Inspiration From Outside of the Classroom: An Afterschool Program That Motivates Students to Write

Sometimes as educators, you need to look outside of the classroom and beyond the walls of the school to find people who can inspire students and yourselves as teachers in ways you could not have imagined. Our schools are in communities full of people with talents that can benefit teaching and learning. Educators can seek these resources within their community to enhance their pedagogy and their students’ experience with the curriculum. Additionally, teachers can learn from and connect with their surrounding community. Imagine bringing a hip-hop artist into the classroom. How would students react? What if this artist grew up in the same city as your students and walked through similar hallways and neighborhood blocks? Finding inspiration in unexpected places This was the case for one middle school teacher, Idella, who created an after-school writing program that stemmed from a larger learning community of teachers who meet monthly with professors from a local university to discuss best practices in writing pedagogy. This learning community consists of K–9th grade teachers, school psychologists, creative writing specialists, current and former administrators, current and former professors, and a poet in residence. The poet in residence, local hip-hop artist Andre Saunders, was brought into the program through a connection with his former elementary school teachers who are members of the learning community. These teachers had maintained contact with Andre over the years and, after listening to what their students were interested in, were not afraid to reach out and engage with hip-hop and poetry in their classrooms even though this was something outside of their typical practices. Andre Saunders is someone who cares deeply about giving back to his community. He shares his gifts and talents of writing and creating music across Philadelphia. He is a performer and community activist. As conceptualized by Rudine Sims Bishop in ” Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors ,” students benefit from seeing themselves reflected in the curriculum and having the opportunity to learn about those who are different. If this is true for our libraries, the same should also ring true for the people who enter our […]

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