Happy Birthday to William Kamkwamba

One of my favorite books and stories is the autobiographic novel The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. It is the story of a 14-year-old kid who built a windmill literally from trash, thereby bringing electricity to his African village for the first time. The author and innovative windmill builder is William Kamkwamba. The book is also available as a children's book. Here is the website for more information.

I love William's story for many reasons, one of which I'll focus on here. I like to see people succeed. As a teacher, helping others succeed is what I strove to do, even though schools make failure more possible. Shouldn't success outside of school translate to success in school and vice versa? The intention of public education, after all, is to prepare kids for life outside of school.

The reason William was able to build the windmill was because his parents couldn't afford his school fees and so instead of school, he went to the library and checked out books related to his interest in science and mechanics. Often times, kids do their best work outside of school, or in spite of school. A particular thing that comes to mind is coding/programming games. I would love to see schools who enable kids to follow their passions and build their own metaphorical windmills.