SJC Announces Poetry Out Loud Partnership
The Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism is pleased to announce its partnership with Saint Joseph College’s Carol Autorino Center for the Arts and Humanities in West Hartford, to implement Connecticut’s fifth annual Poetry Out Loud (POL) program.
The Carol Autorino Center, under director Dr. Robert Smith, will collaborate with CCT on this year’s Poetry Out Loud program, supporting and managing student instructional activities and the Connecticut state finals competition. All POL professional development workshops for teachers will take place in the Center’s Bruyette Athenaeum, with the state poetry recitation finals in the Hoffman Auditorium on March 16, 2010.
"We are thrilled to engage in this partnership," said Karen Senich, CCT Executive Director. "This [partnership] extends an already great opportunity for Connecticut high school students and teachers, who participate in POL, to gain from the Center’s educational and programmatic expertise, academic connections, and top-notch facilities."
Since the 2005 - 2006 school year, students from high schools across Connecticut have benefited from Poetry Out Loud, a program sponsored by The National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation. This free recitation program encourages the nation’s youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and performance, which help students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about our literary heritage. Participating teachers receive free multimedia educational materials to augment their curriculum and engage in classroom, school-level, and state competition.
The program is now underway on the Saint Joseph College campus. Fifty teachers from twenty-two Connecticut high schools attended workshops presented by noted Connecticut poet Dick Allen, and Laura Sheehan, Artist Director of greater Hartford’s Capital Classics Theatre. Teachers are now preparing their students for live poetry recitation contests in their respective schools, supported by Connecticut artists-in-residence.
"Poetry Out Loud provides training especially important to today’s students," said Dr. Smith, "With the high speed of communications technologies, POL provides a deep encounter with language that assimilates and strengthens critical skills which apply across the curriculum—reading, writing, and speaking, of course, but also thinking, listening, and questioning."
School champions will return to Saint Joseph College in February with their teachers for workshops conducted by Connecticut artists in preparation for the state final on March 16 in The Bruyette Athenaeum’s Hoffman Auditorium.
