Yesterday I had the honour of meeting grade seven students who were creating scarecrows of hope. They were doing this to kick off their study to understand how intentionally using hope enhances quality of life. They were also making the 'hope' scarecrows for the Hope Foundation's annual Harvest of Hope Affair on September 26. The students were working in groups to create thematic scarecrows of hope that represent their hopes for the future. For example, one of the scarecrows was a graduation scarecrow.
As I reflect back on my visit and the conversations that I had with the students and their teacher, Ms. Holt, I could not help but think about the relationship between hope, creativity and imagination. "Creativity is most often defined as a process of construction of the new, while imagineation is a form of thought in whihc the new is brought to awareness"(Gallas, 2001, p. 460).
As these students create their scarecrows and then imagine (in the reflections they will be doing) how "their scarecrow" represents what they hope for in the future and what they will have to do to get to the images that surface as they imagine what is possible.
I believe this tells us that creativity and imagination have a special role to play in learning to hope. Furthermore, for those who feel that hope is about goal achievement, it would appear that it is equally important to pay attention to the role of creativity and imagination.
Reference:
Gallas, K. (2001). "Look, Karen, I'm running like jell-o": Imagination as a question, a topic, a tool for literacy research and learning. Research in the Teaching of English. 35, 457 - 492.
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