Pedagogy for Liberation

If Spoken Word is a Much Needed Voice of Change, Why Is It Not Being Heard?

Simply put, hip hop pervades streets and homes, radio waves, and air waves; Snoop Dogg can be seen everywhere from Black Entertainment Television (BET) to Nickelodeon to Pepsi commercials. It seems there is no contest. Though most, if not all, major American cities house poetry slams and open mic venues and many college towns—if not the colleges and universities themselves—are following suit, compared to hip hop, spoken word remains an elite culture. On any given Friday night in the New York area, a teen can turn on Hot 97.1 FM and be treated to a world famous disc jockey (DJ) spinning the latest Cam’ron and Vado—while being introduced to “Muma”—the Dip Set’s latest derogatory term for women, or journey to the Lower East Side’s Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, and pay 12 dollars after waiting an hour or two on line to hear the Friday night poetry slam. Unless, of course, that teen is among the lucky (but growing) few to have a somewhat progressive teacher with a penchant for experimentation.

On the eve of a visit to a charter school in a large, Northern, New Jersey city where a colleague and I had been invited to perform our poetry for seventh graders, I could not help but notice the resonance of a line from a Lupe Fiasco song playing on the radio. This song by a rapper many would classify as “conscious,” acknowledges “the father that’s there,” “the kids in the ghetto . . . that don’t wanna be there,” and finally, “the teachers not scared to tell those kids that’s livin’ in the ghetto . . . that the world is theirs.” Immediately, I thought of the teacher who had extended the invitation, telling us that he and his students had been discussing women, race, stereotypes, and “the glass ceiling,” and that poems tying into women’s issues and race would be appreciated. As an aside, he mentioned that the students would “LOVE your Top 10 Reasons Not to Date a Thug.” I mention this request not to satisfy my own vanity, but because “10 Reasons Not to Date a Thug” is a poem I am hesitant to perform at the university where I teach. Its content, use of slang, and inside jokes reveal my familiarity with the street world, a familiarity which, as a “teacher” and a presumed model of “good” behavior, I do not know I am allowed to have. The teacher who has invited us to the charter school, on the other hand, has informed me that the poems do not “need to be about sunshine and butterflies . . . our students write about and can handle gritty issues,” revealing that he is not only concerned about his students, but also in tune with them.

Shortly before 7:30 a.m., we were led to a large, empty classroom into which the entire seventh grade—I would guess about 150 students—began to file. Both my colleague and I performed, then the students were invited to ask us questions. Though there were more questions than time allowed for, the specificity and range of the questions seemed proof of two things: that the students had been listening quite carefully and that they were genuinely interested. In addition, on three occasions, the question as to whether I had really “dated a thug” was posed. To me, this seemed to indicate not only that the students found some poems more provocative than others but also that the teacher who had invited us had taken the time to learn what interested his students, and had had the good sense to recognize the importance of their interests. As a teacher, specifically a teacher in an inner city school, why is it so important that he learn the interests of his students?

Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) has argued that teacher education is highly flawed, because anthropology classes rarely appear in preservice teacher education. This omission means that preservice teachers do not learn about their prospective students in relation to their unique histories, racial and ethnic backgrounds, environments, and social networks. Instead, most preservice teachers “take a series of foundations courses in history, philosophy, and sociology of education . . . ” and “there is a strong concentration in psychology that includes courses in child or adolescent development, cognition and learning, and exceptionality” (p. 104). Given the nature of their preparation and the often unchecked assumption of these teachers that their own beliefs and practices are simply correct, rather than a product of their own culture, many teacher education students from middle-class, suburban backgrounds make assumptions about the beliefs, practices, and shared values of their students and their students’ communities, as well as assumptions about the psychological impact of students’ beliefs, practices, and values.

To demonstrate “cultural” ignorance she typically observes in students, Ladson-Billings (2006) has included one preservice teacher’s “Critical Incident” journal response: “My students are so surprised that I am 25 years old and don’t have any children of my own. I try to explain that I’m not married but they say, “You don’t have to be married to have children.” I know that having children out of wedlock is part of their culture” (p. 105). Rather than locating her decision to delay motherhood in her own middle-class cultural beliefs, the teacher assumes that her behavior is normal, perhaps even “right,” and that her students’ insistence that “You don’t have to be married to have children” is the result of “their culture.” In addition, “their culture” is inferior; rather than describe it as “a culture which prioritizes child birth and family,” it is one which embraces “having children out of wedlock.” Because “their culture” is inferior, it becomes easy for teachers to then conclude that its impact on the students is negative, and a frequently cited negative impact is low self-esteem. Partially to blame, for Ladson-Billings, is “the way that American culture maintains a narrative of the individual” (pp. 105-106). Consequently, we tend to locate problems within the individual rather than look beyond the individual to the complex web of interaction between “individual, family, community, school, and societal factors” (p. 106). In support of her argument that teachers often take the liberty of assessing their students’ self-esteem, Ladson-Billings provides another “Critical Incident” journal response from another preservice teacher:

I worked hard to get to know D’Andre. He is a bright boy but he also has so many problems. Chief among them is his low self-esteem. I try to do things that will help him feel better about himself. I feel that if he had higher self-esteem he could experience more success in the classroom. (p. 105)

It seems culture functions as a double-edged sword. A teacher who understands or perhaps even is familiar with her students can use this understanding to be a more effective educator. A teacher who is culturally ignorant is likely to cite “culture” “with authority as one of the primary explanations for everything from school failure to problems with behavior management and discipline” (p. 104). There is, however, hope, “if teachers can learn to recognize the cultural underpinnings of their own beliefs, attitudes, and practices, they may become more open to the power of culture to shape the learning experiences of the students they will teach” (p. 107), which we can see in the case of the seventh-grade charter school teacher.

Due to the success of our initial visit, my colleague and I were invited to the school’s monthly poetry slam. That Thursday at noon, we met in the same classroom, and again about 150 students filed in. We were told that 20 students had signed up to perform, and that we were to score the poems on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the highest) based on style, content, and body language. Finally, a teacher reminded the students to be respectful of the performers. Though students at this school wear uniforms, there are special days when they may dress as they please. This was one such day, and the students had dressed to impress. The first performer was no exception. The earrings she wore to match her green dress seem to emphasize the importance of this day, this moment. She told the attentive audience that “This is titled “Behind My Smile”:

Some wear fake smiles

Behind those is pain

How do I know?

I too wear a fake smile . . .

While everyone else is asleep, I am just starting my homework.

Do I look like Cinderella to you? . . .

Though her delivery was a bit shaky and her poem would benefit from revision, the students showed their support by snapping when a particular line struck a chord with them, and overall, we were off to a good start. Another of the students to perform was a petite, precocious girl of 12. Her poem was called “Five Reasons to Live,” and she told us that it was “inspired by Mia and her ‘Ten Reasons Not to Date a Thug.’” She proceeded to break down her five reasons, (a) Joy, (b) Love, (c) Fun, (d) Celebrities, and (e) Hate, using vivid imagery, details, and even the word “cacophonous.” Another female student stood out. Her poem began with a prompt my colleague had given her: “On the Way to School”:

On the way to school,

The bus may seem the safest place, but is it?

You see the kids who sit alone, staring out windows . . .

Ambulance sirens

Kids ask who got shot

In our society that’s how many get killed

Candles representing a family member who died

Is this how we have to live?

How many more have to die? . . .

Though most of the students need to develop confidence, speak louder, learn to enunciate, and above all, keep writing, it was clear that they had a lot to say. It is also important to note that the success of this event was most likely a result of their teacher’s intense encouragement and provision of a celebratory platform through the poetry slams he had introduced earlier in the school year.

In the two months that followed, my colleague and I went to the school three times to work with any students who were interested in staying after school to write poetry. In anticipation of the common complaints that “I don’t know how to write a poem” and “I don’t know how to start,” we gave the students two prompts, and the option of going in their own direction. By our third after-school workshop, we were coaching students to perform their poems at the last slam of the year, which a handful of teachers and parents would be attending. I found myself working with two girls who were best friends. Each had written a poem using the prompt “Where I Live,” and each had written about the city in which she lived; however, while one of the girls lived in an area she described as “ghetto,” the second did not, and was quite proud of her “good” block. We suggested they perform a group piece—that is, perform together, responding to one another, as if in dialogue:

Students #1 & #2: Where I live

Student #1: Where I live, you don’t have to worry about parking in the street, and in the morning, your car isn’t there

Student #2: Well where I live, your car is locked at all times

Student #1: Well where I live, you can leave your child at home, and not find them in a pool of blood

Student #2: Where I live, all the kids stand on the corner . . . sagging they pants, and looking for a fight

Student #1: Well where I live you don’t have to worry about getting jumped when you walk down the street

Student #2: Well where I live used to be a peaceful, non-violent project

Students #1 & #2: Where we live is [ . . . ] New Jersey.

The big day had arrived. After a cookout featuring hot dogs, hamburgers, and music, we made our way into the classroom, which was even more crowded than I had seen it. One of the two girls I had been working with was on the verge of tears. She told me that her friend did not want to perform, she was afraid, there were eighth graders in the audience. Fortunately, we were able to change her friend’s mind. Neither girl had ever participated in a slam, and I doubt I am alone in saying that I was quite proud of them. The first girl had memorized her lines, and said them with a tone that let the audience know that these words were important, though her partner’s delivery was not quite as lively or smooth. One precocious poetess told us to “Love like the kitten loves its yarn, love like the Frenchman loves his wine, love like the grapes love the vine, love baby, just love.” A quiet girl performed a stirring piece about molestation. A small boy performed a beautiful poem, about identity. After the slam, the teacher, my colleague, and I tallied up the scores to see which students had placed first, second, and third. In addition to bragging rights, each of these students would also receive a Visa gift card ($75.00, $50.00, and $25.00, respectively), which the teacher had purchased at his own expense. Because two students had tied for third, he decided to buy another gift card over the weekend, and announce the winners the following week, at an assembly. He also asked if we were interested in meeting with a core group of students regularly during the upcoming school year to develop a slam team, with an ultimate goal of sending a representative to the annual, city-wide “Be The Change” ceremony.

Like the seventh-grade teacher mentioned above, an English teacher at a local public high school, also in a large Northern New Jersey city, invited me to speak to and perform poetry for her students. Due to the seemingly overnight migration of singles, couples, and entire families who presumably have been knocked out of their previous zip codes due to the current economic crash, the change in this city a la gentrification is more than palpable. It seems that as soon as one building is gutted and converted into a condominium, another follows. A simmering tension between renters, owners, and developers is the result in this neighborhood which surrounds the high school, up to a major intersection which serves as a dividing line of sorts: one block down are the three sets of housing projects. The students, whose classrooms sit dead in the middle of this great contradiction, typically cross the intersection during their lunch breaks and wander down a side street to buy candy from the Korean bodegas or pizza. What do they think of the disparity?

GreatSchools, according to its “Find a School” pitch, is

the country’s leading source of information on school performance. With listings of 200,000 public and private schools serving students from preschool through high school and more than 800,000 parent ratings and reviews, GreatSchools has become the go-to guide for parents aiming to make a smart school choice. (GreatSchools, n.d.)

Why do I think that the parents of students at this particular high school (which has received a GreatSchools rating of 2 on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the highest) do not have the luxury of making such a choice?

On the morning of my invitation as I approached the school, uncertain as to which direction I was to walk in order to reach the correct entrance, I stopped a middle-class woman leaving what appeared to be the school’s parking lot. “Excuse me,” I asked, “can you please tell me where Exit 1 is?” She frowned and told me, “I don’t live here.” I watched her cross the street to a recently converted condominium complex which rents the parking lot at the high school for its residents. Faculty and staff, I learned later, park about a block away, in a make-shift lot beneath a state highway. Inside, after walking through metal detectors, signing in, and being photographed, I was escorted to the auditorium, where classes were being held temporarily. As I was early, the period prior to that in which I had been invited to speak to was still in session. As I looked around, out of approximately 30 students, maybe half were following along as the teacher read the text—a young adult novel titled “The Hunger Games”—aloud. When she paused to ask if, for example, her students knew what “pelt” meant, a portion of those who had been busy texting stopped and attempted to hide their phones. Many others clearly did not care, and continued texting. When the period ended, I was greeted warmly by the teacher, who informed me that there would be more students than expected—some of the male students had elected to stay, because I was “cute”—and two other teachers opted to bring their classes. I had the opportunity to talk with one of these teachers; a 20-year veteran, no less. When I asked how she liked teaching “here” she laughed good-naturedly, and told me “Every year it gets worse.” When I asked what compelled her to continue, she said, “I love it. You got to.”

Meanwhile, the students had begun to file in. I would say between 80 and 100; enough so that once they were seated, I was not able to make eye contact with all of them. And though I had been teaching at the University level for 7 years, though I had been, at this point, volunteering in Newark for 3 months, I must admit to being a bit nervous: If these kids did not listen to their teachers, why would they listen to me? Three minutes of performing a poem I had written earlier that year about my own students—most of them middle to upper middle class—showed me that my fears were not unfounded; there were blank stares, and texting resumed. Yet it also showed me that what lay before me was an opportunity. So I said, “I’m going to do my favorite poem: ‘Ten Reasons Not to Date a Thug.’” After stating the title of the poem, in addition to fully rapt attention, I was met with laughter, in which I joined. Those seconds of laughter revealed a common frame of reference. I went on with the poem, knowing I did not need to explain phrases like “snow flake,” “a minute,” or “make moves,” and I am fairly certain that through the usage of these phrases, I was able to gain a greater level of access to the students, perhaps even a level of trust. By the end of the poem, the tone of the room had become more serious. One female student seated in the front row raised her hand, and asked if I needed a hug. Three male students who had been talking when I first took the stage were quiet. As I walked to my seat, one turned; “You really been through that—” he said. I nodded.

Then something wonderful happened. The auditorium of 16-year-olds in the school that demonstrates the extent to which it values its faculty by allocating parking in a construction site under a freeway, demonstrates the extent to which it values its students by approving a curriculum which implies that listening to a teacher read aloud is learning, was quiet as a male student said that he would “do a poem.” As he stood before us, he warned his classmates that they “better not” laugh. The teacher leaned over, whispering that a member of his family had been killed that year. In the days that followed, the teacher contacted me, informing me that more than a handful of students had come forward, admitting (I use this word because when I had asked the students if any of them wrote, I received a chorus of “No”) that they had poems, asking if she or I could read them, and provide feedback? Needless to say, we were ecstatic. As it was the end of the school year, we agreed that an attempt to start the slam team I had alluded to, taunting them with the fact that my seventh graders at the charter school had been slamming, was unrealistic. We also agreed to start a slam team in the coming school year.

High school slam teams are a growing trend which arguably began in the early 1990s with June Jordan’s Poetry For the People movement in the Bay Area and now flourishes nationwide with the help of volunteering poets, open-minded teachers, Youth Speaks, Brave New Voices, and citywide competitions. The presence of spoken word and slam poetry in schools has become so pronounced that it has even been documented in the critically acclaimed films To Be Heard (Martinez, Legiardi-Laura, Shaffer, & Sultan, 2011) and Louder Than a Bomb (Jacobs & Siskel, 2010). Encouraging students to write about their feelings and experiences in the form of a poem acknowledges that they have something to say and that it is important, while showing that poetry does not belong to an elite, inaccessible world. The time I have spent volunteering has shown me first hand what students—even those who are well aware of the chaos and violence that may erupt at almost any time—can achieve when they believe their voices are valued. As Anne Haas Dyson has noted in the foreword of Maisha T. Fisher’s Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms (2007), the close connection the seventh-grade teacher encouraged his students to make between their lives at home and their lives at school is “not found on the public agenda these days” (p. x). Dyson goes on to say that above genuinely engaging students, the goal is to mold them into “correct” speakers and writers. “This narrowness, this setting of school apart from their neighborhoods, separates children from all that grounds them” (p. x). Hence, Fisher’s desire to study the Power Writers of University Heights High School in the Bronx. Taught by “soul model” Joe, the class is an elective offered by the alternative high school, meeting Monday after school, Friday morning, and Saturday morning. Students are asked to express their truths, to expand their vocabularies, to “push beyond ‘ascribed lives’” (p. 5), and to gain a sense of empowerment, because, as Joe explains, quoting Freire, “education is always an act of ‘intervention in the world’” (p. 5).

Fisher has informed her reader that “The aim of this book is to explore how a community of young writers with the guidance of attentive and interested adults (re)defined literacy and what it meant to be literate using the medium of spoken word poetry” (p. 4), yet her study explores much more. It has shown how students who “were angry that they had to live in these conditions . . . wanted to protect their younger siblings and themselves from cycles of untimely deaths, poverty, and the temptation to surrender to it all” (p. 3) thrive with a culturally relevant pedagogy which not only encourages, but requires that they draw from their lives, values, and experiences to respond to those very conditions. One of Joe’s “copilots,” Roland, poet, filmmaker, and board member for The Nuyorican Poets Café, describes these students as rebels “because what they have all done is rebel against the little slot, the little block in the pyramid that society has chosen for them” (p. 12). Underscoring the power and access one gains through literacy, he adds that “they have chosen to rebel in the deepest, most profound way with their . . . literacy” (p. 12).

Perhaps emboldened by Roland’s ideal that “the more you can express about yourself and the world around you, the more powerful you can become” (p. 14), it seems clear, when examining the samples of the students’ poetry which Fisher has provided, that these students do not want to be passive actors in life. For example, during one session, 16-year-old Karina shares a poem about a friend who had first inspired her to write, “an old friend of mine that I’ve known since I was six. He passed away” (p. 26):

But luxury and cash wasn’t the only wealth he had

Not knowing the innocence he lost would make even the cold-hearted sad

So to become so rich with love and power

Soon everyone would envy

He would soon become a victim of a bad deal gone deadly

I loved this young man, although a boy

He grew up way too fast

Being a child not raised by parents

People stare as if they don’t understand . . .

Nineteen-year-old Eli shares one of his poems, after quoting Malcolm X’s speech “The Ballot or the Bullet”:

Mama tells me to stay sane in an insane world

Full of pain

Where your life is not worth one grain of sand or dust

Just give me a hand.

Honestly, compassion is a must . . .

It’s primal

Rage against everything that’s natural in the natural world

Saying shit like hypocrisy

And using/confusing vernacular to have you, him, her, and me

Not to think what they say is contradictory . . .

I need to hit the books

Otherwise I’ll be missing important things out there

Out there I go and look

Nobody cares

But all I see here in NYC is

Racism, sexism, phobia extraordinaire

Just take a good look out there baby

You just have to be aware (p. 30)

In both cases, we can see that these students think critically about the world as they experience it. Karina realizes that “this young man . . . grew up way too fast,” as he had to fend for himself, though it cost his innocence and life. For Eli, “to stay sane in an insane world,” he needs to “hit the books,” and remain vigilant. “We have to depend on one another,” he urges, because “Nobody cares.” Joe’s response to each of these students is important, not only to them, but also to the rest of the class, for it shows the students that their voices and experiences are valued. The students also see that they can learn not only from Joe, but also from one another, and that Joe also learns from them. In fact, Fisher has observed that Joe “addressed Karina’s poem but also made eye contact with everyone, as if the feedback was meant for them as well” (p. 27). Joe acknowledges Karina as a modern day Blues singer who has “share[d] with us your sense of loss” (p. 27). He also describes the piece as “serious and introspective.” Furthermore, Joe demonstrates his familiarity with Karina’s reality by asking “When did he die?” and “when were you able to write about the death?” (p. 28); he is not uncomfortable when discussing about Karina’s friend. Turning now, to Eli, when he was “reluctant to share a piece, believing it was unfinished . . . Joe . . . urged him to let the work go out to the group” (p. 29), not only because he voiced concerns that Eli put too much pressure on himself, but because the feedback he was to receive from the group would likely be helpful. For example, Karina told Eli: “I thought your piece was interesting . . . you actually put your thoughts on the government” (p. 32).

In the last chapter of the book, Fisher has argued that more teachers and more schools must follow suit and guide students in “building literate identities,” explaining that such an identity enables a student “to be a critical reader, a purposeful writer, and a confident speaker” (p. 92). For Fisher, this begins with what students already know, with their truths. It means “Holding student work up as worthy of attention, even when it still needs improvement” (p. 92). It makes sense, then, that students reported that they did not feel judged, worried about being “wrong,” nor did they feel, as they had in “regular” classes (English and other), a profound alienation from the curriculum. Fisher has also noted that “Students in this writing community contradicted monolithic depictions of minority students as anti-intellectual, or punitive to peers who demonstrate care for school and learning” (p. 95), as they often shared their poems with one another before and after class.

One Power Writer, Syesha, is quoted, reporting “If my peers [from Power Writing] see me in the hallways they tell me to go to class” (p. 96). While Pearl recognizes the impact of writing and a “literate identity” on her self-esteem, lamenting that while many young women believe attracting male attention means “having ‘the hair,’ ‘the skin,’ and ‘the figure’ but not ‘the mind’” (p. 96) she enjoyed the positive attention she received from peers—male and female—who valued her opinion of their poetry. Overall, it seems that these students recognize the tools they have been given, and are eager to defy stereotypes, in school and beyond. Their story, told in To Be Heard, lays a foundation for the argument that “given the heightened volume of the educational debate these days, their message [that spoken word is a powerful learning tool] and approach merits close attention” (To Be Heard, n.d.), and I could not agree more. The educational gap between the haves and the have-nots has become an issue of such great concern that many see education as the Civil Rights Movement of our time. Yet there is no national dialogue regarding the systematic implementation of a spoken word curriculum in public schools.

That there is no national dialogue is perplexing, especially because there are a number of studies—Jocson (2009), Fisher (2005, 2007)—documenting the positive impact of spoken word poetry in the classroom. In her study, “A Unified Poet Alliance: The Personal and Social Outcomes of Youth Spoken Word Programming” (2010), Weinstein has used interviews and observations compiled over three years (2006-2009) of working with “Wordplay,” a teen poetry group in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to support her position on spoken word poetry: It helps students develop literate identities; builds literacy skills, self-esteem, motivation; and fosters a sense of community. As such, it is Weinstein’s hope that educators and academics pay “attention to the potential for the arts generally, and literacy arts in particular, to help us think differently about teaching and learning” (p. 22). Weinstein’s work is theoretically framed by New Literacy Studies, a scholarly movement “which posits literacy practices as multiple and as based in specific social contexts. This frame encourages examination of not only literacy practices themselves, but of the power dynamics always at play in communicative situations” (p. 6).

Weinstein believes that within the forum of spoken word poetry, young people can and do engage directly with these power dynamics while expressing their social identities. Her study Feel These Words (2009) has discussed nine of her former students, dubbed “The Writers,” who

fit into categories of youth too often represented—by the media, politicians, even the school systems that are supposed to serve them—as deficient in the kinds of characteristics and skills that both reflect and are supposed to lead them to middle-class status. (p. 2)

By drawing attention to the social context in which the privileged majority situates these teens, looking at the ways each teen practices literacy (composition of poetry, narrative, or rap lyrics), then looking at the ways in which this literacy is the product of social context and discussing the extent to which dominant power structures are challenged, Weinstein has presented a glimpse of what a curriculum influenced by New Literacy Studies might look like. Such a glimpse is important because it honors not only what students need to be taught (literacy) but also what motivates them to learn. Weinstein has stated in no uncertain terms that teachers should “shift their perceptions of students from individuals who know little or nothing about the ‘right’ way to write to people who have deep funds of knowledge on which to draw as they negotiate various forms of composition” (p. 9).

I agree that such a shift would benefit students immensely, giving them a sense of agency and empowerment while reducing the tension between the often separate spheres of home and classroom. However, I find Weinstein’s study to be of limited use in the campaign for widespread implementation of spoken word poetry classes in public schools. I say this because though she initially met each of The Writers when they were her students, Feel These Words chronicles, as Weinstein herself acknowledges, the “imaginative writing” of these nine teens outside the classroom. I understand that Weinstein knowingly chooses writing produced by the students on their terms and on their turf to demonstrate the degree of engagement possible when students’ voices and concerns are not devalued, yet I also believe that if the type of widespread change public schools and public school students so desperately need is to be effected, a more compelling demonstration—one containing more tangible, quantifiable benefits in the classroom—will be necessary.

Though not a product of the public school curriculum, Youth Speaks, founded in 1996, presents the annual Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival, in which poets ranging in age from 13 to 19 compete. In an attempt to put the current impact and potential of Youth Speaks into perspective, it is worth noting that in 2009, the Brave New Voices Festival featured “over 500 teen Poetry Slam Champions from 45 parts of the country and 5 additional cities across the globe, representing over 50,000 young poets in their local communities” (Youth Speaks Incorporated, n.d.). With this type of reach, informed by beliefs and goals outlined on the Youth Speaks website (youthspeaks.org/about-youth-speaks/),

As we move more deeply into the 21st Century, oral poetry is helping to define the new American Voice. By making the connection between poetry, spoken word, youth development, and civic engagement, Youth Speaks aims to deconstruct dominant narratives in hopes of achieving a more inclusive, and active, culture. Believing that young people have the tools to take control of their lives through language, Youth Speaks encourages youth to express themselves using their own vernacular. (Youth Speaks Incorporated, n.d.)

it certainly seems that if it has not yet effected change, Youth Speaks is in a position to do so. Perhaps the most important of Youth Speaks’ components is the Residency Program. First, a group of established poets visit the school to perform, thus providing a concrete model of what Youth Speaks poets do on stage. Then, a trained poet-mentor goes into a school and collaborates with the teacher to develop a spoken word curriculum, using themes the teacher identifies. Residencies can last from 5 to 10 weeks to an entire semester or even a full year. Poet-mentor Talia Taylor says,

The students are allowed to be a part of the learning process . . . by bringing their own personal narratives into the text that they are reading. In addition to reading the book and breaking down the narrative theme, they add their own narratives so they can compare and contrast how their life correlates to the text they’re reading.

Of this added dimension, Balboa High School English Teacher Amanda Bowen notes that the students “aren’t just regurgitating what they think the teacher wants to hear, they’re really bringing themselves through” (DeWolf, 2010). In terms of the program’s specifics, Bowen says that once a week, Youth Speaks slam champion Jose Vadi comes to the class, often beginning with video of a poet performing. Vadi briefly discusses the poem with the students, touching on dominant themes, and asking for any words or images that come to the student’s minds. These words and images are written on the blackboard, then students are given a guiding question and 15 minutes to write a poem.

Despite the apparent success of this innovative pedagogy and the recent trend of introducing spoken word and slam poetry in urban schools, there are critics. Fisher acknowledges that “All too often there is an assumption in the education community that promoting student self-awareness through writing and performance means that students are not acquiring the skills they need for academic literacy” (p. 14). Still there are other critics, also in educational communities, who believe that in lower income communities, insurmountable problems—such as distrust of school personnel, poverty, crime, inadequate health care, lack of transportation—render activities such as poetry slams painfully inadequate in improving much, as more “concrete” steps—such as provision of child care or provision of transportation—are viewed as more beneficial (Berliner, 2006; Keller & McDade, 2000).

Culture typically functions as a double-edged sword in urban schools. As Ladson-Billings has argued, teachers in urban schools who are not familiar with their students’ culture display a level of ignorance which leads them to make assumptions about those students and cite low self-esteem as the cause of students’ academic and disciplinary problems. On the other hand, teachers who understand their students and recognize the importance of their students’ culture and interests are likely to create a genuine learning community in which students are actively engaged. In recent years, spoken word has become popular with progressive teachers who recognize that introducing this form of poetry can change their students’ views of literature as well as their relationship to it. I see this change for myself when I visit English classes to talk with students about spoken word. The reaction is always the same, though it varies in intensity and degree. The students—most of whom seemed visibly bored only minutes before—are surprised to learn that this is poetry, and they are excited, because they want to try it, too. In addition to changing students’ views of literature, Spoken Word asks that students write about what is important to them. The last time I volunteered in a school, for example, I asked the students to write a poem. The poem could be about anything, as long as it included the following prompts and responses to them: Everyday I see . . ., Everyday I say . . ., Everyday I ask . . ., One thing I know for sure is . . . Their poems varied in subject matter, from nagging mothers to the ills of the ghetto. The point is, the students were eager to tell their stories.