Urban Word NYC and the NYU Metro Center and the Department of Teaching and Learning at Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development present:
Preemptive Education: Urban Word NYC Fall 2007 Teacher Training
- self- expression - critical thought - self- confidence - educational achievement
Silver Center, 100 Washington Square East
Opening Panel and Performance: free to public
FRIDAY Sept 21, 2007, 7-9pm
Room 714, Silver Center
Speaking Dreams, Living Words:
An Evening of Performance and Conversation on Justice and the Power of Poetry
David Kirkland Ph.D., Moderator
Panelists: Marcella Runell Hall, Queen GodIs, Piper Anderson, K~Swift
The arts have always served an important role in education to cultivate visions of justice and liberation. To some educators social justice is an act of changing the world outside of us. To others it means changing the world from within us. This conversation brings personal stories to center stage, examining the power of spoken word in education to reclaim identities and unleash powerful new voices. Through spoken word, social justice takes on new meaning beginning with one individual, a paper, and a pen whose words when spoken have the power to transform society and the self.
And weekend workshops:
SATURDAY, September 22, 2007 10am - 3pm
(100 Washington Square East, Manhattan, Room 520 Silver Center)
10-11:30am
Urban Word NYC Introduction to Student-Centered Pedagogy
Parker Pracjek & Michael Cirelli
We will discuss the cornerstone principles of Urban Word NYC pedagogy (student-centeredness, non-censorship, and mentoring model), and what it means to carry these principles as systems of belief that bleed into every aspect of our roles as educators. We ask: In what ways do I foster active listening to my writing students? In what ways do I re-enforce the status-quo (suspicion of and disappointment in inner-city youth) or invite deep questioning? In what ways do I model positive social dialogue? In what ways do I foster collaborative teaching?
11:30-1pm
NYCoRE
Educator as Activist
This workshop encourages teachers to examine the ways in which institutionalized education serves to maintain the predominant status quo. We will look at the ways in which a teacher may redefine their role from the traditional classroom-based professional to one who takes a stand on issues of educational justice. Curricular resources developed by NYCoRe on Katrina, immigration and militarism will be available.
1:30-3pm
Kamilah Forbes, Hip-Hop Theatre Festival
Hip Hop Theater 101
This workshop will cover the beginnings of hip hop culture in relationship to a performance aesthetic; discussion will include the history of hip hop theater: how, where and who started it as well as some of the social and political aspects that brought it into being. The workshop will also be interactive in exploring the basics of theater and storytelling in a performance context. Time permitting, other aspects of hip hop theater techniques will be explored, including using rhyme as the basis for dramatic scene, incorporating movement into the physicalization of a character and the utilization of a live DJ as the sound track that pushes a dramatic scene forward.
SUNDAY, September 23, 2007 10am - 3pm
(100 Washington Square East, Manhattan, Room 520 Silver Center)
10-11:30am
David Kirkland, Ph.D.,
Language and Liberation
This session examines the politics of language, exploring the power of the spoken and written word, always articulated in dialect, to construct our identities and unleash our powerful voices. In this way, language plays an important role in both poetry and the arts. A contested site, language is the place where youth struggle with words, theirs and others, to cultivate visions of justice and liberation. In language, youth take on new meaning beginning with a voice and verb, where words when spoken have the power to transform the world inside-out.
11:30-1pm
DJ Reborn (Robyn Rodgers)
Young Women Reborn: Through Popular Music, Media and Culture
The powerful voices, energy and brilliant analytical perspectives of young women deserve to be explored through alternative mediums. The "Young Women Reborn: Through Popular Music, Media and Culture" workshops seek to do just that. Robyn Rodgers will lead a mini version of this model with a discussion of the impact of media on girls, a writing exercise and a dj demo.
1:30-3pm
Rachel McKibbens
RELEASING THE HOSTAGES: How to Negotiate Poems Out of Our Youth
We cannot teach imagination, but we can encourage it. In this workshop, you will discover how to build your own custom fit exercises from poems, write poetry of your own to be used as prompts (even if you don't think of yourself as a poet) and acknowledge the risks you must take as educators to earn the trust of your students; if they don't believe we care about them as writers, they will not deliver the poems they are capable of.
REGISTER NOW!
Suggested donation for weekend training is $100.
Please be sure to pre-register by emailing Program Director, Parker Pracjek at parker@urbanwordnyc.org
Training is free for NYU students and staff, NYCoRE Members, and the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival staff. For additional information, please call 212-352-3495.
About Urban Word NYC:
Founded in 1999, Urban Word NYC™ (UW) is at the forefront of the youth spoken word, poetry and hip-hip movements in New York City. As a leading nonprofit presenter of literary arts education and youth development programs in the country, Urban Word NYC offers a comprehensive roster of programs during the school day and after-school hours and conducts diverse programmatic offerings in the areas of creative writing, journalism, literature and hip-hop. UW presents local and national youth poetry slams, festivals, reading series, open mics and more. All told, Urban Word NYC works directly with 15,000 teens per year in New York City alone, and has partner programs in 42 cities across the United States. For more information, visit: www.urbanwordnyc.org or call 212-352-3495
About NYCoRE:
New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE) is a group of public school educators committed to fighting for social justice in our school system and society at large, by organizing and mobilizing teachers, developing curriculum, and working with community, parent, and student organizations. We are educators who believe that education is an integral part of social change and that we must work both inside and outside the classroom because the struggle for justice does not end when the school bell rings. Visit: www.nycore.org
About the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival:
In six years, the Hip-Hop Theater Festival (HHTF) has grown into one of the most influential outlets showcasing hip-hop performing arts in the country. The Hip-Hop Theater Festival aims to invigorate the fields of theater and hip-hop by nurturing the creation of innovative work within the hip-hip aesthetic. The core of HHTF's programming is its annual Festivals. Visit: www.hiphoptheaterfest.com
BIOGRAPHIES
Piper Anderson is a performance artist, writer, and arts educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently touring a one-woman show entitled In Her Memory that explores a young woman's journey to healing from intimate partner violence. She serves as an artist in residence in schools through out NYC and is an Arts and Media Facilitator at El Puente Center for Peace & Justice.
Kamilah Forbes is an award winning actress, director, playwright and producer. Voted one of VIBE Magazine's Top 100 Juiciest People, Kamilah is known for her captivating work and dedication to each of her passions. As a burgeoning actress, director, playwright and producer, her talent casts a vivid and evocative spell on both the national and international stage. In her diverse body of work she is noted for having a strong commitment to the development of creative works by, for and about the Hip-Hop generation. As the Artistic Director of the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival (HHTF), an annual 3-week festival taking place nationwide in New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Chicago, she has seen it grow from a fledgling project into an independent non-profit organization with a truly national scope.
The festival has featured the works of nearly 100 artists from not just within the U.S. but around the world as well, including England, Brazil and Canada. Many new and well-known artistic forces have had their worked leveraged under Kamilah's artistic direction including OBIE Awards winner Will Power, TONY Award winner Sarah Jones, Rennie Harris, Nilaja Sun, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Indio Melendez, to name a few. Kamilah first came to prominence as the writer/director of Hip-Hop Theatre Junction's premier work "Rhyme Deferred." "Rhyme Deferred" has since toured through a wide range of venues throughout New York, Washington DC, Texas and North Carolina. She has been featured in such diverse publications as American Theater Magazine, Vibe, The Source, and Honey. "Rhyme Deferred" was published in TCG's anthology The Fire this Time. Currently a Kamilah-directed commissioned piece, "Scourge" (starring Marc Bamuthi Joseph), is set to launch the international leg of its tour in January 2007. Kamilah received a B.F.A. in Theatre from Howard University as well as studied at the British-American Drama Academy at Oxford University in Oxford, England.
Born and raised in the United States, Queen GodIs is one of the hippest nerds of this spoken word generation. Her work however, embodies an accessible blend of Hip Hop, Spoken Word, Music and Theater that is both dynamic and refreshingly unique.
Queen has featured internationally at such distinguished venues as: The Trans Atlantic Music Festival (France), BAM Opera House, Nokia Theater, The Apollo Theatre Sound Stage, The Kennedy Center and The Royal Shakespeare Company's New Work Festival in Stratford Upon Avon. Her critically acclaimed debut album, Power U!, presents Queen as both producer and engineer with a with a penchant for creating work that is socially responsible. Her poetry has also been featured on Def Poetry Jam, Robert Townsend's Spoken and appears on two major releases produced by Afro-European singing duo Les Nubians entitled: Echoes - Chapter One and Nubian Voyager. Other credits include: public speaking, education consultant, youth mentor and performance workshop facilitation for inter-generational participants. She was recently the coach of the 2007 Urban Word NYC Teen Poetry Slam Team and is currently preparing for an international tour of her album. She debuts a full-length feature production called 'Birth of Power U!' directed by and co-developed with the acclaimed Tamilla Woodard of LAUNCHnyc. The production will appear off-broadway at the Triad on September 28th, 2007.Visit www.myspace.com/queengodisbiz, www.myspace.com/launchnyc, www.cdbaby.com/cd/queengodis, for more details.
Marcella Runell Hall is the Director of Education for the Hip-Hop Association, and co-author of the Hip-Hop Education Guidebook. Marcella also works in the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs at New York University, serving as the campus-wide Diversity Educator & Trainer. Marcella most recently served as the Assistant Director of Programs, Education & Training at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, as well as adjunct faculty for the Bank Street College of Education and Umass, Amherst. She is currently completing her doctorate in Social Justice Education and also does freelance writing for the New York Times Learning Network and VIBE magazine.
David E. Kirkland is Assistant Professor of English Education at New York University. His work focuses on youth popular culture; Black culture, language and literacy; and urban teacher education. For five years, Dr. Kirkland taught secondary reading and English language arts in Detroit and Lansing, Michigan. Currently, he is writing three books: A Search Past Silence: Exploring Literacy in the Life of a Young Black Man, The Promise in their Eyes: Using Youth Culture to Teach Secondary English, and Narratives of Social Justice Teaching: Negotiating Preservice and Inservice spaces (with others).
Rachel McKibbens is a Brooklyn-based writer, co-curator of the louderARTS project and an Urban Word poetry mentor. She has been teaching in-school and after school workshops for six years and has taught poetry at the on-site high school in Bellevue Hospital for four. McKibbens has appeared in the fourth and fifth seasons of HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry and stars in the slam documentary "Slam Planet: War of the Words ." She is a 2007 New York Foundation of the Arts poetry fellow and a 2007 Pushcart nominee.
Anthony "K~Swift" Scott is a long-time leader at Urban Word NYC. He is hip-hop artist and educator who has been involved with every aspect of Urban Word since 1999 when he discovered his first youth open mic. K~Swift was selected as one of five members of the NYC Teen Poetry Slam Team in 2001. Rapping since the age of three, his poetry has appeared in MH-18, Fusion, Teachers & Writers Collaborative Handbook of Poetic Forms, and Brave New Voices. Most recently, he's been recording and performing with his group New Rap Order. His debut solo album "No Plaque, No Problem" was released independently in 2006.
DJ Reborn has been pleasing crowds across the country and abroad for over a decade with her mellifluous blend of soul, hip-hop, reggae, house, latin, afro-beat, nu-jazz, classics, rock and more. This Chicago native now resides in New York and not only spins at clubs and parties but also at museums, (The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Whitney Museum, The Bronx Museum, The Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum) as well as live shows (The Roots, Common, Talib Kweli, India Arie, John Legend, Alice Smith and Goapele) Reborn is also a mentor/workshop facilitator for NYC teens. She has crafted a workshop specifically for teens girls that explores djing, creative writing and women's images in music/media culture. Since 2002, DJ Reborn worked as musical director and live on stage DJ with renowned actor/playwright Will Power on the off Broadway Hip Hop theatre hit show FLOW. She partnered with Will Power again in 2007 as the musical director/sound designer for his original children's theatre production LITTLE HONEY BO. Reborn was the 2004/05 international tour DJ with Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam and she has made four appearances on BET's Rap City. She has been featured in TRACE, NRG, URB, SCRATCH, NEW YORK MOVES, LUIRE and DJ TIMES magazines.
Parker Pracjek is an educator, arts administrator and performing artist. She is currently Program Director at Urban Word NYC and Managing Director of the New York Butoh Festival. She holds a BA in Theatre and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. She has taught at John Jay College and The College of New Rochelle, as well as many ESL and GED programs throughout NYC. In addition to teaching and working in Arts Education, Parker is a writer, dance-theatre artist, and puppet and maskmaker.
Michael Cirelli is the Executive Director of Urban Word NYC. He is the author of the award-winning curriculum, Hip-Hop Poetry & the Classics (Milk Mug 2004), and has a full-length book of poems, Lobster with Ol' Dirty Bastard, scheduled for publication in 2008 on Hanging Loose Press. Aside from teaching for many years, he is the Director of the Annual Hip-Hop and Spoken Word Teacher and Community Educator Institute at the University of Wisconsin, which won the 2007 Innovative Program Award from the Association of Colleges and Universities. He has his MFA in Poetry from the New School, and also teaches hip-hop literature at the College of New Rochelle. He was featured on Def Poetry season 5.
