A few months ago the 8th grade class began reading Quinn Early’s book concurrently with our study of American slavery. Through this process I began writing a teacher’s guide for the book. My students wrote over half of this teacher’s guide, which aligned to common core standards and included aspects like chapter summaries, character analysis list, thematic analysis summaries, final project ideas, and (my part) teacher whole group, small group, and individual guiding questions. He has already taken this guide to distribute to teachers at schools in Los Angeles and he will be promoting the book in schools alongside this resource. The students also did final projects on the book.

Quinn Early played in the NFL for 12 years, has been training and teaching at White Dragon Kung Fu School with me for 29 years, is a Hollywood stuntman who is currently on the SWAT TV show and is the stunt double for Will Smith, and is an author. His mother wrote a book, Bryant Acres, about some of her family’s history through the period of slavery in the antebellum south. She passed away from Alzheimer’s disease prior to the completion of this book, so her son, Quinn Early, finished the writing and publishing process. All proceeds of the book go to Alzheimer’s research.

On February 26th we had Mr. Early in our class for a few hours. We started with an inspirational presentation, question and answer session, and book discussion. Each student presented their project, which included animations, canvas art pieces, and spoken word poetry, and gifted it to Mr. Early. We concluded the morning with a book signing and football card signing session.