Venette Cook, MA, is an ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) teacher from City College of San Francisco with more than thirty years of experience teaching in California, Portugal, and other countries. Venette has shared her poems with enthusiastic students and teachers on four continents. She finds inspiration in her remarkable students' lives as refugees, immigrants, and international citizens as well as in her mindfulness practice in the Thich Nhat Hanh Plum Village tradition. She believes mindful living can help teachers act as healers for themselves and others, and that poems, as an art form, can help students and teachers transform harmful and divisive ways of thinking so we can walk on paths of peace and justice for all. She is available for classroom presentations as well as professional development workshops focused on poetry and mindfulness.