Stories
A story wakes up and gives us its name. Suddenly music, tones, the rhythm of things begin to matter. Take a shape. We call our stories Abecedarian because they are of elemental things: community, pedagogy, agency, teaching, social responsibility.
​
I don't remember how the Abecedarian began. I was always scribbling a name or a portrait on the back of a pad or envelope. Eventually the envelopes ended up on a page. Becoming text they acquired a legitimacy and a name: Kimani, Eric, Tara, Chris, Damayra. The voices of urban youth, the stories lives tell. Collectively they evoke a thick description of what it means to grow up tangled in the labels of urban America without losing your dreams or forsaking your soul; and individually, not as case studies but as confirmations that education can be a process of presenting to each child, the enormous presence of a hero (O'Gorman: 1968).