For my Americorps/TEAMS project, I taught a large poetry unit to English Language Development (ELD) high school students. We started the unit watching the documentary "The Fall of the I-Hotel" which chronicles the experience of elder Filipino, Black, Chinese, and other immigrants and their struggle over basic tenants and human rights in San Francisco, CA. We then reflected on our experiences and recent young immigrants. As a result, our students completed a larger compilation of poetry on a number of themes, in a number of poetic styles. Zihao (photo above) was one of our stellar poets who truly found his voice and his cause in his poetry. Our students really struggle to make English work for them and truly reflect their most critical, deepest, heartfelt thoughts. Through the poetry unit, we realized just how vital creative writing and letting go of the usual grammatical rules can also be in providing a holistic and transformative ELD curriculum.