Meet Our Instructors: Yasmin Boakye
Yasmin Boakye
BA in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
@yasmin.thee.amazing
What inspired you to work with WBS?
I moved to Baltimore in summer 2019, in part because I read a wonderful article in LitHub by Danielle Evans where she shared 5 reasons that Baltimore was a great place to be a working writer. One of those reasons was Writers in Baltimore Schools, and so I reached out to Patrice about becoming an instructor, and she kindly invited me and my 1-year puppy to come by for an interview.
Six years later, I'm incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to continue and deepen my writing praxis alongside fabulous young writers in this lovely city. I've had the opportunity to work with fourth graders and college graduates, poets and prose writers and visual artists, students who are deeply passionate about writing to students who are reluctant but open to the challenges of written expression. The experience has been richer than I ever could have imagined.
What is your favorite lesson you've taught? Why?
I love teaching the senses. Kids experience the world so viscerally, and sometimes the way writing is taught distances young writers from the fact that the goal, for the most part, is to make people feel things with your words. Focusing for a while on what you can see, smell, taste, touch, and hear often helps students reactivate their imaginations and get past blocks around plot, character, and story progression. Plus it's just fun to bring in objects that they can play around with!
What would a perfect morning look like for you?
A perfect morning is waking up around sunrise, doing morning pages on my front porch over coffee or at good neighbor up the block, riding (my bike) either north into Baltimore County or south to Annapolis for more coffee, picking up a biscuit at Blacksauce Kitchen and eating it on the R House patio, and walking my dog around Hampden to her favorite treat spots (currently: Modern World, Rebel Rebel, Howl, and Golden West if there's anyone working the window). That's more than a morning's worth of things, but I try (and fail) every single week to get it all in.