In many of my lessons, I focus on encouraging the students to make connections, particularly with other people and cultures. I present a concept that seems abstract or surprising and challenge them to connect to it. For example, I taught a lesson about dreams and encouraged them to share their own dreams. One thing I asked was how many people have flown in a dream? At first, no one raised their hand. Then I explained how flying is an almost universal fantasy in dreams, either by spreading one’s arms and jumping, or floating, etc. After some brief discussion, nearly everyone in the room could relate a time or way when they had flown in a dream. I next asked the students what other types of dreams they knew of, i.e., ones that don’t occur when you are sleeping. This forced them to take the specific concept of a sleeping dream and abstract it to other areas. They very quickly suggested goals as a form of a dream. We then proceeded to do an art project to draw out a narrative/storyboard of themselves, achieving one of their goals.
