The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Cartoonist

In 2022, while working in a mainstream secondary school, I supported an autistic student in Year 8. He had a remarkable talent for drawing. He could draw almost any character, and he was incredibly passionate about it.

He told me almost every day that he wanted to become a cartoonist.

Drawing was clearly something that gave him enjoyment, confidence and a sense of achievement. However, during lessons, he often wanted to draw instead of completing the work set by the teacher. As a result, he was frequently reprimanded and received detentions.

At the time, I kept thinking about the same question: What if we could use the thing he loved to help him learn, rather than seeing it only as something that stopped him from learning?

I didn't think the answer was to simply let him draw all day or remove academic expectations. I thought his passion could have been used as a bridge to the curriculum.

His drawings could have been incorporated into English through creating characters and stories. They could have been connected to art, digital media, technology, communication and even careers education. His ambition to become a cartoonist could have given teachers an opportunity to show him why learning different skills mattered to his future.

I left the school in 2023.

Years later, I discovered that the same student was attending a college where my husband teaches digital media. The student does not know that my husband is my husband. My husband asked him whether he liked drawing, and surprisingly, he said no.

Hearing this made me think about him again.

I cannot know what caused this change, and I would not want to make assumptions about his experiences or his future. But I remember the young person who used to tell me every day that he wanted to be a cartoonist and who could draw characters with extraordinary ability.

It made me reflect on what we mean when we talk about high expectations in education.

High expectations are important. But having high expectations does not necessarily mean expecting every student to learn in exactly the same way or follow exactly the same path.

Sometimes, the most effective way to help a student reach a high expectation is to begin with what they can do, what they love and what makes them feel capable.

For that student, drawing may have been more than a distraction. It may have been the doorway through which we could have helped him connect with learning.

Instead of asking only, “How do we stop this behaviour?” perhaps we should sometimes ask, “What is this student showing us that we can build on?”