PENCIL Y GOLAZO - OCTOBER 2017

Writing Coach Training Prepares Poet-Athletes for the Stage and Screen 

SCORES middle school teams have been working on music videos in partnership with Tiny Production. Teams write and record a original song, and shoot music videos that will debut in our first Middle School SLAM!

​Our coaches brought amazing energy, insight, and enthusiasm to Writing Coach Training 2 on October 11th! We went over performance tips and tricks and practiced performing a team poem in small groups. As coaches gear up for our annual Community Poetry Slams, we have no doubt that all of our elementary school poet-athletes will be well-prepared when they take the stage at the Community Poetry SLAM!

New Grant Partnerships from New York Life Foundation and Laureus Sport for Good Foundation

 As a Grants for Good recipient, the New York Life Foundation is working with us to create a more effective and robust high school readiness program. They support projects like ours that help economically disadvantaged eighth-graders get to ninth grade on time. Research has shown that for disadvantaged students, more learning time in the form of high-quality after school, expanded-day, and summer programs leads to greater achievement, better school attendance, and more engaged students.

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The Laureus Sport For Good Foundation, in addition to funding our core Literacy in Action program, is also helping us update and implement program evaluation techniques as we aim to better capture High Impact Attributes in accordance with extensive research and best practices developed by Up2Us Sports. Never one to rest on our laurels, SCORES strives to ensure our program remains as effective as possible and our poet-athletes benefit the most.

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SCORES Spotlights

Coach Edy

Coach Edy enters the Spotlight! Edy is the girls' soccer mentor and coach at Castellanos Elementary School! Edy has been a dedicated and passionate coach with SCORES for 4 years. His favorite SCORES value is teamwork, because by working together his girls have learned that they can accomplish their goals and understand the importance of individual commitment to a team and to each other. When asked what he wants his girls to know, he said, "that they have power and they can do anything they set their minds to. I want them to be strong women and to define for themselves what it means to be an empowered girl."

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Tiana, SCORES Alumna 

​Tiana started as one of our poet athletes as a fourth grader from Pilsen Academy and later joined the All Star team as a middle school studentas a reward for the constant teamwork, leadership and commitment she displayed. Now a junior in high school, Tiana says that her favorite part of SCORES has been the unique opportunities she has been given. Her favorite SCORES Value is Leadership because the program has taught her valuable leadership skills as she captained her team despite being very shy when she started out with SCORES.  When asked why she continues to stay so

​involved, she said, "As a thank you to my coaches. I love that they have stayed in my life and are always there for me!" We can always count on Tiana to be at game days and to provide support at different events. Thank you for all of your hard work Tiana!

Whittier Boys Learn about Imagery in Poetry

Coach Mak explains, "This season I wanted to emphasizes imagery in our poems. We talked about how images can set the mood and tone of our writing. We worked on finding colorful language to make our poems more visual as well as entertaining. After every writing assignment students would draw an illustration to go along with their poem. They would then compare the two and see if their drawing was able to illustrate their thoughts and feelings that went into writing the poem. If not, students would go back and edit their poems to add written images."

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