The real magic wand is the child’s own mind.
– Jose Ortega y Gasset

In her online article, “The Image of The Teacher,” Pam Oken-Wright declares,

“The things we want for children, we should also want for teachers. In Embracing Challenges in Early Childhood Education: Flexible Protocols for the Thinking Teacher, due to be released by Routledge in July 2025, I propose that what we want for children is that they will:

• Develop awake minds
• Pay attention to their own curiosity and have the disposition to follow it
• Develop a disposition toward inquiry
• Experience pleasure in learning
• Feel a desire to communicate and act on that desire
• Reach for relationships and know how to sustain them
• Challenge themselves
• Develop cognitive and emotional flexibility (Oken-Wright 2026)

In her book, Pursuing Bad Guys (part of the Reimagining Our Work series) Donna King follows Oken-Wright’s encouragement to pay attention to children’s curiosity and follow it. As the author begins to deeply notice what children are trying to express through their intense interest in “bad guys,” she and her class go on a marvelous journey of discovery. Her book is a beautiful example of learning from and with children in the most authentic, “awakened” way.