Artist Spotlight: Jackson McBrayer

“If you’re passionate about it, then there is a way to make it your career”

Jackson McBrayer discovered his talent and love for stand up comedy upon his first performance in 2006, pursuing it while picking up more passions along the way. His transition into poet was just as innate, leading him to teaching poetry as a Bay Area Creative teaching artist while continuing his stand up routines. Much of Jackson’s comedy and poetry centers on being disabled in an ableist society, using art as means to subvert his audience’s assumptions.

Jackson’s career in comedy was spurred on by a spontaneous decision encouraged by friends after years of deliberating over trying stand up. His first routine changed his life, Jackson commenting “I immediately fell in love with being on stage. I was like, oh, this is my thing”. A large influence being his large Italian family, growing up in a vibrant environment in which he was the same. His love for the stage extended to slam poetry in which he’d begin to write and perform in an entirely different medium. Jackson recognizes not just the difference between comedy and poetry but the similarities as well. Often he turns his standup routines into poems, just shifting the tone and form of the material. He believes “no matter what art form I'm using to tell my story, I think that turning our good and bad emotions into something beautiful has value”.

Of his motivations and messages within his art, Jackson is eager in subverting people’s expectations and assumptions that they project onto him. His life is filled to the brim with skydiving trips, mosh pit surfing in his wheelchair, performing in front of hundreds, and dancing in the middle of a dance floor. He expresses these moments in his comedy and poems, with the belief that poetry can be more than sad or heavy but about the happiest moments of his life. Jackson’s art celebrates himself just as much as he uses it to process or cope with sad moments in his life. He states: “I talk a lot about my victory moments because I think that there's a culture around disability”.

“Be the teacher you wish you had.”

When working as a teaching artist, Jackson describes how he is often the first disabled person that children and even most adults will develop a relationship with. He wants them to build assumptions based on him and his stories, that “disabled people can do everything”. Jackson’s transition into teaching felt natural to him having coached wheelchair basketball previously. When teaching, he’s motivated by the desire to create a fun, open atmosphere for his students. Jackson describes the importance of seeing kids' silliness and playfulness not as a negative but as a positive. He encourages class clowns to make jokes that they can write into their poetry rather than discouraging them and celebrates their desire to make their peers laugh. Poetry is a way for students to not only express their trauma or their negative emotions but create art that can be full of joy. Jackson wants his students to be genuine to themselves and share their voice. He believes in the impact he has as a teacher to make sure his students believe in themselves and their ideas.

“[My] reason to be a performer is [that] I think differently and my perspective has value.”

Jackson pushes forward that we should be genuine to ourselves and that art is a way to do so. His role as a teaching artist has become indispensable in his journey as a poet, comic, and individual. No matter what he writes about, Jackson writes with the intention to move his audience whether it be to make them laugh or cry. From his strong, twenty year career in the Bay Area comedy scene to his new found exploration into visual art, Jackson is always finding outlets to express his creativity.

Does AI Pose A Threat To Education?

Image Source: CNN

In today’s day and age, it feels inescapable—AI has entered the chat, and isn’t leaving. It inserts itself into countless aspects of daily life and despite tech companies’ attempts to replace every person, job, and experience with lines of code, many of us remain hesitant and unconvinced of if the benefits outweigh the crisis. After all, despite its uses, AI poses many threats; not only has its rise seen a sharp increase in layoffs as many have lost their jobs to the technology, but studies have shown that AI data centers have been detrimental to the surrounding environment (MIT News, "Explained: Generative AI's environmental impact") and have only exacerbated our current climate crisis. Can we really embrace a technology that is so rapidly depleting our water resources while people all over the world still struggle with food and water insecurity, or is it time to rethink our priorities? Another realm where these doubts have been clearly expressed is in the sphere of education; after all, in a world where we are constantly being sold machines marketed as being able to think for us in order to cut costs, how will this put the value of receiving an education into question? The reality is that AI has entered the educational sphere like a long-term substitute, and the new challenge becomes learning to deal with it.

While those attempting to sell the technology may claim that AI will soon make teachers obsolete (CNBC, "Bill Gates: Within 10 years, AI will replace many doctors and teachers - humans won't be needed 'for most things'"), the reality is that they remain extremely relevant in helping to guide students through such a rapidly changing technological environment. Casey Gardner (MA.Ed), an English and Creative Writing teacher at Clayton Valley High School, spoke about her experiences instructing students on AI usage. Gardner explained how many schools are constantly adapting and adopting new technology to detect and combat AI usage in the classroom, there is ultimately no way to completely prevent students from using the technology at home. Teachers such as Gardner attempt to take a more realistic approach; she explains how “even if they use AI, we like to wide lens out into the real world a little bit… For my seniors, because their class is also a career prep course, my advice is ‘don’t use it to be creative, because it sucks at that’. But I tell them all about its benefits for planning, editing, revising, spellchecking… But I try to put it in the context of:

‘I already know that the computer knows how to read and write. I want you to know how to read and write’”.

Based on her own experience, students seem to be generally receptive to such teaching methods, with the basic understanding laid down that using AI in place of forming one’s own original thoughts is still a form of plagiarism. Gardner stressed that in such a rapidly changing environment, adaptability is key and is ultimately the best way for teachers to remain ahead of the curve, ensuring that students are always receiving the most up to date information and learning strategies.

PG, one of Bay Area Creative’s own teaching artists, echoed these sentiments, saying that “AI has a place in the classroom when it comes to understanding something, but when it becomes the creator it is detrimental”. As an artist himself whose interests span over several mediums, PG understands the importance of the arts as a form of personal expression and creativity, and removing a “creator” from the equation entirely and relying on AI therefore defeats the purpose of art entirely. PG explained that he hasn’t changed the way his classes are conducted to accommodate AI in an attempt to discourage students from using the technology, as its overuse can create a dependence on it that prevents students from truly learning.

While some students have embraced AI, many others remain hesitant due to the larger negative ramifications of its widespread use. Sydney Ruzicka, a student at UC Berkeley majoring in sociology, expressed how she feels that the rise of AI has led to “professors and students alike [being] less trusting of work produced in an environment where genAI is involved, which interferes with many of the social aspects of navigating a classroom environment”. While many of Ruzicka’s professors have implemented anti-AI policies, such as screen free classrooms and tests taken with pen and paper, the impossibility of knowing whether classmates are using the technology on their own time to get ahead creates a myriad of anxieties for students. She explains how “Whether there is a discrepancy between classmates doesn’t matter, just the threat of being ‘behind’ is enough to make even some of the most resistant students consider weighing their moral compass against using genAI to be on the same footing… Cutthroat environments breed cutthroat people, and the level of uncertainty in today’s world only increases students’ anxieties that they aren’t doing good enough quick enough.” However, Ruzicka herself is also a tutor and writing fellow, and explained how she helps students she works with to combat these feelings of anxiety that cause them to give in to such pressures; in her own words,

“I would urge students to have faith in their own abilities, because they might just surprise themselves if given a chance.”

Source: Science Photo Library

At the end of the day, there’s no simple solution to instantly eliminate the growing problems caused by AI. However, throughout all of these interviews one connecting thread remained true; the belief that AI can never truly replace the “human touch”, something especially inherent to education and the arts. Gardner cited the fact that “hands on engagement leads to longer term retention”, and that a physical instructor who can provide personal instruction and support to students is far more effective, especially for students with special needs that may need additional support. Ultimately, while there is no way to say for certain how far-reaching AI will become or the new potential threats it may pose, it remains clear that teachers remain essential in their role of giving students the ability to go forth into this uncertain world and combat these threats with confidence in their own abilities through reminding them of the value of their individual voice.

Artist Spotlight: Yenia Jimenez

Starting her career in poetry through the discovery of fellow poets on Instagram, Yenia Jimenez is now a self-published poet and teaching artist at Bay Area Creative. Yenia grew up in San Francisco where she writes about her experience as a woman of color in an effort to connect with other women of color or anyone who’s walked a similar path who can relate. 

“Poetry helped me heal, it really saved my life”

Yenia has always been a writer from youth, starting with journaling as a child up until adulthood. Writing was a method of coping with her trauma in a healthy, self-reflective way. She grew up in the projects of San Francisco, describing how “there was no happiness in my neighborhood, there wasn't, like, parks you can go to safely.” Poetry became a way for her to cope with her surroundings, to escape the sadness and fear she felt in the real world. Yenia’s first introduction to poetry was through her first grade teacher’s love for the art form and her readings of Shel Silverstein’s poetry to her class. After this interaction, she began writing throughout childhood into adulthood. Around 2012, she began researching self-publishing her poetry and prose through seeing other writers on Instagram. Through her research, she was able to publish her poetry independently. 

Yenia’s transition into teaching poetry was seamless, Yenia expressing “I need to learn how to teach this,” as she understood just how much poetry did for her. She wanted others to use poetry as a way to cope with their trauma, issues, and emotions which motivated her to start teaching free workshops over Zoom. Through this experience, she met her mentor, poet Tony Robles, who taught her how to facilitate. From there she began to meet more people in the Bay Area art community leading her to work at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts in San Francisco. 

“When I teach poetry at different organizations it doesn't look the same everywhere”

Yenia works as a teaching artist with multiple organizations where she acknowledges how teaching methods need to change depending on a variety of factors. At SFJAZZ she teaches students not just about poetry but its connection to jazz and African history. Meanwhile, there are other schools where she’ll focus more on writing about nature, personal struggles, or just day-to-day life. This ability to adapt is one of the ways Yenia is such a great teaching artist. She understands that not every school is the same, that there will always be some small or large shifts to make in her lesson plans. Whether it be in an effort to teach the history of jazz or poetry, Yenia’s greatest desire is to let her students know that poetry can be a way to process and release emotions that they are holding inside. Poetry changed her life in such a positive way that she recognizes how it can do the same for others, especially the youth.

“The most important thing is for kids to have an outlet to be able to release.”

Not only is poetry a method of processing, but Yenia describes how useful it is for language learners in their journey of learning English. As an Afro-Latinx woman, she teaches many Spanish speakers where instead of discouraging their use of Spanish, she encourages them to use both Spanish and English in their poetry. With her students, she helps translate their poetry into English so that they have the poem in both languages. In Yenia’s hands, poetry becomes a multi-purpose tool that she uses to help her students and teach them to help themselves.

Yenia’s own poetry is often political; she emphasizes the importance of political poetry in a time where political poetry is not often in the spotlight. She states “there's enough people writing poems about flowers” and while she doesn’t discourage these poems, she understands the importance of creating and sharing political art. There have been many people that have tried to censor her poetry but that’s never stopped Yenia from continuing to write not just about her own life but the lives of others. Many value and respect her persistence in writing political poetry even in a time where it is not as profitable nor digestible for the public. Even if she is not writing about pretty subjects or flowery topics, she is writing about what really matters. 

One of Yenia’s biggest motivations is her son; inspiring her to find ways to turn her art into a career and become the renowned poet she is today. She continues to teach, write, and perform all throughout the Bay Area. Her poetry moves her audience while her lessons move her students. She continues to write both for herself and others, sharing her passion for poetry in an effort to hopefully save lives.