ACE Spectrum
ACE Spectrum
Ace Spectrum is about you — the ACE Learning Centers.
It’s a quick sharing of ideas, inspiration, opinions and best practices among our continuing education organizations.
Please join the conversation.
ACE Poetry Contest Winning Poets from Oakland International High School Describe Beauty, Protection and Dreams
By Samosa, ACE Poetry Contest Mascot, Oakland International High School
Poetry. Doesn’t have to rhyme. All the time.
The thing about poems
Is they can take time
To tell a story
With nary a rhyme.
So here are our winners
From Oakland so cool
Rhyming don’t count
Not from this school.
It’s telling our stories
The highs and the lows
Putting stories in poems
Just makes us grow.
Here are the winners from Oakland International High School. They’re purrfect.
First Place Prize:
Persecution People
By Kalkidan Woldetsadik
I left my home country
To be persecution person
To live in dark round
Having dark stress
My happiness left me
My sad life coming up
Who I’m gonna tell what I will to tell
Nobody didn’t listen to me to I be selfene
Living myself nobody not sharing me
Listen God mine pray
He listen my pray that’s all gone
A new day comes to my life
My sad life being away my happiness comes closely
When I entered to my country
I breathe again when I get freedom
My dream being open
Thank you Jesus to make my dream true
See Kalkidan recite her poem here:
Second Place Prize:
To Kill but to Protect
By Adriana Mejia
Your words make me wonder
If I am paying the prize
The sensation that what you are saying
Will later be said to me
Don’t worry, dear Father
Your words in my blood will disappear
I will carry them with sorrow
Of someone that my community wants to destroy
Now, I stand away from you
If those words I have to hear
I prefer to hear from someone else
But not you
Maybe now you won’t understand
But one day you might see
How your words will be tattooed on me
How I will be your armor
When karma decides the target
Is only you
You won’t realize now
I might never let you do so
But whenever I get to cry for the shame
Inside of me
Your words will be remembered
Such a stone, such sword
Controlled with the words that my people
Get day by day
Now, Father I stand close to them
Throw the stone near them
But pointing at this heart
That you made
Because if you kill me at this moment
The memory will always unbroken
Kill me to bring strength
Kill me, but not them.
Third Place Prize:
What is Beauty
By Akira Furaha
Beauty is retiring with no job, like every 12th grader who are always tired. Beauty is like the weird color wall just like Momo’s bed she described nervously. Beauty is like red buckets on heads like 11th graders with so much energy. Beauty is corny and cheesy just like this poem. Beauty is like the smell of lemonverbina which I don’t know how to spell. Beauty is like Mr. Paul’s beard soft, long, and old like Mr. Daniel who claims 2 be 2 old. Beauty is subjective no one knows how to describe it perfectly, but people know what it is. Beauty is like 何も or 没 nada, niente, khong congi and nothing in other languages. But what I know is that Beauty is beautiful.
Oxford Day Academy Winning Poets of ACE Poetry Contest Show Off Their Rhyme
By Thor, ACE Poetry Contest Mascot, Oxford Day Academy
We have epic Oxford Day Academy (ODA) ACE Poetry Contest winners with epic poems. Poems about the future. Poems about what it will take to be successful. For never being too young to feel the pain.
Let my ODA poets show off. Eeeepic!
1st Prize Winner – Chyanne Robinson
2nd Prize Winner – Damian Montesinos
3rd Prize Winner – Sarai Johnson
4th Prize Winner – Taniyah Arreguin
If I were a book
By Chyanne Robinson
If I were a book, I wouldn’t invite you in just yet
I fear that that if I let you in – you may hurt me in an instance
If I were a book, my main character would struggle with trusting people, because people started breaking her trust at an early age
If I were a book, I would fear that if I were to trust you, you would simply walk out of my life, so instead, I keep the pages closed
If I were a book, I would tell you about family separation, about a mother leaving her family, and her children not knowing why.
If I were a book, I would tell you about my older sister having to surrender her childhood, because she had to take care of me
If I were a book, I would empathize with someone who may feel alone and worthless – because I KNOW what that feels like
If I were a book, I would tell you about feeling alone, about a cloudy mindset making it impossible to think straight as dark thoughts build up
If I were a book, I would struggle with capturing a happy memory, because it is elusive – disappearing before I can write it
If I were a book, I would tell you about multiple deaths and a child who blames herself for the death of her grandma, her uncle, her cousins
If I were a book, I would tell you about not wanting to go to school, not wanting to have friends, blocking myself from the world because being alone allowed me to hide my sadness
If I were a book, my tattered pages would resist being straightened – no I do not want to go to a shrink, no I am not going through a phase, no, I am not too young to feel this pain
If I were a book, I would tell you about being bullied because I did not look like the other girls, or because I chose to follow the rules
If I were a book, I would tell you about being bullied because I was Black and called ugly, or that my hair did not flow like white or Latina girls
If I were a book, I would fade away … like my depression.
I Am Equity
By Damian Montesinos
I am equity
I am Equity, I am Strong, I am Brave, I am Powerful.
I am fair and value others opinion.
I stand for myself and give all I have.
I stand up to violence and speak my mind even when i’m wrong.
I give voice to the voiceless and give my admiration to others.
I Used To Think…
By Sarai Johnson
I used to think that procrastination was limitation,
…but It was my adaptation.
I used to think teachers used condescension to get my attention
…but it just turned me away and caused me to retaliate – but I won’t let that stop me from being great.
I used to care too much about people’s thoughts,
that caused me to refrain from getting taught.
I am Equity
By Taniyah Arreguin
I am equity. I am willing to work in a team.
I am equity, I represent fairness.
I am equity, because Being equitable isn’t about giving everybody the same tools. It’s about
Giving everybody the tools they need to be successful.
I am equity. I choose to be successful in life.
I am equity. I am not meant to be a person who is controlled by someone else’s direction.
I am equity. I can be the change I want to see in the world.
I am equity. I am 16 years old I am a risk taker and mess maker
I am confident doer of exciting things
I’m not built for desk sitting
My brain craves action, I’m not as grown as people think, I still need to move and explore, don’t
rush my teenage hood.
I am equity, a creative student, curious, persistent, and independent with a spirit of adventure
And a love of joy.
I am equity, a teenage with a full-time job, called moving and adventure
Let me be persuaded by it, from my early years, until my old
Years
I AM EQUITY.
San Francisco International High School 11th Graders Share Their Dreams in Poetry
By Hei Hei, ACE Poetry Contest Mascot, San Francisco International High School
I’m running in circles for the poetry from the 11th graders at San Francisco International High School (SFIHS.) Their poems are smart, insightful and full of brave messages.
Arr, arr – here are the 11th Grade winners of the ACE Poetry Contest.
From class I: Ashley Tercero
From class J: Winni Hu
From class K: Jordan Baluyot
From class L: Alexander Blanco
And now their poems.
Is This Really the American Dream?
By Ashley Theresa Tercero Perez
Is this really the American Dream
A place painted pink but with another
Dark side
Full of open doors, important as oxygen
But also full of suffering, like a tornado
Suffering from the loneliness that comes every night
Working hard, filling the wallet with dollars,
To support your family, knowing that it’s worth so much effort
Holding cold through the streets, to provide a better future for their children…
Knowing that money is not everything in life
Crying alone, with the helplessness of not seeing them grow.
The American Dream is a piece of paper
Where you start to write a new story
Praying to God for the strength to continue,
To not lose hope.
Working hard, seeing how the years,
They go fast, like a shooting star
Knowing that it was worth so much sacrifice,
So many years of dedication
Without losing hope.
Ashley accepts her prize.
Dream
By Winni Hu
The American dream is like the cat in Schrödinger’s box
If you believe it is there
Then you will find it there
If you don’t believe it is there
Then you will not find it there
Sometimes
Dream is as beautiful as fantasy
Lots of people died on their fantasy
Without hard working and trying
Sometimes
Dream is as difficult as the reality
Lots of people get the sweetness at the end
With scars and tears
Who will be able to get their dreams
As they get their jobs
As they get their hope
As they get their food
As they get their freedom
Martin Luther King has an American dream
A dream as shiny as the black pearls
After a long time of hardship
The lights of the hope and equality
Penetrate from the shells
The road before he is long and winding
But the light he brings to America
Stay gold forever on human the history
I have an American dream
A dream as amazing as a movie
Showing the taste of my life
Showing the color of my future
Showing the shape of my dream
Showing the shine of all the miracle
I will finally determine my ending nither
Happy
Or
Bad
All the Americans have an American dream
Some are easy to be reached
Some are hard to be achieved
All the Americans have their own life
Either
Working hard to climb up the stair of the society
Or
Dreaming hard only on the bottom of the reality
This is how American dream works
If you believe it is there
Then you will find it there
If you don’t believe it is there
Then you will not find it there
Who will be able to get their dreams?
Winni accepts her prize.
Hopeless
By Mark Jordan Baluyot
The American Dream
Is it just a big scheme?
We all work hard
To seek a precious reward
Like a colony of ants
Looking for food for infants
Does hard work really payoff?
Workers are sick, still no days off
It’s a burning star
Dying slowly from afar
Immigrants say it’s unfair
Being controlled from the one in the big chair
Just like the moon and the sun
Why can’t we be one?
Light in the day and night
They get along and never fight
Families got deported
Dreams are distorted
We are the colored skin
Try our best, but can’t win
Everyone in sorrow
Because of the broken tomorrow
Is it still there?
It just flew away in the air
Jordan accepts his prize.
Oh! Americandream
By Alexander Blanco
Oh! American dream! Designed to be new, but expensive,
Expensive as something fancy and cruel like a knife. His opportunities are invisible as the oxygen But
Coexist? The American dream as lightful morning?
Tell me what about your hard work! What is your climbing to the top of the mountain like?
Exciting as a spring? Or boring as a school?
Dreams are dreams
But working for it
Brings you a wind of hope, new oxygen to your lungs!
Because at the end of the day
An unexpected reward, may fall from sky
Like a soldier from an airplane.
American dream is a president because it promises a lot of things.
Just don’t sleep on the facts
And break your legs on the stage.
Alexander accepts his prize.