What I’m about to describe is not special just because it exists. Nor is it a novel idea; teachers run programs like our Coffeehouse in schools every day. I didn’t invent it, nor am I especially good at it. I’d describe my role as less mentor, more encourager. I’m the person who supplies the hot chocolate and claps really loud. Another teacher and I run it, we inherited it from teachers of the same mindset, born from our own teachers who sensed the same thing we do: these artsy kids need some space and a venue for their artsy-ness.
Mr. C. and I run an after school Coffeehouse multiple times a year for our students in a 100 seat Little Theatre. That’s it. Students can get up and perform. Whatever. We have some rules (“No swearing” “Five minutes or two poems” “No singing along with songs playing over your headphones while the rest of us can’t hear the music” [NEW rule]). The most important rule (and one that exists in Poetry Slams and similar programs everywhere) is “No apologies.” This rule is designed to prevent shy kids or kids sharing what they’ve made for the first time from standing and stuttering apologies for their five minutes. Sharing something you’ve made is unbelievably difficult. Seriously. Sharing something you’ve made is unbelievably difficult. I salute every person who’s ever done it, especially if you’re 15 years old.
(I also salute my parents and the teachers I had who made it possible for me to do it. Who gave me some space and a venue.)
With all due respect to coaches (wonderful people who care a lot about our kids and spend a lot of time with them), when a kid physically grows big and tall or stays small, coaches have a pretty good idea there might be talent to be cultivated there. A kid talented at making art doesn’t necessarily stand out in a physical way. If artistic talent is to be cultivated and some-of-the-most-important-contributions-humans-have-to-offer-this-otherwise-busted-world, from cave paintings to Da Vinci to students reading their own poems on the stage of a Little Theatre in a high school America in 2015, is to continue to exist, who will see this talent if we don’t give burgeoning artists the space and time to show it?
So basically, Coffeehouse is the basketball practice of art.
There are many singers and musicians. They’re especially good this year. Tony played the theme song from Rocky on the ocarina. Jaidah played her own songs and “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers. Josh played “Bankrupt on Selling” by Modest Mouse. Mikeya sang the Sam Smith version of “How Will I Know.” A group of students sang the theme song to Pokemon. Mr. C. played death metal versions of Taylor Swift songs. We kind of hit every genre.
The poets earn my special respect. They read their poems off laptops and phones and out of old school journals. Some of them know their work by heart. Some of them read Slam-style, some of them read with their heads down and not aimed towards the microphone. Their poems can be funny and full of pain. My favorite line this year has been from Michael’s “Self Image, Fame, and Stitches” (and I’m paraphrasing here): I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t even go to Wendy’s anymore
It’s an exercise in listening, I rarely see the poems on the page. I occasionally ask for copies. I asked a former student Colin Pascoe for his work, and they’re some of my favorite poems I’ve ever read. I still have the binder he gave me, his “book,” when he graduated, in which he separated his poetic efforts into high school years. See his chapter page for Freshman year: “Hello I’m Colin and I hate everyone and I don’t title my poems because I hate them too.” His performances at Coffeehouse and at Louder Than a Bomb in Chicago in 2009 were epic.
We lose students sometimes, and we lost Colin in 2010. Colin went away to college with strict instructions from me to keep writing poems, graduate, and apply for MFA school. I feel a deep sense of loss over all the poems he never wrote. And I’m thankful he sought out a space and a venue for his artsy-ness in high school.
I’m thankful for all the kids that do.
With permission, I’m ending with a link to some current student work, Tracy’s great poem “The She System.”
She killed with it at Coffeehouse.
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