Robert Krulwich had another thought-provoking column at NPR yesterday — Inside-Out Your Mind.

He shares a number of excellent examples, including the video I’ve embedded below, that encourage people to be creative by thinking the opposite — “inside-out.”

I always found that exercise very useful when I was a community organizer. One example was when we preparing for a candidates forum, but we didn’t want to do the usual routine of trotting the candidates out, asking them their positions on our proposals, and then ending it there. Those were certainly productive, but we had already done quite a few of them.

So we considered what would be the opposite of what we usually did. We ended up bringing the candidates in and, instead of having them tell us what they thought, we had people provide testimony on the issues that were important to them and how it affected their lives. Then, candidates had to share what they heard, and our members publicly graded them on their listening ability. It was a great action!

I’ve also used this method to help me be creative in dealing with classroom management issues.

But now I’m trying to think of how I could use this as a lesson. It could certainly be useful in my IB Theory of Knowledge class when we study “perception.” However, there just has to be a way for me to use it with my mainstream students, but I’m not coming up with anything.

Any ideas?