POPULARITY
Reading a story from second or third edition of Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fernando-montes-de-oca/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fernando-montes-de-oca/support
How do we get our kids to read (and to like reading)? That's a question for so many parents, especially as technology and screens become more ubiquitous. Patrick Carman discovered that a great stepping stone to reading is listening to stories. He developed a podcast for young kids to listen to stories, get their imaginations firing, and develop those important parts of their brains. It turns out it's a proven pathway to a love of reading! Listen to today's interview to learn about podcasts for kids: what they are, how to find them, and how to work them into your day! As co-founder and Creative Director of GoKidGo, Patrick Carman writes, directs, and produces every GoKidGo show! Mr. Carman has authored 40 novels with over 5 million books in print across 23 countries. Millions of young readers have read, watched, and played multimedia books Mr. Carman has produced including ‘39 Clues', ‘Skeleton Creek', ‘Trackers', ‘Voyagers', and ‘Towervale'. He is also the creator of Aftershock, a #1 fiction podcast on Apple and iHeart. Mr. Carman is an inexhaustible public speaker who presents at events throughout the year including the National Book Festival, the LA Book Festival, and the American Library Association national conference. He has spoken live to over a million students at over 2500 schools across the country. Connect with Patrick Carman: https://www.gokidgo.com/ (https://www.gokidgo.com/) Join us LIVE each week in our Facebook Group … https://www.facebook.com/groups/blissfulparenting (https://www.facebook.com/groups/blissfulparenting) Connect with Blissful Parenting: Free Workshop ► https://www.blissfulparentingworkshop.com (https://www.BlissfulParentingWorkshop.com) Website ► http://www.theblissfulparent.com/ (http://www.TheBlissfulParent.com/) Blog ► http://www.theblissfulparent.com/blog (http://www.TheBlissfulParent.com/blog) Podcast ► http://www.theblissfulparent.com/podcast/ (http://www.TheBlissfulParent.com/podcast/) Contact ►http://www.blissfulparenting.com/contact (http://www.BlissfulParenting.com/contact) Follow Us On Social Media: Youtube ► https://www.youtube.com/theblissfulparent (https://www.youtube.com/theblissfulparent) Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/theblissfulparent (https://www.facebook.com/theblissfulparent) Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/theblissfulparent/ (https://www.instagram.com/theblissfulparent/) Twitter ►https://twitter.com/blissfulparent (https://twitter.com/blissfulparent) Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a note in the comment section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. You can also subscribe to the podcast app on your mobile device. Leave us an iTunes review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on iTunes, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on iTunes.
Author, teacher and lawyer, Michelle Kuo, joins us to talk about the power of storytelling, and the importance of listening to, and lifting up, diverse voices and viewpoints.
Michelle Kuo got a call one day, telling her that her favorite student had been arrested. After college, Michelle Kuo joined Teach for America and moved to the Arkansas Delta. She taught in a school that focused on teaching underserved youth who had been expelled from other schools. Her time there was transformative, both for Michelle and her students. But at the end of her term at Teach for America, she moved away to attend Harvard. Several years later, she got the call that Patrick, one of her most transformed students, had gotten in a fight outside his home and someone had been killed in the fray. Michelle set aside a new job to return to Arkansas and spend time with Patrick during visitation hours and continue teaching him as he awaited trial. She wrote Reading With Patrick about this experience. This book is moving, riveting, and essential all at once. It kept me up at night and I'm still thinking about it months after reading Michelle and Patrick's story. There is still so much work to be done in the American South to improve the lives of so many who live there. Writing about big issues takes courage and integrity, qualities Michelle exemplifies. But beyond these issues that need to be top of mind for everyone, there is the process of writing about issues, writing about real people, and writing about actual lives. We grapple with these topics in this conversation and, while I know there is so much more to say on these topics, anyone who is considering writing a book relating to social justice or about people in their lives will get a healthy primer on both topics in this episode. It's one I know I will return to again for inspiration and guidance from Michelle, who is a total rock star and a philosopher all wrapped up in one. You're going to love her. Happy listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
In the next Attorney Heart episode, Michelle Kuo (attorney, professor, and author) shares her story of how she worked as a teacher in Helena, Arkansas for Teach for America. During her term as a teacher Michelle decided to go to law school and while at Harvard Law School she faced a life-changing experience. One of her former students whom she really cared about and admired, Patrick, killed someone. Michelle returned to Arkansas to visit Patrick while he was in jail. Michelle shares how story.
In her coming-of-age memoir Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, A Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship, Michelle Kuo chronicles her time in Helena, Arkansas. Kuo is a Chinese-American woman of privilege teaching English at an alternative high school in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. There she develops an unlikely friendship with one of the teenage students who is arrested and imprisoned for murder. For seven months, the two of them study literature, memorize poems, and consider the complexities of education, race, poverty, and social justice. BUY Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship Connect with Nonfiction4Life on social media: Facebook Instagram Twitter Music Credit Sound Editing Credit
It takes courage to walk into a classroom when students don’t look like you. It takes courage to return every day to teach a class when students devalue education. Media has portrayed the scenario in films like Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds with white teachers symbolizing the great white hope to a class of minority students. Well, Michelle Kuo is not the great white hope, but she becomes hope and maintains hope for young black students in Mississippi Delta, specifically Patrick. Kuo writes about her journey in the memoir Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship (Random House, 2017). Her story focuses on race, justice and education in the rural south where she taught American History through black literature. Kuo, a Harvard graduate born to Taiwainese parents, wanted to work in a place where she was needed. Thus, she was assigned to an alternative school, which the local administration used as a dumping ground for the so-called “bad kids”—where rabble-rousers who had already been expelled from mainstream schools now given a final chance before being permanently ejected from the public education system. Her memoir navigates the terrain of teacher speaking to students through books and poems they can understand. Reading with Patrick points to a teacher who breaks the rule, choosing favorites. The memoir includes effective teaching tools Kuo used in the classroom. Most importantly, the memoir illustrates humanity when Kuo leaves Helena for a law school but returns after discovering her favorite student, Patrick, has gone to jail. Michelle Kuo teaches in the History, Law and Society program at the American University of Paris. She and Patrick share the royalties from this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It takes courage to walk into a classroom when students don’t look like you. It takes courage to return every day to teach a class when students devalue education. Media has portrayed the scenario in films like Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds with white teachers symbolizing the great white hope to a class of minority students. Well, Michelle Kuo is not the great white hope, but she becomes hope and maintains hope for young black students in Mississippi Delta, specifically Patrick. Kuo writes about her journey in the memoir Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship (Random House, 2017). Her story focuses on race, justice and education in the rural south where she taught American History through black literature. Kuo, a Harvard graduate born to Taiwainese parents, wanted to work in a place where she was needed. Thus, she was assigned to an alternative school, which the local administration used as a dumping ground for the so-called “bad kids”—where rabble-rousers who had already been expelled from mainstream schools now given a final chance before being permanently ejected from the public education system. Her memoir navigates the terrain of teacher speaking to students through books and poems they can understand. Reading with Patrick points to a teacher who breaks the rule, choosing favorites. The memoir includes effective teaching tools Kuo used in the classroom. Most importantly, the memoir illustrates humanity when Kuo leaves Helena for a law school but returns after discovering her favorite student, Patrick, has gone to jail. Michelle Kuo teaches in the History, Law and Society program at the American University of Paris. She and Patrick share the royalties from this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It takes courage to walk into a classroom when students don’t look like you. It takes courage to return every day to teach a class when students devalue education. Media has portrayed the scenario in films like Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds with white teachers symbolizing the great white hope to a class of minority students. Well, Michelle Kuo is not the great white hope, but she becomes hope and maintains hope for young black students in Mississippi Delta, specifically Patrick. Kuo writes about her journey in the memoir Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship (Random House, 2017). Her story focuses on race, justice and education in the rural south where she taught American History through black literature. Kuo, a Harvard graduate born to Taiwainese parents, wanted to work in a place where she was needed. Thus, she was assigned to an alternative school, which the local administration used as a dumping ground for the so-called “bad kids”—where rabble-rousers who had already been expelled from mainstream schools now given a final chance before being permanently ejected from the public education system. Her memoir navigates the terrain of teacher speaking to students through books and poems they can understand. Reading with Patrick points to a teacher who breaks the rule, choosing favorites. The memoir includes effective teaching tools Kuo used in the classroom. Most importantly, the memoir illustrates humanity when Kuo leaves Helena for a law school but returns after discovering her favorite student, Patrick, has gone to jail. Michelle Kuo teaches in the History, Law and Society program at the American University of Paris. She and Patrick share the royalties from this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It takes courage to walk into a classroom when students don't look like you. It takes courage to return every day to teach a class when students devalue education. Media has portrayed the scenario in films like Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds with white teachers symbolizing the great white hope to a class of minority students. Well, Michelle Kuo is not the great white hope, but she becomes hope and maintains hope for young black students in Mississippi Delta, specifically Patrick. Kuo writes about her journey in the memoir Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship (Random House, 2017). Her story focuses on race, justice and education in the rural south where she taught American History through black literature. Kuo, a Harvard graduate born to Taiwainese parents, wanted to work in a place where she was needed. Thus, she was assigned to an alternative school, which the local administration used as a dumping ground for the so-called “bad kids”—where rabble-rousers who had already been expelled from mainstream schools now given a final chance before being permanently ejected from the public education system. Her memoir navigates the terrain of teacher speaking to students through books and poems they can understand. Reading with Patrick points to a teacher who breaks the rule, choosing favorites. The memoir includes effective teaching tools Kuo used in the classroom. Most importantly, the memoir illustrates humanity when Kuo leaves Helena for a law school but returns after discovering her favorite student, Patrick, has gone to jail. Michelle Kuo teaches in the History, Law and Society program at the American University of Paris. She and Patrick share the royalties from this book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies
. Nikolai DiPippa, Clinton School Director of Public Programs, sat down Michelle Kuo, author of Reading With Patrick, who taught English at an alternative school in the Arkansas Delta for two years. Recently graduated from Harvard University, Kuo arrived in the rural town of Helena, Ark., as a Teach for America volunteer, bursting with optimism and drive. But she soon encountered the jarring realities of life in one of the poorest counties in America, still disabled by the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. In this stirring memoir, Kuo, the child of Taiwanese immigrants, shares the story of her complicated but rewarding mentorship of one student, Patrick Browning, and his remarkable literary and personal awakening.
This week on So That Happened: Zach Carter takes a break from book leave to return and host the show! He’s joined by ProPublica reporter Jesse Eisinger and Huffpost’s Alexander Kaufman to talk about why bankers never seem to go to jail. Then, Michelle Kuo stops by to talk about her book Reading With Patrick, a memoir about a teacher’s relationship with a gifted student who ends up jailed for murder. It's an exploration of race, class, justice, and coming of age in the South. Finally, Mike Konczal is back, this time to help Zach and Arthur celebrate the 7th birthday of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. Will there be cake? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
"My book, READING WITH PATRICK, is about a student of mine named Patrick, and this remarkable literary and intellectual awakening we experienced together in a county jail in Arkansas. He was a student in my class who was incredibly bright, really quiet, and just had trouble coming to school. I really encouraged him to come to school to write and to read and we had this incredible year together where he improved incredibly. Three years after this, I’ve left Arkansas—it’s a place where a lot of people leave—I agonize about it, I decide to go to law school. My parents are like, “what the heck are you doing in Arkansas?” Three years later, I’m in law school and I find out from a friend that Patrick had gotten into a fight and killed someone. I was totally devastated. I was shocked. I went back to Arkansas to visit him in county jail and I discovered that his reading skills had regressed. They were worse when I first met him in the eighth grade, and it’s because he had dropped out of school the year after I left the Delta. The heart of the book is really about us reading together in jail for seven months while we’re waiting for his trial, and about the incredible agility and the power of reading together and writing together. And it’s also about me grappling with my own failures and trying to think about the legacy of racism and poverty in the Mississippi Delta."
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
