SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) - A Bay Area non-profit called Bay Area Creative has been teaching kids and teens poetry in local schools and online for years, and they made sure to continue to provide the creative outlet throughout the pandemic.
They introduce slam poetry to students.
They're given three minutes and ten seconds to express themselves in a fashion that fuses poetry, story-telling, and theater.
The non-profit has been teaching this creative outlet to people of all ages for 15 years.
The executive director, Mike Taylor, believes our youth are more ready to take on tough conversations than you might think.
"And there are so many battles that you have to face outside of yourself," said Taylor. "What this program does is give some of the tools to at least, you can be sure who you are."
Poetry teachers use games as a way of learning. They use the art form to encourage kids and teens to find their voice and deliver their feelings face to face.
One such student from Richmond High named Jamey Williams is now a professional poet and teacher artist himself.
Whether invited into classrooms and after-school programs or interacting online during the pandemic, their poets have worked with students from the East Bay to San Mateo County and are looking to expand.
Deputy Director Patrick Ohslund shared, " It just fills me so fully to be able to be in this classroom space that so often isn't a community. So often it is students working individually, being told what to do, being told they're not behaving correctly, being told to calm down... you know and when we teach poetry workshops there is still an element of focus and it can't be chaos and pandemonium in the classroom though we do focus on a play-based curriculum that is as high energy as we can bring."
So this Valentine's Day people who make a contribution to the non-profit on www.bayareacreative.org can request to get a poem from a student in return that they can send to their valentine.
The goal is to one day combine grants and donations to hire poets full-time to keep this program going.
"On one side we love serving the community and everything that comes out of that. On the other side, we love paying artists. If I can give an artist a day job to do their art every single day. That's success right there. That's momma we made it right there," said Taylor.
from KRON4 https://ift.tt/uqJ16Nm
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