Irene Sterling is a human catalyst! Irene Sterling has lived in Paterson, NJ (aka Silk City*) for 40 years. She’s knows a lotta souls in Paterson – good, bad, thoughtful, lost and hopeful ones. Irene and I met at a Public Library Association event in Jersey City, NJ in October 2008. We exchanged pleasantries and biz cards. She joined the “chase” and created a page on the wyrrb.com site. She sent me an email, via my book’s ning powered site, stating that the students of Paterson need a “katalyst” and she intended to have me visit the students before the end of the school year in June 2009.
* During the late 19th century and early 20th century Paterson was known as the “Silk City” of the world. At that time, approximately 121 firms in Paterson, involved in every facet of manufacturing the silk product, employed thousands of workers in their mills.
I quickly found out a simple truth about Irene – she is all about making ideas/dreams a reality especially when it comes to the next gen of leaders for Silk City! I agreed to donate my time and voice to the students in the city of Paterson from June 2nd - June 4th. As acting president of the Paterson Education Fund , Irene and her team arranged my visit and bought books for all 1,800 8th graders. In the two days spent with Irene, I discovered that she is revered and respected throughout the city’s school system – it was like being in the presence of that city’s “patron saint of education!”
The Silk City visit: Whirlwind two days. Four schools. Four assemblies. Over 1,800 8th graders and a 100 HS students. Beautiful, boisterous cacophony. JOY! Laughter. Enthusiasm. Lessons. Emotion. Encouragement. WYRRB?!
Each school assembly I did with the rising, high school freshman class of Paterson, felt like a rally for a movement and so I dubbed the visit…The 21st Century Silk City Uprising! As I thought more about the notion of an educational uprising in Paterson I grabbed a great resource for understanding the nature of social mass movements - The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Hoffer shares truisms throughout the book associated with successful social mass movements and I made these correlations from his writings to what I witnessed in Silk City:
• Many who join a rising revolutionary movement are attracted by the prospect of sudden and spectacular change in their conditions in life (city’s history of social unrest via the 1913 - Silk Strike in Paterson; 2008 stat of over 50% dropout rate in Paterson)
• Desire for change and vehicles of change along with a fierce dissatisfaction for the present conditions (Change needed: in Paterson, only about 47 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds are high school graduates, according to Census data from 2006. Vehicles of change: With its focus on teaching students just how to set goals, planning ways to reach them and providing them with regular support from an adult mentor, Navigation 101 is targeting Paterson’s drop-out rate. According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., that aims to increase graduation rates among the nation’s most at-risk high school students, nearly 7,000 students drop out every day. That’s about 1.2 million a year. In response to these statistics, Paterson officials chose to implement Navigation 101 in partnership with the Paterson Education Fund, a local education advocacy group.)
• Infuse the masses with some soul-stirring enthusiasm to manifest the purpose of the movement…(KC’s June ’09 visit to Silk City)
• What seems to count more… is faith in the future (Irene Sterling, Paterson Education Fund, school district and city leadership)
• …they must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast undertaking (count on an 8th grader’s youthful inclination to be hopeful and to dreamBIG!)
• Audacity and a joy in defiance; unbounded brazenness (city’s history of militant behavior, youthful energy of Paterson students, Irene Sterling + other “believers” throughout the city)
The RESULT: a raucous, emotion-filled, two-day, rally of hope and possibility!
Katalyst Note: I’ve been invited to reprise my 2009 visit as the commencement speaker for the students at their graduation ceremonies in 2013 by Irene - that will be a fantastic moment to see the dreams of the students, teachers, school administrators and city leadership turned into a reality…KC + the Silk City Class of 2013!
Books by KC
