Now booking 2027
2027 Theme: Don't Miss the Masterpiece.
July and August dates go first.
Start the school year with an experience built for everyone who helps make your school what it is.
Teachers. Administrators. Aides. Office staff. Custodians. Maintenance teams. Cafeteria workers. Bus drivers. Support staff.
Every role matters. Every person contributes. Every person is part of the masterpiece.
For decades, Ben Glenn has helped schools begin the year with energy, laughter, encouragement, and a renewed sense of purpose.
Don't Miss the Masterpiece is designed to bring your entire staff together around one powerful reminder:
What you do matters.
Who you do it with matters.
And the people around you may be carrying more value than you realize.
The goal is simple: start the year connected, encouraged, and ready to build something meaningful together.
Your event includes
A high-energy 45–90 minute experience created specifically around Don't Miss the Masterpiece.
The stories, message, humor, and live art all work together around one central idea, so the theme feels like part of the experience from beginning to end—not something added on at the last minute.
Ben creates one of his signature six-by-eight-foot pieces live in front of your staff as the message unfolds.
The music builds. The artwork takes shape. The final reveal brings the theme together in one unforgettable moment.
The original artwork stays with your school.
Everyone leaves with a 9 × 6 print of the finished artwork.
It gives each person something tangible to take with them—a reminder of the message, the theme, and the role they play in the bigger picture.
Your leadership team receives a simple outline designed to help carry the theme beyond opening day.
Use it for staff meetings, encouragement throughout the year, recognition moments, or as a way to reconnect your team to the message when the year gets busy.
You'll receive the Don't Miss the Masterpiece theme artwork as a downloadable file so you can print shirts locally in whatever quantity works for your staff and your budget.
No merchandise package.
No minimum order.
No markup.
This isn't a message written only for teachers.
It's built so the person driving the bus, serving lunch, answering the phone, cleaning the building, leading the classroom, or running the school can hear themselves in the story.
Everyone contributes something. Everyone matters. Nobody is background scenery in the masterpiece.
The idea
The theme comes out of Ben's book of the same name. Teachers spend all day looking for the masterpiece inside their students. This is the day somebody stands up and points at the masterpiece your staff has been building all along.
And it is not only the teachers. It is the aide who noticed. The custodian who said good morning by name. The cafeteria worker who kept an eye on the kid eating alone. The theme is built to say that out loud, to everyone at once.
The outline
The keynote runs 45 to 90 minutes and moves through the same three parts as the book.
Learning to spot the masterpiece in the room. Ben opens with the two teachers who looked at a kid everybody else had written off and saw an artist.
The part nobody photographs. The year that is not working yet, the plan that is half finished, the student who is not turning around on your schedule. This is where the real work lives.
Why the work counts even when you never get to see the finish. The canvas is done by the time Ben stops talking, and the room sees exactly what he means.
Staff shirts
Download the artwork and print shirts locally, at whatever count and price fits your budget. No merch order, no minimum, nothing waiting on a shipping date. Wear them on kickoff day, keep wearing them all year.
Tell Ben's office which direction your staff likes and they will send the print-ready files.
Build the day
45 to 90 minutes, everybody in one room. This is the anchor.
Add one of the two ADHD sessions in the afternoon and you have a half day.
Same travel day, second audience. The best value in the lineup.
Don't Miss the Masterpiece at bulk pricing, a copy waiting on every desk.
One theme. One staff. One shared mission.
Back-to-school weeks are the tightest two weeks on the calendar and they go early. Send the date and the town, and Ben's coordinator will pencil it in with no contract and no deposit.
Check availability