hello and welcome to we poets my name is sally baker and this is adnan to look i'm the host of we poets an addon is the director of we poets and tonight we're celebrating our thirtieth year anniversary we never dreamed that we would have a t v show that would last thirty years but here we are and we thank god very much for his blessings and helping and letting him felt all these people to make us successful after thirty years tonight we're going to be interviewing some children and some internes who were small and they have their children here tonight and we have some new in turns we have gas and many people who have helped us make this show successful tonight so i'm going to be interviewing ad then and then he's going to go back into the control room and direct but first of all i want to tell you something about adnan and then is my he role he's a compilation many things that many people could not have done he came to this country he could not speak english or write english and he tried to go to school and because he has a speech handicap they didn't want him to enroll in high school but he persevered and he got his ged and then he wanted to go to college and they didn't think that he would be able to take the classes in college but again he persevered he never takes no for an answer and he got his bachelor's and his master's degree in industrial design at san francisco state and then we decided that we would start this t v show and of course and had never done a t v show before so he rolled up his sleeves and he learned all the things all by himself and here we are thirty years later and he's train many many interns and i've interviewed more than thirty two thousand kids in addition to doing our show at comcast and berkeley community media we were invited to go to paris france for two weeks and we took fifteen students and we filmed we poets in schools in paris france for two weeks and adnan was a camera man and i interviewed the children then we were invited to go to runway they jamaica for one week and we filmed in schools and runaway bay jamaica and and it was a camera man and ad an has received many awards and his greatest award we nominated him for his award was cold he rose in education from the california lottery and we got to go to hollywood and adnan received the award from the star of the show called mash and his name is jamie far then we were invited to go to white house in one thousand nine hundred six by president reagan and we received our first award which was ten thousand dollars and we gave that to the in double a c p axel program that helps minority kids go to college so i want to thank you and then for being such a wonderful director well thank you so very much for coming and thank you for all these years thirty years thank you and now i'm going to be interviewing some of our former interns and their children after thirty years so here we go with ruth hi ruth hello how are you good i can't imagine how many years it's been since i've seen you and since you were an intern on we ports tell us something about you being an intern well i started when i was about twelve years old and i remember learning how to do all the different parts the camera work and working here on the fet and doing making learning engaging for all students isn't this great and your mother was one of my first in turns to tell us something about your dear mom my mom nancy mathis i loved your show she did some of the artwork on the show in addition to helping learn the camera and learning to do some of the floor manager cheering and she was a teacher retired teacher in oakland unified school district yes and i just love nancy i know she's looking down from heaven this and us tonight i believe she is yes now we're going to hear from your son come here ok look right here at the camera tell us your name please and how old you are alex my name is an how old are you alex five and a half and this is your second time on t v you remember when you were on when you were just a baby in your mom's arms five years ago do you remember that you yes a tell me something about you what do you like best at school look at the camera there matt why is it important you learn math so i know all the math thing that's right but your teacher's name madeline name anthony good and what else do you like to do in school  you so much ruth thank you and i just want to say i think it's outstanding that you've been doing this for thirty years and i hope you have thirty more years of doing this under my belt and oh for sure what think you so very much here and now i would like to introduce you to one of my first interns way back in one thousand nine hundred eighty four this young man and his twin brother were both interns and they used to ride in the studio on their bicycles and he comes in and his twin brother comes in when he's in town and helps us out so now let's hear from charlie scott they both identical and i'm always getting their names mixed up scott i'm sorry i'm doing ok so how are you tell us what you've been doing since you first i've traveled to nicaragua costa rica i've lived in guatemala and southern mexico and believe and somewhere else but i can't remember a world traveler well i'm a small area of central america travel wonderful and you speak spanish of course first of course and tell us about your brother charlie charlie is a professor of visual anthropology and singapore and he just finished the last time we talked he was mainly doing stuff in the classroom and teaching people how to do this type of production three camera production in the classroom now he's just taken students that he's trained to do fieldwork to the southern philippines and to southern thailand as well and been going  to interview muslim populations that are a minority population and and see what their lives are like these are areas that have a lot of conflict that is usually associated with religious conflict but it when you talk with the population there it's really political conflict and people have been left out of the mainstream so he's really fulfilling his dream to yeah and he loves it and then the students get to go and do this really interesting work as well isn't that tells you that your niece his daughter my niece is now twelve i think and she's when she comes back she'll be able to play music and sing for you she's a sort of art and turns do yeah he really taught her well and i don't know how old was she when she was an intern she must have been what all it's been fun and i was remembering you know we used to come and do the camera stuff it was always really entertaining and we would come and have fun there'd be a group of us and it was just a great feeling you really pulled us all together and made it thank you so much yeah it was great thank you you thank i would now like to introduce you to another one of my in turns many many years ago he and his sister were in turns and we had so much fun and now michael has three beautiful young ladies here and we're going to hear from them later his sister rachelle and her son were not able to come tonight but we're going to go ahead here with michael hi michael hi sorry how do you want tonight very good how are you thank you so much for coming thank you for us yes tell us what you were sheila did when you were on we poets many many years ago when we came in a few times and did some poetry and i believe my sister did some work on the cameras to operating and working in the control room yes yes and now were just teenagers i'd never thought you'd have such a beautiful family like this now tell us what have you been doing all these years i graduated from san francisco state and i did a little traveling in europe and actually now i do web site promotion so i help people promote their websites on the internet now wonderful we pull it just looking for somebody to do our website ok here's our former internal right here so tell us more about yourself anything you want to tell  us you know i just spent a lot of time taking care of the girls and you know making sure they're happy an involved in lots of activities and you know all this one here is in soccer and so it's not only christina still you know looking for what she wants to do  yeah that's what i do you know isn't this great and your mother came tonight yes she did tell us a little bit i think about your mom she's doing really well she's retired now she's just taking it easy and me and her go on walks a lot told in park and she's just you know she helps out with the the granddaughters too and it's always a lot of time with them good and tell us about rochelle resells doing well she's actually doing an internal hospital so she's working right now and you know she's doing really well and her son jordan he wanted to come but they weren't feeling well tonight so hopefully next time they could make it yes well i'm so proud of you guys and now we're going to have the girls do a poem right so you and i are going to step aside and the girls are going to do their poll and we'll be back  a lovely job and thank you for that lovely point and now i would like for you girls to tell me your name and how old you are and what you like best in school i name is natalie and i'm eight years old i love cooking in my school great thank you for coming you did a beautiful job and next christina six and i like choice time it's great you did a wonderful job thank you for coming hi my name is  and i'm chilled years old and i like my favorite subjecting in school is science great well think you can also become you did a wonderful job i'm very proud of you i would not like to introduce you to two dear friends of mine mother and daughter on my left here's aaron willard and on my right here is sharon willard mother and aaron was an intern on our show many many years ago and her mother would help us some time so we didn't have enough interns so here we go with aaron hi aaron hi intern on we poets while it was a big confidence booster and i just really loved working as the crew and i had a lot of fun i worked in the back room with a who still back there thirty years or so but i worked on camera and i even did floor directing they popped on a lot of jobs actually and you became the director and right now i am working as a freelance artist and i also work at a bookstore great and you made this lovely post a force right why did you tell us about this poster put it depicts it in charlie or scott is going to get a good dish out of it tell us about this book well i want to show some kids on your poster because your original logo of we poets has four children and so i just picked two kids and i was just drawing something up out of my head and took off and you have a boy or girl right yes yes and put are they doing well they're actually holding up the sign so when you get a shot of that you'll see that as well will thank you for drawing that lovely poster and thank you for coming to help us celebrate tonight thank you for inviting me good and now we're going to hear from your mom hi sharon hi how you doing today i think  good tell us all about yourself please oh ok well i richmond unified school district for like forty years and during that time i introduced to you and you when you came out to the classrooms and did poetry with children and you came out to my classroom and the children did points on animals and you videotaped them and they each got a video and they were very  and i think what you do is really wonderful for children it isn't really a chance to shine and get confidence where they wouldn't otherwise be able to do that great and you're also reports board member tell us about their well i believe in so strongly that children should be writing and especially poetry and art speak as you don't even hardly hear children knighting poetry anymore and i think it's so special and so important what you do that yes i decided to be on the board and try to support you any way i can good and we could have done it without the support of you an error and learned a lot from then and i think you did too oh yes well i want to thank you guys for coming and helping us celebrate and it's been so many wonderful years that i've known both of you in error and i'm so proud of you all grown up from that little teenage girl that came in the first time to a lovely young lady i'm real proud of you and proud to you to share oh it's a pleasure to work with you it really is thank you guys i would now like to introduce you to two very important crew members here at we poets they are adults opposed to our teenage in terence but they've been with us for several years and we're going to hear from both of them so here we go with jerry first hi jerry hi sally tell us all about yourself please well i'm the most senior because i think i'm the oldest here and i've had a lot of fun here working with on and you helping out doing camera work channel like like this one and as a public affairs program and we interviewed a lot of people from nonprofit organizations and read you know public service announcements like they were a news news or news flashes and i took classes with them and we actually entered some cartoon contests and won them i won three first prizes in the big yard in current cartoon contests my wife one one one one and and i actually was the judge one of the things i and it was a coincidence thing that happened but i'm really happy to be here because i get to meet all these wonderful kids young poets and i try to think back thirty years and see at their age i don't have that interaction like i do now so it's a wonderful program and also being interested in you know poetry because i write poetry creative writing and some documentary so this gives me a good handle on things of what is involved in things social things that i see that i've seen here so it's a little bit of everything when i want to thank you both for being wonderful adult crew members you're both in a wonderful job we couldn't do the show without you each week and thank you so much for your i would now like to do a tribute to my dear friend morrie turner he was the cartoonist who wrote the comic strip we pals and i met morrie way back in one thousand nine hundred four before i started my show and he encouraged me to start my poetry show and i've done a collage of some of the things that morrie interacted with me and add in during our thirty year career morrie passed away a couple months ago so this is a tribute to him and i know more is in heaven looking down on us tonight so here we go this first picture is of more in his studio drawing cartoons and i was privileged to go to his studio several times to see him work this is a logo that morrie did of we p he made a child of each of the four ethnic racial groups going down here to our left is our first show that we did on february fourteenth one thousand nine hundred four thirty years ago and morrie was  that night and he drew pictures of the three children and myself as we filmed our show all over here on the left is a letter that morrie wrote to me congratulating me it says congratulations on your latest award sorry i wasn't there he said but i'm scheduling the following cartoons to appear in the oakland tribune newspaper and this was the first when maury did i was never in the newspapers before so this was the first one and he has a column called sol corner and he showcased me in this in this corner several years later he did me again in his comic strip in his cartoon  strip called soul corner next we come up here to a picture of maury and i at one of our parties that was the only time we had a picture taken of the three of us together next we have morrie writing the another another letter of congratulations on one of the awards that i had one then we come down here to another cartoon that he drew of me he always called me his soul sister he said i was a superwoman so he drew me here in my super woman's costume then over here on the left is another program that morrie was my guest and here's the picture of him smiling eating a piece of cake he always like to eat the good food after we had our anniversary program and here's nancy ruthie was on with her son this was her mother who is now in heaven and she was one of our crew people too and here's maury talking with some of the other parents that were there heerey is again eating a piece of cake and then here's maury and i on the stage together and then here's morial over here again in front of all the balloons and of oakland little little caesars pizza of berkeley cheeseboard pizza of berkeley red tomato pizza house of berkeley and grocery outlet and san leandro and i was also like to think of berkeley community media channel twenty eight and comcast channel twenty six for letting us produce our show here during the past thirty years and i want to thank all of our watchers who watch our program thousands and thousands i want to thank all of the thousands of children who have been a poets and thank you so much and adnan thank you too for letting us have these thirty years of a successful program thank you so watch for watching b