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Welcome to Season 2 Episode 1 of The Book Love Foundation Podcast! And thank you for joining us in this celebration of teaching and the joy of learning.
We kick off the season with a conversation with Kwame Alexander.
Season 2 Ep 1 Show notes
This episode is Part 1 of a two-part conversation Penny had recently with Kwame Alexander.
Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, and the New York Times Bestselling author of 24 books, including SOLO, a Young Adult Novel, and THE CROSSOVER, a middle grade novel which received the 2015 John Newbery Medal for the Most Distinguished Contribution to American literature for Children, the Coretta Scott King Author Award Honor, The NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Book Love Foundation podcast. The Book Love Foundation is a non-profit 501 3(c) dedicated to putting books in the hands of teachers dedicated to nurturing the individual reading lives of their middle and high school students. In the past five years, we have awarded $223,000. If you can help us in our mission, visit booklovefoundation.org and make a donation. 100% of what you give goes to books.
– Penny
– Penny
RESOURCES REFERENCED
Kwame’s web site is where you can find all things Kwame. Details and links are available there.
Thank you for listening to the The Book Love Foundation Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please share it with a colleague or two.
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Creators and Guests
Host
Penny Kittle
Guest
Kwame Alexander
What is The Book Love Foundation Podcast?
Celebrate the joy of reading with the Book Love Foundation podcast. This is a show filled with information and inspiration from teachers and leaders across grade levels, states, and school systems. We interviewed authors and educators for the first five years and now turn our attention to leaders in public, private, and charter schools. Find out more at booklovefoundation.org or join our book-love-community.mn.co of 2500 educators from 28 countries. We sustain joy together, one kid and one book at a time.
Penny Kittle 0:00
The book Love foundation podcast is produced by the teacher learning sessions, connecting teachers with ideas, experts and each other.
Kwame Alexander 0:16
You got these sort of heavy, emotionally powerful things that are happening in the world right now and in our lives all the time, and poetry allows us, it gives us a way to sort of process it, digest it, deal with it, understand it, laugh at it, cry at it. And it makes it seem as though we can still sort of overcome those challenges, because we can understand them better. We can understand a different kind of insight into them. And I think that's the power and the beauty of poetry. And I think kids get that when they when, when they're writing haiku or list poems or free work, free verse poems in class about the things that matter to them, and they read, they're sharing it with each other, and I think the kids understand the power of it.
Penny Kittle 1:09
Welcome back to the book Love foundation podcast where we celebrate reading. I'm Penny Kittle and I'm your host. Our foundation is dedicated to providing classroom libraries to teachers who work to connect every student to a book that will keep him reading late into the night, teachers who are relentless in their efforts to create reading lives that last we give teachers books. Teachers make magic happen for every student, and this podcast comes to you from the producing magic of Kevin Carlson, founder of the teacher learning sessions.com where you can find teacher resources and a community of professionals dedicated to excellence in teaching. I'm excited to begin recording the second season of the book Love foundation podcast. After a long hiatus, as some of you know, I have been on a two and a half year journey writing a book with my friend Kelly Gallagher and learning a ton in the process, while immersed in writing my own classroom teaching and a considerable bit of travel this year, I just couldn't find time to record podcasts. I missed you all, so I'm thrilled to be back this season, we have interviews with lots of authors, including Deborah Wiles, who wrote the National Book Award finalist revolution. American literature legend John Irving, novelist and therapist, Chris Crutcher, who received the Margaret A Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2000 for his lifetime contribution in writing for teens. What a lineup. But it doesn't end there. We also have teacher researchers and all around amazing people, Linda reef, Terry lasaine, Kylene Beers and Bob Probst, Kelly, Gallagher and Tom Newkirk. It's exciting stuff, starting with today's interview with the amazing poet, Newberry, award winning author, master teacher and truly dynamic presenter, Kwame Alexander, I gave his newest book solo to a student just this week, and then watched from across the room as he started reading, sinking deeply into the story. You know what I mean by this? That moment when you watch a student who is just convinced that books aren't for him, you watch him engage solo, is a great book, especially for all of your students who've dreamed of a career in music or who have struggled to understand the flaws of their parents. Kwame makes stories real. I caught Kwame as he was just returning home late on a Sunday night in June, literally just in the door with his luggage in hand, and yet, he was all in to help out the book Love foundation. I love this man.
Moderator 3:59
Support for the book Love foundation podcast comes from booksource, a leading distributor of authentic literature for K 12 classrooms. Booksource believes that engaged reading is the key to a brighter future, and that creating better readers has the power to create a better world when students have access to a rich and varied classroom library and the ability to choose books that explore their personal interests they enjoy reading and spend more time doing so, visit booksource.com to discover how booksource can help you foster engaged reading in your classroom by getting the right books into the hands of your students.
Penny Kittle 4:43
Is it Kwame?
Kwame Alexander 4:44
It is Kwame.
Penny Kittle 4:46
Kwame. It's Penny Kittle. How are you?
Kwame Alexander 4:50
Hey, good. How you doing?
Penny Kittle 4:51
I'm great. Thanks for talking to me tonight.
Kwame Alexander 4:55
You got it? I just got in. I just got off a plane.
Penny Kittle 4:58
Really, Oh, my.
Kwame Alexander 4:59
Gosh, give me a give me one second. Okay, gotta find my headphones. Hold on, one second.
Penny Kittle 5:06
Oh, yeah, good idea.
Penny Kittle 5:14
Are you there?
Kwame Alexander 5:15
I am. I'm about five seconds away. Oh, okay, I literally just got out the taxi.
Penny Kittle 5:23
Oh, my God. Kwame, seriously, I could call you like in half an hour.
Kwame Alexander 5:26
Can you hear me?
Penny Kittle 5:28
Absolutely alright. It looks like you're recording. So awesome.
Kwame Alexander 5:34
Sweet.
Penny Kittle 5:34
Okay. Kwame Alexander, thank you for joining the book Love foundation podcast for teachers.
Kwame Alexander 5:41
Oh my gosh, I'm with the infamous, awesome, dynamic Penny Kittle. Y'all.
Penny Kittle 5:46
That's funny. Kwame. This morning, I was looking at the 100 best African American poems edited by one of my heroes, Nikki Giovanni, and as I was going through this book, I was like, How is Kwame in here? Twice?
Kwame Alexander 6:01
So there's a story there, you know,
Penny Kittle 6:04
is there?
Kwame Alexander 6:05
Yes. Well, number one, she called me and asked me to to help her call together some of the the younger, emerging poets that she may not have been familiar with, or people that she trusted me to say they deserve to be in the book. So I researched, and, you know, read through all the books in my library, and and called friends and got recommendations and and tried not to include any of mine, because I figured that would just be a little bit too much. And if she wanted to use mine, she would. And but there was one I thought, you know, might have been worthy. So I remember sending her a note saying, if you think this one might work, you know, I think it's appropriate. And she ended up including it, but, or rather, and there was another poem that I had written her on, like her birthday, like maybe, like a couple years prior, and she loved that poem so much. And I think that was the second poem she ended up including so, you know, it was a little bit of luck, and, and, and, I guess some nepotism is, is probably what it was, but, but hopefully the poems do stand up on the page and they work. Hopefully they do,
Penny Kittle 7:34
oh, I think so, you know, dancing naked on the floor. I'm going to use that in my poetry class this fall. I just think it's got some amazing rhythm in it.
Kwame Alexander 7:44
It's, it's probably one of my favorite poems that I've written of all time. So, so yeah, I love that poem. And I remember when I wrote that poem, um, I remember, I remember that I had seen this, this, this young kid recite a poem at an open mic, and it was an offensive, derogatory, misogynistic, just a terrible poem. And I know a lot of people may think, Well, you can't use terrible and poem in the same sentence, but of course, because there are no rules, and it's just how you feel and and sometimes, you know, first of all, your feelings can sometimes just be way off. Secondly, there are rules and to the degree that you can take your feelings and your personal feelings and make them our business, so that we care, so that we can connect, so that we we can relate. Then you're doing your job as a poet, but if you're not doing that, and this kid was not doing that at all, and I remember, I, you know, I, I did what you're never supposed to do, an open mic penny. I cut him off in the middle of his poem. And I, I went back to my theater days and say, Cut, you know, and just the entire room just went silent, like, what did he just do? What did Kwame just do? And I said, this is offensive. We don't want to hear anymore. And I was saying what everyone wanted to was thinking, but no one would say that. And I remember saying some of my friends afterwards were like, You can't do that. That's not right. And I said, Well, you got to write a poem that cooks. I mean, it ain't got to bake a cake, but at least it's got to know the ingredients. And so that's where that poem came out of about, you know, what's the responsibility that poets have to, sort of create a language that dance is naked and free, wild and gutsy.
Penny Kittle 9:44
Absolutely, yeah, I love how it ends. Let it inspire. Make us want to write a poem about how brilliant and breathtaking and tragic and hopeful life is. That's a poem.
Kwame Alexander 10:00
That's it. That's what it I think that's what it should do. It should make us want to, you know, create, you know, poetry in our lives. Poetry is a great metaphor for for humanity.
Penny Kittle 10:13
So, yeah, I love that poem, too. Nikki Giovanni, I remember the poem she wrote for Virginia Tech. We are Virginia Tech. I had students listen to that poem that next day because, of course, we were reading about what had happened. And, you know, poetry crosses boundaries and speaks in ways that other other literature doesn't.
Kwame Alexander 10:37
Yeah, I mean, it really gets to the heart of the matter. You know, to borrow a Maya Angelou line, and you want, you want to. You got these sort of heavy, emotionally powerful things that are happening in the world right now and in our lives all the time. And poetry allows us it gives us a way to sort of process it, digest it, deal with it, understand it, laugh at it, cry at it, and it makes it seem as though we can, you know, we can still sort of overcome those challenges, because we can understand them better. We can understand a different kind of insight into them. And I think that's the power and the beauty of poetry. And I think kids get that when they when they're writing haiku or list poems or free work, free verse poems in class about the things that matter to them, and they're read, they're sharing it with each other and and I think the kids understand the power of it. They feel it. And I know I do. I know I do. I still do to this day. It's just, it's the thing that keeps me grounded and it allows me to soar at this, you know, sort of at the same time.
Penny Kittle 11:52
Absolutely, I close my class every day with beautiful words, and they can either share somebody else's words or their own. And I just love it when a kid comes to me and says, Can I close class today with my beautiful words? Miss Kittle, it's powerful. It's just so powerful. That's great. We are going to pause the conversation with Kwame here, and we'll share the second half in our next episode. I get to talk to Kwame about his writing process, his dream for a Writing Studio in his house, how the crossover changed from its initial form into the book that won the Newbery medal after being rejected. I'm not kidding 22 times from publishers and more, including kwame's work with his fabulous nonprofit leap, which promotes literacy for children in Ghana. That episode's available right now at teacherlearning sessions.com and on Apple podcasts or wherever it is, you get your podcasts. But before I go, I want to share exciting news from the book Love foundation. Stay with me. This is unbelievable. We had 700 teachers involved in a summer book club created by our board member Karen Milford. We raised almost $58,000 for classroom libraries. We had enormous support for the project from Scholastic and book source and the authors you'll hear from this season. Because of our summer book club and the generosity of so many individual sponsors, we were able to give away this summer 20 libraries to teachers, 2500 book libraries. We created a book flood in 20 classrooms this summer. You can check out photos from some of the winners on Twitter using the hashtag, book Love and look out for 2018 the creativity project, edited by Colby sharp and published by Little Brown, will be released in March, and its royalties are dedicated to our foundation. Seriously, how cool is that? And in addition, Claire Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan authors and professional development superstars who wrote the fantastic assessment in practice book for choice literacy have a new book out this spring from Heinemann called it's all about the books. They have designated all royalties to the book Love foundation in order to help us expand our mission to elementary schools. The generosity of teachers never ends, and every day, I am inspired by all the teachers who work hard for kids and for each other. Please go listen to the rest of my conversation with the amazing Kwame Alexander in the next episode, and thank you for spending a little bit of your day with me. Happy reading.
Moderator 14:43
Hello This is Kevin Carlson from the teacher learning sessions. It's nice to be back. Thanks for listening. You know how we start and end every show with our tagline, connecting teachers with ideas, experts and each other. So far, I think our track record has been rock solid regarding i. Is and experts now we're taking a big step forward and how we can better help connect teachers with each other. I want to introduce you to the share. It's a new online space from the teacher learning sessions that celebrates the writing, thinking and excellent work happening in classrooms and schools across the country. It's a place where you can connect with like minded professionals who will help you make better decisions about your teaching practice. You can talk shop without the chatter and noise of other social networks. You can have deep conversations about questions with complex answers, learn from each other together and find inspiration every day. It's built on a platform from the same people who created Ning years ago, and we've been testing it out with a small group of volunteer teacher learning sessions podcast listeners, and now the share is ready for you. Visit teacher learning sessions.com/the share to learn more and start your free membership today. Thank you. Support for the book Love foundation podcast comes from booksource as a leading distributor of authentic literature for K 12 classrooms, book source makes it easy for educators to build, grow and organize classroom libraries that engage readers, discover expertly Curated Collections designed to match your curriculum and support guided reading, reading and writing workshop, summer reading, stem and more or work with a book source literacy expert to develop a customized list of titles based on level, genre, content area, topic, theme, whatever you need. Visit booksource.com to request a custom book list and grow a classroom library that engages readers today. The book Love foundation podcast is produced by the teacher learning sessions, connecting teachers with ideas, experts and each other.