About
I'm Michelle Ruiz
Poet & Educator
I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. I grew up in Castro Valley, California, and made my life-long dream of becoming an English teacher come true at 23-years-old in my very own hometown. Working with many teachers that had once taught me left me with a sense of honor.
I got into teaching with the mindset of wanting to change and improve the world, and the best way to do so is to inspire our youth to make a difference. I wanted to give back to the community that raised me.
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Throughout the years, my beloved colleagues and I have organized poetry units and events for students and the community. When I was in middle school, I hated poetry. It felt confusing and antiquated. I didn’t begin to grasp the love and appreciation for poetry until required college courses for my English degree. My beloved professor exposed me to diverse and interesting poems that tugged at my heartstrings. When I became a teacher, I wanted to cultivate a love for poetry for my students at a much earlier age.
Poetry has been my lifeline.
I have learned that the best way to engage pre-teens is to make the content relatable. So I decided to develop a poetry unit that utilized the history and development of Hip-hop as an introduction to poetry. The unit begins with a game. The students have to guess whether the quote in the presentation is a hip-hop lyric or a line from a poem. The energy in the class explodes as they try to guess the difference, only to realize there is not much difference at all. Hip-hop is poetry, and poetry is everywhere.
This activity allows them to see poetry in a different light. By the end of the unit, students will have written and performed an original poem. Students then vote on which performances are the most powerful and are given the opportunity to perform their poems in a more public after-school setting.
Poetry has been my lifeline. When feeling burnt out and unmotivated, I would ask students to give me three words and write them a poem. This was a beautiful gift for all of us and inspired me to use poetry as a way to motivate and connect with others. Students' eyes lit up when I turned their words into a poem, and over time I would catch students writing poetry instead of staring at their screens. The beauty of any art form is how contagious it can be.
After spending almost a decade as a middle school teacher, I pursued my dream of becoming a published writer. My book, Redefining Love, explores the various forms of love: self-love, romantic love, feminine love, and love for the world intertwined with social-emotional themes that promote healthy mindsets. My purpose was to create a book of poems to inspire people to embrace the various forms of love inclusively. I want to celebrate all the different parts of life and love and hope my poems can leave readers with a sense of contentment and desire to embrace love to make this world brighter. I’ve also published Sun Signs in Prose and Moon Signs in Prose. These books were inspired by the influence of my family and their love for discussing zodiac signs.
Not long later, I began hosting writer workshops for adults to participate on the weekends. Our topics are vast but always have one thing in common: love and connection. I create spaces to encourage and inspire adults to tap into childlike wonder and write their hearts out. Many of my adult students asked for longer workshops to happen more often. This is what inspired me to begin hosting enchanting creative retreats.
Whether you attend one of my workshops, escape to one of my retreats, or read my poetry, I hope you are left inspired to positively change the world we live in.