Why & Wonder
Crafting creativity in the classroom is one of the most urgently needed but underdeveloped tools in the classroom space. In the book, Crafting Creativity & Creating Craft, by Weida, discusess that the creative imagination is perhaps one of the more needed and underdeveloped tools in education. We live in a highly visual age and we rarely tap into the working conscious with the inner canvas of the minds eye and it is an untapped source of inspirition. These mental images that are created by concentration are embodyed by visions that we can tap into as teachers through guided visualization.
Guided visualizations are one means to coax forth our creative images, which can then be embodied through the crafting of spoken and written words as well as objects. Visualizations are most effective when they arise from the teacher’s own awakened imagination rather than from a memorized or read aloud script. For this reason, teachers should take every opportunity to exercise and strengthen their own imaginations. The exercises in this chapter offer one avenue. They are adopted for classroom learning from the professional acting technique of Michael Chekhov (1991), who wrote, For artists with mature imaginations, images are living beings, as real to their minds’ eyes as things around us are visible to our physical eyes. Through the appearance of these living beings, artists “see” an inner life. They experience with them their happiness and sorrows; they laugh and cry with them and they share the fire of their feelings. (p. 4)
Jamie McKenzie writes many articles and books about the power of wondering. In fact he has designed an entire questioning tool kit that help us wonder.
If the purpose of an education is to extrapolate us from our present circumstances to a life of a more moral value then we have to teach in the classroom wondering, visualizing and designing what that life looks like.
Our classrooms need to be designed around the essential question in every discipline, "Where did we come from? Where are we going?"
In math, science or social studies where did we come from what mathematical theroms have been presented before us what did they help us do why are they important and then wonder where are we going with math? What does the future of math look like? The same is in science what sceince theroms ideas where presented before us? What did they do for us and where are we going with them?
One of the best books I have read about wonder for the science currirculum is Astrophysics for people in a hurry Neil DeGrasse discusses the idea that Newtown idea about gravity might have been wrong. It leads me to the question What if we are wrong. What if our ideas in science and math are wrong? Where in our curriuclum do we leave time to ponder these ideas and these questions? What is the result if we don't leave time to think about these ideas? To wonder/visualize new beginning?
The visualization process in the classroom can be honed with the practice of visualizing.
I have attached to the picture the chapter about visualization exericeses to do with your students.