Keaka: A Children's Story about Fear and Self-Acceptance.- Author Terrence 'Coach T' Burruss

Welcome to SpeakUP! International with Rita Burke and Elton Brown!

Thank you, Elton! As our listeners are aware, we SpeakUP! International to inform, to educate, and to inspire. In keeping with that theme, we've had some of the most marvelous, wonderful, dedicated people on our show, and today is no exception. We have with us an educator from Georgia and he goes by a shadow name of Keaka He's also known as Coach T, and the T is for transformation as his innovative educational brand represents the best of both worlds of spirit, of youth, and nostalgia about pop culture. His work and experience ranged from youth mentor and musical tour consultant k to Twelve, school teacher and youth basketball coach. To our audience I introduce Mr. Terrance Burruss!

Peace and blessings. Elton, Rita, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. I can't believe I'm getting the opportunity to speak up on SpeakUP!. It's really meaningful opportunity. I really appreciate you. Shout out to my family in Buffalo, New York. Shout out my family in Gwinnett County, Georgia. It's a pleasure to blend cultures and have a meaningful conversation here today with you am really all of over metro Atlanta. Shout out the whole city of Atlanta, all sides and whole western New York to shout out Rochester, Syracuse, upstate New York. Some love.

We are international, and if individuals happen to get the link to this podcast, they will definitely feel the love coming from you. You live in Georgia. I have to ask right off the bat,

Oh no!

Living in Georgia is a. Interesting place to live for black people.

Certainly.

How do you live in Gwinnett County, Georgia? This is a smaller town than Atlanta. I wanna know, how do you function there as a black person?

I think I function there any black person's. Functions anywhere. It's the same, it's the same principles no matter where you go. I think that's the thing that's so beautiful about blackness. You see it you see it translate in the same or similar ways everywhere you go in the world. I visited Cuba. Two years before the pandemic. I swear to goodness, we were talking before we, went live. Elton you have an uncanny resemblance to my grandfather. I seen my grandmother in Cuba. Walking the streets of Havana, Cuba, old Havana, in, the ghetto, the trenches. That was very meaningful to me on many levels. Like how could it not to see a woman that resembles your grandmother in a Spanish speaking country where you don't speak the native language? I took Spanish for three years. I'll be honest with you. I took it for three years in high school. Shout out to Central Gwinnett, but I didn't learn, I didn't learn a lick. You know what I'm saying? I learned a few words. We always learned the cuss word, the curse words a few, yeah. A couple different, social phrases just to get you going, but then it just just tails off, like how do you just don't finish the race. But it was meaningful and it always is to see family and be, and being black as family. That's simple. Is that there's Georgia and then there's Atlanta. Atlanta and Georgia aren't necessarily the same thing in a person's mind. Particularly if you come from a different state, like if you're from the west coast up north to Midwest, when you move to Georgia, you do notice that there's a difference between living in Atlanta and living in other parts of Georgia. And I visited Albany, Georgia, Valdosta, Georgia, Savannah, Georgia, Augusta, Georgia. Got some family there. Athens, Georgia, where I go to school, I'm at the University of Georgia. I went to Hype College at Kennesaw State University, which is another, suburb of Atlanta. So there's so many different sides and faces to the state of Georgia. It's what makes it beautiful, but it is different. There's a difference between Atlanta and living in Georgia and Gwinnett County in particular is one of the, I think it is the biggest, I believe it is the biggest suburb in metro Atlanta. Our county is the seventh most diverse county in the whole country in the United States of America. It's the seventh most diverse school system, Gwinnett County School System, and it's the 11th biggest in our country. So I come from a huge metropolitan area culture, just culturally speaking. Not even just focus on the population, just culturally. So that makes a story like Keaka super duper relevant to where I come from. And for the country at large, we're talking about a book that that follows a, a Hawaiian kind of aesthetic culturally. And, there, there aren't a ton of a Hawaiians that live in Atlanta. I'm not gonna portray that. But I was looking for something that would take on different meaning because everybody, pretty much anyone that lives in Gwinnett County culturally comes from somewhere else.

Now, you said something that has touched my soul. You said being black is family. And I will remember that for the rest of my life. So today is my learning day because I was chatting with a person that I will not name, and we were talking about getting hits today. So this is my next word, being black is family. So talk to us then, Terrence, about your connection to pop culture and how you tie this into what you do.

Ah, this question was the one out that, that kind of left me the most stumped because I wanted to answer it appropriately and not just appropriately from any perspective, but my own, like to just have integrity about the topic. As a black man, as a black man from the state of New York. I just can't like I'm hip hop. Like I'm, I was born on August 11th and that is the birthday of hip hop. This culture will turn 50 years old this year, and I'll be turning the, as that I'm turning this year. And that's meaning that's, that takes on the ultimate meaning when I found that out. So pop culture begins. With hip hop for me, and in, in the immortal words of the legendary mc producer from Queens, Mr. Q-Tip said hip"hop is not pop. It's not pop." And it starts with hip hop for me. But I will be remiss if I didn't acknowledge pop culture as a, as a a influence on me from a just like an experience standpoint. Like I was just as much a Disney channel fan as I was a BET or I was just as much a fan of Hey Arnold, as I was of of the proud family and I mentioned these cartoons all the time, love, time, and Jerry, these are pop, this is pop culture. I love my favorite era of pop culture. Since we're having a pop culture conversation I always say is the 1980s. I love the nineties. I'm a nineties baby. I was born in the nineties, right in the middle of the nineties, but the eighties, I feel like in America was the pinnacle of pop culture. And I think most people, when you think about Michael Jackson and you think about, Beverly Hills Cop and what Madonna was doing and the type of movies Back to the Future and Coming to America, the 1980s was when. All cultures could thrive in all cultures. As far as the cultures that we recognize in movies up until that point which is black film white American film everybody was doing it their way. The music, the sound, the visuals, everything was just magnified in the 1980s. There was a lot of things that, that, that weren't great about the 1980s. We know that we speak to that very often, but the 1980s as far as pop culture, in my opinion inspired artists like Kanye West, inspire artists like Jay-Z, inspire artists like Justin Timberlake and Nas and anybody else who's musically movie related is the 1980s that, that was really like, to me, is the coolest, the aesthetic?

During that period that the music was very fluid. There was no, at one point there was no really like black music and it wasn't white music, but somewhere along the line, the two had mixed together. They had come very close together to the point where there, there was a blend and you could feel it when you go to clubs. When you went to the club, it wasn't all black music. It just wasn't that way. Not on the airways. Same thing. It was all of a mix. Do you have a, any idea why this type of phenomena occurred?

I was gonna say Mr. Elton, that was Bird and Magic too. That was Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. The girl is mine. The girl was both of theirs. The girl was both of theirs. And to me, that girl was pop culture. That girl was pop culture. Everybody was expressing themselves in the same pot of influence the zeitgeist of pop culture. But they were all doing it in a way that, that they wanted to do it. That was when even hip hop evolved so much from year 1980 to the year 1989. It was. It got so much more like in your face and aggressive by the end of the a by the end of the eighties where it was more related to disco at the beginning of the eighties, it had a much more upbeat and rhythmic dancing. So that the spirit of hip hop, the spirit of pop culture follows like the consciousness of the space in which it exists, which is, America obviously hip hop, pop culture. These are uniquely American concepts, ideas. And we, in the eighties, we just did it big. I wasn't there to experience it, but Michael Jordan, it was just cool. The sneakers and the jackets, the everything was just super duper next level fly. Awesome. I love the table.

You tried every element of hip hop into your response, and I'm delighted. And I'm also delighted, Mr. Terrence, that you are quoing Michael Jackson so often because of course he used to be one of my most favorite people. But I'll tell you which one resonates with me most often because it's really deep. Is the Man in the Mirror.

Oh, I knew you were gonna say that. You have to say that one. You have to say!

That really resonates with me because it talks about reflection, it talks about knowing oneself, about speaking one's truth. So thank you so much for that.

It's perfect. It's only a few perfect songs in the world and that I feel like have ever existed Miss Rita. But I think Man in the Mirror is one of those perfect. It's a perfect song. It's. It's perfect. Perfectly captured the message. I love Michael Jackson so much. So I wanna ask you Prince or Michael Jackson for you.

Still Michael Jackson because I,

solid salad. Solid

Because I feel like he was my son. No dislike for Prince. Prince is my daughter's most favorite. She wore purple all the time because of Prince, but I feel that I'm kin with Michael Jackson. No question about that.

What in, in what respect? If it respect, what do you mean? Like spiritually, the way his appearance. What about Michael Jackson makes you feel so related to him?

Maybe I shouldn't discuss that. Okay. Publicly, but I can chat with you about that. But I've felt all of the years that I've followed him, that he was my son because I think most black men his age, Needed. Needed mothers needed a hug from mothers and Maya Angelo said that when he passed away, she said, we should all hug our Michaels. So let me shift a little bit. You are an educator and you do sound like an educator from a variety of perspectives. You are focused, you know what you're talking about. You have an extensive vocabulary. Tell us what drew you into education?

Being the eldest son of Amina being the oldest son. My, my mother's name is Amina. It means righteous, it means trustworthy. It means a variety of things. Queen Amina from the Nigerian, lineage, descendants like it, the name has so much meaning and it wasn't her birth given name. She had a name that would remain nameless. I won't say it just for her sake. She will be mad at me for that. So she changed it to Amina back in, I want to say 2015 or 16 because the name, she never, it never re, the name never resonated with her and it goes back to the culture conversation that we started with black or white. And just the relevance of names the relevance of words and a word that has the most meaning to anyone personally is their name. There's no word that It's more personal to an individual. And so for her to finally change her name from something she didn't like to, something that she did was like the most amazing thing that anybody around us can ever fathom. So when I was thinking about naming my, my, my company, ah, I'm getting emotional just talking about I never, I've never really articulated it fully in this way. Name of my company, eldest son of Amina, meant so much to me on a, on a subconscious level. Like I wasn't even fully aware of why I wanted to name my company that, but Amina is the name that resonates with my mother. And my mother means so much to me. She is my educator. She's my teacher, my first teacher, first Love. She's who I dedicated the book to and I love my dad and my parents both. But it's some, it's your mother, you know...

Mothers are your mother. Mother mothers. I'll have, Mr. Terrence are influencers and they were, before the word be, before the word became vogue. They were influencers. And I'll have, you know as well, I'll have, you know as well, you're bragging about your mother. My mother was 80 when she went to Ghana and changed her name. So I get what you're saying, loud and clear. We're coming from Wow. Progressive mothers.

Wow. That is, man, it's it's just the most gangster, like my oldest brother who, my dad had a, has a son from a previous relationship. My oldest brother love him. And I love his mother too. I appreciate her. But he's always had a special love for my mother. So when he found out that she had her name changed, and this dude is a Aquarius, so he's an intense guy, just. Naturally, but he was so impressed with my Libra mother's audacity to change her name. This dude plays basketball in Spain and he's in his early thirties, like he still wants to play basketball. He's an intense guy. This guy's intense, but he was so impressed by this little woman's. This little woman's decision making in that moment. And again you draw a meaning in education from the people around you. Your family is your first team, organization, classroom, like your siblings, your parents. And I'm looking at him like this name change, registering in his mind. And I'm like, man, yeah. So it's always an education. These educational moments come at a constant. You just really just gotta have eyes and ears to pay attention. And I've been doing that a lot more as of late, and this venture has been part of that.

So what about your experiences with your career? Can you tell me a little bit about the roles that you've taken on?

I've done a little bit of everything and I, I pride myself on that. Like I pride myself in doing that. Like I'm in my late twenties and I've had a lot of different work experiences. I, one of my first gigs is, it goes back to our first question of how I got into education. It was fifth grade field day. Literally, I. I hope this makes sense to you all. The fifth graders were in charge. This is Hopkins Elementary, low Burn, Georgia. It was our first year in Georgia. We had just moved from Buffalo to Atlanta. It's like 2005. You're making new friends and this is a community that's totally different from my native. Like I, I was in the suburbs of Buffalo, like east of Buffalo, Amherst, New York. And Mo My, my, my elementary experience was it was a predominantly white elementary school. There were definitely a sprinkle of black kids for sure. Like we were we was we held it down. We were solid and most of us were from Buffalo. So it wasn't like we were like, at least for me, I can only speak for me. I wasn't from out there, but I was a, I was perfectly as acclimated. I perfectly assimilated because I was always raised to just be myself in that environment, I always felt like myself. I love Wmi Elementary. I always have love for Wmi Elementary. And, I know we're gonna get into Kayak in a second, but my, the artwork in the book is based on Buffalo, New York, because that's where my education began. I grew up in Georgia, but my elementary experience, my, my youth, my, my infancy, Tyler being a kid. Was in Buffalo, New York. And that's why I always connect with my hometown because it was real. Like I'm not, when you're from New York you just grow up faster. Like we age in dog years, but like new, there's New York years, you gotta add three or four years to, to being a New Yorker. So in reality, I was like a preteen when I left that place. And That's I gotta, I forgot what the question was. I apologize, but that's where my education began.

It sounds to me as if New York is just thumping through your blood and it sounds exciting. I aming at the bits to hear more about Kaeka. Talk to us about that.

I began writing the book at the the beginning of the pandemic. One of my roles one of my adult jobs was an admissions counselor at Georgia Gwinnett College here in metro Atlanta. Gwinnett County, like I said, seventh biggest school district. Culturally in, in the country 11th biggest school dig district in the entire country. So I I'm a admissions counselor or recruiter for a college. The local college almost like a community college, but they're really growing super tremendously. I'm super proud of being a part of Georgia Gwinnett College's history and Lineage. As a A staff member, a educator, a person that just gave counsel to the students. And my role changed tremendously, drastically. Like anybody's on March 13th 2020 when the pandemic began. And I was already wanting to move into a different role or at least get a raise of some sort. I'll be honest with y'all. And it may be that, youth that 20-something ambition and kind of naivety. But I was really, but in a genuine way. I was looking for A role change or like a change in direction? I had been there for two years and I didn't necessarily wanna l leave the organization, but I wanted some type of role change or more responsibility or a different responsibility. I had been a recruiter for the school and I would go out to the high schools in metro Atlanta and recruit students from all over Atlanta. This is one of my most meaningful experiences I've ever had. I loved my job. I would be in DeKalb County, shout out to the east side. I will be in Cherokee County that's right above Cobb County, where I went to college. Shout out to Kennesaw State. I got a shout out. So many people, I, of course, Fulton County, I will go to, south Fulton High School where you know a lot of very, Meaningful people to the culture of Atlanta went to high school. I would go and recruit in these metro Atlanta high schools that the variation of culture was so wide. Like I'm telling y'all, Forsyth County and Clayton County are totally different culturally. Frederick Douglass High School is very different from Etowah High School in Metro Atlanta. But people listening to this that are familiar with Atlanta are gonna know what I mean, and they're gonna be surprised. That I, they, they may be surprised that I was in these places and given the same message and really portraying myself with the like just trying to refine that in that integrity. When somebody's being themselves and you're able to connect. Connect to them somehow and what you're saying makes sense to them and you inspired them to maybe want to go to college or consider college for the first time and that would happen at all these high schools no matter what side of town. No matter what part of metro Atlanta I would be in. Either or they was felony me or they wasn't for either. They was staring at me with a milk carton, walking the, fifth period looking like this lane. Look at this lame dude, man. What is he doing? About to have me cursing or SpeakUP!, but, these kids is bad. They bad everywhere. They bad on the north side and south side. But it was a really meaningful job. It was a meaningful experience and Keaka came off the tails of me leaving this job in 2020 after about. Three or four months within the pandemic of trying to just, adjust to doing the virtual thing. All the communication was happening on Zoom and Microsoft teams and I wasn't, I was no longer leaving the office to go to DeKalb County. I was no longer leaving my office to to travel back to Cobb County or. To rockdale somewhere, 45 minute drive. You're stuck in metro Atlanta traffic, but you're locked in on connecting with that student today or really, making that impact or getting with one of your fellow recruiters from another college, Emory, Clayton State Georgia College, all these places, all these connections you were able to make. Now we're in the house, now we're stuck in the house, and so I decided to start driving Lyft. I did a little ride share work like soon after the pandemic, and I was already transitioning to that at my time at Georgia Gwinnett. But I went full-time with it and just really focused on keeping the money going and getting out of the house, making sure that I was, protecting myself with the mask and, taking it serious. But my role changed and in the midst of changing roles. When I first started, doing the ride share thing, I just had a lot more time on my hands and I started writing this story and it it really just came from that, that desire to be creative, that need to be creative, the necessity to stay creative in some way, for me creative, chaotic, and I just, I started thinking about being a toddler and being afraid of my shadow in real life. My mom used to tell me that. All the time that I would run for my shadow and my godmother, shout out to Tanya that my shadow would, cause me trouble when I was two or three years or two, I think two years old. I'm not going to, go too old on that. I was definitely around two years old, but I would run away from my shadow and. That story always re resonated with me. It was always like super hilarious to me. And I, I just started thinking about it again during the pandemic and just driving around Atlanta, picking up, picking up people. The story just came back to me and I started, I just started jotting stuff down and my Google doc and I just added to the story and added to the story. And I finished writing the story. Around this time, maybe last year I finally finished it. Like I came back. I would just come back. It was just, I was just chipping away at something. I didn't initially write the story to have it published and to be speaking to you wonderful people years later. But you, that's just the nature of creativity.

There's no question that COVID, that the pandemic forced us to tap into our creative juices. So if you track to 10 people, I'm sure that nine of them would admit to allowing those juices to flow so that they could do things that they'd never did before. So I see, I connect with what you're saying. Definitely.

It's a product of the pandemic. Keaka is a product of the pandemic and that's why, This idea, the person of shadows, like we, we were all being in the house, really connected a lot of people to their shadows quite personally and quite intimately, and I use that word a intentionally because, it's nothing like your bedroom, like your space, like your living room your home, your in the house. House. You're having to think you're having to wait. You're having to. To really think about going outside and what that may mean for you, what that may mean to the other members of the house. It sounds very dramatic, but these things really happen to all, every single one of us. So Keaka is a product of the pandemic. It is like a a child, a brainchild, a creative child of that experience. And so it's not just for the babies, it's children, a children's book. But I'm a grown person and I wrote it and I was feeling grown person anxieties and grown person identity kind of trouble. Who, who am I what do I do now? How has my professional life transition created? Like a new sense of who Terrence is in this moment. What do I do now? Who do I be? And yeah I'm proud to say I made it through and Kayak was able to come from it.

Terrence you said you finally finished writing this book, which is wonderful! I'm just wondering two things. One what age group is this book designed for? And has this book been published?

This book is for toddlers, preschoolers even infants, like a nighttime bedtime story to a kid about the age of eight, maybe in the second grade, I wanna say. Definitely the younger children because that's when the imagination is most ripe and they're really learning those pre-literacy skills. I talked to an educator about this. The book is a rhyming, rhyming book. If I was a rhyming pattern, and I just, I was just inspired by Dr. Seuss. Again, the pop culture thing. I was just inspired by Dr. Seuss as a kid I love Green Eggs and Ham. The Grinch, of course, and all the places you'll go was given to me by, by one of my, my, my most dearest professors Dr. Linda Lyons at Kennesaw State University. Go os once again. She gifted me all the places you'll go when I graduated under my, with my undergraduate degree in communication. And I read the book for the first time as a grown person, and it, again it's a children's story, but it took on such a powerful meaning as a adult person. That's, that's a common gift. I found out, or I learned. But of course I wanted to write a book like that. I wanted to write a book on, on that level. Just like a allegory, like something that, that kind of transcends age and hopefully time just. This is, it's a great story.

Let me interrupt you a little bit here, Terrence. We often label books, children's books, adult books, but I believe very strongly that many of the books that are written for children have got messages in them for adults as well. Would you say this book fits there?

Certainly. And I would just reference Imposter syndrome. We all deal with imposter syndromes at different points in our lives, like where we're going through a transition. Of course, it always comes in times of transitions in our life where we're going from preschool to kindergarten from being a kid to now being able to ride in the front seat. I couldn't wait to sit in the front seat. Man, I couldn't wait to put the seatbelt on the front seat sitting next to mom, be like, yo, could we go to Chuck E. Cheese? Something like that. Like I, I always pictured this for myself, so when I got there, it was like, yeah, but now who am I? I'm also moving into the third grade, and so that means now I like girls or something like that. It was just a shadow there. Going from middle school to high school, going from youth football to high school football and going from a high school to college or from high school to work into. There's so many transitions from adult to moving out, from single man, from bachelor to family man, from family man to grandfathers, from, there's so many, it never ends. The most consistent thing that we'll find in our experience and those bring with them. Feelings of anxiety, feelings of worry, feelings of being unsure. And that's what a shadow is. A shadow is this thing that we're not sure about when we're two years old. What is that? What's that you don't know. You don't know what to do with that. And we deal with that forever. And so Keaka is a story for everyone. I call it the greatest story ever told, and it's. It is my book. I want everybody to love my book and have my book, but the greatest story ever told is the story that is Keaka and not Keaka itself. And if if you can appreciate that. I hope you look at the book, read the book, purchase it for somebody that can use it, whether it's there 2 22, 62 82. So yeah.

So how do you handle an anxiety, courage and wisdom?

One of the most meaningful things that I could have ever done for myself was take up yoga. After graduating college in 2017 I started doing yoga like soon thereafter, graduating probably within a couple weeks. I just was, again, just looking for a way to be creative, a way to express. Kind of that, that creative energy or this, that then I grew up playing sports and I think it'll make, it only makes sense for athletes, and this is why I call myself Coach T to T is truthfully, is truly for transformation. The T stands for transformation. Because in my opinion, in my experience, in my education transformation comes through fire. It comes by fire. You have to really burn up whatever was. To get whatever is, and that happens through kinetic energy, through movement, whether that's your mental or that's your body. And I just happened to be a kid that was super active from a young age. I played baseball, I played football, of course I mentioned basketball is my basketball, Liz, my favorite sport. I played even a little lacrosse when I lived in Buffalo before I moved to Georgia, so

it's my favorite sport as well, basketball. But I'll tell you, my son must have been in his teens and he was playing basketball in the schoolyard and I went to play basketball with him, and I was wearing the biggest boots you could ever find. And of course I never. But I never got anything into the net. Of course, I never got anything into it.

Hold on. We, I gotta pause you right there. So you went to his school, right? You said you went to his school? So I presume that his friends were also out in the school yard playing basketball.

Of course, I was just making a fool of myself intentionally.

Oh my goodness. You came to this man's school where his friends hang out trying to play basketball like Big Mama. Yeah, Big Mama's house?

Mothers do things like that. Sometimes you know that, Hey, but listen, if you've got your book in front of you, you can pick. Favorite page, your favorite lines, and just read it to us before we bring this to a close. Do you have your book with you?

I can go and grab one. I'm so sorry. I stepped out outside to do the interview cuz I got some people, but I, my, my book is right here on the other side of the door. If you just, if we could just take five. I'm so sorry. I'm gonna grab...

No problem. A couple of lines for us would be good.

Okay, gotcha. Hello. Mic check. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2.

Yes. We're here and you've got your book. Pick your favorite line or two lines and share it with us before we bring this to a close, please.

I wanna thank y'all for this time this interview. It's been a really amazing experience to, to speak with you all. And I won't give too much of the book away because I want people to read it. I want people to go purchase it. It's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million. But if you wanna, purchase it from me directly I'll have Rita give you all my information because, these companies will, take your profit, but I won't get into that. So this is Keaka my, my book about. Kid afraid of his shadow. So he is learning fear and self-acceptance, and he really finds himself in quite a conundrum throughout the book because he is running from his shadow. But the line I want to read for you all to close, everything comes from about the middle of the book is one page and it's when him and his mother reconcile where they come back together. For almost like the climax of the story almost, in my opinion. If it was like a film and I'll come here. It says this is little T's Mom, which we were, were saying, is miss Amina there, my son? What do you want me to do? You cannot run from it T because that it is you. And again, my, the book find follows like a rhyme pattern, and so it, it takes on extra meaning when kids are able to rhyme words and they're learning those pre-literacy skills. They're rhyming words. So the words rhyming helps them remember the words and the rhythm of the sentence. And the cadence of the sentence, so my son, what do you want me to do? You cannot run from it T because that it is you, that it being the shadow that bit, that it being Keaka and that it transforming into Keaka in that moment. Because in, in the story in the picture you can see this revelatory kind of face that little Ty has he's like blown as what young kids say. He was blown. He was blown away by this revelation of the shadow, like being himself like, and you can see that surprise in his face. And that moment is a transformation. And that moment you go from being afraid of something to understanding and understanding, creating like a, like even just a moment of peace. A moment of just. Ah, just letting your shoulders relax and just a moment of learning and wisdom creating something new in your mind. Please purchase the book. It's called Keaka's. It's a really cool story. It's a children's allegory about overcoming your fears and self-acceptance and self-love, and a lot of other cool stuff.

Thank you very much Terrence for this brief reading. I love the colors of the book.

Oh man. It's beautiful they love it.

And they'll be drawn into it and mom and dad won't have a problem, or uncle whoever won't have a problem getting the kids sit still long enough to read at least portions of the book. Today we got an opportunity to talk about the importance of education, your life in Gweneth, Georgia, the Georgia being the

peach State. Which is great. And shout out to the apple though. Shout out to the apple. Hold on. Shout out to the apple. Apple to the apple and,

We and your actual education and how you apply what you've learned through life to help you be the educator that you are, and the transformation that happened from you creating your book. So I thank you for all of. Of what we've learned about you and let's do this again soon.

I echo that comment. Let's do this again soon. You've got so much to share, so much to share, and we, I'm sure we didn't get a smidgen of it, so thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to SpeakUP! International. To contact our guest, Terrence'Coach T' Burruss and want to purchase his book Keaka check out Amazon Barnes and Noble and Books, a Million. If you would like to be interviewed by us, SpeakUP! International, please drop us a line containing your name, company, name, the service you provide to your community and email address to info@speakuppodcast.ca. You can reach us using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. To connect to our podcast, please use Spotify or your favorite podcast platform and search for SpeakUP! International. You can also find our podcast using our web address. www.speakuppodcast.ca. Our logo has the woman with her finger pointing up mouth open speaking UP! At SpeakUP! International, we aim to inspire, to inform and to educate.