The show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys opened up a whole new world to me; I knew someone had brought those creatures to life on the screen, so why couldn’t I do the same on paper? Armed with my own Herculean adventure, I shared my story proudly during show-and-tell time in my third-grade class.

The result? One of just many creativity scars: ”I’ve never heard no third grader talk about Greek mythology. Just bring a toy next time.”

I can draw a line through each one of these scars–

”No one needs another high fantasy story like this one. Tolkien did it best.”

“PhD work is not for everyone. Don’t you do something with pools?”

“It’s great that you have an animated avatar which talks to your students about the concepts in the coursework, but let’s be honest: it’s just bells and whistles.”

As I continue to swim upstream, I can see ebbs and flows in my creative confidence. We say we are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion–that is–so long as you follow the same pathways that have been carved out in the academic landscape before you. Be physically in class. Don’t make a class intended to be in-person so accessible that it can run asynchronously if needed--after all, students have to have a reason to come to class. 

What if we reclaimed a bit of creative confidence for ourselves as teachers–no, strike that– for ourselves as lifelong learners, by rapidly iterating new versions of the writing course experience? 

Take the story of the Three Little Pigs for example. Its moral is clear: hard work, diligence, and dedication pay off, hence why the brick and mortar house survives. I invite you to suspend your disbelief for a moment, and consider a retelling in which we don’t assign moral value to the material construction of the homes. How about a new title: The Three Little Pigs and the Technology Hound?

What if we liken the straw home construction to that of building an asynchronous course experience? Naysayers would argue that in the wake of the pandemic, let’s blow the house down because students didn’t learn anything. What if we stopped being the “red penners” and just started a napkin sketch of how to solve our problem? What if we saw every tech glitch or frustrated user as an opportunity to rebuild and reconfigure–to keep our work human-centered?

It also may be easy to say that the straw house was the simplest one for me to draw. Even with all my amateur art experience, I had many false starts and failed experiments, but with each new digital canvas, I learned. I refined. I created confidently.

Stick house. Less malleable, more structure–but still relatively easy to blow down, though not as easy as the straw classroom. What if this version was likened to the synchronous online writing class; we have recurring required meetings with more direct guidance–sturdier material–those sticks. Okay so this drawing was faster and more deliberate, and like my synchronous online classes, having done the rapid prototyping required for an asynchronous class taught me a lot about how to effectively use class time. Yet, the technology hound has to mediate this one too. Blow it down. Those horrible lectures that droned on for over an hour? That never happens in a physical classroom. Cue the crickets.

Return to the brick-and-mortar school experience. Traditional students need to be in person. It’s what they paid for. How many of those “traditional” college students were responsible for some level of caregiving in the home? Didn’t we notice how students struggle with the big bad wolf of technology that they are supposed to be keenly adept at using?

Like my drawing, there were many “happy accidents” as Bob Ross would say during triaged post-pandemic teaching that could reveal so many possibilities for a better educational future. We are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We think creatively, broadly, and collaboratively to generate solutions for course delivery that is accessible to all: The veteran. The working parent. The adult returning student. The first-generation college student. The traditional college kid. The ___________. 

The Kelley (2013) brothers were right: “[...] the words we choose do more than just reflect our thought patterns–they shape them,” (p. 198).

Three Little Pigs House Illustrations: Ashlyn Walden via Procreate

Hydra vs. Hercules GIF: Ashlyn Walden via Procreate

Swimmer GIF: Jelly London via Giphy

Notecard Paperclip: OpenClipart-Vectors via Pixabay

Sticky Note: OpenClipart-Vectors via Pixabay

Pigs: André Santana AndreMS from Pixabay 

Wolf: OpenClipart-Vectors via Pixabay

Name badge: Maicon Fonseca Zanco from Pixabay 

Paper: Schmidsi via Pixabay

Books on the Table: Taras Hrytsak via Unsplash

Hobbit Home: Douglas Bagg via Unsplash

Epic Cinematic Discovery Trailer by AdobeStock

Epic Opener by AdobeStock

Kelley, T., & Kelley, D. (2013). Creative confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within us all. Crown Business.