The Power of Words

The University's Warner School of Education is collaborating with three urban high schools in Rochester and performance poet Reenah Golden to introduce students to spoken poetry as a literary practice that combines performance, politics, and cultural change.

The project gives youth safe and effective ways to express their views on issues such as poverty and violence in their communities.

"There is a way in which urban teens are disconnected from their schooling," says Joanne Larson, Michael W. Scandling Professor of Education, who helps direct the Spoken Word Poetry Project for Warner. "It's as if they're crying out to us, 'I have something to say, and you aren't listening!' "

Funding for the project is provided through an Edith Glick Shoolman Children's Foundation grant and a new collaboration with Rochester's Writers and Books.