Teach & Serve IV, No. 26
Creative Space/Creative Time
January 30, 2019
I do another kind of dreaming, too. I dream about the professional life I want to lead. I dream about the leader I wish to be. I dream about what I might look like five, ten and fifteen years from now (God willing!).
Do you take time to dream?
I remember, not that long ago, that I had a pretty rich – if ultimately fleeting – fantasy life. When I was taking out the trash and something fell from the can, I would often pick it up and fire it in, pretending the clock was winding down and I was attempting the buzzer-beating, game-winning last shot of Game Seven of the NBA Finals. Every time I was at bat as a kid on the playground, it was a World Series moment. When I was playing my guitar at a coffee house or in front of any crowd, I was performing in Madison Square Garden.
Dreaming is kind of fun and, to be honest, I slip into these dreams still every now and again.
I do another kind of dreaming, too. I dream about the professional life I want to lead. I dream about the leader I wish to be. I dream about what I might look like five, ten and fifteen years from now (God willing!).
It seems to me a very important part of our work as educators, taking time to dream, to dream about ourselves and our institutions, to dream about who we can be, to dream about what we can do to get better and how we can improve.
Surely, we ask our students to dream about themselves. We want them to vision a potential future and what that future holds for them.
Should we not do the same thing ourselves?
Leaders who do no dream never conceive of or realize what they might become.
Schools that do not dream cannot ever reach heights previously unimagined because there is no one imagining them.
Give your schools and the people within them a chance to dream. Give them time and space to do it. Make dreaming part of the operating system of your institution.
You will be amazed by the results. The results will not be dreams. They will be new realities.