Emma Walton Hamilton
My background is in arts education and we know, absolutely for a fact, that there is no better way for kids to learn critical thinking skills, communication skills, things like empathy and tolerance. This is true across every boundary, across cultural boundaries, across socioeconomic, it's a great leveler in terms of unifying our world.Collection: Education
My mom's coping mechanism was to be strong and resilient. She is very compassionate and nonjudgmental.Collection: Mom
With my mother, Julie Andrews Edwards, I've authored such children's books as the 'Dumpy the Dump Truck' series, 'Dragon: Hound of Honor,' 'The Great American Mousical,' 'Simeon's Gift' and 'Thanks to You: Wisdom from Mother and Child.'Collection: Wisdom
Mom was never self-pitying. She was ferociously focused on making sure that everyone understood that she knew how fortunate she has been.Collection: Mom
Stay strong. Stay true to yourself and to who you are because there is community out there. It may not be in your town or perhaps even in your family, but you are wanted and you are loved and there are places in the world where you will be safe and supported.
And for me I think I was originally a theater person, a producer/director/actor.
My work in the theater began to shift more towards young audience type of work and education programs for children, arts education programs.
Yeah, I think the arts and literature have always been irrevocably connected. Because if you think about it, every film script, every play, every song starts as words on the page before it is ever performed or filmed or sung.
I think that at a certain point in our lives we should have to interview our parents.
My parentage set me up to want to make a life of my own in the arts, but also contributed to my feeling a certain amount of pressure, especially in my early years, to figure out who I was and how to make my own mark.
Stony Brook is a phenomenal university and I am proud to be affiliated with it, so it is gratifying to be able to support this wonderful institution in whatever way I can.
My husband, Steve Hamilton - an actor/producer and co-Director of the Southampton Playwriting Conference - and I had been working in the theatre in New York for many years.
Sometime in my 20s, a wise mentor said something that dramatically changed my outlook and that has stayed with me ever since. She told me to 'wear the mantle with dignity and pride.'
The arts are the most uniquely suited to provide young people with critical-thinking skills, problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration, empathy and tolerance and compassion, looking at the other point of views.
If you wait until you're an adult to be exposed to the arts, it could seem elitist, it could seem out of reach, it could seem scary.
I think writing and reading are completely synergistic; not necessarily in that one has to be a good reader to be a good writer or vice versa, but that they so inform each other.
I think I personally, as a writer, read differently knowing how tough it is to write, knowing how challenging it is to articulate it, to express clearly and economically and with focus and with purpose.
I think that children who read are better writers, and children who tell stories appreciate books.
The arts give kids the building blocks with which to then play.
At a time when there is so much tension in the world - between cultures, and nations, and so forth - there is nothing that levels the playing field more than the arts.
So often we think, well, kids learn to read at school, I don't have to be responsible for that. But in fact they learn to love reading at home, and therefore it's really important that we as parents preserve the joy of reading by supporting them and reading things that speak to their hearts, books that they love.
When I was three years old, a nanny took me shopping and I saw large cut-outs of Mary Poppins in the store and yelled, 'That's mummy!' These women walked by and said, 'Oh how cute. That little girl thinks that Mary Poppins is her mum.'
I was able to hide a lot behind 'Walton,' and found that to be quite useful.
I have a picture of me sitting on the step of a brownstone stoop with my mom and all the Muppets around us. And Perry Como, for some reason.
I have a transgender nephew on my father's side of the family. So I'm extremely aware of how important it is to support and advocate for young people who are experiencing that in their lives.
We're both very passionate about the arts. Mom, of course with her arts background. I have a theater background and work with children.
If the arts are in peril, we must do our small part to to fight the good fight and protect and preserve.
Netflix is so amazing because they take chances. They'll take a risk, be edgy, be quirky.
I don't remember a time when it wasn't, when I didn't feel like the LGBTQ community was part of my life and part of reality.
I am my mother's daughter.
We certainly had our moments when I was growing up. But the great thing was, if Mom was working on a night shoot, she'd be up making breakfast before school.
Young children especially are receiving so much of the world through their ears and their eyes, particularly if they're pre-literate. So engaging them with sound, particularly sound that stirs them emotionally because of the sequence of notes, will make them pay attention.
It might be helping to explore a story visually by going to see a museum exhibit that's relevant to something that somebody's reading, or going to see a show or listening to a piece of music or cooking a meal that's in one of the stories, something practical, something kinesthetic that draws the reader in and helps them to experience the story for themselves. Those are all ways I think we can kind of come in the back door and help kids find the joy, as opposed to the chore or responsibility, of reading.Collection: Reading
I think the main thing that we can do as adults helping young people to find the joy in reading, whether we're parents or caregivers or educators, is to come at that subliminally as much as possible and not to make it an issue. The key is to know the individual child and get them materials to read that's going to speak to them best.Collection: Children
I think every single one of us can think back on the key individuals in our lives who really made a difference, and also maybe some of those who sent us astray. There are those are the teachers who are brave enough to buck the system, and obviously not in such a way that jeopardizes their jobs, but brave enough to say, "I know I have to accomplish that, but I want to know how I'm going to help this child get there differently. I want to know what makes this child tick, and I want to help him get there from a place of curiosity, rather than from a place where I impose my ideas on him."Collection: Teacher
My mother used to say, "Tell your brain you want that piece of information or you want to solve this problem, and then just walk away from it. Just forget about it. Just do something else, completely distract yourself, and you'll see, it's like a computer. Eventually, it will deliver it up." And I find that's really true.Collection: Mother
I am passionate about reading, for myself and for kids. Our future as a compassionate, productive, healthy society is rooted in our continuing to engage our minds and spirits. The key for me is in keeping it joyful as an activity.Collection: Reading
Dramatic reading and writing for kids can open a window to individuality and to expression that nothing else does, because all of a sudden the pressure is off and they just bring themselves to the table.Collection: Reading
I think that teachers have the hardest job in the world, and they are the most unsung heroes so much of the time.Collection: Teacher
I think you have to have a personal connection, and that's what I am always looking to try to create: a personal way in to a story.Collection: Thinking
People ask me all the time what it's like to work with my mother. I feel completely blessed because, first of all, this has given us an opportunity to enrich our relationship in ways we never could have imagined. Our time together is purely creative. It's unfettered by politics or the news of the day or aches and pains or family dramas or anything else. This time together is sort of golden and protected as being just creative time, which is heavenly.Collection: Mother
Stereotypes have their roots in truth.Collection: Roots
My personal view is that reading has to be balanced. Obviously, there's a certain amount of reading that we have to do academically to continue to learn and to grow, but it's got to be balanced with fun and with elective reading. Whether that's comic books or Jane Austen, if it makes you excited about reading, that's what matters.Collection: Fun
I think so much emphasis these days is placed upon achievement and skill and assessment that the joy has gone out of reading for many kids. Students become distracted by struggling to learn to read or by the pressure to achieve.Collection: Struggle
Graphic novels might really speak to one child who's struggling with the other kinds of reading and might help them discover that storytelling is joyful and personal and illuminating. They might find your way in auditorily by listening to audio books in the car instead of playing Game Boys or watching DVDs.Collection: Children