Adam M. Levin
Adam M. Levin is a writer, rapper, and educator, originally from River Forest, IL. He has performed across the United States, as well as internationally in the United Kingdom, Trinidad & Tobago, Panama, and Mexico. He is the co-founder and co-facilitator of Emcee Wreckshop, a rap workshop in the Chicagoland area, and the co-host of Wreckshop Live! on Vans' online platform Channel 66.
He released his first album at the age of 17, primarily recorded between final exams at his alma mater, Oak Park River Forest High School. While attending Oak Park, he joined the Spoken Word Club in its first year following Peter Kahn's return from London. He became a two-time member of the school's Louder Than a Bomb slam team, finishing in the finals both years; the first member of the program to perform in twelve Spoken Word showcases before graduating; and one of the first members of the Hip-Hop Wing of the Spoken Word Club, which he eventually returned to facilitate after he completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Wisconsin, where he was also a member of the first cohort of the university's First Wave Spoken Word Learning Community, receiving a four-year, full tuition scholarship. After a few years of working in a variety of academic settings around the Chicagoland area, both in-class and afterschool, he became the Spoken Word teaching assistant at OPRF from January 2015 to January 2019. Some of Levin's work alongside Peter Kahn Kahn was featured in Steve James' documentary series America, to Me, which aired on the Starz network in 2018.
Writing Prompts
Write about a time someone told you something that wasn’t true
Write about a time you assumed something about a group of people and it was proven wrong
Write about a time someone warned you about something and it turned out to be right
The impact of poetry and the spoken word club
When my freshman year of high school began, I was a believer in search of a congregation. Even in the ninth grade, I didn’t know how to relate with my peers socially, as none of them had the same faith in the power of hip-hop that I did. It was much easier for me to wrap my headphones around my skill and turn Jay-Z’s The Blueprint album up as loud as I could than to do the awkward, uncomfortable work of trying to excavate common ground from my conversations with other kids. I had been bullied throughout middle school, so even small slights and miss understandings threw me into fight-or-flight mode. I was an incredibly difficult young man with a lot of potential and an equal amount of anger and sadness.
Enter Peter Kahn, and the Oak Park model.
I slipped a poem that stank of musty teenage angst under the door to Peter’s office after his weeklong residency in my honors English class. He encouraged me to stop by the first Spoken Word Club meeting of the year after school to write more work, and share what I’d already put to paper. I can count on my hand the number of meetings I missed after that day. I was the first student to perform in twelve Spoken Word showcases, and was fortunate enough to earn a full-tuition scholarship to the University of Wisconsin-Madison based on the work I did as a member of Oak Park-River Forest High School’s Spoken Word Club.
Spoken Word gave me an identity that I hadn’t been able to develop before I’d encountered it. Suddenly, the personal qualities that had previously made me an outcast were invited into the center of a community that cared about and valued me.
When I was old enough to fully understand how profound and life-changing its effect had been, I became committed to paying the work forward by doing anything I could to replicate it for my younger peers. This led to Peter asking me to become his Spoken Word teaching assistant, a job I held from January 2015 until January 2019. During my second year there, I met a young man who loved hip-hop and hated school, who asked me to teach him how to rap. When he saw how working on his craft could yield significant returns, he started to change his grades and his life with the same vigor. It validated the importance of the work, and I’ve committed myself to working in public education to find ways to offer young people the opportunities I craved when I was their age--to connect, to create, and to make my life worthwhile.
Top favorite poets or lyricists
Andre 3000, billy woods, and Sean Price