Why Students Love a Schizophrenic Teacher

In his creative memoir, former elementary teacher and nominee for National Teacher of the Year, Greg Vander-Haeghen, crusades to save education from banality, myopia, and mind-numbing standardized-test obsession, all thanks to his students-who understood that inner space is no less worthwhile as an exciting frontier than the Wild West or Outer Space or the Marianas Trench, and the line that divides creativity, insight, wonder and joy from craziness is meaningless. Indeed, welcome to Mr. V's world at Energy Elementary School, the site of a former nuclear power plant, in the fictitious town of Earl, California. And welcome to a classroom like no other, given that Mr. V, an off-the-wall, schizophrenic, constructivist-zealot teacher, who often zigs when the educational system zags, and allows a class full of International G.A.T.E. and at-Risk students to flourish and fail and largely find their own way in a highly-supportive environment. Call it Creative Curriculum. Journey through the course of a calendar year as you follow the ups and downs, and all-arounds, of a teacher who allows his students to do such outrageous things as scream, paint, cogitate and mud-wrestle during standardized testing. Or, construct a most unusual zoo in class. Or, create their own curriculum. Or, interact with holograms. All in a day's study. Along the way, the students exhibit their individual geniuses while Mr. V. questions and reflects upon the pathology of our educational system, and promotes a chaotic classroom where the students make their own rules. In Room 25, noise is good and chaos rocks.