(bright music)
- [Narrator] As soon as this book reaches readers,
I'm sure to be asked,
so, how long did it take you to write it?
50 years is the answer I'll give.
I've been doodling and sketchnoting
since the beginning of my life.
An inky path that has led me here.
In coming to know my journey,
perhaps you'll see a bit of yours,
and even if similarities aren't apparent,
you're likely to see the faces of your students
who want, even need to doodle and sketch their way
to brilliance as you guide their learning.
Thinking with pen in hand runs in my family.
Just like having blue eyes and freckles.
I inherited all of these.
Let me tell you about
two blue eyed freckled relatives of mine.
My grandfather and my mother.
My grandfather, Hollis Paul,
barely finished elementary school
when the tobacco fields called him away.
My grandpa did not have a depth
of literacy knowledge behind him
as he entered the world of work,
but he had a lot of reading to do.
The newspaper, to keep up with local and world events.
The Bible, to prepare for Sunday school lessons.
Letters and ledgers and all that came along with raising
a family of 12 and running a 700 acre farm.
How did Grandpa read and comprehend all of these things
with such a limited education?
One thing he did was annotate.
Everything.
Blue ink surrounded the text.
Margins full of jots and symbols.
And the text itself was underlined and circled
with arrows jetting out every which way.
My mother, Hollis' youngest daughter,
reads in much the same way,
though her formal education is more complete.
Receive a birthday card in the mail from my mom.
I'll bet ya it's annotate.
Hallmark's text emphasized, edited and added to
until it is just right.
My mother gives away her annotated books.
The most personal gift she could give.
Her own thinking.
Visually recorded forever.
So I come by this passion for keeping a handwritten record
of my thinking in the most natural of ways.
I saw those I love think with their brains
and their hands at the very same time.
I noticed as a small child struggling
to stay quiet in Church, that having a pencil in my hand,
doodling away, seemed to comfort me.
Help me think about something that was being said.
I noticed that sometimes in school,
I just wanted to sketch or doodle while I was reading.
Or while the teacher was talking.
I noticed that sometimes I was allowed to do this.
And sometimes it was forbidden.
As a junior high student, I noticed that when I studied
at home, I always had a pen in my hand.
In high school and college,
I processed information and merged my own thinking
with the text through what Harvard calls marginalia.
A blank space was an invitation to slow down and think.
Try out a pneumonic device.
Draw a symbol or a quick sketch.
And now when I'm reading or listening with a book
on an airplane or handout at a conference,
I understand with a pen or stylus in my hand.
Even though I've been exploring doodling and sketchnoting
for 50 years, only in the past 20 or so
have I been metacognitive about it.
Metacog doodling, as Lucas, a clever fourth grader put it.
I think about my thinking as I transform a page or screen
into a non-linguistic representation of my thinking.
Others showed me how my thoughts might become deeper
with a bit of ink and a willingness to slow down and think.
This book exists because I believe
we can do the same for our students.
They are amazing, brilliant humans
who deserve every available option
for making their thinking known in this world.