The Importance of Improvising



      I recently finished reading a book by Tony Wagner titled Creating Innovators and it sparked much thought about the importance of teaching kids and giving them opportunities to be innovators, creators and simply presenting them with situations to improvise. 
     Being improvisers is something most of us probably do without even realizing. For example, this past spring after planting the garden, I was up getting ready for school when I noticed a couple of baby calves that managed to get under the fence and were tromping through my freshly planted lettuce bed. This sent my blood pressure into hypertension! My husband was not home, the garden was a mud pit from a recent rain and I was clothed in dress clothes and heels! Luckily when this opportunity to improvise presented itself to me, I reacted quickly by kicking off my heels, placing on my pink polka-dot rubber boots, shoved my pants into the boots, and hustled to the garden. As I reached the garden, I suddenly remembered that I had no idea how to herd cattle. So I began running towards the calves sinking into the ground with every step and clapping my hands in hopes of scaring or confusing the calves back under the fence and hoping to God that no one was witnessing this chaos. Shockingly enough this tactic worked and the garden was saved! However as I was walking back to the house I spotted my boys looking out the window laughing hysterically because surprisingly my method was not the technique their father uses while corralling cattle…I’m not sure why, it worked flawlessly!
     After this unique improvising experience, I used it in my writing that day at school and had my students laughing while they were describing a time they had to react quickly! Situations like this as well as observing kids when challenges are presented to them makes me think about the fact that students need more opportunities to problem solve and improvise. 
     This notion of course got me thinking about my own boys; so this past week I told my boys that I wanted them to water the chickens but they couldn’t use the water hose. They of course looked at me like I had two heads but after talking about it and getting a plan organized, they put buckets into their little John Deer Gator, drove to the pond below the house, filled the buckets and watered the chickens. Just by having to do this simple task, they had to form and execute a plan in a different format than what they usually would.
     Future jobs are going to require employees to problem-solve, collaborate, improvise and complete tasks that are not yet invented, therefore creating challenges for your students and kids is important to their development. If you don’t devise situations for their benefit, do it strictly for your own entertainment! It is fun to watch a young mind work and form ideas you would not even of considered.