At 17, Detroit School of Arts student Justin Ward is building Draw It Out, an educational children’s series designed to make reading feel less like a lesson and more like an adventure.
Justin Ward had some puppets he wanted to show off.
He had built them himself, and the Detroit School of Arts student reached out to his art teacher, Mrs. Hall, with a fairly simple question: Could he display some of them around the school as art?
On the first day of school, she came back with another idea.
“Why don’t you create an educational show for kids and put it on the Student Hub?”
Ward was 17, but puppetry wasn’t new to him. He had already been building and performing with puppets for about a decade.
So he started thinking.
The original concept was a children’s show about drawing. That’s where the name Draw It Out came from. But as Ward began developing the project, he says he came across articles about children struggling with literacy in Michigan and elsewhere.
The drawing show changed.
“I knew then that I needed to change the direction of the show from teaching kids how to draw to helping teach kids how to read,” Ward says.
And a school art project started becoming something much bigger.
Learning without feeling like a lesson
Ward remembers what books felt like when he was a child.
Reading The Cat in the Hat wasn’t simply an exercise in recognizing words. In his imagination, the characters came off the page. Sometimes they played with him. Sometimes he entered their world.
“Reading can open so many doors and take you places you never dreamed you could go,” he says.
That’s the feeling he wants Draw It Out to recreate.
The show combines puppetry with animation, storytelling, games, music and live action. Ward doesn’t want children to feel as though someone has simply moved a classroom lesson onto a screen.
“I wanted it to feel like an adventure where kids are learning without necessarily realizing they’re learning,” he says.
Puppets are central to that.
Ward says he has watched what happens when he brings a puppet around children. Curiosity takes over. Kids want to look at it, talk to it and interact with it.
That attention, he realized, could become an invitation to learn.
Building a television show while doing homework
There is another part of Draw It Out that isn’t immediately obvious when watching the finished product.
Ward is doing a lot of this himself.
Years of experimentation with puppetry gradually led him to teach himself to write, direct, edit, and produce.
An episode starts with the educational skill or idea he wants children to learn. Then come the story, script, characters, and individual segments. Ward works on the puppetry and performances, helps plan production, and remains involved through editing and the overall creative direction.
“I’m basically involved in almost every stage of the process,” he says.
That doesn’t mean he’s working alone.
Ward credits his parents with helping him evaluate his ideas. His mother reviews scripts and segments with him, offering criticism and helping him consider whether the educational material is actually working. His father brings another perspective.
Then there’s Mrs. Hall, the teacher whose suggestion started the entire project.
Other Detroit School of Arts students have joined in, too. Fellow student Jelani Baker created the music for the show’s theme intro, while Sazha Ramirez contributes animation when she’s available. Detroit School of Arts has also provided filming locations, as has Spain Elementary-Middle School.
It’s becoming a small creative ecosystem around a teenager who is still figuring out how to make television.
One episode can take a month
Making the show isn’t cheap.
Ward needs puppets, cameras, lighting, audio equipment, sets, props, animation, editing tools, and other production supplies. He’s looking for grants and opportunities to borrow equipment to keep costs from stopping the project.
Then there is time.
Ward estimates that one episode can take about a month to produce.
He rewrites repeatedly, trying to make sure the educational information is accurate and understandable without letting the show turn into a lecture.
Performing with puppets presents its own challenge.
One hand may be inside a puppet’s head while the other controls an arm. Ward may be watching a camera monitor while simultaneously keeping track of a script taped nearby.
And after all of that, he’s still a high school student.
“I’m not only a puppeteer,” he says. “I’m also a poet, actor, model, fashion designer, and sometimes a musician.”
There are performances, other television ideas, and short films.
There are also grades.
“Trying to keep up with my grades while doing all of that can definitely be a challenge.”
Then the kids respond
For all of the equipment, editing, and rewrites, Ward has already gotten a glimpse of whether his idea works.
While filming segments at Spain Elementary-Middle School, he asked students educational questions with the puppets.
The children wanted in.
They answered. They participated. They engaged with the characters.
“That experience showed me that what I’m creating can actually connect with kids in the way I hoped it would,” Ward says.
Now he wants to bring Draw It Out into more schools, including reading days and classroom visits where he can read with children, perform with the puppets and interact with students directly.
But Ward isn’t thinking only about the next episode.
He imagines Draw It Out becoming a nationally recognized children’s educational series, with books, activities, classroom resources and live performances alongside the show.
A child might meet the characters on a screen, in a book, at school or at a live event.
Whatever form it takes, Ward wants the result to be the same: a child discovering that reading can take them somewhere.
And there is another lesson inside Draw It Out that has very little to do with literacy.
It’s about permission.
Ward’s puppets could have stayed on display at school.
Instead, a teacher looked at what he had already created and asked him to imagine what else it could become.
Now Ward wants other young people to ask themselves the same question.
“I’m from Detroit, I’m a high school student, and I’m 17,” he says. “I want other young people to see that they don’t have to wait until they’re older or wait for someone to give them permission to create something meaningful.”
Draw It Out is an educational television series created by Justin Ward, a 17-year-old creator and puppeteer from Detroit.
- Mission: Uses puppetry, animation, and storytelling to help young children develop reading skills and promote literacy.
- Origins: Inspired by visual arts teacher Mrs. Hall at the Detroit School of Arts, who suggested turning Justin’s puppet displays into an educational show for DPSCD’s Student Hub.
- Production & Team: Created, written, directed, and produced by Justin Ward. Features theme music by Jelani Baker and animation by Sazha Ramirez. Filmed at Detroit School of Arts and Spain Elementary-Middle School.
Media & Links:
- IMDb Page: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt39299965/
- Season 1, Episode 1: https://rumble.com/v790i54-draw-it-out-s1-ep1-splattered-paint-pilot.html
- Season 1, Episode 2: https://rumble.com/v7az91o-draw-it-out-s1-ep2-what-it-means-to-share.html
- Season 1, Episode 4: https://rumble.com/v7cmol2-s1-e4-draw-it-out-story-time-curtis-reads-john-henry-steel-drivin-man.html
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