Poetry workshop: The Hills We Climb with Those Who Have Climbed Before—Amanda Gorman, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks and Ntozake Shange – with guest speaker Kate Winton

February 17, 2021 | A Play for Our Times: Explore the enduring impact and relevance of A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959 to today’s struggle of class, segregation, gender, and the American Dream. Explore the enduring impact and relevance of A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959 to today’s struggle of class, segregation, gender, and the American Dream. We will also peek at Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf. Closely reading scenes from both plays, we will consider their unanticipated success, their universal appeal and what they say to us today.

This workshop includes lessons to dramatize and stage Hansberry’s and Shange’s plays, allowing close reading while enhancing students’ understanding of racism, prejudice, gender and human rights.

Each session in this series will explore and analyze literature and art created by African-American writers, artists and thinkers. We will closely read and analyze excerpts of texts and discuss visual art and music. We will consider essential questions and discuss how the past informs the present. These sessions are intended to generate lessons and discussions for use in the classroom. These workshops and the lessons we create for our students will aim to foster empathy and empower teachers to bring their students into these vital conversations. Resources (historical, literary, artistic) will be made available online to the group before each session, and participants will be encouraged to contribute. The workshops are open to all.

Each workshop will run approximately 75-90 minutes.

Please RSVP for each workshop separately. Registration will open shortly after the prior workshop has ended.

Past Sessions (recordings are available):
Wednesday, November 19, 2020 | The Origins of Race: Ibram Kendi, Ta-Nahesi Coates, Phillis Wheatley, Howard Zinn | This session introduces foundational terms and the historical context of American slavery to understand the origins of racism in this country and the social construct that is race- with guest speaker Yusef Jonas

Wednesday, December 9, 2020 | On Slavery: Huck Finn, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Kara Walker, Ethnic Notions, Bill Traylor | Examines enslavement and freedom through literature written during slavery or immediately after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Wednesday, January 13, 2021 | The Choir Kept Singing of Freedom: Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee
This workshop uses as a lens Lee’s documentary on the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963 and King’s eulogy, photography, and song to explore segregation, civil rights, and the often violent struggle for freedom.

Wednesday, January 20, 2021 | Voices of Struggle: Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X
With guest speaker Yusef Jonas, this workshop analyzes how these powerful orators used language to galvanize and inspire activism.

Wednesday, February 3, 2021 | Poetry workshop: The Hills We Climb with Those Who Have Climbed Before—Amanda Gorman, Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Gwendolyn Brooks and Ntozake Shange – with guest speaker Kate Winton. This workshop will engage participants in close reading exercises and share ideas for teaching and writing poetry with an eye to inspiring students to add their voices to the mosaic that is our American tapestry.

Upcoming:
March 3, 2021 | Artists of the Harlem Renaissance: Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Jacob Lawrence Considers The Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and artists and writers who worked to bring their own voices into the American experience to chart a path forward.

March 17, 2021. Imagery and Imagination: The Poetry of Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claudia Rankine. Unpacks poetry in sung and spoken word as a form that celebrates the African American voice.

March 31, 2021. What stories are they telling? Museums, Monuments, and Memorials Examines the design, timing, and siting choices of several historical markers to explore the way they frame history and the impact that framing has on us.

April 14, 2021 Between worlds: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, Bill Traylor, Claudia Rankine, Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, Serena Williams Explores the way each artist straddles multiple worlds of gender, race, genre, and culture to challenge our assumptions and understanding of race. -with guest speaker Yusef Jonas

Susan Stein is an actor, playwright and teaching artist in NYC. Stein has spent the past eight years touring her original play, Etty, directed by Austin Pendleton, to theaters, universities, schools and prisons throughout the United States and parts of Europe. Stein has been an Artist/Scholar in residence at Cambridge University, Duquesne, Boston College, Vanderbilt and Chapman University. She leads workshops in writing and acting throughout the US and UK. Susan studied acting at NYU Graduate School and SUNY Purchase and received a Master’s in Writing at Wesleyan University. She was on the faculty of Princeton Day school for 13 years.

Yusef Jones
Kate Winton

Kate Winton is the Education Director of ettyplay inc. In her thirty years of teaching at Princeton Day School (NJ), The Northwest School (WA), and Taipei American School (Taiwan) she has been committed to arts education. working extensively with the Lincoln Center Program for Arts Education in New York City, McCarter Theatre’s YouthInk program, and Silver Kite Community Consulting. She has a BA from Princeton University and a Masters of Arts in Writing from Teachers College Columbia University.

The full inclusion of people of all abilities is a core value of Classrooms Without Borders. For questions or to make requests for special accommodations contact [email protected]