Imagination!

The idea of imagination is something I truly value and embrace, and I hope to be able to encourage in my own classroom. As a child, I was an exceptionally imaginative girl that had imaginary friends, ran across the open lawn of my elementary school, pretending it was a vast and dangerous forest, or writing short stories about strange worlds at a very young age. I have memories of playing games with my younger sister where our “dolls” were unsharpened pencils, but we could see them for what they represented, not what they were. While I want to believe that there is plenty of imagination still left in schools, I am fully aware there are schools out there that do not foster or encourage its growth.

Students who are “at risk” or “underprivileged” may not be given opportunities for their imaginations to be nurtured and given room to grow and evolve. Imagination is the thing that leads to innovation, and also adds a nice richness to our world. For students who are not given opportunities to foster their imaginations, they tend to be seen as “non-being” who is “powerless” (Greene 36). This powerlessness can result in difficulties later in life, particularly as they integrate into other socioeconomic classes (i.e. in college or jobs) where others were given the opportunity to overcome that powerless feeling. What I can already see as a possible struggle with this idea is that some schools are on scripted lesson plans (where everyone is on the same page, same problem, on the same day) which may not benefit imagination growth.

The question is then how can teachers foster imagination in curriculums that do not promote that fostering? Greene tells us that “imagination is important in the lives of teachers as it is in the lives of their students” (Greene 36). A teacher should embrace and foster their own imagination in order to encourage the imagination of their own students. This can be somewhat strange as an adult, particularly when we are told that imagination is something that is a common characteristic of youth and childhood, and that it must mature as we mature into what I consider to be a type of blandness—unless you are in the arts, of course, because that is a region of adulthood that fosters imagination.

What I found interesting in Greene’s article was when she briefly touched on the readers and phonics that are used to help teach students to read who might be behind in that department. My own experiences as a rather slow-to-develop reader was that I did not really find a drive to read until I read Harriet the Spy. I was in fifth grade—a grade level that is probably considered “behind” when it comes to reading expectations. For me, it wasn’t that I couldn’t read, it was that I was not inspired to read. Is Greene maybe hinting that if readers and phonics were built around things that inspire readers that perhaps there would be less of a gap? Or that because a child progresses “as expected” when developing reading means they get earlier access to reading that fosters imagination?

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Greene, M. (1995) Imagination, community, and the school. Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change (pp 32-43). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.