A partnership between the INSTITUTE FOR LEARNING AND TEACHING (ILT) at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Massachusetts - Boston and the El Jolgorio de Massachusetts, Inc., the HISPANIC WRITERS WEEK project is an innovative, week long initiative that introduces Latino literary professionals from the four corner of the Hispanic world to local Latino students.

Utilizing interactive seminars and lectures, the project aims to educate students about the importance of using writing as a tool for educational advancement, communication, as an alternative for conflict resolution. The week long workshops are being conducted in public school classrooms and libraries of Boston, Cambridge, and Chelsea.

Project Background & History

The HWW project is a product of the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences Reading Series at UMass-Boston, a project initiated in 1987 that has brought to Boston some of the leading writers in the continental United States, South and Central America, Europe and Vietnam. The series was created to foster and promote dialogue and discourse on the origins and consequences of war and violence in the global community.

In 1993, the Joiner Center created the HISPANIC WRITERS WORKSHOP, aimed at involving members of the Latino community in the Joiner Center series and activities. The Hispanic Workshop began as a two-day event, consisting of a Friday night reading in Jamaica Plain for the Latino community and an all-day workshop on Saturday, highlighted by a morning panel on issues of language, culture, identity and forms of literary expression.

Faculty for the workshops was selected from a list of accomplished writers and included acclaimed authors like Martín Espada, Demetria Martínez, Leroy Quintana, Tino Villanueva, Margorie Agosin, Alan West, Jack Agüeros, Naomi Ayala, Claribel Alegría, Rosario Ferre, Yrene Santos, Charlie Trujillo, Daisy Zamora and others.

The HISPANIC WRITERS IN THE SCHOOLS program drew on this experience and developed into a separate event supported by the Joiner Center and the Boston Public Schools. The HWW project received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1995, which helped to formally establish the program and to attract writers like John Balaban, Leroy Quintana, Marilyn Nelson and Carl Phillips, among others.

In 1997, the program was expanded to include activities at UMass-Boston for the over 100 participating Latino students. The curriculum of the program was development in collaboration with the Talented and Gifted Latino (TAG) Program, Project ALERTA, the School-to-Career Program of the Boston Schools, the Mauricio Gaston Institute at UMass-Boston, as well as the Latino Parents Association.

In 1998, the program was expanded again, to include weeklong workshops offered by visiting writers in middle and high school classes. In collaboration with Project ALERTA at UMass-Boston, the Hispanic Writers Week initiative was introduced to elementary schools. Over the next ten years, visiting writers conducted workshops in public schools in Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea and Lynn, increasing the number of students served from 300 to over 850 students annually.

In March of 2008, due to the retirement of the founder of the program from his position at the Joiner Center and historical close ties to programs at the ILT, the operational responsibilities of the program were transferred to the Institute for Leaning and Teaching.

Hispanic Writers in the Schools Program

The HISPANIC WRITERS WEEK IN THE SCHOOLS PROGRAM seeks to reach students at all levels of the public schools in Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, and Lynn. The faculty, invited writers to the HISPANIC WRITERS WEEK IN THE SCHOOLS PROGRAM, is composed of writers from the four corners of the mainly Hispanic world. The 2007 faculty included Luis Alberto Ambroggio (Argentina), Rey Emmanuel Andújar (Dominican Republic), Naomi Ayala (Puerto Rico), Adela Basch (Argentina), Mario Ramiro Diaz, (Guatemala), Elkin Eduardo Echeverri (Colombia), and Danielle Legros Georges (Haiti) to name a few.

The goal of the HISPANIC WRITERS WEEK IN THE SCHOOLS PROGRAM is to encourage students and teachers to explore the process of writing and the experience of being a writer in both languages, English and Spanish. The writers in residence are bilingual who work closely with students and teachers in their respective classrooms during the week, to encourage students to become comfortable and acclimated with literature in both languages.

Most present and past writers in residence, such as Marjorie Agosín (Chile), Jack Agüeros, Claribel Alegría (El Salvador), Martín Espada, Rosario Ferre (Puerto Rico), Demetria Martínez, Leroy Quintana, Yrene Santos (Dominican Republic), Charlie Trujillo, Sonia Valdez Rivera (Cuba), Tino Villanueva, poets Alan West Duran (Cuba), Raúl Ybarra (Nicaragua), and Daisy Zamora (Nicaragua), come from places other the United States and know very well what it means to leave one's country and inmigrate to a new one. These are writers who have confronted firsthand the experiences of war, terror or violence, and, in the classroom, work well with inner city students who have all too often been witnesses to or victims of urban violence. They are writers who offer students alternatives and fresh ways of understanding and reacting to their experiences and can speak convincingly of the importance of language in expressing feelings and emotions and the power of the written word to communicate to others the important issues facing them as individuals and as members of the community. Writers in residence serve as role models; committed individuals dedicated to the discipline that writing requires, writers who have learned the value of finding one's own voice and describing one's own history as a way of defusing and resolving conflicts, both internal and external.

Public Schools Reading

Writers in residence offer writing workshops throughout the day, Monday through Friday, in the various participating schools. The week culminates with a Saturday student reading program where a number students from each classroom are invited to read to their peers, teachers, parents, and community members in general in each of the schools, the literature work they created in the workshops Each student upon successful completion of the workshops is awarded a certificate of achievement and those invited to read are awarded a medal.

Hispanic Writers Week Community Program

During this week and complementing the IN SCHOOL PROGRAM is the COMMUNITY READING PROGRAM visiting writers join in a Monday to Thursday program of evening readings, sharing their works with parents, teachers, school administrators, and an eclectic mixture of published, emerging, and aspiring Hispanic authors, poets and friends from the local communities. In 2007 there were seventy-two readers including the invited writers sharing their work with an overflow audience.

The Institute for Learning and Teaching

The Institute for Learning and Teaching (ILT) is a unit of the Graduate College of Education at the University of Massachusetts at Boston (UMB). ILT was founded in 1970 as an expression of the University's commitment to the public service mission of an explicitly urban campus. ILT specializes in university, school, and community-based collaborations, with a particular emphasis on urban education and multicultural concerns. The greatest strengths of the ILT include: Strategic, high quality programming: Our programs focus on providing direct services that catalyze systemic change by forming the basis for improved educational policy. ILT delivers programs that address the Achievement Gap, Dropout Prevention, English Language Learning, Professional Development, and Community Engagement. ILT programs, such as TAG Latino Program, have substantial, life-changing impact on individual students, their families, and communities.

El Jolgorio de Massachusetts: Organization Background

EL JOLGORIO was started in 1989 by Jaime Rodríguez and a group of Puerto Rican activists for the purpose of maintaining alive the spirit of the island's Christmas by bring together its traditional elements - food, music, and dancing. Since then EL JOLGORIO has grown by leaps and bounds becoming the biggest Hispanic Christmas party in town. In December 2006 more than 2,400 persons crowded the new Boston Convention Center to celebrate EL JOLGORIO. From its inception EL JOLGORIO has served as a fundraising event for local organizations serving the Puerto Rican community and thereafter a share of the raised funds going to sponsor the HWW.