In this article, the author, a poet and teaching artist, shares how he successfully brought slam poetry to College Hill Middle School in Texarkana, Arkansas. In 2001 he discovered slam poetry--a poetry-reading format in which poets compete in dramatic readings of their works--and went to Slam Nationals in Seattle on the Arkansas slam team. He returned to Arkansas and designed a one-week residency that hit multiple objectives and standards on the Arkansas Frameworks. His teaching aims to inspire and motivate students to write poetry before studying it as existing literature. His most important reward is that students are learning creative skills by writing poetry, and they are developing the aptitude to present those poems in a more dynamic way that will engage and entertain their audience of peers--skills that will follow them and benefit them forever.