What it means to be an effective teacher.
The
idea of fostering creativity in the classroom was something that at the
beginning of my post-secondary education I would have argued wasn’t an
important part of helping students learn; I’m glad to say that my opinion on
this topic has changed dramatically since then.
I
was never a very “creative” student throughout my secondary education. I was a student who liked writing essays,
reading textbooks, and watching documentaries made in the 1970’s, but that was
how I learnt best. Although I was never
an artist, I played the piano for eight years before entering high school. I always had a fascination with reading music
and the feeling of contentment that I had when I would play. However, once I got to high school I noticed
that being creative wasn’t necessarily something that was a “good thing” as far
as assessment and assignment purposes went.
But creativity isn’t just “the arts”; creativity is a state of mind and
a process. I think that author and educator Sir Ken
Robinson did a great job in one of his TED lectures in 2006 of highlighting not
only the importance of creativity in the learning process, but also of how the
current education system doesn’t foster the creativity of students as individuals
or as a whole, and how this can be detrimental to some student’s learning
processes.
Sir Ken Robinson's lecture: "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
Sir Ken Robinson's lecture: "Do Schools Kill Creativity?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
This journal entry is somewhat related to my last entry on accommodation; teachers need to be able to individualize learning in order to fit the needs of each student, including fostering creativity. A definition offered by Berk (2005) of creativity is that it is the ability to produce work that is original, but sill appropriate and useful. Although when many people think of creativity they think specifically of music and art, it’s important to understand that any subject can be approached in a creative manner. Being creative simply means coming up with new, relevant ideas or ways to solve problems!
Being
able to foster creativity in a classroom setting may mean a variety of things
for teachers; for me, it simply means creating an environment where students
feel free and safe in order to produce something that might be “wrong” or “different”.
There is a part in Sir Ken Robinson’s
lecture where he states that: “if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never
come up with anything original” (2006).
To me, this is exactly why creating a safe environment for students to
share their ideas is critical in helping to foster creativity in the learning
process. By enabling to students to be
creative in their thinking processes, you can encourage ideas that may not be
conventional or typical, but may enable the students to learn and think in a
way that works best for them as individuals.
Fostering
creativity in the classroom can be done in a variety of ways: allowing students
to brainstorm without judgment, working in groups settings, allowing students
to have more say in how they complete assignments, encouraging “wild”
ideas. By encouraging creativity in the
classroom rather than crushing it, I think that we can help all students have a
better understanding of not only the class material, but allowing them to
become more involved in their own learning process.
References:
Berk, L.E. (2005). Infants, children, and adolescents (5th ed.).Boston, MA: ALlyn & Bacon.
Woolfolk, A.N., Winne, P.H., & Perry, N.E. (2011). Educational psychology (5thed.). Toronto, ON: Pearson Canada.
