2013-036 EDC-Arts - Cedar Ridge High School $500

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YouTh ink. and Literacy Our workshops are aimed at improving writing and performance skills, and feature an emphasis on the use of figurative and descriptive language, storytelling techniques, body movement and gestures, voice control, eye contact, and vocabulary development. Furthermore, spoken word provides an avenue to address social issues relevant to youth in diverse communities. Sacrificial Poets is dedicated to fostering personal growth for youth by providing both a means by and a venue in which they can tell their own stories using their own words. The workshops are designed to provide youth the tools and safe space they need to express themselves, share their experiences, and kindle a greater sense of power, purpose and belonging. The YouTh ink. curriculum has three main branches of focus: writing,performance and public speaking, and identity. The writing portion of our curriculum features an emphasis on developing storytelling techniques,powerful imagery, figurative language and literary devices. Some of the topics we touch on include: • simile/metaphor/extended metaphor • irony: situational,verbal, and dramatic • personification, anthropomorphism • paradox • double entendre • storytelling conventions/techniques • alliteration • point of view: 1St, 2nd, 3ra person • hyperbole • rhyme: end, internal, slant • oral poetry, oral literature history and elements • poetic structure: stanza, verse, line • connotation, denotation breaks • parallel structure • figurative, literal meanings Arts, Identity, and Achievement Recent studies have shown that building positive identity, especially with regard to race, is a crucial factor in achieving academic success and promoting resilience. For example, a study conducted by the Heinz Endowments "found that ALANA (African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American) students performed best in settings that built on their culture and promoted their racial identities," and that"culturally responsive pedagogy and positive racial identity can play major roles in promoting academic achievement and resilience for ALANA youth" (Hanley and Noblit, 20). Furthermore, the researchers of this study stress the powerful role that art plays in this type of learning model,noting that"when students are actively engaged in creatively thinking,they focus in ways that call for flexibility in thought and an integration of emotionality, rationality and meaning that is necessary for success in academic settings and elsewhere" (66).