Many of the students who were in Tiffany Wilson’s Special Education classroom at Sedona Red Rock High School last year had trouble writing about themselves.

Now, with the help of poet Tee Pace, they were all able to accomplish that goal.

“It’s really cool to finally get it to where they were able to do an ‘I Am’ poem without me having to really assist them in writing it, so they can actually have a poem that they’re proud of,” Wilson said.

Pace came to the class as part of Sedona’s Artist in the Classroom program run by the city of Sedona’s arts and culture specialist, Nancy Lattanzi.

Several of Wilson’s students presented their poems, which took a few days for them to write.

The “I Am” poems were about what the students liked and what made up their day-to-day lives.

“I am from chicken nuggets, pizza,” Riddick Jones, 14, said. “I am from basketball.”

Jose Zavalza, 18, said it was his first time writing something like it on his own.

His favorite part, though, was being able to write about things he likes doing, like running track.

“I am a 1,600 [meter] runner now,” he said. He said he is working with SRRHS track and field coach Sean Eicher to improve his running. In the previous season, he said he ran 800 meter races.

One of the major reasons Wilson said she wanted Pace to work with her students was because she had experience in special education.

“She really helped me take it to the next level and bring it to more of an art level with the poetry than the form that we were doing,” Wilson said. “So she did a fantastic job of going and having them do planning together.”

“I was a special education teacher for about 10 years,” Pace said. “A little bit all over, so, in New York, upstate New York and then New York City; Monterey, Mexico; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

Mostly, she said, she worked with high schoolers.

Recently, she worked with some students at West Sedona School, which she liked more than she anticipated.

“I was like, ‘oh my god, I think I want to teach elementary school,’” Pace said. “I actually want to go back to the elementary school and work with more younger kids, and that was a surprise.

“I thought, sometimes, ‘you’re all sick,’ and that’s what I don’t like, especially after COVID, I’m super germaphobic, and the little kids seem to always be sick with something, but I got out of there alive.”

She said she was still happy with the high schoolers, though. They were all very active in the poetry exercise.

To get them started, Pace said she showed them a presentation about herself and gave an example “I Am” poem.

“I showed them some pictures of me growing up,” she said. “So I showed them a picture of my house in Staten Island, a baby picture with me and my brother, a picture of me in Arizona and Sedona when I moved here, a picture of me graduating college.”

To start off the project, she said she worked with Wilson to create a worksheet for the students, which included prompts asking about life events and people in their lives.

“I knew it was going to be ‘write about your favorite person,’” Pace said. “So I was like, ‘Grandma Tessie. Grandma Tessie.’ I just talked about my grandma a lot. And then after I talked about myself, we did this game called ‘this or that,’ so they had to stand up, and that’s what Riddick said [he liked best].”

The game had the students stand up, listen to something one of the adults said, and pick which one they had a preference for.

Contact Arts & Culture Specialist Nancy Lattanzi at NLattanzi@sedonaaz.gov or (928) 203-5078 for additional information on the Artist in the Classroom program.