Lessons from Fifth Graders

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

My friend Mario recently told me that if you want to enact lasting change in the arts, work with children.

I can’t get that idea out of my head because I know he is right. I’ve experienced it both in my own life and as a teacher.

It reminded me of how a few years ago, I helped a group of fifth-grade boys write their own opera in collaboration with the MET.

I remember how we transformed the space into their very own 'Writer's Room' to help them find their words.

I told them, "Art happens over time. In fact, a production may occur over many years. But the key to it all? Collaboration."

I can still see their eyes widen in response to how long it takes to create great work.

I encouraged them to contemplate the value in creating art and how a simple phrase like “yes and” can be life-changing.

It is not lost on me how powerful it is to stand in front of a room of young students and ask them, “What do you want to take responsibility for in your art?”

It’s a question I constantly contemplate in my own life.

I wonder where those boys are now and how I wish I could tell them that they gave me a lot of hope for the future.

What do you want to take responsibility for in your life? How can that guide your day today?

A CREATIVE TOOL

A few months ago, I came across the painter Michael Hafftka on social media and was immediately struck by his enthusiasm. In that moment, I told myself, I will find a way to meet this person.

This past Thursday I visited his studio in Brooklyn and had the most incredible conversations with him and his wife.

It reminded me of perhaps the most potent creative tool of all - community.

A PIECE OF ART

“Ego” by Denise Duhamel

I just didn't get it— even with the teacher holding an orange (the earth) in one hand and a lemon (the moon) in the other, her favorite student (the sun) standing behind her with a flashlight.

I just couldn't grasp it— this whole citrus universe, these bumpy planets revolving so slowly no one could even see themselves moving.

I used to think if I could only concentrate hard enough I could be the one person to feel what no one else could, sense a small tug from the ground, a sky shift, the earth changing gears.

Even though I was only one mini-speck on a speck, even though I was merely a pinprick in one goosebump on the orange, I was sure then I was the most specially perceptive, perceptively sensitive. I was sure then my mother was the only mother to snap, "The world doesn't revolve around you!"

The earth was fragile and mostly water, just the way the orange was mostly water if you peeled it, just the way I was mostly water if you peeled me.

Looking back on that third grade science demonstration, I can understand why some people gave up on fame or religion or cures— especially people who have an understanding of the excruciating crawl of the world, who have a well-developed sense of spatial reasoning and the tininess that it is to be one of us.

But not me—even now I wouldn't mind being god, the force who spins the planets the way I spin a globe, a basketball, a yoyo. I wouldn't mind being that teacher who chooses the fruit, or that favorite kid who gives the moon its glow.

Grateful,

Michael