Susan Maynor Helps Learners Turn Compassion into Creation

What they made happen

At CharacterPlus, Susan Maynor helps educators connect creativity with compassion, giving students opportunities to use their ideas in service of others. As Director of Creative Learning, she brings that purpose into professional learning about design, storytelling and emerging technology. Her 2026 session, “Compassionate Innovation: Leading with Heart, Creating for Good,” invites educators to consider how empathy can shape what students create and whom their work could benefit. CharacterPlus team, Conference program

That purpose also guides her work with artificial intelligence. In a CharacterPlus workshop co-facilitated with Roxanna Mechem, Susan approaches AI through questions of character, preserving students’ agency, integrity and voice as they use technology. The focus gives educators a reason to look beyond what a tool can produce and consider the thinking, judgment and responsibility students bring to using it. CharacterPlus workshops

Her work at EPiC Elementary in Liberty, Missouri, provides the classroom foundation for this approach. Alongside teachers and school leaders, Susan helped connect creative learning with community relationships and opportunities for children to contribute. She described a deliberate effort to redesign projects so students could use their creativity to improve communities. At CharacterPlus, she is carrying that experience into her work with other educators. Susan’s reflection

Meet the educator

Susan is the Director of Creative Learning at CharacterPlus. Her earlier work as a learning experience designer and blended learning coach at EPiC placed her alongside educators developing a school centered on creativity, community connections and preparing students for an uncertain future. Across those roles, she has worked at the intersection of learning design, technology and storytelling. CharacterPlus team

Her explanation of why that work matters reaches beyond enthusiasm for digital tools. In the EPiC interview, Susan questioned limiting learning to classroom materials when technology and community expertise could connect students with a wider world. She described those connections as opportunities for learners to develop ideas and address real problems. Her motivation, as expressed in that account, was to expand what learning could make possible.

EPiC Elementary is one of the best schools I have encountered in my career. Susan’s contribution offers an opportunity to look more closely at the thinking, relationships and sustained work behind that learning environment. Her story also helps make visible the contribution of educators whose work includes supporting colleagues, connecting people and developing opportunities that students eventually experience.

What went into it

Susan’s February 2024 reflection offers a useful view of how that work developed. She described a school culture built around experimentation and improvement, while acknowledging that the pandemic had slowed its momentum. Under principal Jamie Ackart’s leadership, the staff revisited its vision and considered how its established commitments should guide the next stage of learning. Innovation required renewed attention rather than reliance on what had worked before. Susan’s reflection

The team’s priorities connected creative skills, community contribution and individual learners’ needs. Susan described planning how production skills could develop across learning experiences, deepening service learning and exploring more personalized approaches. These were related design decisions: students needed ways to express ideas, reasons to apply them and support that recognized differences in how they learned.

That connection helps explain the importance of human-centered design in her story. A project takes on a different responsibility when students consider another person’s experience. They must think about whether their idea is useful, understandable and appropriate for its intended audience. Creativity becomes connected to listening, judgment and revision. This is the educational opportunity suggested by Susan’s approach, rather than a claim that every project produces the same result.

Her work also recognizes that teachers need opportunities to practice this thinking. The 2026 “Compassionate Innovation” session describes participants developing an initial idea into a practical application. At CharacterPlus, a workshop co-facilitated with Roxanna Mechem approaches artificial intelligence through intellectual, performance, civic and moral character, emphasizing human agency, integrity and voice. Technology sits within a larger conversation about the choices people make and the responsibilities that accompany them. CharacterPlus workshops

Why it matters

Children can develop creative skills while also learning to consider what those skills make possible for others. Designing for a real person or community gives learners reasons to ask better questions, reconsider assumptions and explain their decisions. It also gives compassion a practical dimension. Caring can become the beginning of thoughtful work.

Susan’s contribution lies partly in helping educators make room for that possibility. Community relationships, teacher collaboration, resources and time for revision all influence whether students can carry an idea forward. Her accounts show attention to those conditions, alongside the creative experiences themselves. They do not establish a measured effect on every learner, but they document an educator working to connect learning with contribution.

Her move into CharacterPlus offers a continuation of that commitment. The emphasis remains on what people do with their knowledge and creativity, including when new technologies enter the classroom. For other educators, the invitation is to consider a question with lasting relevance: Who could benefit from what our learners are capable of creating?

Champions of Learning connects educator stories with current research that helps explain the promise of their work. Published on August 5, 2026, in Studies in Engineering Education through Virginia Tech Publishing, “How Artistic Expression Fosters Compassion in Future Engineers” examined written and artistic work from an eight-week undergraduate Compassionate Engineering course. The researchers explored how students expressed concern for others and connected that concern with engineering decisions. Original publication

The study did not evaluate Susan’s work or elementary learners. Its relevance is contextual: it examines how creative expression can make human experiences and ethical questions part of design. That connection helps illuminate the purpose running through Susan’s work, where imagination gains direction through attention to others.

Bring the idea to your classroom

Reference stories: Susan’s Apple Education Community reflection, the EPiC interview, and the linked CharacterPlus and 2026 conference materials.

This story summarizes published reporting and professional accounts; Champions of Learning has not independently interviewed the educator.