October 6, 2026Excellence in Action: Part 5 | Mr. Taylor Verboom, Grade 1 ADST

Excellence in Action:
Inside the Classrooms of Aberdeen Hall

What does exceptional teaching actually look like in practice? In this series, former High School Principal Grant Ozechowski visits classrooms across all three divisions to observe authentic, everyday learning and ask students directly what makes their teachers great. Each feature highlights how our faculty bring the core pillars and key actions of Aberdeen Hall’s Strategic Direction to life.

Strategic Pillar: Our Programs
Key Actions Satisfied: Designing Dynamic and Responsive Lessons; Engaging Students in Authentic, Experiential Learning

In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson posited that “schools kill creativity.” His presentation is one of the most famous TED Talks of all time. In it, he supported his claim that schools extinguish creativity in students when they stigmatize failure and celebrate compliance. Schools often rely on courses in the Arts and ADST to break this trend. However, when I visited Taylor Verboom’s Grade 1 ADST class, I was unsure what I was going to witness. Can a Grade 1 class really teach creative thinking? Can an ADST teacher build an environment where failure is not a disappointment? I had these questions and more in mind when I dropped into Taylor’s class.

The students filter in one by one, finding their way to a predetermined seat. Moments later, Mr. Verboom strides to the front of the class, where he has installed a length of cord stretched from the ceiling to the tabletop in front of him. The students wait impatiently; they know that they have a new challenge coming and are excited to get cracking.

Mr. Verboom makes a dramatic gesture signalling that class is about to start, and begins to spin a story, “Way down the road, there’s a place called Enderby. There’s a really cool hike at Enderby cliffs that overlooks the valley below. One day, a hiker climbed up the cliffs to admire the view. Unfortunately, while they were at the top they got a little too brave, and stood a little too close to the edge, and sadly they fell. Not too far, but just far enough to get hurt. They couldn’t walk, and they called mountain rescue. You are the rescue team.” By this point in his tale the students are buzzing with enthusiasm, they can’t wait to tackle this challenge. Mr. Verboom continues, “In your rescue bag, you have a cool zip-line gun, but you don’t have a device to carry the hiker from the top to the bottom on the line, so you’ll need to make one. You have cardboard, pipe cleaners, tape, scissors, popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and your imagination. Today’s challenge is to design the carrying device that can get your lost hiker off the cliff.” Taylor’s fingers play with the makeshift zip-line as he delivers the last words dramatically.

The class oohs and ahhs as the details of the unfortunate hiker unfold. “I already have an idea!” one eager student exclaims, his eyes alight with visions of solving the problem.

Mr. Verboom goes on to explain that the students will be working in small groups, and that each group will have ten minutes to build their device. It has to be big enough to carry their hiker (which looks a lot like a chess piece to me, but I lack a Grade 1’s imagination) down the zip-line. “I won’t give you any help for the first eight minutes,” he says, “but then we can test your creation and see how it works. Then we’ll set some goals and you can make adjustments before our final test at the end of class.”

Each group hastily gathers their supplies, and soon the classroom is awash in pipe cleaners, masking tape, and cardboard. Students bend over their work, imagining how their contraption will look as it slides down the 10-foot zip-line at the front of the class.

I ask Mr. Verboom what makes his class work. “The key is to keep things moving. Break the class into small chunks. I never give them more than eight minutes before moving on to the next step. I try to imagine as many problems that could arise beforehand so I can address them in advance. And I always remember to leave time at the end of class to clean up!”

At the moment, the eight minutes allotted for building are almost out, and Mr. Verboom has attached the first test project to the makeshift zip-line. He releases it and it plummets down the cord, crashing into the tabletop. “Oh boy, that one is giving your guy a super scary ride. Maybe you should figure out how to slow it down a bit,” he says before sending the group back to the drawing board.

Moments later, a second group watches as their device descends the zip-line. “That one looked like a safe ride, but it fell over at the bottom. Maybe you could work on keeping it from tipping,” he adds. Group after group tests their first designs. Each one succeeds in providing a teachable moment, and each group receives some new goals from Mr. Verboom. Teams busily add new elements to their designs, imagining solutions to the problems that arose during their test runs.

Eight minutes later, the class gathers together to watch their finished products. Each device is celebrated as it successfully navigates the line. Some still tip, others still careen hastily to the bottom. Some slide gracefully to a stop with the chess piece nestled safely inside. Regardless, each student brims with enthusiasm for their efforts.

Moments later, after cleaning up the scraps of cardboard and unused pipe cleaners, the class gathers again at the front. “Tell me something you learned, and something that was hard,” Taylor asks. Some respond that they learned to listen to their partner; others say that they learned to speak up when they had an idea. One boy says he watched what another group did well and adapted it into their design, while another student describes how overcoming initial failure paved the way to their eventual success. Not bad for a group of Grade 1 would-be engineers.

So, what did Mr. Verboom teach me? Well, I learned that schools won’t kill creativity if the teacher is willing to take a couple of risks. Taylor didn’t have to make up a story to teach his class, but the tale of the lost hiker is what captured the students’ imagination. Taylor didn’t have to incorporate a mandatory test run into his challenge, but adding this phase demonstrated that all designs start with some form of initial struggle and failure. Taylor didn’t have to give the students so much freedom—he could have provided them with step-by-step instructions to build their device. But giving them instructions would rob the students of the opportunity to stretch their imaginations. Taylor’s lesson had some inherent risks; the students might not have succeeded, and the hiker might never have made it off the cliff safely. However, maybe that’s the point.

I guess what I’m saying is that you can teach creativity to your students. You can teach them not to fear failure. All you need is a creative teacher: a teacher who is willing to show his students that sometimes the risk of a little failure is what makes success worthwhile.