March 2008

Dear Educators,

On behalf of Youth Speaks, I want to first thank all of you for your many years of support. It’s because of your partnership that in the last three years alone we’ve been able to conduct performance poetry assemblies, single-day workshops, and semester-long residencies to over 150,000 Bay Area students. We could not do what we do without you.

You bring students to our events, you invite us into your classroom and onto your campus, and you work with us as partners to create safe spaces for young people to explore the power of their voices and their critical, creative minds.

Because you’ve been such wonderful partners to us, we want to make sure that we’re being equally great partners to you, so we’re going to take the next few months to create a new plan for how to best partner with teachers and students from throughout the Bay Area in the future. For us to best focus our energies during this strategic planning phase, we’re going to greatly reduce the number of school visits and residencies taking place the rest of this year.

If we’ve already committed to you and you’ve already committed to us, those programs will happen. But for the rest of the year, we won’t accommodate any new requests.

We’ve got a lot of great things in store for next year, including a new school clubs program that will better enhance the growing spoken word movement as an educational tool for you in and out of the classroom. The Living Word Festival, Words as Weapons, the SFUSD & OUSD High School Poetry Slams, and the Q. Arts Festival will provide many exciting opportunities for field trips, and we’ll have our best year yet of powerful and effective on-campus programs. We’re very excited about what’s in store for the 2008-2009 school year, and we look forward to partnering with you in an even better and deeper way.

In the meantime, we’ll be launching a new series of free after-school workshops for teenagers the week of March 31st, so we’d love it if you can help spread the word. Information will be on our website and will also be sent to you shortly.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact either me, or our Arts-in-Education Director Khalil Anthony Peebles

(email Khalil here).

Again, thank you for continuing to bring your students out to Youth Speaks events and programs and us to your schools! Good luck on the rest of your year, and we’ll be in touch soon.

In peace & poetry,

James Kass
Founder & Executive Director

415.255.9035 ext. 10

(email james here)

DESCRIPTION:

Hour-long assemblies and workshops occur in public high schools, middle schools, juvenile detention centers, after-school programs, and alternative schools 3-4 days a week, and are a primary point of entry and exposure to Youth Speaks programs. Poet-Mentors perform poetry on topics relevant to youth to inspire interest and promote the power of spoken word and performance, while also exposing students to introductory skill development through workshops and writing prompts. Youth Speaksí current schedule will bring over 35,000 students direct access to spoken word and poetry performances through the School Visit Program.

These programs have proven to be excellent introductory methods to get your students excited about the burgeoning youth poetry movement, and writing in general. If you’re interested in booking a visit, click here to download the application form.

Assemblies: An hour-long presentation, Youth Speaks will facilitate an interactive, literary, and exciting assembly for schools interested in organizing a school-wide, or partial student body event. We will send 3-5 of the most talented Spoken Word artists in the Bay Area, ranging in age from 16-35, to your school’s campus. Schools can choose from theme-based presentations to spoken word revues. Administrators must arrange with Youth Speaks a language and content criteria prior to the assembly day. Assemblies can also be combined with classroom workshops.

Classroom Workshops: Either a one-day visit, or a small residency of three days, Youth Speaks will come to the classroom to facilitate introductory Youth Speaks spoken word, poetry, and creative writing workshops. All students will write in the workshop, as well as begin to develop performance skills through the practice of Spoken Word/Oral Poetry. Led by a team of three poets trained in the distinctly young and passionate Youth Speaks flavor, these workshops are excellent beginnings to your poetry curriculum, and are a proven tool to get your students writing. Based on the idea that writing and poetry can be fun, these interactive sessions work with free-writes and standard Youth Speaks templates. Administrators must arrange with Youth Speaks a language and content criteria prior to our arrival. Classroom workshops can be combined with school-wide assemblies.