Day
Dreamers
“Those
who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who
only dream at night.”
Edgar
Allan Poe
Are
you a day dreamer? When I was going through my mother's house after
she died, I found some of my old report cards from elementary school.
Back then, young children received grades of Satisfactory,
Unsatisfactory, or Making Progress. Teachers would write on the card
exactly what needed work. On almost all my report cards, teachers had
noted the fact that I spent too much time “day dreaming.” In
their minds, that was a very bad thing.
Having
been a teacher, I appreciate the difficulty of having a certain
amount of material that must be gotten through. If the children don't
learn it in the allotted time, they are unprepared for the next
year's subject matter. But this method of teaching short changes
children who need to work at a slower pace, as well as children who
already know the information, and need to move on to something new.
It also leaves out the child who follows threads of thought into
stories, and gets more caught up in those stories than in what is
going on around them. I wonder how many children are asked, “What
are you thinking about?” when they're day dreaming. I was never
asked.
Day
dreaming is just as important to clarity of mind as night dreaming.
Day dreaming contains our thoughts, our way of reasoning, of forming
ideas and images; we plumb our depths for motive and possibility, we
notice our surroundings, and the other creatures with whom we share
them. If you have a creative mind, it does a lot of day dreaming.
Writers and artists, poets and architects, city planners, landscape
designers, even farmers and executives need time to simply allow
their minds to roam free. To contemplate things and imagine. I think
it would be smart to allow some time during the school day for
imagining, for day dreaming, and then afterward, poll the kids to see
what they thought about.
I
hope today you will set aside some time to simply day dream. No telling
what kind of juicy schemes and projects you'll come up with. Who
knows, there may even be some stories in there that need to see the
light of day.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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