IMAGINE IF YOU WILL: The Human Super Power

I grew up on a small farm in Oregon.  Dad and mom were hard working people who earned a living from the soil.  We never had much and the plan for me was to be a farmer to take over the family farm and follow what had been the muti-generational family business.  Would I have been happy doing that?  Probably, but we’ll never know.  We’ll never know because of several teachers who ignited in me a unique ability that human beings have.  The ability to imagine.  Imagine something beyond where they are, beyond the expectations others have of us, even beyond the expectations we have for our own daily lives.  

Human beings have this ability and no other beings on earth do.  I believe it is what has set us apart in the animal kingdom.  I’ve worked with dogs for years as a hobby.  I’ve shown, trained obedience and rally.  I love dogs.  Dogs show compassion and love and I love that they live in the moment enjoying life and what it gives them.  What they cannot do is imagine.  They can’t imagine what they might do in the future, they can’t imagine other possibilities.  

Humans alone as a species have this ability.  That means that everyone reading this can imagine what they will do tomorrow or what they want to be in ten years or how it will feel to achieve that goal you set for yourself or what the view will be like from that mountain top.  As parents, teachers, administrators or board members you can imagine what you will do next summer or what your next career goal is.  There are no limits to imagination.

Given all that, we should be excited when children show imagination.  It is natural, perhaps the most natural of human intelligences.  Imagination is the basis for setting goals, it is the basis of creativity.  It is the tool we use to plan, create, invent and innovate.  Yet too often we hear adults say things like “be sure to color within the lines”, “Johnny’s mind wanders too much in class he can’t stay on task” or the classic parent statement “don’t make up things” or the report card comment “Susie has an overactive imagination”.  Some others that we commonly hear are “that’s not realistic”, “that’s just your imagination”, ‘don’t daydream”, or “get your head out of the clouds.”

If we accept the fact that imagination is responsible for all human progress, which I believe it is, then why do we work so hard to try and squash it?  Shouldn’t we be celebrating it, directing it in positive ways and using it to make the subjects we teach come alive.  I believe it’s in large part due to the old paradigm that we still struggle with.  That paradigm dictates that teachers impart knowledge and students learn (memorize) that knowledge.  I blame, in good part, our testing program for this fault.  Most tests are still knowledge based as opposed to demonstrations of the ability to apply information and create new.

So, the question becomes how do we integrate this superpower into our classrooms.  First of all, we need to become cognizant of the language we use that causes students to withdraw from using their imagination.  Second, we need to find ways to integrate the use of imagination into our lesson planning and our daily responses to student questions.  This involves questioning strategies that encourage the use of imagination.  Last but not least we need to change our view and approach to children that we may perceive to have overactive imaginations.  Many times, these are neuro divergent students who suffer the most from a lack of understanding of why their minds appear to wander when in fact they are creating in their own way.

So here are some ideas for a shift in the way we structure our planning for lessons.  Mind you this does not negate the need for facts, dates, formulas etc.  What it does do is change the mindset about the application of information; it moves the paradigm form memorization to application and changes the students view from irrelevant information to relevant experience.  Here are just a few uses of the idea of imagination.  Notice that I have been careful to not use the word imagination. It becomes redundant and repetitive after a while.  

If you could change one thing about_______________ what would it be?

What would it look like if___________________________?

What is the most creative solution to this problem you can think of?

If you could start from scratch, how would you (design, solve, improve, change) this_________________?

How might it have felt to be a character in a book, to be a certain person in history, etc.?

These questions and many others like them are designed to be open ended.  They can be used as prompts for essays, papers, group discussion or classroom discussion or prompts for a discussion on a media platform.

I invite you to imagine if you will:  What would my classroom look like if I could fully unleash the power of imagination?