From What Is To What If is a book centred around sustainability and climate change, with a unique twist.
It begins with a story. A sustainable utopia. Encouraging the reader to imagine the future of ‘what if’, rather than ‘why not’.
Hopkins emphasises the importance of imagination – an essential skill to building confidence, social skills, cooperation and conflict resolution – linked to cognitive development (pg 51-52). All though the use of questions beginning with the phrase ‘what if’.
What If We Became Story Tellers?, was the chapter that really spoke to me and got me thinking about how I use stories in my classroom to facilitate learning and engage students.
Neuroscience tells us that amazing things happen when we listen to and tell stories. […] That is, we experience the story, rather than just absorbing the information. We understand it more deeply.
Pg 115
Needless to say I think I’ll be using them a little more frequently from now on. Providing they are commonplace, remarkable and relevant to the learning.
And for any of you parents out there, Chapter Four presents an interesting take on attention spans and how to manage the allure of mobile phones and social media – its time we reclaim our attention.
The risk is that a digital world leads to our getting stuck in the present. We start to lose sight of looking towards the future with hope, optimism and imagination. The future starts to fade away.
Pg 79
A thought provoking read to say the least.
Mrs Geography 