Our program is called “DU Helping Hands.” We propose to gather 100 volunteers from the DU
undergraduate body to serve as literacy tutors to Denver’s homeless children. Volunteers will be
headquartered in the five primary schools in the Denver Public Schools system (DPS) where the
concentration of homeless children is greatest. Each volunteer will meet for two hours, twice a week,
with up to ten children between the ages of 6 and 12, to teach reading and writing.
Meetings will take place in the schools, with up to 25 volunteers at each location, contingent upon need.
Each team of volunteers will be trained and supervised by a language arts teacher from DPS. The
participation of these teachers is voluntary. For his or her participation during the fall pilot project, each
volunteer teacher will receive a $1,500 stipend, drawn from the $10,000 seed money granted via the
City Literacy Competition.
Should the pilot program be made a permanent feature, these teachers will continue to be paid a
$1,500 stipend each quarter from DPS funds. A sixth teacher will be appointed Helping Hands
Coordinator, with oversight responsibilities for the program city-wide. Because this position will
demand considerable time and energy, the Helping Hands Coordinator will need to be relieved of half
of his or her teaching duties.
Audience
The WRIT 1133 students sponsoring this program (i.e., you) will need to make a presentation to the
DPS board panel charged with deciding whether to allow your pilot to proceed. This panel’s
primary purpose is to work with the broader community, especially with those who have ideas about
volunteer and/or research projects involving the schools. Because financial and human resources at
DPS are limited, the board can only approve a limited number of projects.
The panel has agreed to meet with you next week, so that you can make a presentation on your pilot
program in an effort to win their approval. Below are descriptions of the members of the panel,
divided into three categories: easier to persuade, in the middle, and tough to persuade.
Easier to persuade
Terry: Terry is an English teacher in a DPS middle school. She is 28 years old, and has been working
for DPS since shortly after she graduated DU in 2004. Terry grew up in Highlands Ranch. She started
at DU with the intention of getting a degree in finance. However, as a result of a service-learning class
that she took in her sophomore year, she decided to join Teach for America. After her TfA experience
(where she taught English classes to middle school students in Houston displaced by Hurricane
Katrina), Terry came back to Denver, to teach in a middle school in one of Denver’s most economically
disadvantaged neighborhoods. Terry also works as a volunteer at the Saint Francis Center, a daytime
homeless downtown, which is where she met her husband, Tom, who was working at SFC as a
member of the Urban Servants Corp. Tom has since taken a full-time position as Community Relations
Director at Denver Urban Ministries, a food bank and employment center. They recently had their first
child, Tamara, who was baptized at Saint Paul’s, a Buddhist-Christian interfaith church located in
Capitol Hill, where Terry, Tom, and Tamara live. To stay fit and sane in the midst of all this activity,
Terry has taken up tai-chi. Tom hopes to persuade her to take a poetry writing class with him at the
Lighthouse Writers Workshop in a few months, that is, if they can persuade Terry’s teenaged sister
Allison to babysit Tamara during class.
In the middle
Jed: Jed is the Superintendent of DPS, a position that he has held for 5 years, when he was recruited
while serving as principal of a high school in Colorado Springs. Jed is 50 years old. He and his wife,
Virginia, divorced (amicably) two years ago. Their two children, Derek and Kayla, are in college: Derek
at CU-Boulder; Kayla at Brown. Jed holds Master’s degrees in Education and Psychology; he received
both degrees with the help of the GI bill, after he completed his service in the Navy. In the fall, Jed will
begin coursework for a PhD in Education, while still holding down his job as Superintendent. While in
Colorado Springs, Jed served two terms on the city council. He is considering running for a seat in the
Colorado State Legislature after he completes his PhD. In addition to singing baritone in the St.
Martin’s Chamber Choir, Jed is an avid mountain climber who plans to scale Pikes Peak this summer
on his birthday, with Kayla and, possible, Derek in tow.
Tough to persuade
Dawn: Dawn is a member of the Denver City Council. She is a moderate Democrat who represents a
district that has begun to gentrify and become more affluent in recent years. The district includes many
young professional families; Dawn was elected to the City Council in part because she promised to see
to it that the property taxes drawn from her district would be spent primarily in her district rather than
distributed to financially needier schools. Dawn was a corporate lawyer before entering politics full
time; her partner, Camille, own a restaurant in LoDo. The couple would like to adopt a child. Dawn
faces a tough reelection campaign next year; her Republican opponent is well financed and has the full
support of the state party.
Michael: Michael is a member of the PTA and resident of an affluent neighborhood in south Denver.
As an ear, nose, and throat doctor, Michael is quite busy, but, because his children (aged 7 and 9)
attend public school in Denver, Michael considers it his responsibility to take part in the PTA. As a
lifelong Libertarian, Jed has an ingrained dislike for bureaucracy. However, because his taxes pay for
the public schools, he sends his children there; and he wants to see to it that the schools serve his
children well. He’s also a genial fellow, who generally likes his companions on the board. The child of
prosperous Wyoming ranchers, he was the only member of his graduating class at Harvard who knew
how to rope a steer. Michael’s wife, Laurie, is a hedge fund manager.
Arlene: Arlene teaches kindergarten in a DPS primary school. She is single and cares for her father,
Kevin, a retired Denver police officer who retired early due to disability. Teaching is not Arlene’s
preferred career; she took the position because it allowed her to stay with her dad. She has held her
position for 10 years now, and she is feeling burnt out. She would like to leave the classroom and take
a position in administration, any position, but she doesn’t have the experience nor the Master’s degree
that would recommend her for the job. In a perfect world, she would be able to vacation in the
Bahamas this summer, but, in addition to needing to remain home to look after her father, she needs to
start saving money to put a down payment on a house, as it has become increasingly clear that her
father will soon need to sell the house they share in order to be able to afford to take up residence in an
assisted living community. Arlene and her father are fans of the Glenn Beck program; last summer,
they both attended a Tea Party Patriots rally at the State Capitol to protest President Obama’s health
care legislation.