Learn Then Burn

Hello teachers! We know you work hard. Besides ninjas, you have the hardest job in the world. Between the teaching, the testing, the grading, and the nurturing it's difficult to seek out new materials for your classroom. We are here to help. As slam poets and teachers, we know the power of the spoken word in the classroom. All you have to do is attend a youth slam or find a clip of one online and you will see the positive impact it has on our young people. It is able to engage kids from any background in a way that classical poetry simply cannot touch. A complaint we've heard from many teachers is that they would love to use spoken word in their classrooms but they are afraid of getting in trouble. A bulk of spoken word poetry does have quite a few curses. After all, those poems were meant to be read to a rowdy crowd of adults at a slam and not a class full of kids. The poems come from the gut and sometimes an "F" bomb finds its way to the page. Unfortunately, this is what holds many teachers back from using spoken word in their classes. So behold! We asked some of the best contemporary spoken word and slam poets to give us poems that would be appropriate for the classroom. This means you will not have to sift through this book with a highlighter to try and find the F's and the S's and the B's. We've provided poems from national slam champs, world slam champs, fellow teachers, and poets we feel are the best of what's around. We've also included some lessons. Some of these lessons have been tested out in the classroom, some not. Feel free to use these lessons as you see fit. Every teacher has their own style so please, do not feel like you have to use the lessons verbatim. Simplify, expand, modify, do whatever you need to do. You know your class so teach the poems the way that suits them best. The most important part is the poetry. Learn then Burn, Tim Stafford and Derrick Brown