“Love is something that you give it away, you end up having more,” sang Sondráya Bradley, who goes by the pen name Sondráya, while performing at West Sedona School on Tuesday, Dec. 10, as part of the city of Sedona’s Artist in the Classroom program.
“I like to instill in them good values and how important it is to stay truthful and loving,” Sondráya said. “Because there’s magic in it. Whatever we focus on, we grow in our garden of life. And if we stay truthful and loving, we attract truthful and loving stories for the day. And I want to introduce some words to them, and tell them a true story.”
This year was Sondráya’s first in the Artist in the Classroom program, and the Dec. 10 session was her last with Maritza Serrano’s class.
“What I’m using the Artist in the Classroom program for is to teach us some [vocabulary] and encourage more writing because I like my kiddos to write a lot,” Serrano said.
Sondráya is a published poet and a mainstay at Sedona Poetry Slam who represented the city in this year’s state finals.
She said that it was her love of poetry and of children that made her want to join the program after being invited by city of Sedona Arts and Culture Specialist Nancy Lattanzi, who attended a reading of Sondráya’s poem “Rain” while looking for poets to perform during the City Council’s Moment of 1AArt each month.
According to Sedona Communications Director Lauren Browne, Lattanzi reportedly stated, “‘Rain’ was about the importance of nature and how vital it is to Mother Earth. It moved me because of Sondraya’s delivery. She was so passionate and emoted so much feeling in her performance. I thought she really has a gift for engaging her audience. She made an impact, which made me want to know more about her as an artist and see if I could bring her talent to the schools through our Artist in the Classroom program.’”
Lattanzi’s comments could not be independently verified due to the city’s policies on outbound media communications.
After Sondráya’s ice-breaker song, she led a breathing exercise before reading her autobiographical poem “How My Inner Guide And I Got To Meet On The Outside” about meeting a brown bear while working in Saint Petersburg in 2004 doing what she called “healing work for a group of people [when] their spiritual leader left them.”
She said that brown bears had held significance for her since her early childhood and described a “monumental” moment when she was walking in downtown Saint Petersburg and had the chance to feed a bottle of milk to a brown bear:
He jerked his leash free
from his owner’s hand
flew to me like some superman …
Sondráya’s international experience includes five years with a poetic dance company and teaching her soul dancing technique at expositions in Sweden and Russia.
Sondráya proceeded to read the 2023 book “How to Write a Poem,” a children’s by Kwame Alexander and Deanna Nikaido and and illustrated by Melissa Sweet, to the students before providing the afternoon’s assignment.
“Why not write about whatever [is magical] for you, whether it’s a mermaid or it’s a rainbow, and I’ve got paper for you, and I’m going to bring it to your desk,” Sondráya said. “And it can be a short rhyme It could be something as simple as ‘My magical bear went to a fair and bought some cotton candy.’”
“My dear magical cat sat on a mat,” Aurora Henry wrote as a limerick.
Holden Baird did his writing and accompanying drawing on his Elf on the Shelf that he named Elfonzo.
“Her name is Ariel, she loves hearts,” Iris Daniels said, describing her creation.
“I made a lizard,” AJ Abrams said, pointing to his work, complete with a massive tree, with the accompanying text: “The lizard is on the wall … it is so cute.”
“This is my elf, this is my baby sister, me, and my dad and my mommy,” Sahara Mangarrez said, holding up her drawing. “I like my elf. My elf looks like me.”
