Using Poetry as a Way to Survive

The New York Times goes into the schools, seeing if poetry is making a difference in teen lives.

From the piece...

Acting as visiting artists, three educators — a former science teacher, a filmmaker and poet, and an advocate for arts education — teach an optional three-hour-a-week class at University Heights High School in the Bronx. Their goal is to teach students how to wield words as weapons in spoken word poetry. Honesty and making trouble in the world are among the class’s guiding principles. There are no grades, and the rough language of the streets is welcomed.

“The most simple and basic way you empower yourselves is through self-awareness,” Roland Legiardi-Laura, a self-described old ’60s lefty, tells a classroom full of students. “You’re in this room to teach yourselves how to be heard in the world.”

Mr. Legiardi-Laura and his fellow teachers hold sessions in their homes, take students to visit museums and colleges, and encourage them to participate in citywide poetry competitions. They develop personal relationships well beyond what is traditional, offering help when students are in trouble.

The teachers acknowledge that their approach is controversial, but do not apologize. “The most important thing we’ve done,” Amy Sultan, one of the teachers, says, “is to create a safe space, and we take that safe space into the world. And they come to see that the safety is really within them.”