OUR Values

We offer Completely FREE Downloadable Courses for Your Classroom or Afterschool Program, as well as in Classroom events. Check the programs below to learn more!

Downloadable

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Mental Health & Wellness

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Mental Health and Wellness is a free ten-session course for middle schoolers that uses poetry videos, interactive student journals, and unique writing prompts to help young people share their experiences and tell their stories.

The content is rooted in mental health and features candid videos of The Diatribe teaching artists responding to discussion questions about their lives and how they cope with mental illness and stress. This culturally responsible program is inclusive, accessible, and meets social-emotional learning and ELA standards.

Course Outline:

Honest Poems
Self-Care
What’s Normal?
Editing Day One
Relapsing
Healing
Editing Day Two
Performance Dynamics

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It’s important for us to track who is using our materials. It helps us to procure funding so we can continue to provide free media like this! Questions? Email our Director of Education, J-Lin

Our Identities

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Our Identities is a ten session poetry unit for high schoolers that can be taught online and in-person. Designed to give students a safe space to speak about issues that impact their lives, the content is unique and inspiring and features work by Black, Brown, and LGBTQ artists.
Poetry Empowered: Our Identities includes slide shows, candid videos of The Diatribe teaching artists responding to discussion questions, and step by step instructions/rationale. It meets ELA, Learning for Social Justice, and Michigan Social Emotional standards. It is easy to teach and will have your students engaging in important conversations about issues surrounding identity and culture and writing and sharing their own powerful spoken word poems.

Course Outline:

How Do You Identify
Representation
Queer Identities
Editing Day One
Our Beliefs
Celebrating Our Identities
Editing Day Two
Performance Dynamics
Rehearsal
Final Performance

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It’s important for us to track who is using our materials. It helps us to procure funding so we can continue to provide free media like this! Questions? Email our Director of Education, J-Lin

Writing To Right Wrongs

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Writing to Right Wrongs is a nine week program in partnership with the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan. Diatribe teaching artists lead in-class lessons once a week for nine weeks, teaching students about housing discrimination, red-lining, gentrification, and how housing impacts every aspect of life including water quality and education. The Diatribe brings this content to life with engaging videos and class discussions, informing students of their rights and how the Fair Housing Center can be utilized as a resource in their own lives. Incorporating Spoken Word into these lessons, which culminate in a performance for their peers, empowers young people to write, speak, and engage with their communities while exploring these important issues.

Bring Diatribe to Your Class

To book this program at your school or organization, reach out to our Director of Education, J-Lin.

Poetry Empowered

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Poetry Empowered is a ten session in-school (or after school) program that kicks off with a one hour, interactive Deluxe Assembly for the whole school. We then work directly in a teacher’s classroom or with up to thirty interested students extracurricularly in ten one-hour sessions. We have three Poetry Empowered programs, one for, Elementary Schools, one Middle Schools, and one for High Schools. Each meet ELA and Social Emotional Learning standards and touch on social issues that our community’s young people witness and face. Through writing exercises and dissecting poems by current world-renowned poets, students learn to apply poetic techniques to their own poetry. Writing sessions with unique prompts and in-depth feedback on both content and performance, result in dynamic and powerful spoken word pieces, which students share for their peers in their own assembly at the end of the program.

Bring Diatribe to Your Class

To book this program at your school or organization, reach out to our Director of Education, J-Lin.

Deluxe Assemblies

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Deluxe Assemblies bring radical vulnerability, high-energy story telling, and entertainment to the stage for entire school populations. Members of The Diatribe share their stories and poetry, talking about how writing helps them cope with difficult issues and about the value and power of sharing your own voice. After these intimate performances, The Diatribe asks students to take a moment to be open and vulnerable as well. With all eyes closed and heads lowered, a series of situations or struggles are raised and students are encouraged to raise a finger for each one that applies to them. Students then look up at all of the fingers held up and The Diatribe leads a discussion about unity, the importance lifting one another up, and opening the door to conversations about difficult topics. The auditorium or gymnasium or media center is then turned into a concert hall as local hip hop artists and musicians light up the stage. The ultimate goal and the result seen time and time again is that students leave The Diatribe’s Deluxe Assemblies feeling empowered and inspired, and with a new understanding that their voice matters and that someone is listening.

Bring Diatribe to Your Class

To book this program at your school or organization, reach out to our Director of Education, J-Lin.

Summer Programming

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The Diatribe offers free summer programming each year in Grand Rapids for 5th-12th graders. Our students have the opportunity to work with talented Grand Rapids and Muskegon teaching artists, exploring creativity and gaining tools for self-expression and self advocacy as they work on developing their poetic skills. These three day long intensives often take place in mid-July/ early August and culminate with a student showcase. Lunch is provided.