LTAB12 Registration Open!

Registration Open... And the children rejoice! December 1st, 2011

Now 4 Ways to Join! Our Louder Than A Bomb co-presenter, Chicago Public Media, has been gracious enough to build us a brand new spiffy registration system.  We are eternally grateful for them, and thank you for your patience as we work(ed) the bugs out of it.  Now you can register as: A High School Individual or College Individual A High School Team or a College Team(!) One small kink is that we are still accepting Junior High teams to the LTAB competition, so if you're with a 6th through 12th grade group of students, then you can register for the HS competition.  You do not need to be affiliated with a college to compete as a College Indy, but you do need to be affiliated with one to compete as a College Team.  This year we are inviting Colleges to send a team of 4-6 poets each and compete just as the HS teams do (except in 4 rounds and with no group piece restriction - duos, trios, quads welcome). So register today!

NEW COACHES MEETING If you are new to coaching, your team is new to LTAB competition, or you are a teaching artist looking to coach an LTAB team, then we ask that you attend our new coaches meeting at YCA (1180 N. Milwaukee Ave., 2nd Floor) at noon on Saturday December 3rd.  We encourage you to bring baked goods.  Because everyone likes baked goods.  We will be discussing basic rules, timelines, artistic development, and networking.  Feel free to RSVP on facebook here.  Vintage coaches are definitely invited if you'd like to come and help acclimate the newbies. FACEBOOK GROUP   As we continue to grow and spread our poetic wings across the country, we need to create new and creative ways for managing this growth with limited resources.  That's why we're inviting you to join our LTAB coaches facebook group.  It can be just another resource to stay connected, problem-solve, network, and share.  We will periodically post materials and information in the group too, so please request to join this exclusive faceclub! REGIONAL SLAMS ARE HAPPENING ALL OVER! Last season we made a call for coaches to start becoming organizers of the work and we've been overjoyed by the volume of people willing to step up for the youth!  We will be having five regional slams happening between now and the end of January.  We strongly encourage your team make it out to one or more regionals as audience members at least, but preferably as competitors!  All winning teams from regionals will be showcased at different events during LTAB and all winning individuals from the Westside, Southside, Northside, and Suburban championships will automatically qualify for semi-finals.  This is the perfect way to make your student's LTAB experience more complete, raise the quality of their investment as well as the content of their poems.  Please contact the following regional organizers if you're interested in more information: West Suburbs: Diana Zwinak - DZwinak@kidsroe.org   All Suburbs: Eric Coval - ecoval@maine207.org, David Hessert - DHESSERT@maine207.org  Northside: Nora Flanagan - njflanagan@cps.edu Southside: David Stieber - dfstieber@cps.edu, Stephanie Stieber - stephaniestieber@gmail.com   Westside: Stephanie Lane Sutton - stephzanie@gmail.com, Nate Olison - nateolison@gmail.com COLLEGE SLAM Once again we are having our college indy slam in addition to our new college team slam.  If you would like to compete in the college slam but would not like to pay your registration fee, then we will also have our "coach a HS team to waive your fee" program again this year.  If you are planning on doing this option, please also be at the new coaches meeting this Saturday. BIG THANK YOUS You may have heard, but YCA recently won a $20,000 grant from the Chicago Sun-Times Sun Shine Project.  The way they picked winners was based largely on public voting and comments, and we were bowled over by the amount of love that poured forth from many of you and your current and former students.  We are indebted to you as a community and honored to bring you together.  Without the belief of this group of people IN this group of people there is no LTAB.  Thank you. Further indebted gratitude is extended to our two other co-presenters, Chicago Public Media and Columbia College Chicago.  As we continue to grow into our 12th year, they continue to grow in their support of us, despite what the economy weather is like outside.  Thank you so much CPM and CCC - we love you! THAT'S ALL FOR NOW Hope to see many of you on Saturday and at the upcoming slams.  This is going to be the biggest LTAB yet!  Email me with any questions and I'll do my best to get back to you quickly, though I may be waiting for a big email like this to answer many of your questions in one swoop.  I appreciate your patience! See you soon, beautiful heads! -RQT