The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain

by Annie Murphy Paul

For decades, educator Ron Berger towed around a rolling suitcase filled with hundreds of such models: sketches, poems, and essays created by children, which he would pull out and share with teachers and students at schools around the country. Among his favorite examples is a picture he calls “Austin’s Butterfly,” drawn by a first-grader in Boise, Idaho. When he displays the drawing—which depicts a tiger swallowtail butterfly in graceful detail—students often murmur in awe. Berger’s aim is to inspire his audience with examples of excellent work by their peers, but also to demonstrate to them how such work is made. One by one he shows them the six drafts Austin produced on the way to his finished drawing, and tells them about the constructive critiques Austin received from his classmates at each stage. The contents of Berger’s rolling suitcase are now available in an online archive—but he has found that many teachers and parents object to the use of models, afraid that it will suppress students’ creativity and originality. In fact the opposite is true, says Berger, who spent twenty-eight years as a classroom teacher before becoming chief academic officer of the nonprofit organization EL Education. Seeing examples of outstanding work motivates students by giving them a vision of the possible.