ART OF THE UNIMAGINED ECOSYSTEMS
Unimagined ecosystems are perceptions, not yet perceived, mere mental urges, not yet realized, until set off by inquiry, ignited by curiosity. What are unimagined ecosystems? Once this question is uttered, your mind will act like a magnetic field, gigantic magnets rotating, scanning our internal cosmos, searching for answers.
Underdeveloped ideas and partial images thrust forth; glints of enlightenment collide, stick together, embracing like old friends, defying gravity, tumbling up the cerebral shoot, falling into our frontal lobes.
These embryonic notions, infantile hunches, are the truncated thoughts of our tomorrows. They toddle, unformed, unclear, half genius, half dazed concepts, barely adhering to gray matter. Morsels of insight stammer like spark plugs trying to fire.
Fragmented intellect anxiously waits in line, atop the hemispheric faults of our brains, gesturing for language to claim, and capture inside the neural net.
Make sense of these raw impressions, sculpt the poetry of precognition, from the subconscious into the new realities that command a new world, an unimagined ecosystem, fully realized, imagined, and manifested.
Cover Art by Amanda Thomason
A combination of worlds unseen: space and the cell of a dandelion, both, at one time, were unimagined ecosystems
Watch Black Dandelion Trailer Here
WELCOME LETTER
Dear Teaching and Learning Enthusiasts:
Welcome to the dynamic sphere of BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE ™, the multimedia international integrative, educational platform derived from the poem, “Black Dandelion by Semaj Brown. You have entered a growing community of educators, administrators, community programmers, partners, academicians, organizations, artists, institutions, libraries, schools, museums, and grass root advocates who are enthusiastic about creating new literate realities of wholeness for youth and community through the BLACK DANDELION: COVERGENT VOICE™ BDCV platform.
In 2022, I absorbed the outpouring and gravity of youth letters from across the country and world responding to a video of me reading the poem, “Black Dandelion” via the Academy of American Poets Dear Poet Project. The youth wrote of intergenerational genocide, extreme bullying, and the indelible promise of a better future. I accepted such courage as my charge to expand the “Black Dandelion” poem through my nine-framework pedagogy, PSL/POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD ™ into the BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE™ educational platform.
I resolved to honor the students’ bravery; they shared struggles and triumphs with a poet laureate and a global community they had yet to meet. Our ultimate connection remains the humanness of joy that strong universal super adhesive. Despite histories brutal, we can yet be makers of joy. In our minds, joy can emerge alongside devastation much like the determined sapling pushing up through a landfill of rubble or the dandelion emerging from the underground, forming fracture in cement.
This 2024/2025 BDCV Course Catalog, “The Art of the Unimagined Ecosystems” offers 9 flexible courses to accommodate many levels of learners, ranging from 4th grade to graduate studies. I am also offering professional development courses: An Overview of the PSL/Semajian Method pedagogy, and a classroom management course, The Communal Classroom. In the metaphoric , magical world of the "Black Dandelion," the people and the plant align. BDCV work centers on the limitless growth of the "Black Dandelion” as well as the often-violent barriers that prohibit such growth or progress of plant and people. According to the poem, "Black Dandelion," whether impaired by toxic herbicides or poisonous policy, Black Dandelions will prevail. As heard in a national TV commercial for AT&T Dream in Black African American Afrofuturistic Lifestyle Platform:
"We are Black Dandelions. We grow the power of goodness for generations into the future!"
Semaj Brown
Flint Poet Laureate
ABOUT SEMAJ BROWN
“Poetry advances the quality of life of citizenry when organized as a precious power tool.” Semaj Brown
Semaj Brown is Flint, Michigan’s inaugural Poet Laureate, and the recipient of the prestigious Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship award, 2021. She was the Visiting artist/educator/editor for The Flint Institute of Arts Art School, 2023 where she developed and implemented the course, “Penning the Sublime: Ekphrastic Writing through PSL/POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD.” Students responded to art in various museum galleries through the lens of workshops and lectures from Ms. Brown’s award-winning pedagogy.
Ms. Brown is the author of the poetry/prose memoir, “Bleeding Fire! Tap the Eternal Spring of Regenerative Light,” Broadside Lotus Press, 2019. She is the creator/director of Theatrical Poetry Productions: “By Ocean By Fire,” “Bleeding Fire”, and the poem-play, “Epoch: Something Called War” which is part of the permanent The Flint Institute of Arts Collection, a commissioned writing in response to the art piece by Lovell Whitfield, “Epoch.” Semaj has performed nationally and published widely in such journals as “American Poets,” and “Language Arts Journal of Michigan.” Ms. Brown is also sought after for her thought leadership, from Hollywood, California, to the Las Angeles Library Systems, “State of the Nation: Eight Poets from Across the United States.” She has been interviewed serially by Stateside, Michigan Radio, host April Behr, also NPR Detroit Today with Stephen Henderson, Poets.org, Earth Ethics/Columbia University WICK Kent State University, Vote the Earth Project, and more
In addition to being a noted poet, playwright, dramatist, Semaj Brown is a celebrated essayist and university lecturer: “The Buying Frying, Making Baking of African American Domestic Stereotypes,” University of Michigan Law School, Senior Trademark Law Class, Professor Susan M. Kornfield; “Mother Ocean,” Examining Power, Oppression and Complicity, Indiana University, Professor Otrude Moyo PhD; WORD POWER, “Social Justice Eats the Entire Pi: Arguing for an Integrative, Interdisciplinary Pedagogy,” University of Michigan-Flint, Department of Liberal Arts, Professor Erica Britt, PhD; “Mother Ocean: Odyssey Poem: Dissolving Obsolete Paradigms, Synthesizing New Realities through the Semajian Method,” in the series, Teaching to Transgress: Centering Storytelling and Humanizing Pedagogies for Liberation and Social Justice, Professor Raven Jones, PhD, Michigan State University, and more. This March 2024, Ms. Brown is a featured presenter at the Michigan Reading Association Conference in Lansing.
For additional information please visit website: https://semajbrown.com
FOUNDATIONS
IN BLACK DANDELION
ABOUT BLACK DANDELION
WHAT IS BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE™?
BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE™ (BDCV) is a multimedia educational platform derived from Semaj Brown's internationally celebrated poem, “Black Dandelion,” and from the learning arts innovation, PSL / POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD.™ The method is intergenerational and futuristic, utilizing applied poetry as an integrative technology to expand and amplify literacy capacity, critical thinking, and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) across varying disciplines: ecology & science, art, history, women's and girls' empowerment, nutrition, social justice studies, and more. BDCV has been engaged from Flint to West Togo Africa, from elementary school to graduate studies. AT&T licensed a powerful excerpt of the poem for a national television commercial, Dream in Black African American Afrofuturistic Lifestyles Platform in celebration of generational Black Excellence. Black Enterprise.com, in an April 2023 article, states, Black Dandelion: Convergent Voice™ Changes the Literacy Game. Elisse Ramey, WNEM Channel 5, CBS affiliate reporter/anchor in a recent feature, broadcasted, "Flint Inaugural Poet Laureate receives International Acclaim."
ABOUT THE POEM
Raked by Innocence, the narrative voice in the poem, “Black Dandelion” is a four-year old little Black girl who recollects the turmoil of the Civil Rights era. She associates discrimination and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with the “mow down” of dandelions, her beloved flowers.
THE ACADEMY OF AMERICAN POETS & THE BLACK DANDELION POEM
The Academy of American Poets distributed a video of poet laureate fellow, Semaj Brown reading her poem, “Black Dandelion” to middle and high school students. The poet laureate received letters from youth from across United States and world via the Dear Poet Project. bit.ly/3yPbGfj.
AT&T & THE BLACK DANDELION POEM
AT&T, in a search, found the video of Flint, Michigan Poet Laureate, Semaj Brown reading her “Black Dandelion” poem on her website. An excerpt of the audio recording of the poem highlights a one-minute commercial of the acclaimed Dream In Black, Black Future Makers Afrofuturistic Lifestyle platform, and aired nationally on television and throughout social media.
MCTE & THE BLACK DANDELION POEM
Black Dandelion: Convergent Voice™, a Multimedia Youth platform launched 2022 at Michigan Council of Teachers of English Centennial Conference Semaj Brown as Lunch Keynote Speaker presented, Poetry as a 2nd Language: Passcode to Literacy through the Semajian Method.
Black Dandelion poem was first published by Chapel Hill Press, 2020 and was also expressed as an art video for The “New” McCree Theatre Youth Poetry Explosion, 2020.
LINKS TO ISSUE BOOKLETS
Bloomin’ Booklet Part 1
Bloomin’ Booklet Part 2
Foundations Booklet
BLack Dandelion: BLOOMING POEM PROGRESSION
Age four Witnessed my first mow down Twinkling ground stars, cut by a murderous lawn mower
Feeling the blade, I fell, curled like a snail in grief
12 full moons folded into Spring Perennial promises prevailed Bees celebrated return of dandelions in a skirt of twirling, yellow bliss
Flowering bouffant mirrored my spiky little afro Jagged edged “lion’s tooth” leaves paid tribute to my snag-a-tooth smile Me and my freedom fighting flowers frolicked to survive the Scissoring, Up-digging, Poisoning
Warning Signs hovered like low hanging clouds: No Blooming Allowed! Blossoms Will be Prosecuted! These brave plants grew just for me
Grew in spite of a society that favored a monochromatic landscape
1965 Mr. Brother Malcolm X was assassinated, big word for a pre- kindergartner. I was convinced he must have been a dandelion, Reverend King too, and the Johnson boy who lived one turn down the street, that way. The Johnson boy was shot by the police for growing in a monochromatic landscape.
Training Wheels Off—Bike riding across insecure cement, I peddled the bumpy path
waving solidarity to each surviving, sunburst noggin, each fulfilling the promise to ornament lawns and flourish souls with lemon drop hope
Dandelions bare art of endurance and escape transforming into pearl puffs floating with ephemeral intention carrying the spirit of the weed.
13 Full moons faded into July “I am a proud weed!”
Yes, I declared that shocking proclamation standing in the pulpit on Youth Sunday Vernon Chapel A.M.E. Church
I added to my speech on David and Goliath my impromptu improvisation of Dandelion Dogma:
“We are Black Dandelions who will NEVER be destroyed. We grow the power of goodness for generations into the future!”
I yet remember the hat framed faces of the pious, amused and mortified.
ABOUT POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE (PSL)
Passcode to Literacy through the Semajian Method
The Semajian Method installs Applied Poetry as an activation mechanism for Poetry as a Second Language (PSL), the futuristic, integrated pedagogy of geosocial-emotional intelligence. PSL is designed to dissolve obsolete academic paradigms while synthesizing new procedures to amplify literacy capacity, improve skill-based learning, and heighten cognitive expansion across seemingly disparate disciplines.
Five reflexive frameworks/principles representing a practice in curriculum conception and implementation culminate in the imagination of Language Arts, and STEAM classrooms. These everevolving Communal Learning Spaces (CLS) offer the new foundational realities of enlightened global consciousness.
BEING BLACK DANDELION AND THE CONVERGENT VOICE
Time: 2 class sessions/ 2 hours
Skill Reinforcement: literacy enhancement, reading comprehension, and interpretation; critical thinking skills (geosocial spectrum analysis), writing, cultural competency, social emotional learning applications
Utilizations: English Language Arts, History, Social and Political Science, Ecology, Environmental Studies, and Math
Levels: 4th grade-graduate studies, community
Description: “Being Black Dandelion and the Convergent Voice” interactive PowerPoint allows students to engage in a deeper understanding of the metaphors and themes of the internationally celebrated poem, “Black Dandelion” by Flint Poet Laureate, Semaj Brown. Readers are introduced to a sampling of the original youth letters sent to Ms. Brown from around the country and world via The Academy of American Poets, Dear Poet Laureate Project, 2022. Learners are introduced to a level of engagement that asserts a new status for the written and spoken word, a new currency emerges where vocabulary and meaning matter, where words rule.
Students will select a modality response. Poetry, prose, visual art, skit-theater, video art, letter writing, memoir, and others are all viable submissions to the 3rd Annual Black Dandelion: Convergent Voice™ Virtual Forum.
Insight:
PSL/ Poetry as a Second Language: The Semajian Method™, or the S Method, integrates all aspects of learning with purpose and wonder. The process of utilizing poetry as a technology results in a transformational practice. The PSL pedagogy erupts in global empathy and consciousness which allows students and teachers to pursue ancient applications transmitted through a 21st century lens. Semaj Brown’s centering on the power of words is a transcendent literacy tool.
Professor Sunanda Samaddar, PhD International Comparative Education
ART OF UNIMAGINED ECOSYSTEMS
(In partnership with The Flint Institute of Arts Department of Education) Matthew Osmon, Director of Education
Time: 5 sessions or 5 hours divided between classroom time and lab/studio art making
Reinforcement: literacy, reading/comprehension, critical thinking, writing, public delivery, artistic expression, model scaping, synthesizing exercises, imaginative thinking
Utilizations: English Language Arts, History, Social and Political Science, Ecology and Environmental Studies, Geometry, Science/Ecology, Afrofuturism, WAGE: Women and Girls Empowerment, History, Math, Art creation, Theater, Dance, Social justice studies, Stratification Studies
Levels: Upper Middle, High School, College
Description: Art of the Unimagine Ecosystems: BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE™ 2025 is challenging us to think beyond the ordinary, to envision the possibilities of a different future through the lens of unimagined ecosystems. The assignment is to study both the “natural” and “social” ecosystems of the dandelion plant, and the “Black Dandelion” poem. The final project will yield a synthesis of creation, a model of an unimagined ecosystem, completely imagined and manifested. Through various methods of exploration, overlapping pathways, as well as patterns naturally occurring and constructed will be identified. Ecological and social relationships will be compared, contrasted, and analyzed. Food chain, and the social implications of hierarchy played out in plants, and in people will be examined. We will write. We will map, draw, chart, write poetry, narratives, Afrofuturistic compositions, memoirs, science fiction, and more. We will utilize clay, paper/cardstock, and other materials to model the newly created ecosystems. Course resource packets are available.
Insight: Semaj Brown has inspired educators throughout the State of Michigan-and beyond, with her unique method of teaching literacy to struggling students by introducing Poetry as a Second Language. Journalists have documented her success among students who were thought to be unreachable academically. She is a Poet Laureate utilizing her gifts to revolutionize reading education in our country.
Pamela Renee Purifoy
NABJ National Association of Black Journalists
Co-Chair Community Outreach
PLAYERS IN THE BLACK DANDELION THEATER:
ANALYSIS OF THE CHARACTERS AND CONSTITUENTS IN THE “BLACK DANDELION” POEM.”
Time: 2 hours or 2 class sessions
Note: The second session can be allocated as home study.
Skill Reinforcement: literacy, reading and comprehension, writing, vocabulary enhancement, critical thinking, public speaking and presentation, analogy development (compare and contrast), language and symbolism analytics
Utilizations: English Language Arts, History, Social Studies, Art Creation, Ecology/Science
Levels: 4th grade-graduate studies, teachers
Description: Who are the players in the theater of the “Black Dandelion” poem? Are they living or non-living, animate or inanimate, or both? Do these players or aspects of these players exist outside of the “Black Dandelion” poem? Are these players in other places, perhaps found in advertisements, in other poetry or in community?
An analysis of the characters and constituents in the “Black Dandelion” poem will evolve into an exercise in noun naming, and that which modifies. Intrigue ensues as participants determine the identities of more than 30 poem related players. It’s a fun game. Survival and triumph are part of this coordinated collaborative activity. Students will create fanfiction about selected players in the Black Dandelion Theater.
Insight:
I have witnesses firsthand the positive effects Black Dandelion: Convergent Voice™ has on learners…Comparing the content of the poem to their own lives, students make the connection between history and current events, as well as using it as a launching point for their own writing process and development.
Jennifer Seymore-Dunton
Retired teacher (33 years)
RW3, Reading Writing Word Warrior
BD 300
WHERE ART MEETS POETRY
(In Partnership with the Flint Institute of Arts Department of Education) Matthew Osmon, Director of Education
Time: 12 hours-3 hours in art making
Skill Reinforcement: literacy enhancement, reading/comprehension, critical thinking, writing, art making, imagination expansion, public speaking/presentation
Utilization: literacy, reading/ comprehension, writing, vocabulary enhancement, critical thinking, public speaking/presentation
Levels: 4th grade – high school
Description: In this course, we will answer the question: How did students from an under-resourced urban area with reading and writing scores many grade levels below the state average learn to write poetry and narratives, and deliver public presentations in 10-weeks? Participants follow the circuitous path of the pedagogy, PSL/ POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD™ created by Flint Poet Laureate, Semaj Brown. The lessons for the young scholars are reflexive, crisscrossing, circling back as reinforcing strategies.
From the onset, we begin to imagine poetry as a verb, something active, something we do, or as a 3-dimensional entity. Poetry is compared to almond butter and jam spread on two pieces of toast. Poetry is like this new exciting thing called a sandwich, something to be consumed, something delicious with great nutritional value. A poem is no longer confined to a page in a book; it is an active force. What happens when art meets poetry? Marvelous, magical things happen, literary art gives rise to synthesis or “sandwiching.” The jam and almond butter on toast is analogous to a newly created art collage, a new entity. There is a synthesis. Collage creation is an extension of literature. The collages are representative of a melding of themes found in student response poems, which were written commentaries on the origin poem, “Black Dandelion.” Given ample time, we return to the collages to write prose, narratives based on the emblems and symbols contained. The Semajian Method techniques of “Linking” and “Replacement Therapy” assists students in fluid writing.
Insight: Our Scholars learned how to delve into the written prose and create poems connected to their life, beliefs, and experiences. Mrs. Brown empowered our Scholars to go beyond their fears to freedom in public speaking!
Richard Kerry Thompson
Greater Height Academy Principal/Superintendent
LINK TO VIDEO
SEARCHING FOR BLACK DANDELIONS IN ART & EKPHRASTIC WRITING
(In collaboration with )
Time: 3 hours (To be divided between the classroom and excursions to the MW Gallery home of the Mott-Warsh Collection)
Skill Reinforcement: writing, critical thinking, analytical processes
Utilization: English Language Art, Multidisciplinary Studies, History
Levels: upper middle – high school
Description: Ekphrastic writing is written verse, poetry or prose inspired by art. In this course, expanding the capacity of literacy is a two-step waltz a comparative duet, breakdancing, between poetry and paintings, or a selected work of art. The visual habitat of paintings will amplify the convergent themes found in the poem, "Black Dandelion.”
Students will identify patterns of relatedness, of the seemingly disparate disciplines of literary art and visual art. Identifying themes of sameness across academic or artistic disciplines fosters student awareness to the undeniable interdependence of all things, whether poem, painting, plant, or a person. Consider how easy it is to recognize water in all of its forms: liquid, solid as ice, and vapor or steam. We are asking students to identify themes found in the “Black Dandelion” poem in other places, namely visual art, and in their world.
Analogies and parallels between the “Black Dandelion” poem and a work of art will be supported and justified by the students according to a 3-Step Rationale gifted to Semaj Brown by her mother, documented in her 2019, Broadside Lotus Press book, “Bleeding Fire! Tap the Eternal Spring of Regenerative Light.” Student writings about the artwork will reflect a hybrid of poetry and prose, contained within a critical thinking context.
Insight: Semaj’s artistry is intertwined with her lifelong commitment and passion for education. I have witnessed Ms. Brown’s tireless advocacy for literacy, the literary arts, and creative expression through poetry carried out in workshops that she has initiated or been commissioned to develop and conduct. The Mott-Warsh Collection has featured Semaj Brown in numerous programs at its MW Gallery.
Poetry has proven to be an effective tool in helping individuals and whole communities to heal. Ms. Brown has been instrumental in the sorely needed healing therapy taking place in Flint, Michigan.
Stephanie James - Director, Curator, and Collection Educator The Mott-Warsh Collection |111 E. Court St., Suite 2C Flint, MI 48502
BLACK DANDELION HIVE LIFE
(In partnership with The Flint Institute of Arts Department of Education) Matthew Osmon, Director of Education
Time: 6 hours (divided between the classroom, art creation, and a possible instructive visit from beekeepers)
Skill Reinforcement: reading/comprehension interpretation, collaborative learning/writing, critical thinking, art creation, introspection, Social Emotional Learning, Ecology of Bees/animal science, life mapping
Utilization: Vocational Centers, English Language Arts, Social Rehabilitation Facilities
Levels: High School and up
Description: "Bees celebrated the return of the dandelions in a skirt of twirling yellow bliss." -Semaj Brown from the poem “Black Dandelion”
This course is centered around the above quote. Participants are guided through an exciting, interactive discussion prompted by a PowerPoint which engages metaphors and deeper meanings, and themes within the poem. Students will navigate the creation of a collaborative writing, a poem. Once the navigation exercise is ignited, we strategically move like busy bees, exploring "Black Dandelion" turbulence, recognizing the geosocial barriers to flight or success for bees, and /or humans who are contained in marginalized communities.
How do bees fly despite turbulence? How do bees secure and maintain their hives? We look to nature for strategies, and we find many applications to our real-world life. The bees struggle: humans struggle. Movement is a theme returned to many times. How will you move, roll, crawl or fly through the winds of your environment? What type of hive or house will you build?
We utilize digital or manual manipulations of portraiture as an expressive creative tool to reflect, correct, redirect and rewrite a positive course of direction. This course contains a vocational option where real beekeepers visit and present all things bee, including those uniforms and the sweet taste of honey! What fun!
Insight: As part of our trademark studies, my students experienced “Branded: The Buying, Frying, Making, Baking of African American Domestic Stereotypes,” a riveting presentation … from Semaj Brown. She brought history, science, psychology, anthropology, and economics to bear … We will never look … the same way again.
Professor Susan M. Kornfield, J.D. University of Michigan – Law School LINK TO VIDEO
VO CAB BEE: A BLACK DANDELION: CONVERGENT VOICE BDCV GAME
Time: 1 to 2 hours game, preparation several months
Skill Reinforcement: vocabulary enhancement, lexicon development, spelling, writing and reading support
Utilization: 4th – Scholars, Students, Intergenerational, Classrooms, Schools, after and before school activity, and Community
Description: It’s fun! It’s a word game! It’s WORD SPORT! We identified 70 “Black Dandelion” words, terms of interest (TOI), or simply vocabulary for the Old Schoolers. Each has a definition, of course, and most TOI boast several synonyms which total to almost 350 new words of interest. In this Black Dandelion: Convergent Voice BDCV Vo Cab Bee, participants play for synonyms. Teams compete in a Family Feud-style manner. Each team has a coach. The 70 BDCV words, definitions, and synonyms are provided to teams with a list of learning strategies to help them achieve usage status and understanding. This Vo Cab Bee can be played in classrooms, interclassrooms, school wide or with other schools as a BDCV Vo Cab Bee Tournament. This is an engaging strategy to increase vocabulary. One interactive PowerPoint presentation on the poem, “Black Dandelion” and you are ready to let the games begin!
Insight: The poem, “Black Dandelion,” is a beautiful poem that packs a whole lot of meaning. One can understand the poem by sensing the context of the words, phrases and ideas, but one can fully realize and interact with the subject of the poem by looking up unfamiliar vocabulary. The words used in the poem have all been chosen for exact meanings and connotations, and placed specifically to convey the truest meaning of the poem.
Darolyn Brown, MA
English Language Arts Teacher
Detroit Public Schools, 34 years
THE COMMUNAL CLASSROOM
Time: 2 to 3 hours (Time varies depending on levels of engagement)
Skill Reinforcement: classroom management, interclass room communication and flow, parent guardian communication, collaborative learning and socialization, discipline, contextual content focus
Utilizations: Service Teachers, Teachers, Administrators
Levels: 4th- high school
Description: The power to re-imagine one’s condition is innate, as primal as species reproduction or the quest for liberty. Communal capacity is a classroom of dreams. In the Communal Classroom, we paint those dreams into a new cultural formation, onto a self-determined canvas, into expository writing, subject verb agreement, research papers, narrative analysis, a poem, or any focused content. It is much more than classroom management. It is realignment of thought, principles, and actions related to discipline and learning. It is the dissolving of obsolete practices, the ones that haven’t worked in a long time, and establishing new realities of wholeness for an often beleaguered learning population of teachers, students, parents/guardians, and administrators. We ask the hierarchical probe; how did we get here? Where is here? And we craft an educational plan of extrication.
Nine reflexive frameworks and principles from the pedagogy, PSL/POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD™ sync and deliver a humanizing educational design for the Communal Classroom that transforms the educational atmosphere.
“The proponents of ubuntu… African philosophy based on the maxim, ‘a person is a person through other persons,’ whereby the community prevails over individual considerations. From the ubuntu perspective, it is arguably not an empty claim that our survival or well-being is causally dependent on others.” -Bishop Tutu
Insight: According to Mattern, (Carrie Mattern, then President of Michigan Council of Teachers of English), “Brown’s keynote address was a vision. It was one of what education could be-and should be-in a just world that is equitable, diverse, and inclusive. She fused science, art, storytelling and language into a tapestry for everyone in that room to discover. I think this is what led to her standing ovation: the perfectly articulated, intentional way that Semaj connected with every educator in the space in such a small timeframe.” -From Flint Courier News, 2022, Tanya Terry, Editor
Passcode to Literacies through PSL/POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD™
Time: Varies from 1 hour lecture to extended consultation
Skill Reinforcement: interdisciplinary/integrative learning and lesson planning, reading comprehension, test taking skills, writing
Utilization: Across curriculum, Multidisciplinary
Level: Service Teachers, Teachers, Administrators, Policy Makers
Description: PSL/POETRY AS A SECOND LANGUAGE: THE SEMAJIAN METHOD™ is an interdisciplinary /integrative practice and pedagogy that dissolves obsolete paradigms while synthesizing new ways of thinking, being, and learning. It also serves as an evaluation tool. The method is technology, represented by nine integrative, reflexive frameworks which utilize the enzymatic function of poetry as a precious power tool.
Integrative thinking yields integrative curriculum, which is relatively new to our current knowledge industry, but the concept is ancient, and valuable to both academics and species survival. In our high-tech Artificial Intelligence driven global world, integrative thinking provides a myriad of receptors that elevate and enhance our abilities to absorb and metabolize intellectual data, and thus synthesize such data into thought, into connectivity, the mechanics of a problem solving, creative being
In 2002, the integrative processes of my pedagogy allowed my 7-month consultation with a Detroit charter school, Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology, Gloria House, PhD, Principal, to raise MEAP scores from statistically negligible to the awardwinning status of Golden Apple recipient!
My thirty-year practice as a literary artist and an interdisciplinary educational consultant has taught me what you already know. Learners, whether elementary or university, whether in an institution, or enjoying an impromptu gathering on the sidewalk of life, assimilate information into understanding when they are intrigued. Nothing excites learning more than a lesson that makes sense, is relatable, and relevant.
Insight: Listening to Semaj brought joy, physical and spiritual to me… kind of a cathartic experience. The comingling of different worlds, the tangible and intangible, had the power to calm me. Her voice, her words and the spirit of sharing managed to lower my pressure. I had been struggling for a change. I felt light and conscious of all my being.”
Otrude Moyo, PhD,
Indiana University-South Bend, Director of School of Social Work
Carnegie African Diaspora Fellow/Associate Professor
PHOTO GALLERY
West Grand Balance Middle School | Mary Kennedy-Jacob, Teacher
Carmen Ainsworth High School | Carrie Mattern, Teacher - Amber Grutsch Sewell, Teacher
Greater Heights Academy | Richard Kerry Thompson, Superintendent/Principal – Reneta Richard, Teacher
Peckham Career Academy | Jane Casey, Youth Specialist
Jenny Seymore-Dunton, Retired Teacher (33 years)
Rosie Ray Henderson, Retired Paraprofessional (32 years)
Edith Withey, Retired Dean, Kettering University
Roberta "Bobbie" Sweetman, Fenten Library, Board Member
These kind and brilliant women made a statement, then asked a question.
“Semaj, we see you working so hard with literacy with our youth. Do you need any help?” That was the beginning. They are known now as the RW3s Reading Writing Word Warriors!
SEMAJ BROWN
Flint, Michigan's Inaugural Poet Laureate Academy of American Poets Poets Laureate Fellow, 2021
CONTACT AND CONNECT
EMAIL: contact@semajbrown.com
WEBSITE: www.semajbrown.com
FACEBOOK PAGE : https://www.facebook.com/BlackDandelionConvergentVoice poets.org/poet/semaj-brown