When Anastasia Became A Monster

The monsters under Anastasia’s bed had been keeping her awake. Their usual growling, snarling and belching had been bad enough, but lately there had been an increase in howling, moaning and bellyaching. Anastasia had become increasingly indignant at the utter rudeness of her neighbors dwelling down there in their land of dust bunnies.

“Of course they must live,” she said to herself. “And of course they must live in their natural habitat. And they will, after all, make some noise, but I simply must be allowed to sleep!”

Up until then Anastasia had more or less ignored the monsters. They were down there; she was up here. She let them have any toys that rolled under the bed, while they avoided attacking her ankles as she got in and out of bed. Otherwise she rarely thought of them.

But now, in the darkest part of the night, she was thinking about those monsters. She pulled her flashlight from under her pillow and hung over the edge of her bed to shine its beam into the monster’s domain. “Hey, keep it down!”

The monsters fell silent.

Satisfied, Anastasia pulled her self back into bed, but minutes later the monsters were back at it.

“Hey, monsters! I’m trying to sleep up here!” she shouted.

They again fell silent before a single monster voice cried out, “Just who do you think you are?!”

“I’m Anastasia, that’s who -- the girl who sleeps in this bed. The one who keeps a roof over your head.”

Anastasia heard some scrambling, then felt something moving on her bed. She turned her flashlight in that direction and sure enough it was a very angry monster.

“Ho-ho,” said the monster. “So it’s you who keep a roof over our heads, is it? How about it’s us who keep a floor under you!”

This was outrageous. “For your information, monster, you’ve been making entirely too much noise under there. If this keeps up I’ll be forced to ask you to leave.”

The monster sputtered and putrid yellow bile flew from his lips. “Perhaps it will be us who ask you to leave!”

“Why would I leave my own bed?” Anastasia demanded.

The monster answered, “Because of that racket you’ve been making on our roof every morning, just as the babies are getting sleep. They keep the rest of us up half the day with their crying. And now listen to them. It’s the middle of the night – normally the most cheerful part of the day – and they’re howling, moaning and bellyaching.”

Anastasia reflected that she had lately developed the habit of jumping on her bed each morning before getting dressed for school. It was her workout. Who were these creatures to tell her not to jump on her bed when even her own parents allowed it?

Just then a heart-piercing wail came from below.

“This is your fault,” said the monster who stomped off in a fury.

For the rest of the night the monsters’ hideous sounds were louder and more varied.






















The following morning, exhausted and bitter, Anastasia jumped so furiously on her bed that even her mother asked her to stop.

Her day was monstrous. She growled at her father. She snarled at the bus driver. She belched during a spelling test and was laughed at by the whole class. She dozed through lunch and was sent home with a note from her teacher insisting that she get more sleep.

She didn’t put up a fight when she was sent to bed early. When the monsters began their cacophony she leapt to the floor with her flashlight and presented the note.

“Do you see this?” she asked. “My teacher commands you to let me sleep.”


“Do you see this?” answered the monster, wielding a paper of its own, “This is a cease and desist order from the high court. If you jump on that bed again, we’ll call the cops!”

“You’ll hear from my lawyer!” shouted Anastasia, who bounded onto the bed and gave it a thorough jumping.

The monsters responded with yowls, caterwauls and shrieks.


The following morning came far too soon for Anastasia who was barely able to drag herself from bed. She dozed and crabbed the entire day.

That night as she lay there grinding her teeth at the monsters’ ruckus she formulated a plan. Anastasia slipped quietly into the hallway where she retrieved the vacuum cleaner from the closet. Then she directed the nozzle under her bed. With a sudden whine the machine came to life, sucking up everything in sight. “That should take care of them,” she muttered with an evil chuckle.

When she returned from restoring the vacuum to its spot in the hallway closet, she found her bed striped down to the bare mattress – her sheets, pillow and stuffed animals were gone. Then with horror she remembered, “Blankie!” Her beloved Blankie was gone!



Blind with despair and rage, Anastasia snatched up a baseball bat, fell to her stomach, and began swinging it wildly under the bed. Moments later she screamed in pain as the monsters sank their fangs into her flesh. An enormous battle ensued. Blood and bruises proliferated. Nasty things were said. Viciousness ruled the field.


After a very long battle, Anastasia lost consciousness.



When she awoke she lay amidst the ruin of her room, surrounded by the nearly lifeless bodies of the monsters. Everything had been decimated. She barely had the energy to raise her throbbing head. That’s when she noticed small bits of Blankie scattered about. She looked at the monsters with cold hatred.






















It was that hatred that allowed her to finally move her hand. She picked up a chunk of ceiling tile with which to clobber her nearest enemy. As she raised her weapon over her head she took aim, then hesitated. It was a monster baby, sleeping peacefully.

She couldn’t hit a baby, could she? Even a monster baby?

The monster baby growled gently, snarled with satisfaction, and belched in contentment.


Anastasia dropped her arm. Her hatred wasn’t strong enough. In fact it was no longer even strong enough to keep her awake. She drifted sweetly asleep to the familiar sounds of the monster baby.

After a long rest, Anastasia and the monsters awoke together. As they were barely able to move from their wounds, a truce was called.

Anastasia agreed that the monsters had every right to live under the bed, but only under the condition that they avoided excessive growling, snarling and belching, while foregoing howling, moaning, bellyaching, yowling, caterwauling and shrieking altogether. For their part the monsters conceded Anastasia’s claim to sleep on their roof, but only if she agreed to relocate her morning jump to her parents’ bed.



Then a very important thing happened. Anastasia said, “I’m sorry.”

The monster smiled. “We’re sorry, too. How could we have let things get so out of hand?”

“All of this and we’re right back where we started,” sighed Anastasia.

Her room was a shambles, her body injured, and her reputation besmirched. She no longer had Blankie. And even worse, her heart felt wounded from all the rage, despair and hatred.

The monster replied, pointing to the destruction, “All of this and we’re even worse off than we started.”

They tried to laugh, but it hurt too much.

Over the next few days Anastasia’s body began to heal. The abrasions clotted and the bruises faded.



One night she pulled out her flashlight and peered under the bed. “Is everything all right down there?” she asked.

“I hurt right here,” the monster said, pointing to his heart.

“Me too,” she answered. Then without thinking she said, “I became a monster.”

“And I,” said the monster, “became a human.”

It hurt them to laugh, but a little less than before.

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Teacher Tom's First Book

As many of you already know, I've been working on a book these last many months. Indeed, if it hadn't been for encouragement from readers, there's no way I'd have done it. This morning I'm happy to announce that our website has gone live and while the book itself, Teacher Tom's First Book, is still a few weeks away from being available to thumb through, we're taking pre-orders now. Here's the link if you're interested. (If you are in Australia, click here. For the time being, those of you in New Zealand can place a pre-order by emailing Resources@inspiredec.com. We expect to be able to take pre-orders from Europe and Asia by early next week, please bear with us.)

When I was a younger man, I really, really wanted to publish a book, although back then I was determined that it would be a novel. In fact, somewhere on my hard drive there are five novel length manuscripts, none of which will ever see the light of day. I hold a degree in journalism, but the novel was my gold standard.

I spent many years in business, working in communications, public relations and whatnot, but then broke free and managed to work as a freelance writer for the next dozen or so years. Always in the back of my mind was the idea of a book, but that's not what anyone apparently wanted to pay me to do. I got plenty of work as a copywriter, journalist, editor and other kinds of writing, but for me a book meant fiction and there were no buyers. I did get a couple gigs as a ghostwriter so there are a couple books out there in the world that I "wrote," but then signed over to another author.

Shortly after I began teaching, I was approached by an outfit that was publishing a series of city tour guides for parents. They wanted me to be the author of the Seattle edition. I got it done and I'm proud of it, but it wasn't really a proper "writing" project in that most of what it involved was researching various attractions and points-of-interest around the area then creating little blurbs about them. Nevertheless, the result was a book with my name on the cover: A Parent's Guide to Seattle. Last I checked, there were used copies available on Amazon for less than two dollars.

The best thing about that project was that it sort of satisfied the urge to produce a book even if it wasn't the great American novel, and so, being checked off the bucket list, it hasn't been among my top-line aspirations for some time.

When I discovered blogging back in 2009, I feel like I found my true "art form," and I've not looked back. I write here almost every day and at the risk of sounding boastful, I feel like I'm threatening to become pretty good at it. That said, for the last several years, several times a week, readers have been asking me "When is your book coming out?" At first, I simply took it as flattery, but over time I was finally persuaded that there were some people, at least, who wanted to see an actual book.

So now I've done it. I can't wait to hold a copy in my hands. In many ways this is better than that novel I dreamt of in my youth. It may or may not be a work of quality. It may or may not be a work of value. Those are things for others to judge, but I can say that whatever else it is, it is a work that is uniquely mine, a product of both who I am and who I am becoming, and of that I'm very proud.

I want to thank all of you who have urged me write this book and who read my daily blog posts. Without you it really never would have happened.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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In Real Life, I Assure You, There Is No Such Thing As Art

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra. ~Fran Lebowitz

For me, the moment of despair and frustration tended to come upon me while sitting in the hot circle of a high intensity desk lamp, alone and blurry-eyed. Why do I have to do this? I'll never use it in real life. And indeed I know I am not the only one who hasn't factored a quadratic equation since high school, yet I do employ some of the philosophy, the hard logic, of algebra nearly every day. I was right about the specifics, but wrong about its usefulness.

No one ever pretended to explain to me how algebra would be applicable to real life, yet no one, even me, ever doubted that there was value in studying it. We chuckle at the Fran Lebowitz joke because for most of us it's true, but we never once consider stripping algebra from the curriculum.

Usefulness, applicability, practicality: these are tricky words when it comes to education. Many of the things we learn in school are not obviously useful, applicable, or practical in the vocational sense, but we rarely doubt they are essential.

Art (and in that I include music, dance, theater, etc.) of all our academic pursuits, stands virtually alone when it comes to having to defend itself in terms of usefulness.

Not long ago, a reader wrote:

. . . the school our kids are going to has a big emphasis on art but by the end of the 6 years all the kid's artwork looks the same.

I don't know anything about that specific school. I'm sure it's a fine school, but when the art classes are producing cookie cutter art, it's likely because the curriculum has been tainted with the curse of usefulness, applicability, and practicality. These things should not be the starting point for education, but viewed rather as its inevitable bi-products, just as the hard logic of algebra remains with me long after I've forgotten how to solve for x.

As a preschool teacher in a progressive cooperative school, I don't generally feel the pressures to teach "useful" stuff. Everyone in my protected little world seems to embrace the notion of an open-ended, exploratory art process, one in which the end result is secondary to the act of creation. My colleagues teaching older children, however, especially as they approach middle school, feel intense pressure to demonstrate usefulness in everything they do, particularly when it comes to art.  Art for art's sake is all well and good for preschoolers, but now it's time to knuckle down and get serious. It's an attitude that often forces art teachers to focus on artistic technique over actual creativity. Art students in this environment often find themselves learning more about "useful" things like composition, brush work, and color theory, than about their own creative process.

Artist, teacher, and rattle snake wrangler Anna Golden from over at Atelierista once expressed her frustration in having to defend art education:

Sometimes I have to justify art education to people as a tool for getting into college, or something . . . but really, what's wrong with art, anyway? What if we all drew things and danced and sang? Would that be so bad? And why can't these rigid thinkers see that artists don't see what they do as genres or labels? It's just making stuff, or being who you are, or exploring. I so wish people could see art the way young children see it. It makes me want to think of a new name for this thing we do. Let's call it creative thinking, or fun, or learning, or Fred. That'll fool them! 

She really touched the right note when it comes to my own artistic endeavors. More often than not, when I get to work on something, I start with the question, "I wonder if I can even do this?"

When I made the piece in the picture below, for instance, it started with the idea of a saw embedded in the stack of books.

If you want to see more of my art click here for my online gallery.

There's a part of me that wants to make up a story about this piece of art after the fact, one that demonstrates my deep thinking on the relationship of humans to their knowledge, tools, and the creative process, but the honest truth is that I just thought it would look cool.

I carried the idea around in my head for weeks, not necessarily planning to make it, but one day as I killed time in a thrift shop (not an unlikely hang out for a middle class bag lady) I spotted this incomplete set of the The Complete Handyman Encyclopedia. I was struck immediately with the corny joke about an incomplete complete encyclopedia and liked the idea of my saw slicing into these particular books. While standing at the cash register forking over $7, I thought it would look particularly cool to sink four long bolts through them as well. I had no idea if it was even possible to do what I was thinking about doing. Or rather, I had no idea if it was even possible for me to do it. It was exciting to finally fire up the circular saw and lay into those books. Would the spinning blade cut properly or just shred the cardboard and paper? Would it be a nice clean cut like I envisioned or would it be a mess? How deeply should I cut? Is it dangerous to be using this tool for this purpose? Will the cut be too wide to hold the hand saw securely? Would I have to resort to glue? What kind of glue? These and dozens of other creative questions and challenges raced through my head even while I was in the process of angling into the tops of those do-it-yourself manuals. Everything about getting those bolts installed was a struggle. I cursed and sweat. I regretted that I didn't have a drill press, but only the measly 3/8" hand drill I've been using since I was in college. The paper dust kept getting impacted in the holes, and the holes refused to line up through the entire stack. I had to stop frequently because the pages kept smoking, threatening to burst into flames -- at least that was my fear. Would some scorch marks add or detract from the finished piece? I sweat and I cursed and I nearly gave it up several times. At one point there were tears of frustration in my eyes, and as I tightened down the last of the nuts, cinching the entire thing into a flexed muscle of kinetic energy, I experienced a wave of relief and joy and "I did it, you stupid m----r f-----r!" that can only come from being on the other side of the creative process.

Just making stuff. Being who I am. Exploring. 

Not long ago, I was out to dinner with a businessman who was going on about his idea that every child, whatever they plan to do with their lives, should have the experience of being "on the line for making a profit." I don't disagree, but the same argument applies to making cool stuff (which is what I think we ought to rename "art" if that's something we need to do). 

When a child approaches our art table, easels, or work bench, she most often just gets right to work, although sometimes she'll ask, "What are we doing?"

The right answer is, "I don't know," or simply to start listing the materials at hand, "I see tape, paint, scissors, pipe cleaners . . .

. . . and trust them to explore, curse, sweat and struggle their way through their own creative process on the way to making cool stuff.

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as art. But knowing how you make it can change your life.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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Crayon Sculpture Masters

This is one of those art activities that I'd thought of retiring. I mean, it's cool -- you melt crayons and pour the wax into molds you've made from playdough -- but it really hadn't engaged the kids over the past few years and it's a bit of a pain to prepare. In fact, we didn't even try it last year.

The first step in this process is to grab a chunk of playdough and to find something interesting with which to make an impression. We provided a collection of small toy figurines, game parts, toy cars, and other objects. 

Nearly twenty years ago, my extended family agreed to limit ourselves to $5 holiday gifts with an emphasis on handmade. The real gift of this agreement is that we spend far less time in stores over the holidays and far more making things at home. This year, as I browsed the school supplies aisle, I noted that boxes of 64 crayons cost about $4.50. Perfect. I decided to make melted crayon "sculptures" for my family and in the process do all the things I always imagined kids doing.

Meanwhile the crayons are melting. It's quicker and easier with a microwave, which is what I did at home, but in lieu of that, we used this rig: a hot plate with a pan of water we kept just at the boiling point. I and parent-teachers had striped and sorted the crayons by color in advance. I've had the kids do these steps in the past. It's not an easy or fast process unless you use a sharp blade (one too sharp for the kids to use) to cut the paper away. That left them to a tedious job that hurt your fingernails. This might be a big part of the reason why kids lost interest in the past few years. Having this step already completed got the kids immediately involved in making their sculptures.

I wish I'd taken photos of the things I made for my family, but I didn't. I just scoured the apartment for interesting objects that somehow connected me to each person. For instance, I gave my mother-in-law a multi-colored crayon re-creation of a table top puzzle her recently deceased husband once obsessed over for an entire evening, finally solving it with a joyful shout of, "It's symmetrical! The solution is symmetrical!" I gave these sculptures to everyone with the admonishment to use them as crayons. I don't want anyone to feel obliged to curate the things I give them. We all already have too much crap in our closets and drawers.

When the child is ready, we hand them their cup of melted crayon which they pour into their mold. Then we have to wait. Depending on how deep the impression is, this can take from 3-15 minutes.

Most of the kids overfill their molds. We just scrape up the excess with a spatula and return it to the melting pot.

One of the best things about doing this project over the course of an entire week is that the kids got to experiment. This princess figurine, for instance, has a very thin neck, which meant the sculpture was prone to break at the neck when we removed the playdough. It took several attempts before we made a deep enough impression that it didn't break. Children also figured out that smaller, less elaborate toys tended to result in the most satisfying sculptures.

I was so happy with the results that it inspired me to renew my efforts to introduce this process to the kids. 

Like I said, the last few times we trotted this project out, the kids mostly steered clear, and even those who did engage, tended to do so in a one-and-done fashion. Some were worried about mess, others about the hot wax. I don't think I did anything differently this time other than to be a bit more enthusiastic, and perhaps a bit less cautionary, due to my own recent successes. Maybe that's enough. Whatever the case, a good portion of our 4-5's class attempted to pour at least one mold, while several settled in for the day in an effort to perfect their techniques.

At the end of the first day, they asked if we could do it again the next day. At the end of the next day, they asked if we could do it the next . . . It's the first time in my 14 years at Woodland Park that we did the same art project for an entire week. And we now have a classroom full of melted crayon sculpture masters.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

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