Peter Kahn

A former Chicago social worker, Peter Kahn has been an English teacher since 1994 and a Spoken Word Educator since 2003 at Oak Park/River Forest High School. Kahn created the Spoken Word Poetry Educator position to help promote student engagement and voice, to close the opportunity gap, and to combat high ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) scores. In September 2022, Kahn extended his influence in education by becoming actively involved with 12 local schools in Central Ohio, focusing on poetry education.

Kahn is the founder and sponsor of Oak Park's Spoken Word Club — the largest school-based club of its kind in the world. Alumni include NBA champion, Iman Shumpert; former Scholastic Arts National Youth Poet Laureate, Natalie Richardson; National Youth Poet Laureate, Kara Jackson; and comedian, Langston Kerman (HBO, MTV, IFC, NBC, Comedy Central). Their success is celebrated annually during the "Schooled on Poetry" event each May, organized by Kahn. Several of Kahn's students have gone on to earn full-tuition scholarships to university as a result of poetry and to earn MFA’s in Creative Writing. Several have been published in Poetry magazine, two with work written while in high school. His students can be seen in the documentary, Louder Than a Bomb and Steve James’ Starz docu-series, America to Me.

A founding member of the London poetry collective Malika’s Kitchen, he co-founded the London Teenage Poetry Slam. He facilitated the visit of three Black-British writers to the US for events in Columbus and Columbia, South Carolina, thereby bridging the gap between the UK and US literary communities. As a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths-University of London, Kahn created the Spoken Word Education Training Programme.

Kahn earned his MA in English Education from The Ohio State University, student taught at Columbus East High School and taught for the Young Scholars Program. His impactful teaching methodology led to him receiving the Inspiring Teacher Award from the American Writers Museum. He was a featured speaker at the National Council of Teachers of English’s annual convention and runner-up in the NCTE and Penguin Random House Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry.

Along with Patricia Smith and Ravi Shankar, Kahn edited "The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks" reviewed in The New York Times by Claudia Rankine. Along with Hanif Abdurraqib, Franny Choi, and former student Dan “Sully” Sullivan, he edited "Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School," deemed “Electric and Expansive” by Kirkus Reviews. Kahn’s 2020 poetry collection, "Little Kings" has poems featured in The London Guardian and The Forward Book of Poetry. One of his poems was also featured on the literary podcast, "The Slowdown."

In addition to his teaching and writing commitments, Kahn also hosts a podcast with Rich Robins and Langston Kerman, Arts Educators Save the World, where they have conversed with prominent figures such as Bradley Whitford, Cecily Strong, Josh Radnor, and Lin-Manuel Miranda.