Lincoln Unified students are becoming more creative and expressive writers with the help of a local celebrity!

Brandon Leake, a Stockton native who won “America’s Got Talent” for a spoken word performance in 2020, spent the 2022-23 school year teaching poetry at our schools. During the fall 2022 semester, Brandon taught entry-level poetry concepts such as rhyming, alliteration and onomatopoeia before giving students a chance to write about their personal goals. In the spring, Brandon began working with smaller groups of students at every campus.

Brandon’s spring 2023 instruction culminated with the Lincoln Unified Poetry Jam on Wednesday, May 10th. Brandon hosted this event at the Performing Arts Center, where students took the microphone to read poems and spoken word with a variety of topics and tones. Parents even got a chance to experience a poetry game Brandon introduced to students as a way of helping them find rhyming words more quickly.

Brandon will be back at Lincoln Unified schools to teach poetry in the fall 2023 semester. We are happy to have this talented and empathetic poet working with our students!