This blog post was shared by Writing the Community teaching artist Jesse Cramer, after a teaching residency at the Inclusive Academy and working with the Tucson Spellers. Works from this residency will be published in the 2025-2026 Writing the Community 6-12th Grade Anthology, forthcoming in May 2026. 

I spent this past semester working as a Teacher-in-Residence at Inclusive Academy, a school for non-speaking middle & high school students. In addition, I would email out my poetry prompts to the Tucson Spellers – an organization working to empower non-speaking individuals in Tucson. 

On my first day at Inclusive Academy we asked the students if there was anything they would want me to know during my time there. Without hesitation, one student responded 

STOP TO THINK HOW BEAUTIFUL OUR WORDS MUST BE WHEN ALL WE DO IS REFLECT ON LANGUAGE. 

At Rose Canyon Lake I listened to the Tucson Spellers share their poetry. Their words reverberated in my mind for days. I scoured the internet to find poems and writings by other non-speakers and shared what I found with my students and the Spellers. I discovered a poet and artist named Adam Wolfond who has released several books, including one that has a free PDF online. I discovered a podcast called My Words Are My Voice, hosted by the father of a non-speaker. In the second episode he reads a poem, I am a Tree by Ethan Statter, that I simply cannot stop listening to. 

It has been an absolute pleasure working with these students and diving into a world of communication and poetry and art that I had not even glimpsed at before, and I am so proud and excited to share their words with you. 

Poems by the students of Inclusive Academy will be featured in the upcoming 2026 Anthology, and stay tuned for a separate compilation of Tucson Spellers’ poetry that will be released in early 2026.

Until then, I highly recommend clicking on these links below… 

https://www.tucsonspellers.org/speller-voices 
https://www.adamwolfond.com/home 
https://books.punctumbooks.com/10.53288/0454.1.00.pdf 
https://www.mywordsaremyvoice.com/episodes/