Creating+Builds+Confidence+and+Identity

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 Willard Wigan has dyslexia. He can’t read. Can’t write. When he remembers being in school, he remembers feeling like nothing. A nobody. Yet, he is definitely a somebody in the art world. Nevertheless, Wigan’s life’s work exists on a scale that most of us cannot even comprehend, possibly even imagine. How many times do think he was told it couldn’t be done? How many times do you think he was told to stop building houses for ants and “make something of himself?” Yet, Wigan didn’t listen. He found his own voice, his own dream… And now, he believes he is Something, Somebody.  Everyday in classrooms around the world, there are students who feel like nothing. Students who feel like they have no control over the direction of their formal education, who feel bored with rote memorization, who feel trapped by the restrictions of traditional assignments and rubrics. Their education is meaningless to them.  Yet, when we put the power of learning, the power of creating, into the students’ hands and see the reaches they can achieve, something surprising happens. They don’t see the limits that we as adults assume are there. They don’t know what is too big or too small to achieve. Anything is possible. And in the face of creating these unseen possibilities, our students discover that they have more potential and worth that they had imagined. They become Something.