This curriculum-based collection of lesson plans is designed to build student confidence for articulating their unique ideas and sensibilities about the world through literary expression.


For this book, Jimmy Santiago Baca, one of the foremost poets in America today, collaborates with two National Writing Project Fellows and literacy professionals, Kym Sheehan and Denise VanBriggle. Together they present a teaching tool that uses poems from Baca’s incarceration as a young man, along with curricular activities and probing questions crafted to help students heal through writing. Each exercise reinforces the theme that a strong grasp of self-esteem borne from unique expression lends itself to the student enjoying day-to-day life at the highest creative and fulfilling level.


Book Features:




Draws on the extraordinary life and career of Jimmy Santiago Baca, who came to write poetry in prison and now has 28 works in print, ranging from a feature movie Blood In Blood Out to his bestselling memoir A Place to Stand.
Based on the authors’ combined experience of facilitating hundreds of writing workshops.
Offers field-tested recommendations to help educators inspire and fortify students suffering from doubt or damaged self-esteem.
Includes detailed descriptions, exercises, and sample poetry to assist teachers and students in the writing process.

Foreword by: Rex L. Veeder