Today, my practice brings creative health, educational research, and the wisdom of classroom communities together to help schools create the conditions for
joy and meaning on a daily basis.
For more than twenty-five years, I’ve worked alongside educators and children wondering what it means to live well together in schools—and how the very experience of teaching and learning can become a source of wellbeing, creativity, connection, and accomplishment for everyone involved.
I’m an award-winning teacher, international pedagogical consultant, best-selling author, and founder of the Pop-Up Studio approach.
Hi! I'm
Dr. Misty.
About The educator
By 2016, I was deeply involved in curriculum leadership in my home province, British Columbia, as the province shifted to a mandated inquiry-based, concept-driven curriculum.
I was hired to travel throughout the province alongside the Ministry’s Chief Education Officer, working with educators to understand and implement this significant change. That work positioned me as a Thinker-in-Residence for hundreds of teachers and children. At the end of many of these visits, educators would ask the same question: How can we recreate the conditions we experienced with you—the engagement, agency, creativity, and deep learning that emerged so quickly—including with learners who don’t typically engage?
I began leading professional development for educators in 2001, the same year I became a teacher.
with Pop-Up Studio
my story
Practical design frameworks for educators who want to bring artful, responsive, inquiry-rich experiences into their own classrooms. The book has been referenced and read by educators in elementary and university classrooms internationally and is still reaching new audiences.
Alongside this practical work, my academic path has given me the opportunity to explore teachers' and children’s hopes for education more deeply. As a relational scholar-practitioner, my research always begins within the relationships that emerge when we work together. My Living Inquiry research allowed me to explore intersections between curriculum, creativity, daily life, student wellbeing, and meaningful participation, while my Making Care Matter study brought me alongside experienced educators to examine the conditions that help teachers flourish together.
The result was my signature Pop-Up Studio approach:
Teacher requests propelled me to articulate an approach to teaching that had developed through years of practice.
I value and commit to facilitating environments where safety, relationships, identity, agency, responsiveness, and meaningful participation are cultivated.
I have the immense privilege of working directly in classrooms alongside teachers and children around the world. I am still happiest alongside educators and children—wondering, making, noticing, and discovering what becomes possible when we gather
to create meaningful work, joyfully.
My practice is grounded in trauma-informed and culturally responsive approaches.
Creative health research provides a broader rationale for understanding why creativity, connection, agency, and meaningful participation matter to wellbeing. My Pop-Up Studio approach provides practical pedagogical frameworks for bringing those principles into the everyday experiences of teaching and learning.
Today, my focus on Creative Health in Schools brings all the strands of my career into conversation.
— Dr. Elizabeth Crawford, Associate Professor
She selflessly gives her time and energy to nurturing educators, and she lives and works according to her values. I respect her highly for that.”
“Misty exemplifies the qualities of a true thought leader.
Specialized apprenticeship in therapeutic art education and co-inquiry with Drs Barbara Bickel and Michael Fisher strengthens my trauma-informed and culturally responsive creative health practices. Art-care supports collaborative experiences where creativity, reflection, connection, agency and care are intentionally cultivated through Spontaneous Creation-Making and wit(h)nessing.
Certified Art-Care Facilitator
Art-Care
3
Official training and extensive apprenticeship with Drs Lynn Erickson and Lois Lanning in concept-based curriculum and instruction. This mentorship strengthened my inquiry practice and continues to influence the practical decisions I make every day.
Certified Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction Trainer
Concept-Based Curriculum & Instruction
My research explores creative inquiry, teacher and student wellbeing, meaningful participation, and the conditions that help educators and children flourish through the experience of teaching and learning.
PhD in Arts Education, Simon Fraser University
MA in Curriculum & Instruction, University of British Columbia
Research & Scholarship
a lifetime of learning about learning
My favourite walks happen where land meets water. Give me a forest beside a river or a trail along the ocean and I’m happy—especially with my dog, Rocket, beside me. I’m endlessly drawn to places where land and water meet. The diversity of flora and fauna is pure magic!
Teaching across the ages is the best.
While I’ve taught in early primary and re-envisioned preschools, people often assume my Reggio-inspired and artful inquiry work means I’m an Early Childhood Educator. In fact, most of my classroom teaching experience is with 10–13-year-olds! I don’t have a favourite age to teach, but I must admit: I love the complexity, humour, ideas, and creative possibilities of learning with preteens.
Living my best life means meeting new people and traveling to new places.
My favourite way to learn is through food, art, culture, and natural landscapes.
Studying with Indigenous scholars has deepened my appreciation for place-based inquiry and attending closely to the relationships within communities. You’ll find me taking art classes, learning from local makers, wandering through gardens and galleries, and joining in daily life. I once won a cooking competition in Beijing!
(Sweet potato soup, 1997. True story.)
I spent the first eight years of my childhood living on Maui, Hawaii. Ocean, culture, nature, and island life shaped some of my earliest experiences of beauty, creativity, and place.
As an adult, I’m learning about the complexities of colonization, and its lasting impacts on Hawaii and its people, more deeply. The islands will always hold a very special place in my heart.
Fresh flowers are one of my great joys. I love arranging them, giving them away, inquiring with them in classrooms, and noticing whatever happens to be blooming. You may find me working in a flower shop someday :).
A few things that make me, me.
beyond the bio
When we collaborate professionally, we also improve learning and living conditions for children who need it most. I donate a portion of all honoraria to charities that provide direct access to a sense of security, hope, discovery, and possibility.
We’ve supported Backback Buddies, Hogan’s Alley Society, Harvest Project, and Kids Up Front, as examples.
good work creates more good work
creating a ripple effect
