Following the guest speaker presentation of Joaquin Zihuatanejo a month ago, the AVID junior class had a spark of interest for slam poetry. Ms. Lea Sanford and Ms. Cynthia Stump introduced the lesson of writing a poems to their classes in hopes of inspiring any writer to get their feeling on paper.

The hopes for the assignment of writing a poem was also to have the students practice their writing skills that will be used in writing essays for college applications.

Even before the assignment of writing a poem, junior AVID Student Minnie Marquez was writing her own poems just as an outlet.  When given the chance, Marquez performed a piece of her writing for the first time in front of both junior classes. Marquez said she was, “very nervous” and “scared people were going to take my poem the wrong way.”

Regardless of her worries, classmates had a very positive reaction to her poem.

Inspired by the great reaction from her fellow peers, Marquez took on the challenge of performing in front of a crowd of more than fifty people. Not only was she reciting a new poem for fun, but was also competing to win prizes. The slam poetry competition was hosted at the Riverside Library in Evans on October 11.

Marquez placed second in the competition, winning a $25 dollar gift card and getting offers to speak at other high schools in the area. “Performing in front of more people was rewarding because although people shed some tears because of my poem, I was happy to see I touched people’s hearts,” Marquez said.