Today, on the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, I’m again reminded of when I was in eighth grade and went to see Ben Kingsley play him in the classic Oscar-winning film. I remember a big group of us went together and the pain and suffering of India, the world outside of my little town, was indelible.
Comparing childhood memories with a colleague recently, he saw the movie too but we recalled the experiences very differently. It was obviously an important film since it was playing on BOTH screens of our tiny respective town theaters (which never happened!). But he had gone to the movie with his entire grade and was made to walk the 2 miles from school to the theater in the center of town, so that, he was told, they would “feel the struggle” that Gandhi endured.
We both watched this movie with our classmates with reverence and awe and I remember the primary plot and key characters. My colleague on the other hand vividly remembered much more – the images of Gandhi’s emaciated body during his fast, his character walking through massive crowds of Indian people, the relevance and importance of Gandhi’s life and message. He told me of the walk back to school and how it later dawned on him the impact of what he experienced (the long walk) with what he learned (about Gandhi’s life and struggle) and how that association stuck with him to this day.
I’m sure my teachers told us this too. I’m sure we had read books before we went and I am sure we were supposed to learn something from all of those words. But none of that sunk in. Some of us remember the feelings and emotions we experience more than the words we hear and read. We remember the people we are with, the stories told through the experience and the meta, big picture takeaways that truly stick with us and help shape who we are and who we want to be.
My own inspiration has come from my own experiences: as a young adult living in MA, I was a Big Brother to a fantastic 10 year old inner city boy who tragically lost his life in his mid-20s. I was heartbroken but inspired by the incredible strength of his family as we laid him to rest. I was inspired by the struggle of those in Central America and adopted my now-9th grade son from drug-war-torn Guatemala (back when you could still quite easily adopt from there). I was inspired by the fortitude of those in less-developed nations who had to find fresh water for their family, as well as those dedicated to the effort to rid the oceans of plastic by selling refillable water bottles (another cause with which I’m involved). As part of that effort, I also conducted walk events to raise money to dig wells in food-insecure regions of the world where groups simulated how women and children walk all day carrying jugs of water for their family. We carried jugs of dirty water just to try and experience their struggle.
Then in 2014, when I was living in Germany and experiencing the fanaticism of the eventual World Cup Champion German team outside Frankfurt, my then 4 & 7 year old children went bonkers for collecting stickers of all the players and I thought, if soccer was going to be subliminally ingrained in them through something as simple as stickers, why not help them learn something more important?!? So after relocating back to the U.S., I formed a company devoted to stickerbooks, albeit focused on education and in an experiential way, and which I hoped also helped answer the question:
“How can we educate but also inspire our young people today?”
I am not exactly sure but since everyone loves stickers, I realized I might be onto something. It is generally understood that there are at least three styles of learning – visual, auditory and kinesthetic – and every teacher, both the aspiring and tenured, now knows about experiential learning. Common core, standardized testing and several other factors, have transferred the responsibility of extraordinary education like home economics, phys ed and learning to play an instrument, to outside of their classroom. Public Education is a big, impactful idea that came from the top of the federal government and can’t address the dynamics within every family and/or child. The state and city cannot do it all so each and every one of us has to do more for ourselves and our immediate families and communities.
And as you’ve probably guessed by now, I’m not a professional educator but rather an entrepreneur. I’m also a father who is desperately concerned about the future of our world and our people (and every aspect of it: Climate Change, Nationalism, Poverty, Gun Control, Inequality, Prejudice, Human Rights, Faith, and so on..). As I’ve been inspired throughout my own life, I launched Sticker Book Publishing to educate and inspire my own children, as well as every other child (and really, human! I know, ambitious…) around the world to learn about the indomitable human spirit, kindness, innovation and achievement, so that they too can reach their own potential and help make a difference in the world.
