An afternoon to Inspire to Retire
The OEA-Retired 2024 Fall Conference will be a virtual session that anticipates inspiring creativeness in all of us, think about best practices for retirement, and learn from a civil rights activist his journey in the fight for justice.
Join Us on Wednesday, September 25th at 10am-12:30pm to hear the 2022-2024 Ohio Beat Poet Laureate, Sandra Feen; expert advice on retirement from an STRS representative; and learn from freedom fighter/ Civil Rights Activist, Charles Black.
All OEA members are invited to join us during this discussion (OEA MEMBERS ONLY EVENT).
Join Us, Wednesday, September 25th at 10am.
Click here to register for this event.Sandra Feen
Sandra Feen earned an MA in Literature from Wright State University, and a BFA in Creative Writing, and a BS in Secondary English Education from Bowling Green State University. Of her thirty-two year teaching career, she taught twenty-eight years at Columbus Briggs High School. She was one of twelve teachers selected for a National Endowment of the Arts first “Change Course” program through Wright State University’s Institute on Writing and Its Teaching and was a two-time OCTELA (Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts) presenter. Feen has also judged Poetry Out Loud competitions, the Columbus City Schools poetry slam, and created a high school poetry slam team and literary magazine.
Sandra Feen was inducted as the 2022-2024 Ohio Beat Poet Laureate by Connecticut’s National Beat Poetry Foundation, Inc. She is a member of the poetry troupe Concrete Wink, the Ohio Poetry Association, and Bistro critique group. She has given poetry readings for over 30 years and has performed work by Holocaust writers in Susan Millard Schwarz’s Anahata Music Project.
She has co-facilitated several Columbus reading series and has given writing workshops at colleges and various literary venues throughout Ohio. She was a speaker and workshop facilitator at the 2022 NFSP (National Federation of State Poetry Societies) Convention, Renewal through Poetry and. Literary Cleveland’s 2022 Inkubator Writing Conference.
Feen co-hosts online The Muse’s Mic, with James Bryant. She is the author of Evidence of Starving (Voice Lux Journal 2021) Meat and Bone (Luchador Press 2019), and Fragile Capacities: School Poems (NightBallet Press 2018). Fragile Capacities was nominated for the Ohioana Book Award and one of its poems, a Pushcart Prize. In 2022, she had her first photography show at an Ohio gallery that showcased two dozen of her photos, and Concrete Wink performed ekphrastic writing. She is currently working on an anthology You’ve Been Poemed: the 121 Project, and co-writing There is A Rock on Martin Avenue, with retired journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Cliff Treyens.
Sandra remains most grateful that she is a Columbus City Schools’ graduate. Her fourth grade Woodcrest Elementary School reading teacher, Barbara Pohl, and her seventh grade Yorktown Junior High English teacher and poet, Dr. R. Nikolas Macioci, encouraged her to write.
She still has a close rapport with Dr. Macioci today.
Charles Black
Most of us have seen him on television, in commercials, stage plays and in film by the name of Charles A. Black. The quintessential actor, for over thirty years, is one of the founders of the Atlanta Student Movement which sparked the Civil Rights Movement. While a student at Morehouse College, he, along with fellow college student Lonnie C. King, Jr. and other students in the Atlanta University Center joined together and created the Committee on the Appeal of Human Rights (COAHR), fearlessly and nonviolently initiating Atlanta sit-ins to demand racial desegregation and equal rights. Black protested with Martin Luther King, Jr. at Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta Georgia during the civil rights movement. He also led demonstrations protesting the lack of black health care workers at Grady Memorial Hospital and the unacceptable conditions for black patients at Hughes Spalding Pavilion. While working in multiple roles during the Civil Rights Movement, Charles A. Black also served as one of the first editors of The Atlanta Inquirer, serving as Editor from 1962 to 1965.Charles
Originally from Miami, Florida, Black is a resident in Georgia He is one of the industry’s busiest character actors, and his screen credits include, The Patriot (2000), Need for Speed (2014) Selma (2014) Barbara Shop: The Next Cut (2016) The Best of Enemies (2019), Love & Debt (2019), and a host of short films, commercials and local productions.
He continues to lead as a mentor to young community and political activists, as a speaker on civil and human rights around the country, and as chairman of the board of advisors at Freedom University. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor for a Lifetime of Community Service by President Barack Obama.
