There are thousands of educators around the world who are already part of our network–but many more who do incredibly imaginative work. We want to connect with and learn with those educators. We want to reconnect and ignite imagination-focused professional development through CIRCE. We want to provide professional services to support schools who value IMAGINATION and creativity and innovation–and want to maximize engagement and learning in their classrooms for all learners.
Our vision: The Imaginative Schools Network will be a diverse and international professional learning community connected by a belief in the value of imagination for all learning.
growing engaged minds; imagining and making better worlds.
The ISN will provide a space for all educators to grow their imaginative practice. We recognize that imagination is neglected in education and we aim to change this from the ground up by
- connecting imaginative and inspired teachers and schools,
- sharing examples of members’ imaginative teaching and learning practices through the imaginED blog and the CIRCE podcast series,
- fostering dialogue through different online forums (e.g. montly Twitter #imaginEDchat, the Imaginative Schools Network FB group),
- inviting members to learn together through professional learning opportunities (e.g. books studies, online presentations/webinars etc.).
This professional learning community will be part of CIRCE. We believe that imagination is as important for learning in the sciences as it is in the arts. We believe that the imaginative engagement of students is as important at the post-secondary level as it is in primary classrooms, and as central to adult and community education as it is to online learning. We share Maxine Greene’s conviction that imaginative development is crucial to the building of societies characterized by empathy and solidarity, societies genuinely inclusive of people from different backgrounds, of different abilities, and with different ways of seeing the world. And we also see imagination as deeply interwoven in the relationships between human beings and the rest of the living world.
The Imaginative Schools Network is for all educators who value imagination and want to connect with others who do, too.
We are in the process of developing a set of standards for the ISN that we hope will guide our future work. Stay tuned for updates on that collaborative project (October 2019-July 2020) on imaginED.