This article was featured in Unboxed as well as Edweek

Deeper learning experiences are needed by our students. Not in two years, not in six months, not next week. Deeper learning experiences are needed by our students today. Right now. This very moment. We need to structure environments where students are deeply engaged in their lives as they are living them.

I know this is true because during the last days of the 2010/11 school year, the worst fear of every teacher was realized for me. My student was murdered. Sean (15), and his younger brother Kyle (13) tragically died in a murder/suicide, killed by their own father. Sean was my favorite that year. In fact, Sean was my favorite student of all time. He was the kid I wished I could have been at fifteen. He swaggered into school with confidence, intelligence, and a never-ending stream of comic book superhero references. Sean and I became close immediately. This closeness in our relationship only increased as we spent many hours together in my after-school Graphic Novel Project, touring statewide on the weekends, selling comics at conventions.

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Here is a story. I am imagining a boy or a young man – maybe a youthful scientist/isaac newton type. You know the kind. A dreamer. Twenty years old or so. He is staring up at the sky and he is wondering about the universe. He is thinking, “Where do we come from?”, “Why am I here?”, etc. And then all of the sudden: BOOM!

He has an idea.

He runs into his house and he writes the idea down frantically. He is completely inspired and he sees connections to things in his life that he never thought were possible. His life’s purpose, now, is to get this idea – the most important idea of his life – out of his head and onto a piece of paper. It is so immense, however, that he is only able to get a sliver of the idea down. It’ll have to do for now though because he needs a record of it. After all, this is the just the beginning. He will be working to realize this idea for the rest of his life.

And ten years pass.

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and without her influence I would not be the artist and educator I am today. When the idea of teaching elementary came I knew just who to call. Several of hours and notes later I had a better idea of what to expect, as well as a reminder of what I already knew. Then I hit the books, specifically the quintessential text for early childhood education: “Creative And Mental Growth” by Viktor Lowenfeld (1964) – which, amazingly, is available free, online, and in  multiple formats care of the Internet Archive.

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After re-reading a bit of Viktor Lowenfeld’s “Creative & Mental Growth” recently I have found myself more interested in elementary education than ever before. The process of nurturing the human mind towards understanding the world at the foundational level of childhood is fascinating.

“No attempt should be made to censor the child’s creative expression, but rather we should try to stimulate the greatest variety of responses.”

Lowenfeld, 1947, p. 124

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In my experience all people want to be better at art. I’ve never met someone that didn’t wish that they could practice more art. I’ve met many who have believe in a story called “I can’t do art, I’m not good at it”. This is an effective and powerful story. A story that is taught to us. Being “good at art” is not something you are born with. Somewhere along the way, somebody tells you that you are no good at what you draw and create. Some of us survive that criticism, in fact we welcome it, and we grow up to become self-designated artists. Most people, however, are robbed of the ability to recognize their inner artist by a single comment, usually given by a teacher, that they aren’t good.

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“He walks with his students, never pushing and always present. The enormous hulking blob that drips ideas onto the sidewalk as his steps echo through the quaint town called enlightenment. As he drips his ideas, he absorbs new ones. Adding the new to his already growing form is never far from his mind, and he knows that no matter how much he adds – he can always add more.”

I wrote this as the introduction to my philosophy of education  statement for my graduate work at Plymouth State University in the spring of 2008. This vision, this goal, of how I wish to see myself as an educator hasn’t changed all that much in the subsequent years. I still am a lifelong learner with an itch to teach everyone as I meander through life.

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“Just because something is impossible does not mean it is not worth doing.”

 – Derrick Bell (1994)

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