As children we all had dreams of becoming something big when we reached adulthood. While these dreams may have changed over time, our ability to imagine something greater didn’t.

During the first year of classes at the LifeLink School Center, we had 115 students, ages 3-5. We did a lot of coloring, learning numbers, and helping the kids acclimate to the new structure of school and classmates. It was a lot of work, and a lot of fun.

One of our crafts was a Book About Me.  We wrote about favorite foods and colors, recorded heights and weights and described our families.  One page was devoted to what each student wanted to be when they grew up. We laid out paper with crayons, markers, and colored pencils.

Then we instructed them to draw their futures.

We were met with 115 blank stares.

We had missed something truly heartbreaking. It was so obvious no had seen it. Kind of like when everything is covered in snow eventually you don’t even notice it.

No one had a dream of the future.

When I was four I knew I wanted to be a policeman. Not just any policeman, but a motorcycle cop. It was my dream of the future. When I pictured myself I could vividly see me sitting on a Harley Davidson police motorcycle dressed all in blue with a cool helmet.

These kids had missed that part. They skipped over the idea that they could be anything they wanted, that the world was full of possibilities. I remember standing there in the school building and the levity of the entire thing sinking in.

The next day we started Career Week. We focused on the concept of the future and its limitless possibilities. We showed movies of different jobs and explained there were no restrictions, they could do anything they wanted. We talked about being doctors, bakers, dancers, baseball players, mommies, teachers, pilots, everything we could think of!

By the end of the week there were 115 different pictures of amazing dreams.