If I had tried to write this post two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have had it in me.
Not because I didn’t want to, but because I was in it—running dried art projects to classrooms before the kids left, scraping paper mache clay from surfaces I didn’t know could get sticky, fielding behavior issues I never expected, and holding space for the heartaches that don’t get written into lesson plans.
But I think the universe wanted me to go the whole way through before I sat down to reflect any further. It wanted me to see what happens when the curriculum dissolves and the only thing left is what you’re made of. And what I learned—no, what I remembered—is this:
Impulse is not an enemy.
Play is not a problem.
Control is not the solution.
We spend at least 12 years of our lives—longer, if we land in corporate, service-based, or essential worker roles—being taught to suppress our impulses. Not just the destructive ones. All of them. The ones that say roll down that hill, smear your fingers through that paint, stick your hand in the mud just to see how it feels.
And it doesn’t stop when we graduate. As adults, our impulses are still monitored—only now the enforcement comes from within. We overthink our desires, edit our curiosities, and only play when it can be documented, cropped, filtered, and captioned.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped allowing ourselves to just be. Just exist. Just… play.
The Cost of Saying “No”
When I stepped into this teaching role, I had every intention of honoring kids’ curiosity. I wanted to be the kind of teacher who said “yes” more than “no”—but also the kind of teacher who didn’t get glitter embedded in the tile grout. You know, balance.
Luckily (or maybe not so luckily), I inherited some glitter.
And glue.
And baking soda. And shaving cream. And food coloring.
The teacher previous to the current art teacher had left a little alchemist’s starter kit buried in the back of a cabinet. The teacher I was covering for (who had gone on maternity leave) had warned me: I don’t do glitter and I don’t do slime.
I understood it. I really did. You can lose a whole class period to one glitter spill. Slime? A lesson in chaos theory.
But sometimes curiosity outweighs caution. And sometimes… it’s the last day of school.
The Slime Rebellion
I had my final sixth grade class—their last time in the art room before graduating to middle school and moving to another building in another town. We were going to do something simple. Calm. Reflective. That was the plan.
“CAN WE MAKE SLIME?”
“No,” I said. Then again, louder. “No.”
They begged. Pleaded. Made big eyes.
I said, “I’ve never made slime. I’ll watch a tutorial real quick. If it seems doable, maybe.”
By the time I typed “slime” into YouTube, they were already unpacking the ingredients. It was a done deal.
And guess what?
Nothing happened.
Well, I mean something happened. They laughed. They helped each other. They measured and mixed and learned from each other’s mistakes. They showed each other what worked and what didn’t. They taught me how to make slime.
We talked about who they got for new teachers at the “big” school. We laughed, they gossiped, I sat on the counter and just watched.
And when it was time to clean up, they cleaned up.
No chaos. No catastrophe. Just joy.
Could it have gone the other way? Sure. I’ve had days where impulse ran rampant. I know what it looks like when curiosity curdles. That’s why I hesitated. But this time? This time it went the other way. And that’s the memory we all get to keep.
Not the mess. Not the risk.
The joy.
In one of my previous posts I made the point that it’s important to not let fear dictate what we do or don’t allow. This was a reminder of that lessons importance.
Glue Potions and Glitter Wishes
It wasn’t just the sixth graders. The first graders got to me, too.
There was a bin of clear glue under the counter—unsupervised, unlabeled, an innocent-looking trap. I let them use it for their last projects. For the last few weeks I allowed them to explore and create whatever they felt like creating and they could use whatever materials they wanted the chance to explore. I found glue in the oddest places: under chairs, on shelves, puddled in forgotten paper cups mixed with pom-poms and confetti like tiny bubbling cauldrons.
I definitely should’ve supervised better.
But also?
They were experimenting. They were collaborating. They were inventing worlds where glitter and googly eyes were currency.
Yes, I cleaned up a mess.
Yes, I questioned my judgment.
But I also watched their faces light up. I saw them want to create. Not for a grade, not for a rubric, not because someone told them to, but because it was fun. And in that moment, fun was the lesson.
Several teachers came to me at the end of the year and commented on the expansion they noticed in their students’ creativity while I was with them, which was like fireworks for me. There was another teacher, whom I thought was distraught when she came in and saw them all working on random bits of weird creations, but she was actually elated and inspired by the things that were happening organically.
Collaboration, experimentation, use of materials.
A Moment of Reckoning (and Glitter Confession)
When the teacher I was covering came back this week—with her brand-new baby in tow—I was elbow-deep in cleaning chairs and scraping dried paint off tables to close down her classroom. We exchanged stories, I filled her in on new students, and shared victories. I told her about students who blossomed, who found a new love for art, who matured in real time before my eyes. She filled me in on being a mom, she recommends 10/10 btw.
Then she asked:
“So… tell me about the horrors.”
And I did. I told her about the messes, the paint-smeared hair, the glue potions, the fat lip, the tears, and the kid she had warned me about who took a running start and slid through a puddle of red paint water like it was home base. I told her about finding my angry teacher voice, which she applauded and confirmed, “sometimes you have to”.
I also told her about the growth. The shifts. The kids who surprised me. The ones who finally found something that made them feel seen. The ones who just needed one adult to say “yes.”
Then I admitted the unthinkable:
“We glittered. And… we made slime.”
She smiled. “I get it.”
The Case for Chaos
One of the most important conversations I had was with a classroom teacher after a particularly difficult day (this was in my last post, but there’s an adorable update). I had been trying to figure out a class that was persistently wild—no matter what structure or strategy I tried.
I told her about my attempts to individualize. The music. The reward systems. The behavior tracking. The mini-conferences. She listened patiently.
Then she said something that stopped me in my tracks:
“You’re not going to save them. Not with five weeks left.”
It wasn’t harsh. It wasn’t defeatist. It was… accurate. And freeing. It wasn’t even five weeks, it was five, 45 minute classes. Less than, once you took into account all of the end of year schedule changes, field trips, and activities.
She saw the wheels turning in my head—me plotting engagement strategies and building elaborate scaffolds for kids who might never climb them. She didn’t tell me to give up.
She just told me the truth.
On the last day of class, I told them, “if you are still working on a paper mache project and want to try to finish it, please do. The rest of you, if you can give me 20 minutes of solid cleaning and organization, we’re spending the rest of the class outside.”
They cheered and dove in. Four or five of them got their projects out and poured themselves into finishing a cat house and a foam cupcake. The others went ham scrubbing tables, the floor, cleaning brushes and wiping out bins.
I noticed a handful of them over in a corner drawing quietly at a recently cleaned table, led by one of the usual offenders but they weren’t bothering anyone and they were actually doing something so I let it be.
When we got outside I got to watch them be the kids that they are, with no other expectations on them, and they got to see me laugh and enjoy the sunlight with no other expectations on me. We got our last moment to joyfully coexist and actually see one another.
When it was time to go inside and line up, the few who had been suspiciously quiet in the corner told me there was something on my chair in my borrowed office.
The Possibility in Play
Letting students play doesn’t mean you’ve lost control. It means you’re building trust.
When I caved and said “yes” to slime, I didn’t just permit a mess—I permitted inquiry. I opened the door to:
- Future special effects artists
- Inventors of strange substances
- Curious chemists
- Kids who needed one last “little” art room memory before middle school
Could it have gone another way? Absolutely.
Could they have ruined their clothes? Yes.
Could they have turned it into a projectile? Definitely.
But they didn’t.
And even if they had? That wouldn’t have made the original impulse wrong. It would have made it a learning moment. And we’d all pivot again together.
That’s what play does. It gives you somewhere to go. Somewhere real.
Letting Go of the Value Machine
Not everything has to be productive.
Not every action has to be efficient.
Not every creative moment has to yield a result.
Let go of the value machine.
That urge to ask:
- What does this do?
- Is it useful?
- Is it good enough to share?
- Will anyone care?
Kill the impulse to monetize, optimize, perform. Let yourself play like a kid with a cup of glue and a pom-pom. Make something pointless. Make a mess. See what happens.
Because if there’s one thing this teaching experience cracked open in me above all others, it’s this:
I was suffocating under the weight of doing it all, “right.”
And now?
I’m slowly cutting myself loose. I thought I had freed myself just by taking a chance with this opportunity, but the truth is that it was just the beginning.
I’ve begun to re-discover parts of myself that were long buried, and I’m ready to keep going and see what else is down there because I can’t even recognize the person I was a year ago.
That guy would have grimaced at the idea of being “trapped” in a room alone with small children.
That guy would have brought the energy in the room down.
That guy would have been way too uptight and critical to make it through the first week.
I’m not that guy. That is the best feeling.
Call to Action:
What would you do today if nobody were watching? If there were no grade, no metric, no social media post to prove it happened?
Go do that thing.
Play. Laugh. Make slime. Glitter with abandon.
And if you’re lucky enough to still hear the whisper of an impulse, follow it. That’s where your joy lives. That’s where you live.
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