We’re pleased to welcome Paige Arnell to the blog as a guest writer on the role of imagination and creativity in education today. Paige is the head of school at Kirby Hall School, which serves PreK through 8th grade learners in Central Austin.

The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking.
—Ursula K. LeGuin

The changing landscape of childhood is much discussed in the parenting and education world. The reality of digital saturation generates much debating of how, when, and where, and pundits of varying authority weigh in on benefits and dangers. Whatever your philosophy, there is no question that we’ve entered a radically new way of growing up.

There are many points of entry for the anxious here. No matter your pedagogy or teaching philosophy, for all educators it is a time of considerable questioning and revising.

One thing that is becoming more and more evident is that for earlier generations so much of the “work” of learning was happening outside of the schoolhouse door. When children were bored and left to their own devices—without devices, when children were gathering in groups together to make their own entertainment, when children were staring down the long hours of a blank afternoon, they were actively engaging in this essential work of imagining. Out of necessity, they made something out of nothing. They invented a landscape of discovery and collaboration. Obviously, some children did more than others; there were leaders and followers. This is not new information. Waxing nostalgic for childhoods of the past appears to be a perpetual exercise of adulthood; however, what we are newly considering is how much this work of recreation dramatically affected the tasks of the classroom. We now are seeing that children entering school without this practice are at a deficit, and that the tasks of deep learning are becoming more difficult for them.

Imagination is the foundation of critical thinking. Without imagination, we have no creativity, we have no curiosity. Without imagination, one might argue, we have no thinking.

This is nothing new, and resources abound for creative activities for children. Unfortunately, what many of these amount to are really no more than decorative activities. A creative writing prompt, a craft with a specific end product, a writing “journal” with pre-filled images and fill-in-the-blank responses. Perhaps some glue, glitter, and markers will be involved. These are nice activities, and many children enjoy them, and they make for cute wall decoration, but they rarely require real working of the mind.

These times require more from all educators. These times require us to ask ourselves more challenging questions. They require us to evaluate what it might mean to prioritize the imagination within our classrooms and schools.

If we truly take as a foundational principle the claim that “the imagination is an essential tool of the mind,” how might we need to reconsider the primacy of imaginative activity in learning environments, primarily in early childhood education? What does it mean to be free to imagine? Does it mean that we give ourselves permission to think of new things? Does it mean we give ourselves permission to try something really new—at least for us? Does it mean that we allow ourselves to act a different role, to move our bodies in a different way, to try a different voice, to try a new style of writing? Does it mean that we allow our mind to wander so freely that anything can happen … a puddle can become the ocean and twigs and leaves can become great ships? Does it mean that we allow ourselves to write familiar words in new combinations?

Yes, we might say, and we might say yes quite easily. In these times—in these times in which the mind is distracted almost continuously and so very rarely given the quiet and time it needs to drift into the world of imagination—in these times, educators must push themselves even further. We must push ourselves beyond a simple yes and into a deep consideration of the fundamental changes that a radical commitment to honoring the work of the imagination would look like beyond glittery decoration.

If we believe that the transformative and powerful work rests on a bedrock of imagination and creative thinking—that critical thinking and the production of ideas can only grow from this rich soil—then how do we need to change our classrooms? It seems we must give our students a few things:

We must give them time, specifically, unstructured time. If we fill their days with tasks and to-dos, they may never reach the space in which a stick becomes a wand or a telescope.
We must show them our own willingness to play and engage with the world in new ways. If we view children’s imaginative free time as time for us to check out of their world, we are showing them that imagination is secondary.
We must give primacy of place to their creations and to their work—no matter how messy it may be. Imagination vitally requires process and not production. Let’s take down the professionally made posters. Let’s allow our students to create the classroom.

We’re called now to create communities in which school provides an almost sacred place for play and exploration, for the joy in creating and making messes. Parents and educators have an incredible opportunity to support each other in this work that may not produce a worksheet one can tape to the fridge, but rather supports the growth of a mind in all of its wonder and full humanness.

—Paige Arnell, Head of School | Kirby Hall School

Guest contributor Caroline Reck is the founder and artistic director of the award-winning Glass Half Full Theatre, which has created some of the most creative, educational, and emotionally moving theater productions I’ve experienced in Austin (or anywhere). I can’t wait to see their latest work, Cenicienta: A Bilingual Cinderella Story, and you’ll understand why whey you read Caroline’s inspiring post below.

A few weeks ago, my young daughter and I were lying on my bed, reading a story. I wanted her to nap. She wanted to talk to me about the patches in our ceiling plaster, where a leak in the roof had caused some discoloration and peeling sections. I always avoided looking at those patches, a reminder that despite having our roof repaired, I had yet to chip away the plaster and repaint the ceiling. But Clementine saw something else. Unaware of my angst about those patches, she told me, “Mama, I love your ceiling! It’s so beautiful. There’s a mama fish, and a baby fish, and that one’s a bear. They’re taking care of each other, in case the bear isn’t a friendly bear . . . oh, no, it’s OK . . . the bear is smiling. . . .”

I was reminded, once again, of how important imagination is in creating a sense of positivity, of possibility, of aspirational thought. I shouldn’t have to be reminded. I’m the founder and artistic director of Glass Half Full Theatre, an Austin company, where my job is dreaming up ways to help audiences look at life in imaginative and optimistic ways, through puppetry and other live theater forms.

But it is so easy to let the everyday drudgery pull you down, make you forget your natural imaginative urges, and I see it happening to kids at younger and younger ages. Many factors contribute to children using their imaginations less often: screen time supplying ready-made images and predictable stories, exhaustion from long hours at school and aftercare, overscheduling of overly structured activities. As an educator, artist, and mama, I’m always looking for ways to promote imagination in children’s lives, and I particularly like to do bilingual work, so it’s accessible to kids whether English or Spanish is the language they are most confident in.

I wrote a play that was originally produced in 2015 at ZACH Theatre, in collaboration with Teatro Vivo, and is currently touring to schools in the Greater Austin area. It’s called Cenicienta: A Bilingual Cinderella Story and features the character of Belinda, a young girl banished by her uncaring stepfamily to the basement. Undeterred, Belinda befriends the objects around her, inventing characters with her unbridled imagination.

The show opens with Belinda giving voice(s) and movement to a two-headed desk lamp. Kids in the audience lean in. They’ve never seen this before. They are intrigued. They want to figure out what’s happening. Sometimes audiences of children will talk aloud at this point: “What’s she doing? How is she doing that?” but they quickly settle into a fascinated silence as the lamp characters (Gustavo and Ernesto) set up the backstory.

Belinda is stuck in the basement, preparing for a party that’s happening upstairs later on. She begins to recount the story of Cinderella, using a napkin with a napkin ring for Cinderella, an upside-down teapot for the Fairy Godmother, and a set of kitchen funnels for the stepfamily. She (and we) notice the parallels between the story of Cenicienta and Belinda’s own life, but it takes the duration of the show, and the unexpected opportunity to meet her hero, real-life poet Gary Soto, who’s upstairs at the party, for Belinda to gain the confidence to recognize her own self-worth in the world outside her imagination.

We’ve been touring this show to Austin-area campuses for the past year. I sit near the audience in the auditorium to run the sound cues, so I get to experience their youthful reaction to unbridled imagination being validated onstage. Their eyes get brighter. Their focus is intense, different from the glazed look children get when they are watching digital content. They are watching and listening, piecing together the story. Teachers and parents report to me that after the show, their kids start making up stories using brooms and straws and other objects they find around them. Kids who don’t speak Spanish experience the unique opportunity to follow along with the parts that are in Spanish, without being left out, because the action provides the links to understand what’s happening onstage. Tapping into their imaginations improves their ability to approach ideas with an open mind.

I still haven’t fixed the ceiling in my bedroom, but I also don’t avoid looking at it anymore. After all, my daughter finds it beautiful. She peers into the constellation of peeling drywall and sees a family of fish taking care of one another. I see the blooming artistry in her eyes, and I can’t remember why I disliked those patches in the first place.

Cenicienta: A Bilingual Cinderella Story, by Caroline Reck and Rupert Reyes, is being presented at the Sin Fronteras Festival at UT Austin January 23–24, 2019, and is currently available to tour to schools in the greater Austin area. For information on the Sin Fronteras festival, visit here. For information on bringing Cenicienta to your school, please visit here.

Caroline Reck