It’s been eight years since I taught students in my special education class. Eight years without students – until this week.

The two kids who came to my house this week were not really students. They were the grandchildren of a friend. And they did not come to learn academics, but to learn my skills at making pop-up cards.

The day before they came over, I was motivated to plan for the three-hour workshop. I created a two-page handout describing the materials and procedures for making my pop-ups.

The kids arrived, and I decided to put the handouts aside. I began by demonstrating how to make the basic folds, and then supervised their doing the same. Within an hour they had finished printing out their photos and turning them into remarkably interesting pop-ups. There was only one problem as I saw it then: The kids’ pop-up pictures did not fold into their cards. In other words, when they closed their cards, parts of pictures stuck out of the cards.

I had just begun to explain that we wanted to engineer the pictures to fold into the cards, when I caught myself and stopped. I found myself saying, “Wow, what a great idea you gave me! I never realized we could make pop-up pictures like this! Thanks for the idea!”  I really meant it. Who says that all pop-ups need to be in the form of cards? Pop–up pictures (as opposed to cards) have the advantage that the pictures can be placed almost anywhere on the background, and the pictures can be much larger. The rush of freedom from needing the pictures to be folded into the card was amazing.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting back into the teaching mode. I enjoyed watching the kids excitedly seeking out “foreground” and “background” pictures on Google Images, cutting and folding their printouts, and hot gluing their foreground pictures to their backgrounds in the most creative ways.

Will I now make lots of pop-up pictures, which don’t need to fold into cards?
I am certain I will make at least one. Who knows? I may need a second display case for what I think I will call, “My Freedom Pop-ups.”

Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertebsen@hotmail.com.