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Families sit around tables in Hyattsville Middle School's dimly lit media center — converted into a café for the night — as students sit near the stage, anxiously holding papers close to their chests and watching eighth-grader Anne Doyle step to the microphone.

"Nobody knows what the future will become and no one wants to waste time wondering," the 13-year-old Hyattsville resident recites as she looks at the crowd.

One by one, each of the 18 students there, members of the school's Creative and Performing Arts creative writing program, stepped into the spotlight and recited poems chronicling personal stories of peer pressure, low self-esteem, silly dreams and visions of a world without violence.

The school has been holding biannual competitive poetry slams like the one on Nov. 13 since it first started its CPA program seven years ago. It is one of only two schools in the county with a CPA program. The other is Thomas G. Pullen School in Landover, which serves kindergarteners through eighth-graders.

Students have to audition and turn in a portfolio of written work in order to join the creative writing program, which has limited enrollment and currently has 28 students. The school also offers CPA classes in band, chorus, dance, media arts, orchestra and visual arts.

To stay in the program, students must maintain a 2.5 minimum grade-point average and a 3.0 grade-point average in their CPA classes.

The poetry slam gives students a chance to showcase their work and develop their public speaking abilities, Hyattsville CPA coordinator Tracey Cutler said.

"A lot of times students dissociate performance from the written word," he said. "You learn good speech patterns. You learn how to engage a listener just as a public speaker would."

Three seventh-graders — Teresa Johnson, Ruby Dessiatoun and Sofia Zocca — placed first, second and third respectively at the end of the Nov. 13 competition, in which students competed in three rounds by reciting poems they had written.

Students are required to compete in one poetry slam a year, as well as write for the school's literary magazine and complete other projects, creative writing instructor Saralyn Trainor said.

Students not only learn how to express themselves through the written word, but also pick up the self-motivation and discipline skills necessary to do well in the class, Trainor said.

Eighth-grader Shane James, a 13-year-old Hyattsville resident, said he's seen a change in his work ethic as he's grown to love creative writing. He's now motivated to perfect his skills, he said.

"Poetry slams allow an opportunity to really get out there and show your work," he said. "It's helped with my discipline because I used to get lazy with [writing]."

Trainor considers herself "the luckiest teacher in the school," in part because she has the freedom to be creative with her students.

"But they all want to be here, too, and I guess that's why I feel so lucky. It makes a difference," she said.

Students in the program say they look forward to their creative writing classes, which they take every other day, as a welcome break from core classes centered around testing.

"I actually have homework that I enjoy," said 12-year-old Mariam Coker, a seventh-grader from Landover Hills.

But perhaps more impressive than the metaphors the students fearlessly wielded during the poetry slam were the solidarity and support students showed as their classmates recited lines about deeply personal experiences. When one student, for example, stopped reciting her poem because of extreme stage fright, the whole group began clapping and exclaimed, "It's OK."

That supportiveness, fostered in the classroom, is necessary for students to improve their writing in the class's workshop format, in which they critique one another's work, Trainor said.

"It gives them a chance to say what they think," she said. "They're at that in-between age where they're not small people, but they have very strong feelings and opinions."

Trainor said she tries to create that safe environment, but mostly credits the students for it.

"I try, but that's the way they want it," she said.

E-mail Elahe Izadi at eizadi@gazette.net.