Dwayne Reed, SIMON B. RHYMIN'

[0:49]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a New Publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Duane Reade is the author of Simon B. Ryman. Duane is America's favorite rapping teacher from Chicago. In 2016, the music video for his hit song Welcome to the Fourth Grade went viral and has since been viewed nearly 2,000,000 times on YouTube. Now 02/2001 because I watched it. Actually, I watched it a bunch of times with my kids. When he's not writing, rapping, or teaching, Duane can be found presenting at educator conferences around The US or loving on his beautiful wife, Simone. Welcome, Duane. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Simon B. Reimann and everything else you're doing. Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. I'm so excited speak about Simon and everything else that's going on. I have to say this might have been the most fun interview prep I've ever done watching all of your YouTube videos with my kids and having us all sing around, like, welcome to the fourth grade. Anyway, we were like all over it. So much fun. Anyway, thank you for that. You're welcome. Entertainment.

[2:27]Dwayne Reed: It was awesome. Thanks for scouting me out over the Internet. And it's always funny when people, they say, Oh, I've met you, kinda, sorta. Me and my kids have met you and we know all your songs. It's always so funny because I'm like, Okay, great.

[2:43]Zibby Owens: Well, book was fantastic, but also just the fact that you've used YouTube and your amazing musical talents to sort of reinvigorate school and teaching, especially this year where, oh my, like the communities of schools have just been so completely sort of smashed apart as we've all been at home. And yet there you are being like, you know, this is great and dressing up like Albert Einstein. Like, you know, know, teaching people teaching kids how to eat healthy and teaching them how to wear masks and teaching all these things in such a fun way. I'm like, why don't I how come I can't teach like that? You know, it's great. Your son is so lucky that he's have has you as a dad. That's just the coolest. I know. So just tell me how this whole thing got started. Both the book and, like, your approach to teaching and rhyming, which is in, you know, every other page of the book is another rhyme, making everything really fun and digestible.

[3:43]Dwayne Reed: So how did you get started on this whole path? Yeah. So I think I like to teach the way that I like to learn. Very visual. I want things to make sense, like you said, at a digestible level, at a lower level. Hey, if I can understand it, like a first grader can understand it, then anybody can understand it. And, you know, first graders can understand rhyme and rap. So that started when I did my Welcome to the Fourth Grade music video. I wanted to introduce myself to my kids, I wanted to let them know the fun that they were going to be getting into, you know, I wanted them to see that, yeah, it was going to be two plus two in ABC, but it was going to be fun and exciting and you were going to enjoy being in class every day, and I thought what better way to do that than a music video where I dress up like Albert Einstein, or, you know, a music video where I'm rapping and they know that, okay, my teacher's in the rap, in the hip hop, that's how we're get down. So, that's where that kind of came from way back in 2016, and as you know, that went viral, Good Morning America, everywhere across the globe, and just since then, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it type thing. So just, I've just been trying to continue to produce content that I know kids and, you know, adults need. Right? We we need to know it's we gotta be healthy when we eat eat our fruit, eat our vegetables. We need to know that mass safety is important, you know, we need to know those things. We also need to know how to count coins. So I got something I saw that one. I saw that one. Yes. So this just, these are things I feel like are really important in our time and I just want to make them sound fun. So, as we get into the book, yes, there are important truths about, you know, not bullying, or there's important truths about finding your voice and sticking up for yourself, or being empathetic toward others, like it's not just this thoughts and feelings and prayers, but, you know, this action, right, that's driven by compassion. I think it's important to hear those truths, but also if they rhyme, you know, they're gonna be more memorable, and hopefully, you're gonna put them to action because you remember them. They're on your heart. And I think that's where the music, the rhymes, the rap comes into play. So are you going to take the rhymes from this book and make them into, like, a video of you wrapping all these? Like, what's the what's the visual component plan for this? There must be something. That is such a great question. And I feel like, man, if you ever wanna come on my team and be like the visionary director, Zibby, you've got a spot. But, yeah, I would love to create an album of songs. So in the story, in the book, Simon's rhyming in his mind in the short little bits. However, I would like to have you ever seen the movie Despicable Me two? Oh, yes. Yes. I have. So Pharrell is a mastermind. Shout out to Pharrell. Pharrell, he produced the song Happy. He's got this little itty bit of a song clip that's playing for thirty, forty five seconds, but in the real world, he's got the song Happy, the music video Happy that changed the world. Right? And that's what I want for Simon's song. So he's got these, you know, rhyming in his head, okay, okay, but I want to take them from the the Creighton Park, Chicago in the story and I want to bring it into the real world and make a, you know, a song that changes people's lives. So that's where I see music and videos that that that long go past a story of Simon and Be Rana. So you do you have songs that you've already written? Man, I've got little bits here and there, things written on napkins and, you know, things in my notebook, things in my iPhone notes. So nothing a 100% done yet. Just waiting for that that right moment to piece it all together. That's something that I've found to be. Sometimes you've got what you think to be really good ideas, really great ideas, it's just not their time. It's just not the right moment because when it is the right moment, that's when it's going to catch hearts, right? That's when it's, so I didn't start teaching until I was 25 years old. I think had I started teaching when I was 18, 19, like some of my peers, I don't think I would have done the Welcome to the Fourth Grade music video, or I don't think it would have hit just right. It hit exactly when it was supposed to when I was the old, the older guy, when I was 25, when I was, you know, trying to break into the education scene in 2016. So I think that's true with with with music. I think that's true with art. I think that's true with anything. It's gotta be the right moment

[8:33]Zibby Owens: for it. So take me back in your life a little, if you don't mind. You wrote in the acknowledgments about your older brother and your sister and how you read to sort of keep up with him. And because he was, like, reading a really long book, you had to then read longer books and how your sister started a book club and how your mom used to take you guys to the library all the time and you're like, it really paid off. I'll even sign your book. So you obviously had this huge family influence for your reading and sort of literary aspirations and all that. But how did you go, like, what happened in between then and age 25 when you started teaching?

[9:08]Dwayne Reed: Yeah. That, again, great questions. I can see why you have this podcast. So my mother, she would take my brother and I, he's three years my younger, my brother and I and my sister, my brother, to the library. We would go there every week religiously. It was like church service for us, but instead of a pastor, we had librarians. So she would take us there, and I don't know what she would be doing, research, market research? I don't know, but it seemed like she was there for no apparent reason, and my brother and I, we would be bored because we didn't understand what it meant to be surrounded by so many books, surrounded by so much life, and it wasn't until a librarian came who would see us often, I guess, and said, hey, do you want me to take them down to, you know, the young people section? And my mom was like, oh yeah, sure. So we went and it wasn't just, okay, we were here and she's like, all right, have fun. She asked us what things we were interested in. So she asked my brother what he was interested in and he says, you know, military, I like the military and I like all things history channel and, you know, all that boring stuff that, you know, he likes and lo and behold, years later, he's now a commander in the army. Wow. You know, army ranger, the works. And for me, I liked Mary Kate and Ashley, the mystery novels that they had, the series. And but I wouldn't tell anybody that. But librarian knew my secret and, no, I didn't become a mystery novelist. However, I did become a lifelong reader and I did become interested in pop culture and which I think ties me to my work, like having my ears to the ground and what's popular. So, man, that's my start in the literary game. And then my little sister, when I went off to college, she said, I want to start a book club. So I said, okay, let's do it, what book do you want to read? And she wanted to read a book called The Help, and it was really popular. So we read that and we spoke about things and we got to the nitty gritty. It wasn't the whitewashed, okay, let's see how Hollywood saves black people, no, it wasn't that, it was, let's talk on some real stuff, because what time, she would have been 10, 11 years old by that time and look, we're gonna have some age appropriate conversations about the way our society is and how to make it better. So, man, she was all up about that, so I was all up about that, and yeah, so, so books and literature are really important to my family, to my mother. She always had a book in her hand, and, you know, I wanna continue her legacy. So I did something like write a book called Simon B. Rhymes.

[11:39]Zibby Owens: And why what did you do between college and when you started teaching at age 25?

[11:45]Dwayne Reed: Yeah. So, so what I did between that time, actually, I started college in 2009, you know, when I was 18, 17, 18, and I dropped out of school. The out of state tuition was a little too much for my family to afford, so I just moved back to Chicago and I was working part time and I was working at a movie theater and I loved it. I love being able to see so many different people. We saw a bunch of famous people and celebrities. I love being able to watch movies and to be inspired by, you know, books on display at the show is what we call it, and I was really just figuring out who I wanted to be as a human being. So, you know, I was going to school part time at a community college and between that time I figured out, man, I really want to impact the world by being in the lives of young people, kids. So I went back and eventually got my degree in elementary education and then the moment I graduated from college, I said, oh yeah, I'm coming on to the scene heavy. So, that's why I released the Welcome to the four ks music video, and since then, since 2016, my life has kind of been under a microscope as far as education is concerned, and, you know, I've loved it, being able to grow. I've made mistakes, but I've seen a lot of success because, man, I guess putting kids first is the best way to do it, you know?

[13:09]Zibby Owens: Totally. Even in the book, you have this whole passage about where Simon is like, why would I wanna go to school? Like, school is boring. Why is my mom excited? Like, now I have to give up Minecraft and like, you know, doing all these things, which of course is like what my I have four kids. And that's like what they they're like, what no like, I'm like, what are you looking forward to at school today? And they're like, nothing. I'm like, come on. There must be something. You know? But you just I feel like you just totally

[13:33]Dwayne Reed: get in the kid mindset. Like, you just get them. Yeah. I think being around one, being around kids so often. Right? We got five days a week, you know, one hundred and eighty days a year, seven hours, eight hours a day, and that's just being in school with them. You also got to account for the time. I do these things called weekends with Mr. Reed, you know, pre COVID, but these weekends with Mr. Reed where, you know, I would get permission to take these kids, we would go downtown, we would go ice skating, we would go to the movies, we'd go to restaurants, I get them Chick fil A. Some of my kids had never tasted Chick fil A before, taking so them to Chick fil A, oh, y'all gotta try this sauce. I'm telling you, they're like, Mr. Reed. I'm like, nah, y'all gotta try it. And they'd like, Mr. Reed. I'm like, I told you. So being able to expose them to, man, just the world around them. You know, a lot of kids, know, you sometimes they don't live in their neighborhood and, you know, that's all they know, which is fine, but if I could expose them to grander opportunities, what I think to be grander opportunities, if I could expose them to Chick fil like, man, I feel like that's job well done, you know, on me. It's more than just the ABCs and the 123s, it's, man, showing them something that maybe they might not have otherwise known about, and yeah, so you might have to give up Minecraft, you might have to give up Roblox and Fortnite and eating pizza rolls and getting ice cream whenever you want, staying up late, but, you know, when you step foot into my classroom or when you step foot into Mr. James's classroom, who is the teacher and Simon B. Ryman, it's not just going to be boring. It's going to be, oh, wow, we're actually doing something. And we're doing something that's going to translate

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[17:10]Dwayne Reed: Let me tell you this, I have a confession, Suzuki. Thank you for sharing and being vulnerable. I when Chick fil A made its way up to Chicago, the Midwest, initially, I did not like it. I thought that it didn't taste any type of good. I thought that it was, like, wet. I was like, no chicken should be wet. Why is this? And I was the biggest opponent of it. However, over time, it grew on me and I got the chicken nuggets and I started to say to myself, you know what? Chick fil A, you're good in my book. So, hey, there's still time. There's still time. Yeah. I know. Alright. It's on it's on the list. I will you know,

[17:45]Zibby Owens: I'm inspired. So back to Simon's classroom and mister James. The big incident in the book is that mister James assigns this big oral project, and Simon ends up profiling this man named Sonny who's in his sixties and homeless and has this big musical talent and a huge heart and tries to get his his friends and classmates and community to really recognize that he that homeless people are not invisible and that they're people and with talents and emotions. That the part that sort of struck my heart the most is when you talked about how Aseni hadn't been hugged in so long. And Simon's like, my mom hugs me all the time. And how sad that part was. And then I won't give like the ending away, but, you know, Simon does such a great job of of teaching everybody that,

[18:33]Dwayne Reed: you know, not to judge and to put put treat people the way you wanna be treated and all that. So tell me about coming up with that sort of plot and how you how you crafted that. Yeah. So on one of those weekends with mister Reid, my scholars and I, it was probably about 10 of us, nine, 10, 11 year olds, and we went to we went ice skating. And while we were ice skating, we came across someone who was, you know, asking for money, who would, be quote unquote known as homeless or someone struggling with homelessness. And my scholars did not pass the test. They were making fun of him, they were casting all type of jokes. Some of them just completely disregarded his requests and just looked right past him. It broke my heart, it broke my heart. And I'm not the kind of person that's like, okay, well, we'll talk about this later. No, no, no, I'm the type of teacher that's like, we're going talk about this now. So I pulled them to the side and I got them together. I said, this is a whole human being, That's a person. And I got on them. Y'all don't walk by nobody and don't say nothing to them. If your mama said good morning to you in the morning, I guarantee you will say good morning back to your mama, wouldn't you? All right, that's a whole person just like your mama. Y'all better say something to that individual, Right? Say you can say, you know, sorry. I don't have any money or sorry. Not this time, but you better say something. And I was so I was hurt by them, and I think we had built and developed a relationship at that point where mister Reid could keep it a 100, where mister Reid could say to their face, yo, I'm disappointed in y'all because of this action, and I wanna see y'all do it better. So I think that that's where that idea came from. I wanna speak to people seeing people as people, you know, and not seeing people as the things that they struggle with, but seeing them as human beings. And, you know, sometimes you don't want to, I can't be as preachy as I am to, you know, my kids, so you have to find alternative methods and, you know, that was in writing Simon. How can I communicate to population at large? Or how can I communicate to kids that those struggling with homelessness or poverty are still human, still deserve to be seen, still deserve to be hugged and treated as somebody's baby, right? Sonny is somebody's baby, you know, the man struggling with homelessness in the story, he's somebody's baby, somebody's child, somebody's friend. And I think literature does a good job of putting that in your face without smacking you across the face with it. Know what I mean, Zibby? So that was the reason for that plotline. Plus, Simon is a very empathetic individual. While he might not be aware of his own insightfulness and empathy, the reader picks up on that. It's because Simon is like Sonny. Simon gets overlooked. Simon, you only see what's on the outside. So the reason Sonny's story resonates with Simon is because it's very similar to his own story. He wants to be seen for what's on the inside and not what's on the outside. So it just and, you know, that's that was my story. I wanted to be seen as more than the short kid with the big head. You know, I wanted to be seen as someone who had a voice for their you know, had a voice and wanted to use it to, help support and change his community. So that's where we get that story with with Simon and his community. That's awesome. I love that. And by the way, as someone who is five two, I completely relate to this whole short subplot. And, you know, my kids are now realizing that they are not gonna be giants either. And I'm like, I'm sorry.

[22:00]Zibby Owens: You know? Look at her mom. Her mom is five eleven. Like, yeah, she is gonna be taller than you. Sorry. You know? I'll hopefully give you other things, but you're not getting over height. Right? Heart over height. Oh, I love it. T shirts, please.

[22:16]Dwayne Reed: I think that's something, again, that Simon begins to see throughout the story. That's something I didn't have. I didn't have heart. You know, I had a heart, but I didn't have a heart. You know what I'm saying? Drake has this line, the rapper, he says, Just because he got a heart don't mean he got heart. And I like that distinction. Like, I had a heart, right? I got this, you know, aorta. I got this thing beating inside my chest, but, you know, as a child, I wasn't confident. And I think that's what Simon has that I don't have. You know, he has this heart and he has this bark, he has this thing that I wasn't able to develop until I was 25, 26, 27, 28, But, you know, him being 11 years old, with the help of his friends, CJ and Maria, and, you know, interacting with people like Sonny and Mr. James, they start to to remind him and producing him like, no, you you have this bark, you just need to use it. And that's what I try to do with my scholars. I try to remind them, I'm not giving you a voice. You already have this voice. You just need to use it. So, if they're if your kids are five two or five five or four foot nothing, it's heart over hype. And tell me about

[23:23]Zibby Owens: wait, don't I just had it in my head one second ago. All good in the hood. Right? All good in the hood? Yes. So there's a lot of negativity

[23:32]Dwayne Reed: surrounding the city of Chicago, right? Number one, which is why I set Simon b. Rhyming on the West Side Of Chicago. There's a lot of negative talk around the West And South Sides Of Chicago, which is really racist, by the way. But what I wanted to do was cast Chicago in the light that it should be casting. Right? Full of vibrancy, full of love, full of beauty. Right? The hood ain't ain't ain't such a bad place. So that's why Simon was cast in Chicago. Then also, this picture book that I've got coming out with Little Brown is called All Good in the Hood. And I wanted to dispel this idea that the hood, quote unquote, the hood is this terrible place. You know, so often we'll see books about kids going into the woods, or we'll see books about rural, rural land, farmland, or we'll see books about the South, and everything's great. Everything's like, oh man, this is awesome, you want to visit here, but then we'll see these books about the hood, or we'll see news stories about the hood, and it's like, no, death, destruction, and like, no, no, no. The bad stuff of life happens everywhere, right? Happens in the hood, happens in the city, happens in urban life, happens everywhere, but we never talk about the good stuff of the hood and that's what I want to address. So, there's this little boy, his name is Lil Bro, and, you know, he's going throughout the day he's going throughout his neighborhood, on Juneteenth. So not only that I want to celebrate the hood, but I want to celebrate Juneteenth, which is when, you know, black people who were, you know, formerly enslaved got word that they were, you know, free, legally free. So, I wanted to celebrate Juneteenth, which I don't think enough people know about and celebrate. So, that's the backdrop of the story, and you've got this little boy who's scared, he's afraid of the sights and the sounds of his neighborhood, but he's got this big brother that's like, nah, nah, nah, homie, ain't no reason for you to be scared, right? It's all good in the hood. So they go throughout their neighborhood and they run into things like, you know, a big scary dog, which you'll see in the hood and he's afraid, but his brother, you know, kind of saves the day. So I won't, you know, give give too much away, but All Good in the Hood is definitely a book that you need, whether you're in the hood, the city, you know, rural America, you need that book on your library. When does that come out? It comes out spring summer twenty twenty three. So we got a little minute, but I'm gonna be bigging it up all the way till it comes out. Amazing.

[25:58]Zibby Owens: Well, it was just announced. So that's I mean, that's very exciting.

[26:01]Dwayne Reed: You know, like when you have something and you've had story in you for so many years and it's like, I've got to wait to see this be manifested. It can be a lot, but once it comes out, it's worth it. It's like having a baby.

[26:14]Zibby Owens: That's right. Can actually have a couple babies by then, which you probably will. So anyway, do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

[26:22]Dwayne Reed: I do. When I was younger and I wanted to be a rapper, I recognized that I quote unquote didn't have the voice. I didn't have the right voice. You you got Kanye West whose voice sounds very distinct and unique. You got Biggie Smalls whose voice and the way he swings when he raps, and you even got, you know, Jay Z. You've got all these artists who have a very distinct voice. DMX, rest in peace. He's got a very distinct voice. Y'all gonna make me loop. I didn't have that. Hello, DMX for your listeners. I didn't have that. And it made me self conscious and it made me feel like my voice didn't matter. However, as I got older and I heard, you know, these artists like Chance the Rapper come out, whose voice is like, woah, his voice is his voice. It made me think, oh, my voice is my voice. Can't nobody do my voice like me? That would be one piece of advice that I would give to aspiring artists. Can nobody do your voice like you? Can nobody write like you? Sure. We might say the exact same things, Zippy. We can write, the boy went to the store and got milk for his mother and then brought the milk back and but I'm gonna say, look, his mama said, boy, you better go down to that store and give me that 2% milk and make sure you bring my change back and make sure it's exact because they give you a receipt. I'm gonna tell that story different than you tell that story, Zippy. So the the advice that I would have is mentally be like, go to Cinderella and pick up some oat milk.

[27:51]Zibby Owens: I'll be like, no. Order some oat milk on FreshDirect if you don't mind. That would be mine.

[27:57]Dwayne Reed: Like, well, you better go down to that Walgreens, go ahead and grab that milk, make sure you bring me my change back, it better be exact. And I'll be like, okay, mom, and I'm down there sweating like my mom said bring exact change, but but, again, we have to tell the story our way, and that's what makes it important. So that will be my big piece of advice to aspiring artists, the aspiring authors.

[28:17]Zibby Owens: That's so great. Awesome. Well, Duane, this was so fun. Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about your book and for all the entertainment, this multimedia entertainment sort of universe you're crafting here. So thank you. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for having me on. I hope that every single one every single one of your children, regardless of their height, reads Simon b Ryman,

[28:39]Dwayne Reed: where where they can dive into the world of the West Side Of Chicago and, man, see really what it means to stand up to bullies, to stand up for yourself, and to use your voice. So I thank you for giving me the opportunity to be on here, Zippy. It was my pleasure. All right. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Thanks, ma'am. Bye. See

[28:58]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this intro and outro music.