Famous Porcupine: Walter
"Second Dumbest" Student
Walter had a tough time in school. His parents held him back a year so that he and his younger sister could start at the same time, and then he had to repeat second grade when his family moved to a new town. His father also made him work (without pay) for the family business, delivering newspapers at 4:30 in the morning and then again after school. This meant he was exhausted and often fell asleep in class. His grades suffered. One of his teachers sat the students in order of achievement in class, and his seat was placed near the back of the room. Miss Brown, his teacher, called him the “second dumbest” student.
"You'll Never Amount to Anything"
School was hard in other ways. Walter was apparently a bit of class clown. He enjoyed making people laugh. His creative imagination also wasn’t a great fit for traditional classrooms. Once in fourth grade, the assignment was to draw a bowl of flowers. He added faces to the flowers and drew arms instead of leaves, for which he was reprimanded by the teacher. He often doodled and sketched instead of paying attention. Another time, he was supposed to be listening to a lesson. Instead, he was hiding behind a big book drawing cartoons. Yet another teacher scolded him in front of the whole class saying, “Young man, you’ll never amount to anything.” He dropped out of high school at age 16.
A Love of Drawing
Miss Brown said that Walter was too busy drawing pictures to pay attention in class, but art was clearly important to him. He sold his first sketches when he was just seven years old. When he was a bit older, he sold caricatures of customers at a barber shop in exchange for free haircuts. As a young teenager he received his only formal art training, taking some summer classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts.
His creativity and love of drawing would eventually propel him forward. In a twist of sweet justice, one of the first awards he received was for a short film involving flowers with faces and plants with leaves for arms. “Flowers and Trees” won the won the first Academy Award for Best Cartoon Short Subject in 1932. By this time, Walter had been breaking into the animation business, having already introduced Mickey Mouse to the world in Steamboat Willie.
(To see this famous porcupine, click an arrow below.)
Walt Disney is one of the most influential artists and entertainers in human history. He received more Academy Awards nominations (59) and won more Academy Awards (22) than anyone else. Though there have been multiple controversies surrounding Disney and his empire, there’s no denying that this imaginative kid who slept through class and doodled cartoons instead of listening to lessons came a long way from being the class clown and the “second dumbest” student in class.
Click here to read stories of more famous porcupines. Be sure to check out the book that inspired this series: Hugging Porcupines: Month-by-Month Strategies for Supporting Our Most Challenging Students.
Citations: The information for this story was drawn from several sources:
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