The View From the Ceiling

Nick Isaaksson is the gym teacher at East Elementary in Jefferson, Wisconsin. He had the presence of mind to check the fisheye security camera mounted to the ceiling of his gymnasium on the morning of May 19th, 2026, and send me what he saw:

I have been doing this for fifteen years. I have never seen myself from above before.

Every student in the building is packed into one half of the gym. Clara has the other. I am standing at the boundary between the two, which is, now that I think about it, exactly where I always stand... somewhere between the world kids already know and the one I am about to show them.

I want to tell you about a boy in that gym.

I do not know his name. But at some point in one of the afternoon small-group sessions, I asked his class a question: what is the largest species of dolphin in the world alive today?

He knew the answer. And when I called on him, he started to dance.

Not a polite, restrained, classroom kind of reaction. A full, unself-conscious, I-cannot-contain-this-information kind of dance. The kind that happens when a kid has been carrying a fact around inside them and finally gets to let it out.

The answer was orca. The same animal whose skull was sitting on a table nearby, covered with a blanket. I let him uncover it.

As he stood there, next to an orca skull that was almost as big as he was, he said to me, "I have a Megalodon fact I want to share."

His classmates were talking excitedly about the orca. The way kids do. He was standing there, waiting, and nobody was listening.

I started waving my hands. Dramatically. Then I shushed the room and said loudly, "Your classmate has a Megalodon fact he wants to share. Quiet. This will be the most important thing you hear today."

The room went still.

He shared his fact. I honestly do not remember what it was. I was too busy watching his face.

For that moment, he was the expert. He was the one with something worth hearing. His classmates were the audience, and he was the reason they were paying attention.

I have seen this before. Years ago in Marinette, I gave a young girl her own table at a community event to display her fossil collection. She was passionate about paleontology and I wanted her community to see that. She is now in college studying paleontology.

I do not take credit for her path. Her curiosity was already there.

But I think about what it means to be seen. To have someone wave their hands and say, "Wait, listen to this person. They know something."

That is what the photo from the ceiling does not show. It shows the scale. It shows the crowd. It shows Clara dominating half a gymnasium in a small Wisconsin town.

It does not show the dancing. It does not show the moment a room went quiet for a kid who needed it to.

That part you just have to be there for.

Forest Whales serves schools, libraries, and community events across Wisconsin and the Midwest. If you would like to bring Clara, and maybe a dancing kid, to your school, visit forestwhales.com.