Paul Caccamo
President of America SCORES
Paul, what is America SCORES?
America SCORES is a national nonprofit organization that inspires urban children to achieve excellence in literacy. If we consider the fact that 1 in 3 kids in inner-city public schools has fallen behind their
grade level in reading and writing by 4th grade and that this statistic hasn't changed much in 20 years, we recognize the need for new solutions to this problem. America SCORES is a new solution. We use
poetry, a genre of literacy that inspires kids every day through its popularity in music, hip hop and rap, and make it our starting point. Our teams of kids meet with a poetry coach after-school and explore
their own capacity for sharing feelings, ideas and dreams through poetry. Working with trained public school teachers through our curricula, the students write poetry, perform poetry and publish poetry.
And they take their sudden new appetite for vocabulary and words back into the classroom during the traditional school day.
But that's only half of our story. If you are going to inspire a child to take a risk and recite poetry in front of their peers, you need to give that child a safe atmosphere in which to learn and excel. Probably
most of us as adults can remember the time we were asked to stand in front of our class and read a story out loud–it scared the daylights out of us. America SCORES has a simple solution for changing this kind of frightening dynamic. Our poets must spend alternate days of the week when they are not writing poetry out on a soccer field learning this great sport. Soccer teaches them communication, teamwork, and
discipline, the very skill that are almost pre-requisites for being successful in the classroom and someday in the workplace. You can guess that many of our kids actually first sign up for the program to
be on the soccer team because they've never had the chance to play sports at their inner-city schools. But there's something about poetry and positive peer pressure and igniting a child's mind by giving them
support to be a Maya Angelou. By the end of their first season, most of our students call themselves, poet-athletes. "Poet" comes first.
Writing poetry and playing soccer, two activities seemingly unrelated–who came up with the idea to link the two? How did the concept move from idea to program?
In 1994, a public school teacher in Washington DC was worried that the 5th grade girls in her class spent their afternoons in a concrete lot behind the schools with boys much older then them from the nearby
middle school. One day, she was fed up and marched right into the lot, pulled out a soccer ball and told the girls to follow her onto an overgrown field. There, for the first time in their lives, these girls
were exposed to the sport of soccer. They were so excited that they showed up on that field every day for the rest of the week! When it rained one afternoon sometime later, the girls all gathered in the
teacher's classroom and asked her if she had any other hobbies for rainy afternoons. She told them that she wrote poetry. They had never experienced poetry and when she explained what it was all of the girls
grabbed pens and started to write. The teacher suddenly saw the translation of teamwork from an athletic pursuit to a literary one. These girls really felt comfortable writing and wanted to share their
poetry with one another. That was a far cry from the traditional school day when students barely want to write and even less so want to read out loud.
The teacher talked to some teachers in other schools, raised some money and before the end of the year she had 4 teams of poet-athletes. Four years later the program was in 10 schools throughout the District.
How did you come to be involved in the program? What specifically inspired or interested you?
I actually sought out that teacher because I was impressed to hear of an after-school education program that really works! I was mostly involved in helping young founders of education programs to grow and
expand their fledgling organizations. When I saw my first team of kids from DC SCORES, I instantly recognized all the elements of a youth development that could have a tremendous impact on children, their schools and their communities. After all, this program cleverly provides opportunities to play, act, learn, write, run, kick...all those opportunities that make schools in wealthier communities great places
to be. I started off as a consultant helping the founder raise funds to expand to more schools in Washington DC and to start a national office that could replicate the program in other cities. A year later, the founder asked me to take over as President so she could return to graduate school. I have taken the program all over the country since.
Is America SCORES a national program?
Since 1999, America SCORES has replicated itself twelve times! We serve young poet-athletes in thirteen U.S. cities and are continuing to grow our program to additional cities that are in desperate need of these opportunities for their young people.
How does an America SCORES program play out? How do kids get involved? Can you run us through a typical America SCORES meeting?
We start with a principal by asking their commitment to launch a SCORES program at their school.
If they agree, we ask their help in recruiting 2 Poetry Coaches and 2 Soccer Coaches (one each for a boys
team and a girls team). The coaches then help us identify children in the school who can most benefit by participation in our program. Often, they are children who are failing at literacy, where English may
be a second language, and/or where they may have behavioral issues. We may also open the roster to any kid depending on how many additional spaces we have on the team. The children all show up for practice that first day. Our soccer practice includes warm-up drills, skill building, soccer scrimmages and then group discussions on issues like teamwork, health and well-being. At the end of the first practice the
soccer coach tells the team to report to a classroom the following day. He tells them that they will meet there poetry coach who will teach them that exercising their minds is just as much fun as exercising
their bodies. As I mentioned before, most of students don't believe him. But they owe it to their teammates to show up for poetry workshop if they expect to play. Once inside that workshop, our poetry coach asks them to write a rap about what they liked about soccer. Within an hour, the creative minds of a dozen young athletes are unstoppable.
Do your SCORE volunteers participate in a training session before they work with the kids? If so, what does that training entail?
All of our coaches are public school teachers whom we hire and train to lead our programs. We have three curricula that in which we train them. The fall poetry curriculum focuses on helping the children
express themselves creatively and perform their original literary work in a public arena. During the spring season, the curriculum changes from self-expression to community-expression. The children must
identify what they like and dislike about their neighborhoods and through their writing they propose changes. As a team, we also require that they commit to a community service activity that embodies their
ideas for positive change and which also inspires them with new experiences to write about. Our soccer curriculum focuses on teaching kids the basics of the sport as well as the importance of communication, teamwork and discipline. We train our soccer coaches on using soccer to introduce the importance of exercise, health, and nutrition. Because of our growing expertise in these three areas---poetry, community service, and health–we are beginning to provide training on these subjects to all teachers in our target school districts even if they aren't coaches for our program.
Are the kids taught about poetic structure and form? How much individual freedom do the kids have to express themselves?
I'm sure that more SCORES kids know how to write a haiku then Americans in general...maybe even Japanese! Our program quickly moves from having kids write freely to developing technique and structure within their writing. They learn numerous techniques through our curriculum like
rhyme and alliteration and they study different poetic forms. Of course, we make it a point to let them have ownership over the content. This is such an important aspect of poetry that makes it such a
valuable tool in education. When kids write about what they want, they are inspired to write. Numerous studies have shown that kids who read and write out of pleasure do better in school, and that is our ultimate goal.
Do volunteers read published poems aloud to the kids participating in the program?
We have been gifted with a lot of volunteer poets in our classrooms. The most exciting this past year has been poets from Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway who came and taught our kids how to recite their poems with passion. I'm sure that more than few of our kids will remember those training when they are on a stage someday.
Do the kids have an opportunity to see their own work in print, or recite it for a poetry reading?
One of the most exciting things at our SCORES programs is when we distribute 10,000 Kicker! Magazines to our schools across this country. This is our national magazine that is comprised entirely of original literary work from our students. We estimate now that it is also probably the largest kids' poetry magazine in the nation. Each edition contains nearly a hundred poems and the name, age and school of their author. In addition, to getting published in Kicker! Our kids get to see their work in local community newsletters and often get enter their work in poetry contests.
Do you think other sports organizations could create their own literacy/writing programs using your program as a model?
Our program is very disciplined. The curricula are very specific so that the program can take the children through an entire experience that does not begin and end with each individual poetry workshop. For
example, our fall program culminates in a citywide Poetry Slam where our poet-athletes compete for the best poetry team. Our spring program culminates in a Poetry Shout where each team presents their most
innovative solutions to community problems that they discovered through their community service projects. I do think that other sports organizations can create writing programs with our model, but there has to be a commitment that having the best sports team is not the purpose, rather having the most well-rounded, articulate, creative, and literate athlete is! At America SCORES, we, however will continue to focus on soccer because it has certain advantages to achieving our mission. It is a sport that is played equally by boys and girls and that has no particular requirements in terms of size or strength. It is a team
sport and it is a culturally diverse sport that uniquely attracts many different ethnic communities in our urban neighborhoods.
Are you a poet? A writer?
I definitely write. I have a pile of manuscripts–short stories, novels, and plays–on my shelf if anyone wants to read them! I think writing is so fundamentally important. It lets us travel to places unique to our imagination while at the same time helping us to connect to the person who lives next door. It is probably the most essential tool for advancement in any type of business. I am really proud to be leading such an innovative writing organization for kids who need this life-essential skill.
Where you drawn to poetry when you were a kid? Did you have a favorite poem or poet as a child?
I know it's the easy answer, but Dr. Seuss was the first writer who I remember as having unleashed all the possibility of imagination in my head. He wasn't bad at rhyme scheme either. I probably wrote more
than a hundred poems in my own Seussical style. Most of them were odes to teachers in my schools, several of which, depending on the teacher's sense of humor, landed me in the principal's office. I loved poetry because it had a rhythm that if you were good at would make people laugh and then continue to keep them laughing until the end.
Do you think there is a connection between reading poetry and stories and becoming a good writer?
The connection is words. You need to love words to be good at reading them, writing them and even publicly speaking them! Reading a lot helps us to grow comfortable with language and vocabulary–a comfort which we can then take into the other areas of expression and language.
Poetry is an art form that has probably existed since men and women could speak. Historically, even in predominantly illiterate societies people could recite poetry, though they could not read or write it. Do you think poetry still has the power to connect with kids and adults?
Poetry has a tremendous power to connect with kids and adults. To this day, the power of poetry through forms like hip hop and spoken word has brought worldwide attention and understanding to urban minorities, to immigrants, to political refugees and even to youth who have never felt they had a voice in society. Poetry lets us tell stories with less restriction than prose and without the immediate judgment that comes with rules of punctuation and grammar. We connect to poetry everyday whether it be through the song on the radio, the jingo on the T.V. commercial, the poster on our subways or the literature on our bookshelves.
Many people acknowledge and witness the life changing influence of literature and books. Can poetry change kids' lives? Does America Scores change kids' lives?
America SCORES changes kids lives. If you can remember the first time you performed on a stage, or read a story out loud, or had your first piece of original literature published, or received applause for acting out a character in a play, you remember how this experience gave you a sense of your potential. Now imagine a childhood where those opportunities do not exist. America SCORES works everyday to provide these opportunities to thousands of students in schools that are under-funded. Our typical schools have no creative writing classes or drama clubs or school newspapers or art classes or even sports.
Everyday that a SCORES poet writes something new and reads it to their teammate, they see that they have influence through their thoughts and their words. Their life has potential.
With all the great poetry kids have written in America SCORES programs, do you have a favorite that you would like to share with Verizon Enlighten Me readers?
My favorite is simple poem that a fourth grader wrote. It's only four lines, two sentences and 13 words:
Life has ups,
Life has dips.
But at least we have
Potato chips.
Where can our readers go to find out more information about American SCORES?
The best source is our website at www.americascores.org
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