Catching Up with Mr. K
An interview with 2019 Baltimore City Teacher of the Year
If Kyair Butts had decided to go to law school, he may have never ended up in Baltimore City Schools.
We’re so glad he did.
"Mr. K" came to Baltimore by way of the Urban Teachers program. Seven school years in and just 30 years old, he’s the 2019 Baltimore City Schools Teacher of the Year.
For Butts—who teaches at Waverly Elementary Middle School—this summer wasn’t exactly a break, though “I told myself I wouldn’t work,” he says.
In June, his students published a book, "Will it Get Better? Our Baltimore Stories" in partnership with CHARM (scroll down for details on the project’s next iteration). He taught a Master’s-level race, culture and equity class at Johns Hopkins, participated in Baltimore’s Urban Debate League, and traveled the country doing professional development trainings as part of Wit and Wisdom/Great Minds fellowship. He also managed to squeeze in a Ravens game and some fantasy football—and on his days off, found time to take his students to the library, or to make sandwiches for the homeless.
Mr. K caught up with CHARM about his summer, his favorite books, and how teachers can best make use of the "10,000-hour rule."
How did you get your start in teaching?
I thought I was going to go to law school because I had done a lot mediation and mock trial.
But I kept gravitating back to my coaching experience in Des Moines, Iowa, and high school debate. I realized “Wow you’re having a lot of fun coaching and helping students access debate.” From then on, law school sounded less and less appealing.
You’ve spent a big chunk of your summer helping teachers access the Wit & Wisdom curriculum—tell me more about that.
For 6th grade, the whole curriculum for Wit & Wisdom is about heroes and characters finding themselves. There are a lot of themes here that we can apply to tour lives. There are some really rich texts. One unit is about courage under fire. It asks: How do people overcome extreme setting and go on to do really great things?
So my thinking was, how do we leverage this learning to translate that into stories about ourselves and Baltimore City and how we ultimately want Baltimore to do better.
How has the Wit & Wisdom curriculum changed how you teach?
Baltimore City as a district picked up that curriculum for language arts. It’s just tighter in terms of standards based tasks, and culturally relevant.
Waverly is a 98% black school—it’s important for students to see themselves in the texts.
They need to be reading black authors but to build their mind of global citizens, but I also I want them reading authors from a range of backgrounds.
Is that how collaborating with CHARM on the Class Book Project came about?
I always wanted to do some kind of culminating project or book where my kids got to see themselves in it—but also to focus on the themes of student voice. How did the CHARM collaboration work? I had worked with CHARM before and various students had put together class poems of their own individual poetry. We use CHARM as inspiration that your voice matters as much as anyone’s.
Whitney (Birenbaum, CHARM’s Director) held workshops with some 2 dozen students. We used honors students as guinea pigs if you will—but it was also an additional project to complement their existing classes.
What was the brief you gave students to open up their writing process?
They’re used to me doting and getting kind of mushy, so the framing was just me gushing over them because they’re awesome.
I said to them, hey guys, we’ve been talking about heroes this whole year. You all are really inspiring me. You’re all heroes. You’ve all had to overcome something, even like being a little unsure about 6th grade. I want to focus on how you can share your story with other people and what you’re hopeful about, and some things that you’re a little vulnerable about. It was a platform where they could be emotional and express doubts they have about themselves, or about the city.
How do students respond to the brief that asked them to of be that open, that personal?
Practice vulnerability and openness, and you tend to get those things in return. There was a large cache of trust built up early on. I shared quite a bit about myself as part of the rapport building process.
I do this exercise where students read CHARM—and they think it’s some old adult that they’re never going to meet. Then I reveal that the student goes to school in Baltimore City and is 12 years old and you kind of hear the gasps—that this kid wrote something so profound that they can do the same.
You shared some of your own work with the students. What kind of feedback did they give you?
I got quite a bit of feedback in terms of how it sounded. From me, they wanted more rhythmic writing. I was amazed at how humble everyone was and the grace they gave themselves and others to be vulnerable. But I’m also not really surprised, because they are great kids and they always able to come together in pretty inspiring ways to support each other.
What type of writing inspires you personally, and how does that filter into your teaching?
I am deeply moved by slam poetry and I‘ve been showing my kids over the years various clips and teams performing.
What are your favorite books—for either adults or young people?
“Tangerine” by Edward Bloor, which is about a student with pretty bad eyesight. As a kid growing up with really thick glasses, I always gravitated to the main character, Paul.
And I really love anything by Malcolm Gladwell. For adults his book “Outliers” is just really amazing to me.
Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, and over the course of your K-8 experience you’ll get 10,000 hours. Some kids become experts at dehumanizing others because they were hurt for 10,000 hours at school. As teachers, we want to make sure that we’re using those hours to make students experts at humanity skills, at being decent people in the world.
—Annalies Winny
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity