California poets in the schools program

Home Educator California Poets in the Schools. We … View more. View less. Bookmark this Exploration. Students are mentored to bring their own life experiences into the View more.

Tina Pasquinzo tina cpits. Artistic Discipline: Literary Arts, Multi-discipline. Available dates: Each school needs to arrange time schedule that fits their needs with the visiting poet.

Available times: Workshop sessions take approximately 1 hour. Santa Cruz County by arrangement. Conducts educational programming for 2 or more years: Yes.

Performs criminal background checks on staff with youth contact: Yes. Provides tools to assess student learning workshops and residencies : Yes. Students today are dealing with extreme isolation brought on by a global pandemic, a massive racial reckoning in the Black Lives Matter movement and record-breaking, climate-change-induced wildfires forcing traumatic evacuations and blanketing the entire west coast in air too toxic to breathe.

Mental health crises are on the rise, particularly amongst adolescents. Poetry instruction, whether online or in person, cultivates human connection. The act of participating in a poetry class allows young people to feel immediately less isolated and can be a powerful step in helping to overcome loneliness.

Writing poetry allows young people to contribute to the larger community dialogue on social justice, climate change and other pressing issues of our time. Sharing poetry aloud with peers can create bridges that foster empathy and understanding. It is a vital necessity for our existence. It forms the quality of light from which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.

Tree B. I just loved watching you float around my room loving all the words and images and sounds. The students so responded to your delight in them — they wanted to give, give, give to you. You were a great example to me. Now celebrating its 50th year of youth poetry instruction, California Poets in the Schools is a potent and wide reaching artist in residency organization. I have worked with hundreds of young writers, organized high school poetry slams, created county and state wide anthologies of student work, and bonded with an amazing group of poets--many of whom are also poet teachers with CPITS.

When I first started I was only going to teach one year. When I saw how poetry increased children's self-esteem, and how they loved learning to use language in an exciting way, I continued on and on. I also learned so much from my fellow poet teachers at their annual conferences with workshops and exchanges of lesson plans, and idea.

CPITS is instrumental in developing the social-emotional learning of every child, in my experience. California Poets in the Schools is the only nonprofit I have ever had experience with that is entirely focused on serving the population it serves. It brings together the most sophisticated, dedicated, and creative teachers and staff imaginable to provide superior poetry classes for children, youth, and adults to mine the depths of their creativity and literary skills.

Its grassroots connection with the population it serves speaks volumes about its dedication to its mission. Co-sponsered by the California Arts Council, and partnering with CPITS, this program is free, and provides students with an opportunity to engage in the memorization of classic and contemporary poems, gain public speaking skills, and broaden their understanding of our vast literary heritage and its power to express profound thoughts and emotions through oral recitation.

I am amazed, year after year, how teens embrace the challenge of standing in front of their peers and becoming more vulnerable than the usual classroom experience typically allows, by interpreting great poetry. In a time when federal funds for the arts have been severely cut back, I am profoundly grateful for the mission of CPITS to continue to touch the hearts and imaginations of children of all ages through their dedication to poetry for 50 years.

California Poets in the Schools changed my life forever, and helps me change the lives of students on a daily basis as I reach as many as one thousand per year, including in court and community schools.

I joined in as a side project while I was figuring things out; now I am area coordinator of Humboldt, Del Norte and Trinity counties. CPITS has allowed me to stay professionally immersed in poetry, while it's possible that poetry otherwise could have fallen out of my life.

Prartho S. It seems the perfect corner to cut in the classroom! Poetry feeds the roots of the human being, nourishing the heart-based wisdom that all children bring into the world. Perhaps more than any other art form, poetry teaches an appreciation of paradox. It embraces the most quirky uniqueness along with our most common denominators. Rather than competition, its spirit is inclusiveness and celebration. Just this week, my third-grade class of mostly first-generation bi-lingual students wrote Dia de los Muertos poems for lost family members.

As usual, some of the most reluctant writers in the class wrote breath-taking poems: "My grandfather plays dominoes in my heart. He sleeps in the cocoon of a butterfly, wishing he could be alive again. I hear the sound of wind blowing through the house. California Poets in the Schools reaches the lives of thousands of young people every year, opening up their imaginations and getting them to write and feel great about it.