George Jackson Academy at Urban Word NYC's Grand Slam Finals
On a Saturday evening in April, just a few weeks before our George Jackson Academy students’ semiannual reading at The New School, we convened at the Apollo Theater in Harlem to watch a teen poetry slam. My co-teacher Jui Nahar and I had come up with the idea for a field trip early in the semester, and as the reading approached, we couldn’t think of anything better for our brilliant, creative, and empathic students than watching other young people express themselves onstage.
But being at the show—Urban Word NYC’s Grand Slam Finals—with our students and several of their parents was something else entirely. The teenage, mostly non-white performers spoke openly, and with beauty and poise, about not only their passions but also their sometimes very deep pain. They talked about what it was like to be fat, to be bisexual, to grow up in a culture of terrifying gun violence. Repeatedly, I looked down the row of seats to see our boys looking fixedly at the stage.
Afterward, the parents were rapturous. And later, in the classroom, the students told us how moving it had been for them, too, to see young people speak so openly, and with such confidence, about these issues. Watching them hold their own on stage at the New School reading a few weeks later, drawing the audience under their spell, I thought: well, look at that. You’re doing it, too.
