here your mind is ok loves you here takes all of it and when i say no was asked to start the program as part of the visual and performing arts we had to have a way to show our art to others and i do believe my principal at the time expected us to put together a book because that would seem the normal thing to do which was exactly why we didn't do that actually we did do the book plus the  poetry reading our first cafe had you know just it was a very small class but we had so many people actually our classroom we had it's held in this room here in one thirty and it's a gathering of everybody from our class the middle schoolers to poets in the neighborhood or teachers parents everyone and you read poetry where performing are school so there had to be a way to perform our and then i went to muncie to ball state university and there was a place called the gold rush cafe and in both of those places poetry was read in appreciated and i wasn't there for poetry in fact i had never had a creative class before i began to teach one and but i remembered the way it felt in there that you were part of something bigger sto learn it by ourselves she helps us with it throughout the way and we don't use takes we'll she's like our textbook five plus ten was fifteen from day one probably even before there was a day one it was there but what they write even in our conversations those things do not exist until the kids create them and that's where the real power is and one of our first lessons is the fact that a writer  called an author and when you add just three little letters to the end of that and you get authority the author has the authority to change the way the person who reads it sees the world and authorities is something that middle schoolers don't seem to have but something they really want and when you learn to command and control words then that command and control is not limited to the paper or to the assignment it goes beyond that and when you first come to recognize the power that you can wield with words you're on your way words determine your destiny the more words you have the more choices you have and the more life choices you have the better your life can be creative writing and she would like also life so like teaches you how to have a best there not only the room but the teacher miss fox and even the students because it takes a special kind of person to be a student and this class you don't in the beginning because i think i was here three years i came in sixth grade and  s grade so i've been here for quite a while and i would say that i've always been pretty confident in myself but you have to be ok with sharing your words or which and really your word piece of you so you have to be ok with sharing a piece of yourself with everybody else and if you are this class teaches you teaches you how to share yourself disordered thoughts on the surface of the tall glass the work the that everything we do in here did not exist until they did it it is my injury there is great change first of all their command of language but most importantly their command of self i my goal isn't to make professional writers my goal is to help them become better human beings and using words as the way to do that and when i see kids caring for each other if a kid is out for a couple of days somebody will go back and call it to find out how they are if they don't already know if somebody is on crutches they jump to help each other get to their next classes they serve each other we have tea every day and they will serve each other because to be of service is really the most important thing we can be as humans is to serve each other and we do that in here and so that growth of the of each student as a person as a human is really what i revel in and what's nice is they come back caf you attended there were a handful of high school kids college kids we have an alumni cafe which is an opportunity for us to highlight those kids and a number of them when they come back they get their binders some of them are still on the shelf over there and they go back to the table where they sat and they begin to write a couple of years ago young man came in and the first line of his poem was it's good to be home because we snap in here instead of a flood if it's good but really even if you do share it as a matter all that matters is what you think so as long as you focus on that kind of what they think doesn't matter but it also feels like you know yourself a little better when you share it and other classes sometimes you might fill bad because some of the kids are smarter than you and here everybody is like the same and you get to express so freely as soon as you walk through that door it's not my program anymore it's yours and they accept the responsibility for what it takes to make all of this work without them what i do doesn't matter because without them there is no program and every kid deserves the chance to have to explore through the arts explore what it means you know look at the word masterpiece and you have to have both of them together without the master it's only a piece and without the piece you are master of nothing in the arts you are your masterpiece when you have taken the creation of you and created the best of you elsewhere and they recognize that to be in here when the kids are working in you hear one kid offer his writing to another to green and read their words together and somebody says well i think if you did this and the respect they have for each other's ideas it's you can't top that it's creative elate let you expression sell it to be a better person to just like this isn't just developing a writing it's developing yourself which is i think the best part about this class golden lights filtered into