 And so as a teacher, I'm always wondering, how do I help my students understand the power and the joy to be found in words? Those of poets like all the ones we just talked about, writers like the ones we just talked about, and of their own words. So two years ago, in September, I looked out at my new students, just like I do every year. And I told them that eight months later, they would all be taking a bow on a real stage, in a real theater, in front of a real audience, after performing in a real play. And there was this pregnant silence, all these little 14-year-old faces looking up at me, the silence, and then a few hands went up. Do we have to do it? Is it a part of our grade, though? What happens if we're absent that day? Like, if I just have it, then my favorite question came from this quiet girl named Kaylee, who raised her hand and said, can I just be a tree? I don't want to be a tree. No Kaylee, I said, there are no trees in our play. And she protested, but I didn't sign up for that. So people who don't know my students, they sometimes try to flatten them into this category that I'm sure you've heard before, and it's called at risk. And I've realized over the years that that phrase is often used as a stand-in, a code word, for some of my students' realities. They're primarily students of color. They're growing up in a city, Boston, with a troubling history of educational inequity. Most of them, 83%, come from low-income households. Many of my students have experienced significant trauma. A quarter of them are special education students, several are English language learners, and many will be the first in their families to attend college. But those are just some of the truths about my students. Those of us who know and love them know that they're also brothers and sisters, their sons and daughters, their athletes and scientists and caretakers and artists. But too often, those kind of facts, those at-risk factors, are presented as the whole story of who my students are and where they come from. And these are the kinds of stories my students see about who they are and where they come from. So my students see these kinds of stories. And sometimes they internalize that these are the only stories worth telling about themselves and about their communities. They believe that these are the only stories anyone ever hears about them or believes about them. They question whether their voices are loud enough to tell the stories that they want people to hear. And so when I stand before them and I announce that they're going to be on stage in front of an audience, they respond like Kaylee and they say, I didn't sign up for that. So before we get to the play, I require all my students to participate in Poetry Out Lab. Anyone here to Poetry Out Lab with the kids? Yeah, okay. So Poetry Out Lab is a national poetry recitation competition. You memorize a poem and you perform it on stage and if you're good enough, you win $20,000, right? So there are three simple rules. And the kids are like, this is too much work. I'm like, guys, memorize one poem and you can... All right, sit down. All right, these are like really, really big. Show up. What about it, dude? That's it. It's one, two, three. I tell my students all the time, I believe in you. You're powerful. If you support one another, you're going to succeed together. But if you can remember being 14, if you haven't blocked that, I will believe you. You'll understand why even those three rules are incredibly hard for students to follow because being 14 is hard. Every social interaction is a minefield. A 14-year-old self-image is so incredibly fragile that the smallest thing can send them into a spiral of self-doubt. And our aspiring tree, Kaylee, was so afraid to be vulnerable that she would skip class, she would show up an hour late, put in minimal effort, she would nervously giggle her way through every theater activity and we were preparing for Poetry Out Lab. And actually she was one of the first nine creators to memorize her poem. But when it was time for her to stand in front of the class and rehearse for the first time, she froze. So she's standing in front of the room, pressed up against the whiteboard, just waiting for the wall to swallow her up and save her. And her eyes were big and terrified and her eyes welled up and she said, I can't do it, I can't save the poem. So time seems to stop. She puts her hands over her face, her classmates start fidgeting. And then from the side of the room, one girl says, come on, Kaylee, you can do it. And somebody else says, yeah, just say the first line. The energy in the room started to shift. Suddenly the students weren't just sitting there passively waiting for her to fail, they were willing her to succeed. So after a few more painful moments, she took her hands off her face, she said the first line of her poem and ran back to her seat. And small as it may have seemed, that was a victory. She'd taken the first step in proving to herself that her voice was powerful. As teachers, we can tell students that they're capable, but it doesn't become real until they confront their fear. Doing the things that scare them makes them invincible. On the night of the performance, Kaylee stood in the spotlight and recited her poem to a packed house. She proved to herself that she didn't have to be a tree because she had a voice and she had had it all along. And in the second half of the year, Kaylee came alive in rehearsals for that play. She had discovered her own voice on stage and simply she became a leader within the group. She infused her scenes with humor and expression. She encouraged her scene partners. She was quizzing them on memorization. She was showing them what to do. And on the day of the play, Kaylee and her classmates shown them. And a few weeks later, reflecting on what she had learned, Kaylee wrote that being forced to do theater was an amazing opportunity to get to know herself and be better. This is so good. Okay, so we should consider what that means in terms of words power. What could our students' words set in motion? I have a former student named Omar. For poetry out loud, when he was in ninth grade, he recited Langston Hughes' The Negro Speaks of Rivers. And in our play at the end of the year, he stole his scene with his portrayal of a black man caught in the web of the apartheid era of South Africa's racist laws. As Omar got older, he started to write his own poetry. By the time he was a senior, he was a member of our school's award-winning slam poetry team, which I want to be clear I had nothing to do with, but I like to think that doing poetry with them in ninth grade wets their appetite. I'm going. And so when I was named 2017, Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, Omar, performed his original poem, Slactivism, at the ceremony. And I'm going to show you a video of his performance. Raise your hand if you wish for a different answer. All right, make some noise if you think sex is a massage you should end. Woo! That's the thing, if you think racism's gonna end right now. Woo! Raise your hand if you hope to that a source of media involved would happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't think you've got 50 likes for it. Snap your fingers if somebody shares it. Raise your hand if you know the answer to this question. How does a click of a budding country change like a magic trick? Poof it, does it? Why do we feed into our feed as if we will feed the poor? Why do we socialize about a social issue and think it resulted in consensus? Why do we let the word of the community become a new word of mouth? Slactivism. Asked to perform to be of the internet in support of a political or social cause from regard to acquiring real-time involvement. And this is my definition. That active time should be active in this on social media, acting like it's empathetic but it's in that experience to put that. And of all ways to waste our time to do this, kids dying from cancer, but we donate within 80 men instead of donating with our credit cards. Share just the food we care. We don't care to share our care on a given day. I guess sharing the protest is doing the protest and being full of everything without making progress. And that's the case. And I'll share images of the demonstration in Chicago at the Donald Trump round and call it advocacy. So let me get this straight. We can see domestic violence come to light on our screens so we view the screens on the live screen. Is Facebook on the reality now? Our new religion? Everyone want to be pastors and priests, pastors and chiefs, chapters and thieves, raptors and priests we rather give our speech than teach when the truth is out of our reach. When I see a child lying dead in the trash can, am I supposed to feel like my share is gonna bring them back to life? Am I supposed to act like a life equal to prayer? A helping hand? Clean water in Flint, Michigan? Re-evaluate my morality if I scroll down? We share to make up for the times we missed in the rallies. We tweet online, but when it's white, tell me act like lots of birds who can't sing. It doesn't matter how many times repost about the Chicago shootings if you don't vote to ship the federal laws. If you want to change the way the spirit is changed your mind, not your status. It doesn't matter how many times you throw a hashtag. If you don't help to stop the bombings. If you don't participate in the boycotts. If you don't play back against police brutality. It's time to put our hands up. Stand up on the keyboard. Focus on the uppercase. Face the water. Now let the media pull this in. Deeply impacted at least one person who was in the audience on that day. The late commissioner of education in the state of Massachusetts, Mitchell Chester. After that day when he saw Omar's performance, he reached out and asked me for permission to have a copy of the poem. And then the commissioner of education in the state of Massachusetts took that poem and started performing it and his speaking engagements around the state. Oh wow. He took the poem and he sent it out in a newsletter that went out to teachers and administrators all over our state. Every chance he got, he talked about Omar's poem. And that is the power of our students voices. Our students have profound and powerful stories to tell. And as educators, it's our job. It's our responsibility and it's our privilege to help them reject narratives that tell them that their boundaries are predetermined. Words, like Ansexten's or Robert Frost's or Buketu Seyum's or Langston Hughes or Kay Lee's or Omar's can be the perfect vehicle to help us do it. I'd like to end by inviting you once again to talk to one another.