Resources Developed
■ Learning what you are good at... and not good at
■ Looking for practical solutions
■ Creating back-up plans
■ Doing what you are good at
■ Doing what is practicalOutcomes Offered
■ Success
■ Acceptance
■ Problem-solving skills
Among his classmates, Wally was known as Wally the Wacky Wizard. Ever since he had been
going to magic school, he had failed Basic Wizardry. He found it tough, and the only reason he
seemed to get promoted to the next grade each year was that he was such a likeable young wizard.
If anything could go wrong in Basic Wizardry, it would certainly go wrong for Wally. Everyone
reminded him how hopeless he was but, no matter how many times they told him, he didn’t improve.
He never felt anyone really gave him the encouragement he wanted, or helped him to put things
right.
It had all started when he got his first magic wand. The class was doing simple exercises but Wally
messed it up and turned his wand into an overripe banana. In fact, in some ways you might well think
it was a good spell because it was certainly a permanent spell. Neither his teacher, nor his dad, nor
any of the other wizards, seemed to be able to get his overripe banana back to a normal magic wand.
I guess one good thing was that the banana didn’t keep ripening.
Nonetheless, it felt limp and squishy in his hand and would never point in the right direction
when he was trying to make a spell. Worse than that, it never ever seemed to get a spell right. There
was the time he turned his baby sister into a purple pumpkin. He thought she looked funny as a
pumpkin, lying in her cot wrapped with a diaper on her bottom and her little beanie on top of her
pumpkin head. Mom wasn’t so amused. In fact, she screamed and screamed until Dad got the High
Wizard of the village to turn his sister back to normal.
If Wally thought his problems were bad then, things got decidedly worse when a Magic-Proof
Monster started to attack the village. Like a winged dinosaur, this terrifying creature smashed through
buildings and picked out a villager or two to eat for dinner every night. The villagers lived in fear,
and the High Wizard’s spells to kill the monster were powerless. The Council of Wizards met and
combined their magic power, but still they couldn’t stop the Magic-Proof Monster.
Maybe because Wally had thought of his own problems as such a monster, he began to see the
monster as his own problem. He dreamed about conquering it, about becoming the village hero,
about being accepted in a way that nobody had accepted him before.
He spent hours and hours down in his father’s backyard shed, practicing with all the magic tools,
trying to create the perfect spell to slay the Magic-Proof Monster. One night he snuck out of the
house, overripe banana-wand in his hand, right about dark when the monster usually turned up. The
rest of the villagers were all hiding in their houses, but when they heard the monster’s footsteps, they
PROBLEM-SOLVINGBuilding Problem-Solving Skills 179