I always thought of Xavier’s as the ideal school. Mainly because of the “Danger Room”, which was a room where all manner of holographic and robotic ne'er do wells could be brought out for the superheros-in-training to practice against.
In one issue, the writers explained this constant in-flow of artificial bad guys for the students to destroy as being the product of Charles Xavier’s own gifted mutation -- telepathy. For the students to be able to train in the Danger Room, Xavier had to telepathically project all of the obstacles into their field of perception. They would fight, flip, blast, and smash the figments and then, with nothing to clean up, go on to their next class.
I’ve always thought that superheroes, Marvel superheroes in particular, served as a good analogy for exceptional kids. Of course the comic books are fantasy, but Stan Lee’s vision of turning weaknesses into super-powers is an inspiring one for any teacher. Here’s an article I wrote about it back in 2001.
Xavier was able to mimic the exact real-life scenarios his students were going to face. To me, that’s a pretty cool teacher. I’ve always wanted to guide and design my students’ experiences such that the tasks they confront are not merely academic. I want to get them out of their comfort zones and into the kind of learning that translates into life. I want every student to have her own Danger Room.
