Writing is a skill that doesn’t come easily for everyone, and for some students in one ALL Academy classroom, that meant carrying around a sense that there’s a ‘right’ way to do it, and they haven’t found it yet.
That’s part of why Clinical Associate Christina Nieves chose poetry for her class’s spring project. Poetry, she found, didn’t come with one right answer or one correct way to do it. It gave students room to be creative, express themselves on their own terms, and realize they had something worth saying in the first place.
That idea became the heart of the project, and eventually, a published book called Becoming.
Back in April, during the class’s poetry unit, Christina introduced students to a handful of poetry styles, from free verse to more structured forms, encouraging students to use whatever gave them a way into their own ideas. From there, students drafted, crossed out lines that didn’t sound right, and read their favorites out loud to see how they felt.
Oleg took that part seriously, working through page after page until each poem sounded exactly how he wanted it to.
“I worked hard on each poem, so I am very proud,” he shared.
As the weeks went on, Christina noticed something begin to change. Students who’d come in believing they weren’t good writers started raising their hands more, asking for feedback, and defending word choices they’d fought hard for. “They grew more willing to share their ideas and take pride in what they’d made,” she said.
That shift carried into the next step, when students picked their best poems and illustrated them. For Zander, that part stood out most.
“I liked sketching out the drawings,” Zander said. “We got to color it and make it nice.”
Picking just five poems out of everything they’d written wasn’t easy. Christina watched students slow down, reread their work, and really think through which piece best represented them instead of just picking whichever one they’d finished first or found easiest to write.
The morning the books arrived is a moment that stands out for Christina.
“Watching the students flip through the pages looking for their poem and seeing their names in print was something I’ll never forget,” she reflected. “They were smiling, showing each other their pages, and you could see how proud they were.”
Seeing their names in print meant something different than seeing a grade at the top of a page. A class assignment gets finished and set aside. A book gets kept. That’s exactly why Christina wanted the poems published in the first place: she hoped that having something real to hold onto would help students see they were capable of doing hard things.
At the year-end Poetry Publishing Party, Kellan stood beaming in front of the people who mattered most to him.
“My favorite part of the project was sharing our poetry with our parents,” he said. “I loved standing and reading my work to them.”
Kellan, Oleg, and Zander started the poetry project searching for the “right” way to write, unsure if they had something worth saying. By the end, the whole class discovered their voices.
“I picked poetry because there wasn’t a wrong way to do it,” Christina said. “But watching them, I realized it gave them more than that. It gave them a reason to believe their own words mattered.”
Learn more about how ALL Academy supports students in unlocking their potential through individualized learning on our Educational Services page.