The handwritten words on a piece of paper taped to the wall opened small windows into the worlds of the girls who had written them:
“Why do teens have sexual intercourse?”
“We need to talk about peer pressure.”
“I love talking on the phone and watching television.”
“How come we doing this?”
They were doing this–namely, attending a program called Saving Grace at the Chicago Youth Centers’ Lawndale site–to learn about etiquette and the world beyond their West Side neighborhood.
But their questions, posted anonymously to spark future conversations, suggest that theirconcerns go beyond which fork to use for the salad.
The 8-month-old program has proved willing to go there with them. Nearly 40 girls ages 13 to 18 meet three times a week to learn about social etiquette, public speaking and modeling.
They demonstrated some of their social skills earlier this month when they donned tuxedos and served as hostesses greeting prominent business people at the March Mosaic fundraiser for Chicago Youth Centers at the Chicago Hilton and Towers.
But at Saving Grace meetings, co-directors Nore Hare and Noby Myles often find themselves talking about everything from school problems to the existence of God.
Some of these girls’ lives seem distant from concerns about how to set a table. A number of them are being raised by grandparents or in foster homes. Several are victims of abuse. A few have committed minor criminal offenses and have come to Saving Grace to perform court-ordered community service.
Judy Bennett, executive director of the Chicago Youth Centers’ West Area and the creator of Saving Grace, saw etiquette instruction as a way to help them step out of their neighborhoods into the larger world.
When she accompanied them to cultural or sporting events around the city through CYC’s Teen Explorers program, she noticed that they were unsure of themselves.
“I’m from an era when you didn’t go to church without a hat on or gloves,” she said. “But I saw that these girls had a need for basic etiquette.
“Not so much manners–these girls are very pleasant, and come from nice homes. But . . . they didn’t know the way to act when you went out to a restaurant or a sporting event. When we took them to nice venues, they didn’t know how to dress properly.”
And when the program got under way, Hare found that they didn’t know a lot of other things.
Teaching table settings had to be moved back several weeks, for example, because the girls didn’t understand the concept of sitting down for dinner.
“Girls were, like, `Sit down and eat? We don’t do that,’ ” Hare said. “Dinner is on the run these days for most of these kids–if there is any dinner.”
They were equally unfamiliar with going out to eat anywhere but a fast-food restaurant. Hygiene instruction bogged down when it turned out that not all the girls knew how to wash their faces. And talk about social skills hit snags because a few girls weren’t ready to be sociable.
“We had some girls who came into the program and said, `I don’t even like people,’ ” Hare said. “So we had to do some self-esteem things, some counseling. We’ve had to work on some basic things that we thought would be in place.
“We had all these expectations of these girls when they came into our program, but they were not realistic,” she said. “We didn’t realize it was going to be so difficult.”
The girls speak so frankly about parental drug abuse and domestic violence that Hare is occasionally overcome.
“I get so emotional sometimes I have to get up and leave the classroom because it’s not fair to them,” Hare said. “These girls are so much stronger than many adults. They are survivors. They want to empower themselves. They want to do better.”
In response to the hurdles Saving Grace has encountered, the West Area CYC began an etiquette class for girls ages 8 to 10 two months ago. “We found that we should have started them a lot younger,” Bennett said.
For the girls in Saving Grace, the value of the program goes beyond etiquette.
“It just gives you a chance to say what’s on your mind, to talk and share your feelings with girls,” said Dominique Harris, 15.
Tillery Scott, 14, credits the program with helping her express herself effectively, not impulsively.
“I can get people really mad; this just really stops me from saying stuff I don’t want to say,” she said.
She was initially a reluctant participant, but no longer. “It does teach you a lot about how to present yourself, how to deal with things later on in your life,” Scott said.
The girls who began attending Saving Grace to fulfill juvenile court orders or high school community service requirements, Bennett said, have stayed on after they completed their obligations, or plan to do so.
Saving Grace includes journal-writing, group conversation and exercises designed to foster self-respect. At one meeting, Myles asked the girls to write their names using the first letters of adjectives they felt described themselves.
The girls bent their heads over long tables, a few ponytails bobbing, as they spelled with candid words: Intelligent. Loved. Aggressive. Terrific. Hateful. Idle. Nice.
Myles gently tried to encourage the more positive descriptions. “You can speak these words into your life,” she said. She peered at 13-year-old Ebanette Clark’s paper: “Oh, she wrote `Nosy.’ “
“Well, I am nosy,” protested Ebanette.
Then it was on to an ice-breaking game led by a group of women mentors from a North Side Bible study group. Public speaking came next, with the girls reciting poetry either individually or in groups. And then there was the modeling drill, a series of walks and turns performed in unison to music.
Myles, the modeling instructor, explained later that the modeling is not about wearing nice clothes, but projecting a positive image.
“It teaches you body language, that eye contact is very important,” she said. “That tells people that you’re secure. You can stand flat-footed and look a person in the eye.”
With that confidence, she said, the girls “can conquer anything. If they want to go to college, if they want to be a mother–no matter what they want to go into in the future, they will be able to accomplish it.”
Once a month, the girls go out to a sit-down restaurant. Soon they will learn ballroom dancing, in preparation for a formal cotillion in June.
“It’s important that they know there’s a big world out there with a lot of opportunities they can take advantage of,” Hare said. “The community is not the way of the world.”
