Equipo Academy's Poetry Month Poetry Slam

Funded Dec 2, 2023

I am so excited to report that the EA Poetry Slam was an even greater success than we'd hoped. We started out planning a single night's event focused on performance poetry and a competition of words, but ended up with a school-wide enthusiasm for poetry and literature.

I knew that a poetry slam would allow creative writing students to share their art with their peers; I was also glad that planning and executing the event meant they would get to see the practical side of creative arts, which I know, as a working writer, is just as important as the creative side of the job. But soon after we announced what the creative writing students were up to, we were invited to be a showcase piece at the school's "Midnight Book BBQ" event. This event is aimed at building a community around the love of literature, so it felt like a perfect fit. Students stepped up to take this opportunity as a way to expand the reach of the poetry slam, even though it meant a sped up timeline for everything.

The event now reached beyond our classroom walls in a way that meant sharing what we had learned with others as part of a larger team. Creative writing students worked with student council and others on finalizing programming, making sure to contribute to the overall goals of the night while advancing the importance and fun of performance poetry and promoting participation in the poetry slam.

Creative writing students broke up into working groups. One team set the rules of the competition, including establishing a category for performance of original poems for the competition and published poems for entertainment; they recruited other students and a beloved English teacher to help judge the contest. Another team created a promotional pitch that they presented classroom by classroom from 6th to 12th grade over the course of about 2 weeks leading up to the event. This inspired middle school teachers to introduce poetry writing to their classes, so their students were excited to perform their poems. Thanks to this developement the "rules team" decided to create a high school and middle school category for the competition. Still other creative writing students collaborated on posters for the event, creating and monitoring a sign-up form, and developing a booth concept for the Midnight Book BBQ to represent the creative writing class with a word bingo and poetry on demand.

At the Midnight Book BBQ, creative writing students hosted our booth, organized the poetry slam, did the tech tests with the lapel microphones, and competed in the slam--along with younger students in the middle school category--in front of almost 400 students and family members. After the MBB, they used leftover supplies and materials from posters, etc. to continue our poetry unit, exploring living poets with "identity boxes" and a gallery walk of poetry lines and poet bios.

The entire experience expanded beyond the poetry slam experience to immerse students in the joy of literature and creative writing--and share it with our schoolmates. Thank you for making it possible for students to have such a great experience and be in charge of a major (and successful) event for their school!”

With gratitude,

Ms. Ford