How a T-Rex jumpstarted a creative life
The classroom was alive in that particular way creative spaces are. Not noisy exactly, but busy. The kind of hum you get when scissors are snipping, pencils are scratching, tape is tearing, and a dozen different little debates are breaking out across the room:
It was chaos, but the good kind — the chaos of things being invented.
In the middle of this, a boy glanced up from his storyboard and asked, “Why do we even need to learn animation? I mean… AI can just do it all for us, right?”
The chatter dipped. The question hung in the air like chalk dust. Everyone was thinking it; he’d just been the one to say it out loud.
Joe smiles. “That is an excellent question. And to answer it, I want to tell you about the first time something like AI blew my mind.”
Joe perches on the corner of a desk.
“When I was in third grade, we were studying dinosaurs. I loved to draw dinosaurs. and I'd sketched a Tyrannosaurus Rex — enormous teeth, tail lashing, claws, all the scales. Ms. Penny, my teacher, loved it.
"I'll be right back." She snatched it off my desk and walked out of the classroom.
At the time I thought I knew exactly what she was doing, she was going to the mimeograph machine, the ancestor of a copy machine. If your drawing got mimeographed, it felt like you’d been published. You were official.
Back then, we lived for the smell of mimeograph ink. The copies came back wet with purple ink - the smell of that ink I can still conjure up in my mind today. But I digress. It was exotic tech back then.
But Ms. Penny didn’t come back with that sweet toxic mimeograph. She came back with something I’d never seen before — a clear sheet of plastic called a transparency. She laid it on an overhead projector, flipped the switch, and suddenly — there it was. My dinosaur sketch was glowing on our classroom movie screen.
The whole class gasped. Ms. Penny grinned. And me? I was thunderstruck.
"I wanted to highlight Joey's T-Rex drawing with our new transparency machine." Ms. Penny gushed.
It caught all of us completely off guard. We'd never heard of one. And we had one in our building? Cool!
It wasn’t just the fact of my drawing on the screen that blew our minds, but the speed with which it had arrived. That T-Rex had gone from my brain, to my fingers, to my pencil, to the paper, to that wall — all in one class period. Imagination magnified in light in almost real time.
It felt like the future was on that screen. Every much as astonishing as AI is today!”
Joe pauses to let it sink in.
“Now here’s the important part. The idea had to come from me first. The machine just made it bigger, faster, brighter. ”
Some kids were nodding now. A girl in the back raised her hand. “So AI is like the projector?”
“We might think about it that way,” Joe said. “It’s dazzling, and it changes how fast we can share what’s in our heads. But just like that projector, it needs your dinosaurs, our ideas, your stories. Otherwise, it’s just light on a wall.”
Joe leans forward a little.
“And that’s why you’re here, cutting out characters, drawing storyboards, nudging paper figures frame by frame. Because animation isn’t just about making pictures move.
He leans back and shoots his index fingers to his temples. "It’s about creating a story in here. And you are learning a language, the language of sound and motion to get it from in here to up there. You are making meaning with that language!"
"You mean learning a language?" a young girl asks.
"Yes, that is basically it. You’re practicing words that have been part of the craft of film making for a hundred years: squash and stretch, to make things feel alive. Anticipation and follow-through, to make actions believable. Overlapping action, to keep motion fluid and real. They’re the grammar of movement, the vocabulary of visual storytelling.
And here’s a secret: AI already knows these rules. The people who built the models taught it what animators figured out long ago. Which means the more you practice them yourselves, the better you’ll be at prompting, guiding, and shaping stories with AI. You’ll know the secret words to say. You’ll know them not because you read them in a manual, but because you’ve felt them in your own finger-tips."
"Like when we had to write out the whole alphabet in kindergarten?" a young voice injects without looking up from their animation.
"Yes! Exactly! Precisely! Joe jumps up in agreement.
"By writing things out you learned not only letters, but how to then write words, and also how to read better too! But now it's the grammar of movement, the alphabet of motion.
Joe pauses. "What a world we live in. Truly. A world where your imagination collides with machines that can spin your sketches into films in seconds, where stories can leap from your head onto a glowing space without ever touching paper. It’s dazzling, almost unbelievable."
"What comes after AI?' a young mind wonders aloud.
Joe smiles at the young futurist.
"Even if one day we skip past AI entirely — use chips in our brains, or telepathy itself, where stories come into our minds with some exotic tech, like dreams on demand — the task will remain the same. Someone will still have had to shape those stories, give them rhythm and sense and make meaning from the sparks that flash in our heads."
A collective "Whoa!" rings out from the animation tables.
"Every leap forward — from my transparency on the overhead projector to AI, from film reels to streaming, from cave paintings to whatever comes next — is really just another way of doing the same ancient work: making meaning." Joe prophesies.
He let's a global pause settle in on the class.
Slowly the hum of scissors, the tape, the pencils, the whispered arguments about timing and spacing restart., The future of storytelling isn’t waiting in some distant lab. It’s here. For Joe, it started in the glow of his dinosaur in a classroom wall decades ago, and now he is sharing the same astonishing dynamic, with newly minted animators, storytellers really, using the latest tech to make their dinosaurs move and growl! We are in the business of making meaning.
"But what about Tiktok? Is that about meaning too?" blurts out a young digital citizen over his shoulder.
"Next time, next time. We are behind with all my mimeograph ramblings today, Let's catch up on these scenes," Joe answers as he dreads the next visit.
More Testimonials:
"I am impressed by...these programs, providing young people with the skills to become creative and critical thinkers...this shares my dedication to nurturing the next generation of filmmakers and visual storytellers."— Steven Spielberg - Referencing the work of Joe Summerhays“
"Joe (Animating Kids Founder) has turned the art of movie making for kids into a science.” — Jonathan Demme - Academy Award-Winning Director
“I absolutely love Animating Kids...you have no idea how amazing it is for a span of K-9. I’ve got the whole building covered and my planning was done for me. The kids LOVE the Animation Chefs. Win, win!!”— J. Tuttle - Media Specialist
"When I found Animating Kids it changed everything. Small and not so small humans became masters of sound and motion on any subject via small group PBL dynamics."— Rachel - Tech Coach - Quebec
“Animating Kids has changed everything! Fun, relevant media-making lessons for kids, and total P.D. for my non-film making teachers. A complete solution!!” — Principal - Bronx NY
"Animating Kids really helps focus our students during remote sessions…it keeps them so engaged. Your secret recipes are a life saver." — Marisol - Sacramento Ca
"The kids love the demonstrations and it is P.D. for me as I tee it all up. Animating Kids makes me the coolest educator in their lives!" — Charlotte - London UK
"This is the most important skills-based content for today’s kids. I don't think primary educators get how impactful this approach can be. It respects media content creation as the basic literacy it is for today’s kids. — Monique - White Plains NY
“We went through the entire process (PD workshop) of learning animated filmmaking with our tablets and smartphones. We could barely keep up. In the end we came away exhilarated rather than exhausted.” — Cathy S. - Librarian“
"My head was spinning. It involved: math, writing, science, team building, art, language arts, engineering, improvisation, innovation, acting, etc. Along with another dozen areas I can’t recall. Sneaky comprehensive. Mind blown. Can’t wait to use it in class.” — Marcia - 4th Grade Teacher
“Animation Chefs have created a really inspired program! My test group of (hardened gang members) like to laugh at the videos, and they love the simple clear explanations. They just have a blast...”
— G. Zucker Austin TX
"Thank you SO much for sharing your wealth of information and opening this world to every kid! I first learned about you when my husband introduced our daughter to you. Now I am bringing it into my after school program. I’m so psyched!" — Joy H. Retail After School Specialist
"Kids sign-up for robotics, coding, and stop motion sessions. After taking all three, they rate stop motion as their favorite track BY FAR. Animating Kids is key to our success." — Shane V. After School District Lead