Using sleight of hand and illusions that provoke double-takes, a North Carolina man is on a mission to help kids persevere through adversity.
Magician and motivational speaker Caleb Morgan visited Aroostook County schools last week with his wife, Maria, to bring his message to Maine for the first time.
Nearly a fifth of Maine children from 3 to 17 suffer from anxiety, one of the highest rates in the country, according to the John T. Gorman Foundation. Schools around the state have upped their efforts to bolster students’ mental health by hiring counselors or instituting new programming aimed at helping kids cope. Morgan hopes sharing his own story of perseverance combined with fun tricks will help instill positive messages that kids will remember.
“My family dealt with an abusive situation. We had somebody tell us, ‘Someday, this is going to be a story that can help somebody,’” Morgan said Friday in Van Buren. “The pain has a purpose now.”
Morgan’s act intersperses motivational tips with illusions that engage his audience, including card tricks.
A speaker can give great insight, but a visual example can help bring a point home in a different way, he said. For instance, people who’ve seen magicians often recall things years later that made their mouths drop, and he hopes his presentations do that for kids.
Morgan was a teacher at one time, and discovered a lot of students were dealing with challenges that affected their performance and how they felt about life in general.
“The thing I saw back then, and the thing that I see a lot of educators dealing with today is students giving up — apathy, just not pushing through new things and not trying new experiences,” he said. “And so we teach them, essentially, ‘Don’t give up. Keep going.’”
Morgan entertained the students with card tricks, interactive activities where objects seemed to disappear and then reappear somewhere else, and even an illusion using newspapers, where torn-up pieces of a paper were seemingly restored in front of everyone.
He and his wife have recently been to Iowa and Minnesota, and last week also visited schools in Bangor, Presque Isle and Washburn. Van Buren was one of their last stops before the holiday season, he said.
Kylie LaPierre, who served as Van Buren principal last year, booked Morgan’s visit several months ago, Principal Ralph Fantasia said. The students knew the assembly would feature an illusionist, but beyond that they didn’t know what to expect.
“Once he came in and started doing his stuff, they were caught. They were pulled in,” Fantasia said. “You could see them leaning in [going], ‘No way. No way.”
Besides messages of “don’t stop believing” and “just keep going,” Morgan shared that every problem has a solution if approached step by step, Fantasia said.
High school student Ethan Morin liked the magic tricks, but more than that, the life lessons.
“You can see a very good connection between what he’s demonstrating and how it connects with his real life,” Morin said. “Don’t think of everything in life as the big picture. Look at it as one tiny picture that builds up into bigger pictures.”
After an assembly for the entire student body, Morgan also presented sessions for student leaders and teachers.
Sometimes after an assembly, students will come up and share their own difficulties with him. That takes bravery, Morgan said, adding he hopes he can serve as an example of someone who’s pushed through adversity.
He loves it when students appreciate the illusions and the bigger message.
“There’s something special about being able to see students’ eyes light up and be able to share a different perspective with them, show them that there’s hope,” he said. “They can say, ‘Whatever I might be struggling through, I can keep that smile on my face because I can see that there’s a way through this.”