We caught up with the brilliant and insightful MARYANNE LONG a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

MARYANNE, appreciate you joining us today. So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?

Schools need to stress HOW to learn, not WHAT to learn.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to create a curriculum for a class of gifted and talented middle school students. It was based on critical and creative thinking skills and basic learning skills.

I really felt like I was teaching students to learn “despite the teacher.” My curriculum proved so popular that I was asked to teach it to all students.

I went a step further and produced a series of booklets to help parents continue at home with the skills the students were learning in class.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

1. What sort of legacy are you hoping to build?
I want people to remember me as one who always tried to make things better either in the schools where I taught: the communities where I lived; or the organizations I served.

2. What do you think people will say about you after you are gone, what do you hope to be remembered for?
I hope people will say that I was the one they knew they could come to for help getting something started (or finished).
They knew that if I did not know the answer to a question, I would know who did.
Regarding my life as an artist, I want them to remember the paintings I made with chocolate paint.

3. Tell our readers about yourself.
My friends say I MORPH – It seems that over the past few decades, I have embraced challenges, learned new skills, and created new versions of myself along the way.

I began as an educator and taught at every grade level at some point in my 23-year teaching career, whether it was library skills to elementary students or business writing to college freshman. But, for the most part, it was teaching middle-grade students learning skills. I referred to it as “how to learn despite the teacher.”
After an early retirement at 45 years of age, I moved to Hawaii and turned my life in a whole different direction. I was hired as an aide to the Honolulu City Council, basically resolving constituent concerns on almost every level, from potholes, to traffic safety, to environmental issues, etc. At this stage, I really learned the importance of building a network, people on the local, state, and federal level to whom I could turn to when we needed help in our communities.

After government work, I spent the next 10 years involved in the non-profit arena. I was fortunate enough to have received training from the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Foundation in non-profit management. One of my proudest accomplishments was co-founding and managing an entrepreneurship program at our local high school, for which I won the Weinberg AIM for Excellence award in management in 2002. The basis for the award was that we had turned our non-profit into a self-sustaining program. We taught students to run a business from concept-to-cash register by designing, producing, and selling school-logoed items in both the school store and worldwide on the Internet.

During roughly this same time period, I served as Office Manager-Volunteer Coordinator for the PGA and LPGA golf tournaments in Hawai`i. That experience taught me so much about time management, resourcefulness, people skills, etc. My volunteer time helped our school store project qualify for grants from the golf tournaments, bringing in initial funding to make our fledgling business financially viable.

The last ten years again morphed me into a whole new realm, totally outside my comfort zone – the art world. I learned to paint and draw (I know, it should have been the other way around). I got involved in art guilds and met so many incredibly talented artists. I found that I got more art gratification learning about other artists, which led to a twice-a-month newspaper column in a Honolulu weekly with a circulation of 250,000 copies. My love of art has expanded even more to curating art shows and starting my own personal art collection.

What MORPHING is in the offing? Well, it looks like it will be back-to-the-future for me. Interest is being generated in some of the creative thinking educational pieces I wrote decades ago. So I hope to be offering workshops to families to help their children learn creative thinking strategies, study skills, and other methods to be successful in life.

4. What do you think sets you apart from others?
I have been told quite often that I do more in a day than others do in a week. I love to be busy. I love to have all my to-do list crossed off at the end of the day.
What many see as work (volunteering, for example), I see as a hobby. I take on only challenges and projects that I think I will enjoy or at least the skill set to be effective.

5. What are you most proud of ?
As mentioned above, one of my proudest accomplishments was co-founding and managing an entrepreneurship program at our local high school. I volunteered my time (often 40-50 hours a week for more than five years) to manage the school store-centered program that was the pride of the community. We had an outstanding state championship-winning football team and the sale of the school’s logoed merchandise sustained our non-profit in full-filling its mission to teach students to run a business from “concept-to-cash register” by designing, producing, and selling school-logoed items in both the school store and worldwide on the Internet. I was honored to win the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg AIM for Excellence award in management in 2002. The basis for the $25,000 award (funded to the program) was that we had turned our non-profit into a self-sustaining program.

6. In my present position (again as a volunteer), I assist art organizations with developing leadership skills, publicity (especially through a twice-a-month art column I write for the local newspaper), grant writing, curating art shows, mentoring emerging artists, offering art classes to senior citizens, etc.

7. What problems do you solve for your clients and/or what you think sets you apart from others?
It’s mostly organizational problems that I help with. I’m not sure it sets me apart more than anyone else. It’s just that I have more time to devote or it is a problem that I have dealt with before and have some sort of template in my computer to solve the problem,

8. What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc?
I guess you could say I AM my brand and I AM the service I provide. My word is my bond. I work until the job is done, or recognize when it cannot be done (at least by me).

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Someone once told me that it is not who you know that gets you ahead; it’s who knows you (and respects and admires what you do).
From that , I learned that your reputation is the most important asset you have. Don’t sully it.
Don’t take on something that you know you cannot handle. If you do make a mistake, own it and learn from it.
Surround yourself with positive people and those with skills that you lack. Learn from them.
Give people around you a chance to shine. Always recognize the good that others do.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

My rewards have been limitless: making new friends; seeing the smiles on people’s faces on opening night; phoning an artist to say we just sold his/her work, etc. It’s difficult to say that any one satisfying experience is any more rewarding than the other.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://longlostart.weebly.com
• Instagram: maryanne_artist
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaryAnneLongHI/
• Linkedin: MaryAnne Long

Image Credits

Floyd Takeuchi (for primary portrait)