SAYS in Your School
During the school year, a trained SAYS Teaching Artist/Poet-Mentor Educator (PME) works inside a classroom once per week to deliver innovative, student-centered lessons that parallel the teacher's learning objectives. Each week the PME's curriculum is adapted to scaffold appropriate standard-based, culturally relevant activities. At the culmination of the program, the PME and their students will create a spoken word anthology of their work alongside Animoto videos of their best pieces. SAYS services support the improvement of schools through providing culturally relevant and responsive direct service to youth. At the core of our model is a commitment to equity—SAYS utilizes evidence-based best practices to advance educational justice.
Sacramento Youth Poet Laureate
The Sacramento Area Youth Speaks (SAYS) Youth Poet Laureate Program provides a platform that promotes youth voice, civic engagement, political literacy and community building. Through this endeavor, we aim to push the literary arts and poetry aesthetic to include young people's voices, ideas, beliefs and their values that are significantly under-represented and marginalized.
SAYS Summer Program
SAYS Warrior Scholar Summer Program
The SAYS Warrior Scholar Program aims to equip college bound students already active in the SAYS network with the tools, preparation, and knowledge necessary for them to begin envisioning their own educational journey after high school. The purpose of the academy is to cultivate Warrior Scholars capable of determining, defining, and creating their own path in higher education and breaking institutional barriers every step of the way.
SAYS Project h.e.a.l
The most successful program, to date, in achieving these goals, in particular academic support + arts education + violence prevention, is the yearlong elective course, Project H.E.A.L: Healing/Health, Education, Artivism, and Leadership. This specialized course led by two Black Poet-Mentor Educators, aims to work exclusively to address the experiences of students who were disproportionately confronting oppressive social systems, historic marginalization, underrepresentation, and a lack of access to resources.
SAYS ProfessionaL development
SAYS provides a plethora of professional development services to teachers and administrators ranging in topics from school discipline and bullying on campus, race(ism) and achievement; community-school partnerships; youth culture and classroom curriculum; equity, expectations, and outcomes; to name just a few.