Next week is Teacher Appreciation Week and I personalized this shirt design to give to my oldest daughter's fabulous first grade teacher. I'm so completely thankful for her and all that she has done this year.
My daughter has been loving the book, The Day the Crayons Quit, by Drew Daywalt. In this book, a young boy finds a pack of letters from each crayon in his crayon box. They each give their perspective of his traditional use of color and offer suggestions for a different vision of crayon use.
Currently, in education there is a framework called Universal Design for Learning or UDL. It's a framework that upends the traditional stagnant classrooms of the past and seeks to create a thriving educational experience where, although the students may have the same learning objectives in mind, there are multiple paths that they can take to get there.
An excellent chart that tells the difference between a UDL classroom and a traditional classroom can be found here. I'm a huge fan of UDL and have seen teachers implement the practice in their classrooms with spectacular results. My takeaway? There are many paths to learning....
Lately, I've been expanding my own interpretation of UDL which applies it to how life can be lived. In a sense, I've extended the "learning" for "living" and am thinking of a universal design for living. In other words, what are the preferences and choices that we have for living life and how can we live our best life on our own terms?
Honestly, I'm exploring this topic more every day. I'm trying to simplify, yet dig deep. I'm trying to expand horizons, yet stay focused. I'm trying to evolve yet remain true. It's a work in progress...
"The whole point is to live life and be- to use all the colors in the crayon box." - RuPaul