Introducing Our 2023-2024 Poetry Inside Out Teaching Fellows: Yaxha Ruvein
Poetry Inside Out Teaching Fellow Yaxha Ruvein shares educational goals and personal pedagogies for creative language curricula.
This school year, the Center for the Art of Translation honors the recipients of the second annual Poetry Inside Out Teaching Fellowship, a year-long program designed to support teachers as they pursue curricular research, build skills in creative language instruction, and learn how to inspire collaborative discussions of poetry in translation in the classroom.
Teaching Fellows join a vibrant network of students, teachers, poets, translators, and academics committed to open-ended dialogue about language and literature, working together to develop culturally responsive, integrated curricula based on Poetry Inside Out’s key practices. They will deepen their understanding of classroom practices that contextualize learning, uplift student achievement, leverage and affirm students’ cultural identity, and develop critical thinking skills.
Each of our Fellows brings a unique perspective and level of dynamism to our programs, and we want to highlight their individual ideas and approaches. Over the course of this next few weeks, we’ll be publishing brief Q&A’s with the fellows to celebrate them with our CAT community.
In Yaxha’s classroom, the Poetry Inside Out program allows for a multicultural and multilingual teaching practice: translanguaging. Through this pedagogy, Yaxha encourages students to harness imaginative thought in multiple languages to anchor their English language learning in the familiar vocabularies of their homes.
Introducing Yaxha Ruvein
Yaxha Ruvein is a middle school humanities educator in San Francisco, bringing 12 years of teaching experience to his 7th and 8th grade English Language Arts classes at Presidio Hill School. Having previously taught a combination of middle grades English, Logic, and Philosophy classes for ten years in Arizona, his teaching practice focuses on de-centering Standard English Ideology through an interdisciplinary, place-based curriculum rooted in multilingual learning.
As a Poetry Inside Out Fellow, he seeks to create culturally responsive translation methods that engage students in multiple modes of expression and to foster a translanguaging pedagogy that emphasizes linguistic diversity through social justice education. Yaxha eagerly anticipates implementing the Poetry Inside Out framework to empower middle school students in leveraging their languages, agency, and identities in their growth as informed, creative, curious, and compassionate global citizens.
What interests you about Poetry Inside Out’s programming/curricula, and what excites you about this fellowship? What do you hope to glean from it?
Poetry Inside Out’s focus on multisensory learning and design thinking in the process of engaging students in the art of translation resonates with my passion for challenging pedagogical orthodoxy and developing fundamental literacies for an increasingly multimodal, multilingual world. I’m excited about utilizing translation as a pedagogical tool not only to enhance students’ appreciation of diverse voices, narratives, and history, but also to acquire a more nuanced awareness of how poetry can serve as a catalyst for assembling habits of mind that operate from a place of global consciousness.
I hope to forge meaningful connections with educators from various backgrounds, each one bringing a unique lens to the craft of teaching a translanguaging pedagogy in the humanities. This collective exchange of methods has the potential to transform my teaching practice and to strengthen my capacity for creating dynamic, engaging, humanistic learning environments.
Through implementing Poetry Inside Out, I aim to gain a revived, renewed, rejuvenating set of practices that integrate translation as an instrument for investigating (and investing in) humanity, forming interdisciplinary connections, centering student voices, and dismantling the legacies of colonialism in the context of English Language Arts. Ultimately, I am enthusiastic about the possibility of becoming a more reflective educator, and by participating in this program, I hope to experience a journey of self-discovery that will improve my skill in creating classes where curiosity, compassion, and creativity thrive.
Any interests in international literature/poetry or foreign languages that you’d like to mention?
Having grown up in the uniquely situated transborder community of Juárez-El Paso-Las Cruces, I have a deep appreciation for international literature/poetry and foreign languages. Years of reading Latin American writers have made an exceptionally strong impact on my love of language, especially Natasha Wimmer’s translations of Roberto Bolaño’s fiction and poetry, an indelible source of literary vitality and inspiration. Equally formative works for me have been Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s haunting short stories as well as the French philosophical lineage, especially Simone de Beauvoir’s “Pour une morale de l’ambiguïté” and Jean-Paul Sartre’s “L’Être et le néant.”
In my role as a middle grades ELA teacher at Presidio Hill School, I’m currently seeking to advance effective ways for students to raise awareness of endangered languages, with a focus on studying efforts around Native-language restoration.
Giovanna Lomanto is a poet and essayist with a tendency to play the same song on repeat until she has memorized every last note. She received her BA in English at U.C. Berkeley and finished her MFA at NYU, during which time she published two poetry collections and two mixed media chapbooks.
