Speaker Series: Bryn Barnard
Author and illustrator Bryn Barnard joined our students in Elementary School virtually this week as part of our Speaker Series. Barnard is a former illustrator for NASA and National Geographic and has written and illustrated four award-winning science-history books for kids: Dangerous Planet, Outbreak, The Genius of Islam, and The New Ocean. He has taught International Baccalaureate (IB) classes, including DP and MYP Art and Theory of Knowledge, in international schools in Singapore and Kuwait and has been a guest author and artist at more than 30 international schools worldwide.
Our Pre-K to Grade 5 students attended assemblies to listen to Barnard talk about his creative process of writing and illustrating books. He shared the process of going from brainstorming, research, and mind maps to sketches, layouts, preliminary sketches and finally to the final art on the book covers and in the book. He also shared how sometimes your preliminary ideas can be changed by editors and how bookmaking is a collaborative project with many moving parts.
When it came time to ask questions, students hands shot into the air! Our students asked all sorts of questions about the creative process and Barnard’s works, and we are glad to see how interested students were. We are pleased to be able to bring different voices into the school to open our students' eyes to something new and different from what they do every day in class.
An important lesson that Barnard imparted on our students was to persist. If you have an interest you want to cultivate, stick with it. Sometimes getting good at something can take years and years of practice but do not give up.
This event was sponsored by the AISG Annual Fund Speaker Series that brings fascinating people with their captivating stories into our school to inspire, enlighten and transform learning. The speakers are invited to AISG from all over the world and share their experiences.
Made possible through generous donations from our AISG community, we are excited to bring these extraordinary speakers and look forward to the many more who will come to touch the minds and hearts of the members of the AISG Community.
