Dear Humans,

Yesterday I handed you a sealed black box with a marble and some foam pieces in it and asked you what it looked like inside. You couldn’t look, so you had to roll, listen, feel and imagine what it looked like.

Yesterday you solved a story problem about 800 oranges in baskets and bins. We didn’t have 800 oranges in the classroom, so you had to imagine what that many oranges would look like.

Yesterday you wrote personal essays about objects that are important to you. You knew those objects intimately and knew exactly why they were important, but you had to imagine you were in your unknown reader’s shoes and reading about it for the first time.

Most of what we do in school (and in life) is imaginary, because the important stuff is too big, too small, or too complex to know in any other way.

Sincerely,

Mr. Curt