E-toolbox for the educator

By Steve Harrington

I got a call from a friend. I thought he was in New York but on my smart-phone I could see he was some place else. Loren was calling from Nepal with a question about finding Imaginal Education resources in the ICA Archives.

Isn’t it strange how in the 21st Century phone calls can come from anywhere and go anywhere – and even be face to face from Nepal to me at home in Costa Rica on a sunny Sunday morning?

Loren said: “Steve, you are part of the ‘ICA Living Archives’ tradition right? I have a question for you… is there anything in the ICA Global Archives that could help a guy trying to help school teachers create curriculum that isn’t just rote read and repeat learning?”

I laughed and said: “Loren you’re the guy with a PHD in education, right?” Yes, he said. “I want some fresh ideas on how to work on site with these elementary school teachers like Rubi, who is teaching English as a Second Language at Glen Buds Secondary School. Can you help?”

I told him about the Imaginal Education Collection website where there is a video clip of an interview with a former elementary school principal who used Imaginal Education methods in his school.

Loren grinned and said, “Steve, that’s why I called, how did he get all that imaginal education stuff into an entire school like that? Can’t you e-mail me some of the curriculum building materials and share some of that good stuff”?

I replied: “You know, the Global Archive Project resources are just beginning to come together; it is like a gold mine but you have to get out your pick to search for the gold nuggets first. I’m still learning what’s there, how to use the new online master databases. I don’t know what – or how – I’m still learning, sorry”! He was disappointed. He really wanted me to help.

After a long pause, I offered to coach him on the standard “Action Planning Method”. We talked about how to make it engaging and fun for the teachers. He promised to try it with them.

After we hung up, it bothered me that I couldn’t lay my hands on materials that would help Loren mentor those school teachers and put imaginal education curriculum and tools to work in their school. I knew that the good stuff MUST be there – but where was it? I began digging. I found some nuggets of gold.

The first was Chicago’s Learning Basket materials for very young children (view at http://www.learningbasket.org/basic.html) on the ICA website. I didn’t know that this program was up and running but the age focus was not right for Loren’s needs.

Next was a manual of some early Imaginal Education work – the “5th City Preschool,” a national demonstration project done in Chicago in the early 1970s. I felt I was getting closer to what Loren was asking for and what might be useful to some school teachers in Nepal for creating a curriculum.

Finally, there was a big chunk of gold on some 10-year-old floppy disks – Image based Instruction Foundations and Pedagogy, a book long out of print. It was edited by OliveAnn Slotta, Denver, and dated 1996. Could we recover the files on media using technology that was nearly 20 years old? Yes, we could!

The Global Archives Project has decided to publish this workbook as an eBook. OliveAnn and about 20 readers and commenters are working online to review and annotate the sections.

Loren doesn’t know it yet but I’m going to ask him to try out workbook with the next batch of teachers he mentors so that they get the “what-why-and how” of Imaginal Education and practice generating curriculum and projects for the learners.

I told him that someone else can have the job of inventing new ICA programs one day. Me, I’m a member of the “living archives”. I’m one of those people trying to find chunks of gold left over from ICA’s work in the last century. We want to put those chunks of creativity into the hands of teachers like Rubi and others who work with the young to bend the new direction of history.

The plan is to have the workbook ready by around August 15, 2014. Until then, here are some links to explore:

Glen Buds Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Glen- Buds-Secondary-School/193143780799115

Loren’s emergent learning community
https://plus.google.com/communities/114436644400419668935

The origin of the term “Image” as used in “Imaginal Education” http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache
http://www.infactispax.org/volume7dot1/jen.pdf

One of the founders of the Constructivist paradigm, Jean Piaget
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_education)

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