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We spend the hour today speaking with Sarah Sentilles, who wrote down her memoirs of two years in Compton, Southern California. She was teaching elementary school there. After graduating from Yale University, Sarah joined a program called Teach for America and was sent to Compton. Far from the life of privilege and the protected environment she was raised in, she found herself in charge of thirty-six first graders in a classroom without books. There she experienced her own education. I spoke with Sarah Sentilles recently and asked her to begin by reading an excerpt of her book, “Taught by America: A Story of Struggle and Hope in Compton.”

GUEST: Sarah Sentilles, author of “Taught by America: A Story of Struggle and Hope in Compton”

Get Lit Players Use Poetry to Push Literacy in Schools

For the past five years, Get Lit has served over 10,000 teens in the Los Angeles area through various programs inspiring them to utilize the power of literature to change their lives. Formed in 2005 by Diane Luby Lane, the non-profit organization has since gone on to combat teenage illiteracy while providing the LA Unified School District with an educational model for poetry and literature aimed at transforming underperforming students. Over the years, Get Lit has also entered a collaborative relationship with California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes that has allowed it to compile a curriculum as well as spark ‘The Magic Poetry Bus’ program. In addition, the youth literacy promoting group also offers in-school and after-school services such as the “Ignite” and “The Get Lit Players” projects. Award-winning poet Jimmy Santiago Baca has said of the Get Lit Players that “they are tackling the darkness of illiteracy and lighting the way for our youth.”

GUEST: Diane Luby Lane, Executive Director of Get Lit Players, Taylor Johnson (17), and Aziza Barnes (17), part of the classic teen poetry troupe at Get Lit Players

Find out more at www.getlit.org.