Imaginative Inquiry:

Using Drama to Ignite Inquiry

Dates: June 27 - 29, 9:30am - 3:30pm
Number of participants: 26 maximum
Instructors: Elaine Chu & Ella Moran

Cost: $630 - includes all materials and the book "A Beginner's Guide to Mantle of the Expert: A Transformative Approach to Education" by Tim Taylor

This summer, join us and experience the methods of Imaginative Inquiry firsthand, and practice leading drama activities to inform your classroom. Guide students into the active roles of researcher, problem-solver and leader. 

We will consider how specific theater conventions can create contexts for Social Studies lessons, and put problem-solving and social justice at the center of a lesson. Teachers will also have the opportunity to think about and plan how to integrate Imaginative Inquiry into your own lessons and curriculum units.

Ella Moran is the Sixth Grade Teacher at The Walden School in Pasadena, CA. She previously taught Third and Fourth Grade at the Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, and in other progressive elementary schools in New York City.

Before becoming a teacher, Ella worked for 10 years as a multimedia producer at Human Rights Watch. Imaginative Inquiry is an apt synthesis of the social justice work, activism, and the vibrant and experiential learning that Ella has been committed to in her work at Human Rights Watch and as a progressive educator.

Ella has a B.A. in Literature from The New School University and a M.S.Ed. in Early Childhood and Childhood General Education from Bank Street College.

Developed in the United Kingdom, Imaginative Inquiry is an approach based on the idea that children’s imagination is our greatest resource in the classroom, placing it center stage as a powerful tool for learning. Within a community of inquiry, teachers and students create exciting and meaningful contexts for learning, using conventions of theater—such as point of view, tension, and narrative—to explore curricular objectives. Students are not merely passive observers of the stories of our world, but are collectively invited to take action in the realm of possibility that Imaginative Inquiry provides.