Building on a foundation of critical literacy and spoken word performance poetry, SAYS services support the improvement of schools. At SAYS, we activate young people to read, write, and speak about their lives through the medium of cultural awareness, social justice, hip-hop, and spoken word performances. As a result in our work in schools and in our community, we have marginalized the center of
school reform by supporting the whole classroom so that each person excels socially, culturally, emotionally and academically. Through our grassroots community-based pedagogy, we empower, support and nurture the whole student and teacher by challenging the structure of the classroom and allowing both teacher and student to become authors and change agents of their own lives. Through this unique process, literacy and leadership go hand-in-hand as young people pick up the mic and the pen.
