Both students and teachers were in for a treat this past Friday during children’s author and educator Dr. Kimberly Johnson’s visit to LC Kerr.
Johnson, who teaches at Clemson University and facilitates a course at Harvard, was in Sampson County to further her life’s mission of educating and empowering minds, especially in youth. She’d share her goal and what she aims to achieve each time she visits a new school.
“My message essentially is that these kids are authors just like me,” Johnson said. “Sometimes if they don’t see people that look like them, particularly black and brown children, they don’t know if this is something they can do.”
“When I was a little girl I never met or heard about a black author, so I didn’t even know we could write books,” Johnson said with laugh. “So to me it’s cool for kids to be able to see me, ask me questions and really get that up close and personal view.”
“Also, to let them know that if they have ideas in their heads, they can put them down and create stories for that,” she added.
During her visit, she had LC Kerr students learning about rhyming words, playing relay games with nouns and shouting for adjectives. She also read them one of her many published books, and much more. She even had teachers involved as they jumped, clapped and wiggled around in each activity right alongside their students.
When talking to Johnson about some of her other motivations for reaching out to children so young, she told an inspiring story, one that made note of her working along side Dr. Bernice King, the last living daughter of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I’ve worked with Dr. King for 11 years and we’re trying to really get the message out for her new movement, which is called ‘Be Loved,’” Johnson said. “The concept is that if we can all just learn how to be loved and create a beloved community. We can eradicate some of this violence, hate and discord that we’re seeing every day that’s starting to trickle into the lives of our babies.”
“The idea is to start at the root of it and then build up and start planting the seeds early,” she said. “We usually start planning around middle/high school, but that’s not soon enough. We’ve got to get down deeper and start empowering and impacting our kids from that level.”
Johnson has been writing and publishing book for over two decades now and has published over 20 books since her initial work “The Adventures of the Itty Bitty Frog.” She’d detailed the insight into her journey, one that’s always had touching and impacting the lives of children at the forefront.
“My first book came out in 1997 and I probably set out to do this in 2000, so I’ve been doing this for a little awhile,” she said. “Again, ever year is a new and wonderful experience, and so the more kids I meet, the more lives I get to impact.”
“Even as an educator, I don’t think I would enjoy my job as much if I didn’t get to have this impact,” Johnson continued. “I teach college as well so I get a good eclectic experience that I can pull from, learn from and then come back and share with these students.”
She’d go further into how that college experience helps her learn and teach others, not forgetting to mention the fun she has in the process.
“In my Harvard course that I facilitate, I loved that because I get a bird’s eye view of the world, because my students come from all over the world,” she said. “It’s like getting an inside view of how young people of all ages are navigating the world, so it’s all kind of fun.”
“It’s a lot of work, but I get to play and I tell people all the time that I come to work to play so this is my opportunity to do just that,” Johnson said with a big smile.
To find out more or t0 contact Johnson, visit her website www.simplycreativeworks.com.