By Ryan Makuch
On May 22, Kallista Walker will receive the Bank of Ann Arbor Community Award at The Mighty Oak’s women’s home opener. Walker, born, raised, and residing in Ypsilanti, is a dedicated member of the community and head of Our Community Reads, an organization dedicated to cultivating a loving and engaging space for children to interact with books.
Our Community Reads also has two youth groups under its banner, including the Pharoh’s Club for boys and the Queen’s Club for girls. The Queen’s Club will serve as the women’s side’s walk-out partners for the home opener.
Walker’s journey to this moment starts back in 2020 when she was asked by Kayla Dillon, then a third-grade teacher at Erickson Elementary School, where Walker works as a paraprofessional, to record herself reading a book for her class. The reading went exceedingly well, and Walker found herself abuzz in the wake of it.
“When I recorded myself, I remember the next day I had this thought that kept going around in my head, and it was, ‘A community that reads together grows together’”, Walker said. “I was standing at the kitchen sink … and I remember all of these names just started being ‘downloaded’.” Those were the names of just some of the key people that would eventually help Walker on her journey with this project.
It is a journey that has allowed her to expand upon some of the teachings passed to her from her mother. A vital influence in Walker’s life, Our Community Reads is created with a healthy dose of her mother’s enthusiasm for children, “brilliant little people”, as Walker’s mother noted.
AFC Ann Arbor’s initial involvement came to be surrounding one of those occasions.
“We had been talking about taking the young people to the Hip-Hop Nutcracker for a while because my mother always took us to plays in Detroit because she said ‘I want you to know that the world is bigger than Ypsilanti.’ That was very important to my mother. So she would take us to Detroit, she would take us out to eat, to plays, to museums. We would go riding through neighborhoods with these big amazing homes. She said even though we lived on the Southside of Ypsi, the world has so much more to offer, and I want you to prepare yourself to embrace it.”
It was around this time Walker encountered Club Chair Bilal Saeed, who offered over an early Zoom meeting to allow the club to aid in the sponsorship of the Queen’s Club’s attendance at the Hip Hop Nutcracker. Walker’s first impression of Saeed was positive, but she wasn’t yet convinced, “He is not that nice! Who does that?!”
But, true to his word, Saeed came through, and Walker’s colleague Mary Jane Dennison funded a limo bus for the Queen’s Club (also joined by AFCAA women’s player Emily Eitzman) to arrive at the play in style.
About the event, Walker said. “This is what it looks like when we come together.” She added, “The look on these girls' faces as they stood in this building in downtown Detroit, looking at the city through this big window, it just made me even hungrier to connect with other teachers.”
Walker has distinctly different favorite things in regards to the Queen’s Club and the Pharoh’s Club. For the Queen’s Club, “Seeing young girls who sometimes start off by themselves when coming. They’re not comfortable, they don’t know how they’re going to be received by the other girls. And just to see how they bond and connect and go out to the playground and play.”
For the Pharoh’s Club, it hits closer to home for Walker. “I think the highlight for me is I always wanted a mentor for my sons when I was young, and I would cry because people told me that they would step into that role, and they would not follow through. And I knew how much my sons needed a mentor, and I could never find it, and I would know people and their children with mentors, and I was like ‘Why won’t this work for me?’ And so, that has always stuck with me, and I see how much it’s needed.”
Both of these program ideas came as a result of another flickering memory for Walker – the Boys and Girls Club after-school programs that Walker took part in during her youth. “I literally can still remember how the lunch smells in the paper bag,” she would say.
To Walker, the chocolate milk she got with that lunch, the arts and crafts projects, the Friday parties that allows the boys and girls to mix and mingle, and the longing to talk to her crush every day that wasn’t Friday are all essential memories for her. And with these clubs, born and nurtured out of the same grassroots communal spirit that Our Community Reads came to be, she has been able to provide equally positive experiences to even more youths.
Why reading, in particular, involves discussion of a specific genre of book. “To me, first of all, I have a passion for picture books because, like cartoons, they can take some of the most complicated things about life and simplify them.”
Walker shares that she is drawn towards books that showcase LGBTQ+ representation, dealing with loss and anger, and the reclaiming and reestablishing of the facts behind the treatment of American indigenous peoples.
“There are so many things that are complicated and difficult and messy, and picture books make them where you can have a whole conversation, not just children, but with adults,” Walker said, transitioning into discussing the importance of adults readings as well.
“If you have adults that struggle with reading, why would I sit and torture myself by reading to my child?” she rhetorically asked. Walker highlighted a “generational deficit” that can rear its head until someone, either a mentor, teacher, or other figure, can turn it around.
One of Walker’s absolute favorite lessons learned from her young people is “how amazingly resilient young people are.” “There are things where adults have a breakdown dealing with them, and we expect kids to do so,” said Walker. “Some of them do it so amazingly well that you would never really know some of the craziness they deal with at home before they get on the bus.”
Walker emphasized the lack of any meaningful power that children have, saying, “They can’t drive. Well,” Walker added with a laugh, “look, they shouldn’t be driving.” But she would continue in all seriousness, “They don’t have jobs, so they can’t just go out and leave these homes that they’re in. If they are being dressed in a way that their clothes are too tight, or too short, or they don’t have socks, they can’t just go out and get that stuff. They are totally reliant on the adults in their life.”
“Reading can help you see yourself, escape your circumstance, and see a world outside your small neighborhood,” concluded Walker, discussing the powers of reading. “Reading helps you dream, reading plants seeds, reading can open your world. It’s the start of everything. And it changes who you are, it changes how you see yourself.”
“They inspire me,” Walker aptly summarized, when discussing the young people that she works with. In kind, the love and inspiration is reciprocated by her young people and her community. AFCAA are honored to be presenting Kallista Walker with the Bank of Ann Arbor Community Award, and we look forward to welcoming the Queen’s Club and Kallista to AFCAA’s women’s home opener to provide ‘Ms. K’ with a well-earned accolade for her service to the community..