Youth spoken word poetry groups are on the rise in the United States, offering safe spaces for young people to write and perform. These diverse groups encourage members to share their lived experiences, decry injustices, and imagine a better future. At a time when students may find writing in school alienating and formulaic, composing in these poetry groups can be refreshingly relevant and exciting. Listen to the Poet investigates two Arizona spoken word poetry groups - a community group and a high school club - that are both part of the same youth organization. Exploring the writing lives and poetry of several members, Wendy R. Williams takes readers inside a writing workshop and poetry slam and reveals that schools have much to learn about writing, performance, community, and authorship from groups like these and from youth writers themselves.

This essential resource helps educators tackle the most common and challenging dilemmas that arise in today’s classroom—such as diversity, privilege, and intersectionality.  This book examines common challenges that arise for educators teaching social justice and diversity-related courses and offers best practices for addressing them. Contributors cover issues such as the many roles instructors play, inside and outside of college and university classrooms, for example, in handling personal threats, responsibly incorporating current events related to social justice into classroom discussion, navigating one's own stigmatized or privileged identities, dealing with bias in teaching evaluations, and engaging in self-care. The authors' backgrounds offer unique perspectives from which to approach such complex subject matter; several contributors are feminist or intersectional scholars with the experience and expertise to address the pedagogical dilemmas that often arise in teaching social justice. Many of the issues discussed arise from the authors' own experiences as teachers in the current social climate; however, they also are verified by research on quality teaching in general and teaching about diversity specifically. 

Youth spoken word poetry groups are on the rise in the United States, offering safe spaces for young people to write and perform. These diverse groups encourage members to share their lived experiences, decry injustices, and imagine a better future. At a time when students may find writing in school alienating and formulaic, composing in these poetry groups can be refreshingly relevant and exciting. Listen to the Poet investigates two Arizona spoken word poetry groups - a community group and a high school club - that are both part of the same youth organization. Exploring the writing lives and poetry of several members, Wendy R. Williams takes readers inside a writing workshop and poetry slam and reveals that schools have much to learn about writing, performance, community, and authorship from groups like these and from youth writers themselves.