From 'Emojis' to Pedagogy

Award-winning children’s book author, science literacy advocate, and 20-year Daniel Island resident Kate Boehm Jerome has dedicated her professional life to children’s literacy, and by all counts the publishing executive-turned-entrepreneur has reached the pinnacle of both her profession and her own distinguished career. Though her unflinching humility prevents her from accepting the moniker, for all intents and purposes Jerome has become a thought leader in the area of children’s literacy. As such, people have begun to turn to the recent graduate of the inaugural class of Stanford University’s Distinguished Career Institute (DCI) for lessons on what she’s learned and what wisdom she can impart on the generations to come. At Stanford, Jerome truly embraced the liberal arts mindset of the place, studying ideas from across the campus. From business, to art history, to technology, Jerome dove in head first and over the year-long fellowship developed new skills, interests and educational pursuits. When she returned to Charleston after completing the Stanford fellowship program in June of this year, she was seemingly a different person. Enter the folks at TEDxCharleston, who since January had been vetting and reviewing potential speakers for their flagship event held October 19, “TEDxCharleston 2016: Tipping Point,” a multidisciplinary ideas symposium featuring presenters from across Charleston’s geographic and professional landscape. Even though Charleston is a city burgeoning with ideas generated right here in the Lowcountry, even amongst the great talent of the area, Jerome stood out and was selected to speak at the conference. On the eve of the event, The Daniel Island News caught up with the author and driving force behind literally thousands of children’s books to discuss Stanford, her TEDx experience, and in a larger sense, her contemporary work as a whole, and the importance of intergenerational communication, a concept she calls “vertical connections.” Charlie Morrison (CM): Being selected for Stanford’s DCI program was obviously an honor for you. How was the experience? Kate Jerome (KJ): “It was incredible. Incredible is the only word that can define it. If you can imagine people who are from all over the country and all over the world from all these different professions, investment bankers, M.D.s, L.A. producers, all of us getting together to share a lifetime of experience and I was just bowled over by the generosity of spirit from the people involved. Every day I got up I couldn’t wait to get on campus… It was amazing.” CM: What did you take from your time out there and what impact did the experience have on you? KJ: “It made me declare my new major. I’ve been developing kids’ books my whole life but I’ve really always been interested in the interaction between generations. As I started to look at the relationships between generations, what I call vertical connections, I realized then that I really wanted to focus my future work on promoting that idea. Any children’s books I do in the future, I will make those books interactive, in that they will require some kid’s parent, grandparent, or favorite adult to read it with them and keep the conversation going. CM: Is that to say folks just aren’t having these types of interactions, these intergenerational conversations now? KJ: “I think people have become afraid of connecting between generations. As the chasm grows wider it gets more difficult to relate. The language is difficult, the technology is difficult, and I’m trying to make the case that these are some of the most important things that we can do, so it’s worth the difficulty to transcend those issues.” CM: And where do you think these breakdowns in intergenerational communication hurt us? Is it something we see only at home with respect to our families? KJ: “I think work environments is really the next frontier. We all identify with our own age tribes, ‘if you’re a millennial and I’m a boomer,’ and all that. And there is some power in that identity that comes with identifying yourself with your age group. It’s okay, but on the other hand if they isolate us too much or stereotype people too much, we have to get past that.” CM: Can you give me an example? KJ: “Sometimes people at work say ‘Oh my gosh I’m getting this old guy and he’s going to be so old-fashioned, but in fact maybe this ‘old guy’ has a solution to something that you’ve been trying to work on and it’s the same thing with the young. These kinds of relationships have unexpected treasures in them. Each of us has different skills to offer, but we also have different things to gain as well. CM: And of the role technology plays in all of this, do you feel it has helped or hurt our ability to communicate across generations? KJ: “I’m all about technology, believe me. I’m dedicated to that in all kinds of media. I see it in books or virtual reality, anything that starts the conversation. I’m currently working on a virtual reality program with a local organization and a major Silicon Valley technology company, but I still think we have to step back and say ‘what makes us human?’” CM: What’s the bottom line when it comes to vertical connections? What’s it going to take for our society to embrace the idea that intergenerational communication is essential to our future? KJ: “We may not all be the same ethnicity or gender or age, but we all share the same tick of the clock and we’re all going to be eventually in the same place. We need to start the conversation because the challenges we face in terms of long-term health care and financial stability for these longer lives are not going to be easy to just solve, and it’s my contention that it’s going to take the brainpower of all of us to figure it out.” Jerome splits her time between Daniel Island and her new, adopted home of northern California. Here in the Lowcountry, she is a dedicated volunteer in the greater Charleston community and an active Emeritus Board Member of the South Carolina Aquarium. She is the author of more than 100 children’s books, but has produced more than 1,000 in her corporate and entrepreneurial career. Since arriving back home from her year at Stanford, she’s begun work on a pair of children’s books series with Arcadia Publishing. The books in those series will work along those lines and try to generate what has become the focus of her late work: intergenerational communication. For more information on Kate Boehm Jerome, see her website at http://www.katejerome.com.