WS/FCS awards contract to LB The Poet
LB The Poet
During the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools (WS/FCS) Board of Education meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 8, the board unanimously approved a contract with Larry Barron Jr. to provide poetry workshops for students at Parkland Magnet High School.
According to the contract presented to the board last week, Barron, who is better known throughout the community as LB The Poet, will receive $12,000 to provide a total of thirty 45-minute poetry workshops during the 2019-2020 school year. Workshops will consist of writing prompts, confidence building exercises, performance coaching and situational poetry scenarios.
Barron, who is a graduate of Parkland High School, is the founder of WORD Society, a collective of performers who travel the country performing, and the Word of Mouth Wednesday Experience, a monthly showcase of local spoken word artists and performers. Barron started writing when he was in middle school. During an interview with The Chronicle, Barron said a middle school teacher introduced him to poetry and he’s been writing ever since.
“Ms. Dimosick at Clemmons Middle School, I want to find her because she changed my life,” he said. “She took me out of class, gave me a pen and a pad and she told me, ‘Larry nobody can judge what you write in this pad, so write all your feelings down.’”
Just like his middle school teacher Ms. Dimosick, Barron has made it his duty to introduce students to the world of poetry. During the public comment portion of the meeting last week, Tia Buster, who is an English teacher at Parkland, praised Barron for his hard work and the impact he has had on students in her class.
“In guidelines with the district mandate to address social and emotional learning and balanced literacy, he encompasses all of that within his weekly 45-minute workshop rotations in our school,” Buster said.
Buster also read several statements from students who have been directly impacted by Barron. One student wrote, “When LB comes into the classroom, he changes my mind and my view of writing and he seriously changes my view of poetry, which I didn’t like previously to him coming in. He makes writing poetry interesting and makes speaking in front of the class seem easy. He makes it comfortable and judgment free.”
LB The Poet has also established poetry workshops at Winston-Salem Preparatory Academy High School and Middle School, Ashley Academy for Cultural and Global Studies, and Winston-Salem Street School, a nonprofit private high school that empowers students to thrive academically, emotionally, and scripturally. Barron also received the Fine Arts Award during The Chronicle’s 34th Annual Community Service Awards.
