Today’s lesson is by guest author Dominique James, daughter of Chicago and Southside sweetheart, graduated Summa Cum Laude from Howard University. She has completed research fellowships at the University of California-Riverside and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. After graduation, she was a TRIALS Fellow at Harvard Law School and a University of Chicago HBCU Bridge Scholar. She is a teaching artist at Young Chicago Authors and creates word-based multimedia projects, for which she received a 2018 Propeller Fund grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation. Whether as an event host, performer, or teaching artist, Dominique seeks to inspire celebration and share joy.
(Photo by Reese Amaru) Visit Dominique’s blog here.
DAMN. 3 Years Anniversary Workshop Series
(originally posted on http://www.nikki-rosa.com/blog and shared here with permission)
For the project, I used the workshop contents to reimagine the physical album, designing my own versions of the album cover, liner notes, and tracklist. I am also posting an image that organizes the info into a single document. The images and the document are below and the downloadable PDF with hyperlinks can be found here. I’m also posting links to the pieces. Happy creating! Continue reading
The summer is an excellent time to start thinking about changes and additions to the current curriculum. Having students blog about living poets is a year-long activity that is student driven, while also providing choice and an authentic audience. 
February is always the time of the year that my students’ energy starts to fade. There is something about the long winters, when the sun goes down early that tends to take a toll on all of us slogging through another school year. I usually save this activity for just these times, because it has been a sure fire way to not only increase my students’ morale and give them some seeds for writing, but it’s also is a great way to continue building a community of learners. This year, I added two spoken word poems by Phil Kaye to add another layer to this lesson, and I was really happy with the way it worked out.