Date: Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Kicks of Choice: Socks and house slippers (no shoes in our house, fam!)
Thoughts captured on September 25, 2024
What’s the deal!
It has really taken me a minute to process this moment, then another minute to sit down and articulate in writing just what it means. And even with that, I’m not sure I got it all the way right. But I wanted to share this happening and make sure there was a record of it…
August 20, 2024 was the fifth anniversary of my mother's birthday. Technically, Ruth Muchita was my great aunt and one of my birth mother’s favorite aunts. People who know me know I had a great relationship with my birth mother in my adult years, but Ruth Muchita raised me from like 3 or 4 months old, so she has always been my mom. She passed away on July 27, 2019, but this year just hit different and felt very difficult. When I woke up in the morning, I lit a candle, walked around all day taking super deep breaths, and just tried to figure out how to move through the day.
What I kept saying to myself was “I’m not trying to be greedy. I don’t need a whole day or an extended period of time. But man, what I wouldn’t do for a 30 minute power call with my mom!” Lemme tell you something – my mom had the gift of fixing it all in a 30-minute call. In that time frame, she could cure cancer, unveil and implement the blueprint for world peace, solve global hunger AND make you feel like you could knock down a brick building with your bare hands! I can’t tell you how many times I would call my mom and hang up the phone within 30 minutes feeling like “oh, yeah, EVERYTHING is poppin’!?!?”
But on this five-year anniversary, it was just more difficult than the birthdays before. As I was making my way through the day, I found myself talking with BreakBeat Lou in the afternoon. I’ve been working with Lou on his biography, so we were in the midst of one of our recording sessions. As I was in convo with Lou, I went to open a new web browser to do a google search on a song that he had mentioned – as I went to open a new Chrome tab, I realized I received an email from Emily Kirkpatrick, the Executive Director of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). I didn’t apply to the conference this year, so I had to stop and open it, specifically because the subject read “Award Notification.” I opened the email, read it and then opened the attachment: “It gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Executive Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the David H. Russell Award Committee have selected your publication “K for the Way”: DJ Rhetoric and Literacy for 21st Century Writing Studies as the winner of the 2024 David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English, one of NCTE’s highest honors for scholarly contributions to our profession.”
To put this in perspective, my level of shock was so palpable, that on the recording, you can hear BreakBeat Lou say, “Yo Todd – you still there? You okay, what happened?”
This award was completely unexpected. I did not know my book was even nominated, so it was the biggest surprise I’ve had in a long time. And real talk – it was so unbelievable that the next day, I woke up and ran downstairs to my computer and checked my email, just to make sure this particular message was still there.
Indeed, it was…
Throughout this journey with “K for the Way,” I really wanted to make sure I got the book right for the DJ community. I knew it would be tough to make it all make sense for academics and the other communities that may read it, but I kept telling myself, “if DJs say I got it right, I’m good!” And over the course of the year, DJ after DJ has told me “Todd – you got it right!” But as I’ve been invited to different book talks and keynote speaking events, I’ve found that more and more people in educational and corporate settings were also saying, “this is interesting…and it makes sense.” In other words, other communities were saying, “Thanks, Todd – you got it right!” So this award really and truly felt like a testament to what this book is doing, how it’s reach is expanding beyond my own vision, and how the work is resonating with folks.
But more important than all those things, the fact that this award notification came on my mother’s birthday means more than anything. It just lets me know she’s saying “here’s that 30 minutes you needed. Now KEEP GOIN’!!!”
Thanks to NCTE for this incredible honor. Thanks to everyone who has lifted “K for the Way” up in such meaningful and extraordinary ways.
And thanks Mom, for real…
Comments