How to
Teach English on Skid Row
L
A Downtown News: 1.10.2018 by Eddie Kim
 |
April
2015, Dan Johnson began
volunteering to teach a weekly English class at the Midnight Mission. Soon
after starting, Johnson — a Downtown resident, writer and calendar editor for
Los Angeles Downtown News — realized the eighth-grade level curriculum was
insufficient, to say the least.
The
class materials focused on esoteric lessons on split participles and verb
usage. There was little that might awaken imaginations and inspire discussion.
“Nobody
is coming to you on the street asking for a definition of an adverb,” Johnson
remarked. “I started bringing in pieces of writing like the old Woody Guthrie
song about Fifth Street, or John Fante talking about Bunker Hill. And students
responded really well to these things.”
Thus,
the idea for the Skid Row Reader was
born. A collection of 26 essays and stories from myriad authors on myriad
subjects, the 78-page textbook was crafted by Johnson over the course of a
year. An initial run of 100 textbooks has just been released.
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