An Exciting End to #NationalPoetryMonth!

What combination is almost as good as soccer and spoken word? Pancakes and poetry, of course!

On Tuesday, April 30th, we held our 4th annual Pancakes and Poetry at Home Sweet Harlem! This unique event gave our poet-athletes the opportunity to round out National Poetry Month with an open discussion about America SCORES, a chance to recite their poems for members of the community, and access to a buffet of incredible breakfast food. Moreover, this year's was particularly special because it launched our second poetry anthology, TOGETHER, WE ARE!

Sixteen poet-athletes from our four full-time middle schools, PSMS 161, New Design Middle School, The Mott Hall School, and Hamilton Grange Middle School, were selected to join us for this event because they were all Shine Award recipients, an honor designated to poet-athletes who give an exceptional performance at November's Poetry SLAM. After school, with poems in hand, they headed to Home Sweet Harlem, a cafe in the midst of our Harlem stomping grounds, where Donna and her team made everyone feel right at home!

After some guided discussion by our Writing Coordinator Shanell Sharpe, our poet-athletes took to the mics and impressed everyone with their award-winning poems. Before leaving for the evening, they all signed each other's poetry books with words of encouragement for their fellow poet-athletes!

Thank you to all who attended, and a huge shout-out to Donna and the team from Home Sweet Harlem who helped make our evening so great!