Coach Resource Center

Coaches: We’re so excited to see what your teams are going to share with us at slams on Saturday. Thanks and let your site manager know if you have any questions about Saturday after reading below. Good luck!! 

• We will be reimbursing teams up to $100 for food and drinks you choose to purchase for your poet-athletes. This could be breakfast or lunch on the day of slam or it could also be a pizza party you coordinate for your team on a different day. Hang on to those receipts and send them to your site manager!

• Buses will arrive between 8:45am-9am (For WS schools only) and 12:45pm-1pm (For ES schools only). You will receive your bus contact either today or tomorrow prior to pick up. Please note: transportation is provided only for coaches (or authorized school support) and poet-athletes. Parents, families, and community members are welcome to join us at Howard University to watch the slams.

• Howard University will be enforcing its bag policy so please plan accordingly with your poet-athletes. If you are planning on bringing any large props, please let your site manager know as one of our staff will likely need to bring it into the auditorium for you. Also, please keep in mind there is no food allowed in the auditorium.

• Please remind parents, families, and community members to allow at least an additional 30 minutes to find parking or take public transportation and enter the auditorium to be seated at the start of the program.

These resources can be found in the CRC, but, for your convenience, we have included a link to our Midseason Training Slides here, which breaks down more details on the schedule for the day of slams and how poet-athletes will be scored on their performances. You can also find our Coach Guide to Poetry Slams [PRINTABLE], here, with some details as well.

In addition to the rubrics found in these resources, please note teams can also have points deducted for the following:

• Unfair Play like conduct, which might look like talking during other performances or booing among other actions.

• Teams will also have points deducted for going over the allotted 5 minute time limit. This means from the time poet-athletes begin performing to when they begin walking off of the stage, teams have a maximum of 5 minutes. There has been confusion around this as some team’s include non-speaking parts to their performance prior to introducing their school and poems and our poetry team did not account for this in previous instructions. So to clarify, your team will be announced by the emcee and that is when your 5 minute time limit begins. Again, our poetry team apologizes for any confusion this may have caused. We have a lot of schools to get through and we want to be respectful of everyone’s time and the space to stay on schedule throughout the day.

Please share: Poetry Slam Information for Families [PRINTABLE] 

• Check out our social media posts to share with families! https://www.instagram.com/p/DCo0Ey8uwE2/?img_index=1 

• Encourage them to check out details on our events page: https://www.dcscores.org/events/