Source: Jewish Community Voice
Gregg Love wants children to understand the root cause of bullying. “A bully wants an audience,” the Cherry Hill educator told the Voice. “If you don’t give a bully an audience, then they have no power.”
In 2002, Love graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in journalism and mass media. His salvo against bullying started while a teacher in the Cherry Hill public school system soon thereafter. Inspired by Dr. Seuss’ storytelling knack to both educate and amuse, he set out to pen a children’s book series of his own that would show children how to hurdle the stumbling blocks of youth.
In 2015, Love published the first book of that series: The One Who Threw From Kalamazoo, followed by The One Who Grew in Kalamazoo: The 2nd Inning, published in 2017. Each book takes place in the small town of Kalamazoo, Michigan. It follows a young boy named Mikey McMild as he pursues his love of baseball despite having to confront a wave of nonstop bullying.
To spread the book’s message, Love has been a frequent guest author at the Barnes and Noble in Cherry Hill. The third book of the series, which is still under wraps, will likely come out later this year, he said. Many of the lessons in the books Love has applied to his teaching at Brookfield Academy, where he’s taught students with learning challenges, trauma, anxiety, and clinical depression for the last five years.
With a team of three therapists and a nurse practitioner, Love is also dispatched to the Inspira Health program in Woodbury and the Jefferson Health outpatient unit for behavioral health in Cherry Hill, teaching 7th to 12th grade classes of up to 16 students in subjects ranging from math to science to history.
“These kids come to us broken. My job is to help put them on the road to recovery. I couldn’t be more privileged to be part of that process.”
When he’s not helping students or writing his Kalamazoo Baseball series, Love is an avid antique car collector owning a 1966 Mustang and a 1978 Volkswagen Bus, which he likes exhibiting at local car shows. “I love it when my cars put smiles on other people’s faces — that’s why I do it.
“I’m trying to convey that we should all be ourselves: everyone else is taken.”
“If you really believe in yourself, then you’ll go the direction you want to go,” Love says.