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Parenteen Theater

Free Street lead workshops for pregnant and parenting teenager from DATES.  
Maria McCray.  Jennifer Viets.  Cindy Henkin


Free Street's Parenteen Residencies use writing and theater workshops to explore choices central to young pregnant and parenting women. 
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Parenteen Residencies focus on three areas: 
1) You and Your Pregnancy (Understanding Immediate Issues) 
2) You and Your World (Exploring Self & Relationships) 
3) You and Beyond (Developing Artist Mentality & Spirituality)

1)You and Your Pregnancy - workshops prepare students for the birth of their children. 

- Initial classes focus on making the classroom a safe, creative space where students feel comfortable taking emotional risks. 
- Teens who have already given birth share their birth stories, learning from each other, dispelling myths and sharing facts. 
- Students practice effective listening and communication techniques to prepare them for discussing their medical questions and concerns with their doctors. 
- Teens are introduced to various choices regarding their birthing experience and participate in discussions to process those choices. Emphasis is on the teen's awareness of their choices.
2)You and Your World - workshops help young moms strengthen their relationships both to their babies and to the important people in their lives.

- Creative exercises encourage imaginative thinking from other perspectives, for example, imagining what a baby inside the womb would see or imagining what their baby would say to them.
- Improvisations, focus groups, and writing exercises explore various parenting choices. 
- Teens discuss sexuality in terms of making choices, including choices for birth control. The emphasis is upon the teen taking responsibility for what she wants and doesn't want.
3) You and Beyond - workshops focus on the power teen mothers have to create and control their own lives. 

- Students write conversations between their past and future selves in order to identify their own concerns and give themselves advice.
- They imaginatively chart out a course for their lives to explore what is infinitely possible. 
- Creative exercises support spiritual reflection, directly linking the rich metaphor of birth with other aspects of living.
At the end of Parenteen Residencies, each teen's writing is compiled into a book for herself and her baby. 

Parenteen Instructors:
Cindy Henkin has a BA in psychology and theater. She is a playwright who has studied the Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth. She recently gave birth to Abigail. 

Amanda Lichtenstein has a BA in English / Creative Writing, with a concentration in education for at-risk youth.