The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH) has released its landmark report “Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools” after 18 months of research. And who should be on the cover? San Francisco WritersCorps!

Pictured on the cover is former WritersCorps teaching artist Myron Michael Hardy with one of his students from Downtown High School. We just love this photo. Look at that smile on the student’s face! The photo was taken by Michele Kraus at our spring 2010 Claim the Block reading series. See the original photo here.

To download the report, which provides an analysis of the challenges and opportunities in the field of arts education, click here.

Four months ago, we traveled to Washington DC to meet First Lady Michelle Obama, who presented us with the 2010 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award.

Today, we’ve finally gotten our video footage from the trip edited together. (Hey, better late than never!)

Watch this 5-minute video of our trip, as our student representative, Nicole Zatarain Rivera, sees DC for the first time. We were joined on our site-seeing by friends from YouthCAN, another award-winning youth program from Seattle.

The video also includes the entire speech by the First Lady about the importance of arts education in not just helping students succeed creatively and academically, but in giving them life skills to pursue their own futures.

“When a student writes a play, she’s not just learning how to put lines on a page. She’s boosting her language skills, becoming a better public speaker, gaining a sense of pride in her ability to set a goal and to reach it. When students are paired up with mentors, it’s about more than just keeping their grades up or strengthening their college applications,” she said. “It’s about connecting them with someone who’s been where they’ve been, who’s willing to take a genuine interest in their future, and who can show them what it takes to succeed in the studio, in the classroom, and in life”

Well said! To see a transcript of the First Lady’s speech, please click here. Many thanks to Jazmin Jones for editing our Flip footage. 

In celebration of Black History Month, our WritersCorps training coordinator Judith Tannenbaum wrote a compelling piece for AOL News that discusses the life experiences that shaped her writing partner Spoon Jackson (who co-wrote their memoir, “By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives”).

She writes, “Black History Month honors the forces and flows that shape a people and our nation. Coties Perry and Spoon Jackson — along with Elmo Chattman, Smokey Norvell and so many more former students — are part of black history. Not only as representatives of statistics about black men in prison, but also as individuals with particular human experience — the child each was, the adult he’s become.”

Change.org recently published  a fantastic review of WritersCorps training coordinator Judith Tannenbaum’s inspiring two-person memoir, “By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives,” which she co-wrote with poet Spoon Jackson.

Wendy Jason writes, “They are an unlikely duo, it seems - folks who wouldn’t typically cross paths. But Spoon and Judith are connected by something that will forever keep them bound: the shared experience of a space that allowed them to be fully human and completely real. And they found this space in the most unlikely of places: San Quentin.”

Watch a trailer for the book here, and listen to Spoon read from the book here.

Congratulations to WritersCorps teaching artist Meg Day, who was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize!

The Pushcart Prize — and its annual anthology, published every year since 1976 — is one of the most honored literary projects in America.

Meg is also a continuing finalist for the Benjamin Saltman First Book Award from Red Hen Press and a finalist for the Omnidawn First Book Prize. We are very proud of her!

Also, check out this story in Mother Jones about Meg teaching for us at Mission High School. The story is entitled, “Does Creative Writing Help Kids Succeed?” We say the answer is YES!