Teacher Shana

  This week was all about “visuals”.  As a teacher, we are taught to cater to numerous types of learners.  As a visual learner, I am careful to include LOTS of visuals when I teach.  When I make a presentation, there are always pictures to go along with what I’m trying to talk about.  We learned this week just how effective pictures can be. I type out my notes in class due to the fact typing is much quicker when my professors are speaking quickly and I want to get all the information down.  I could spend an entire lecture copying from slides word-for-word and not be able to reciprocate those words at all.  Thankfully, I know this.  I know that in order for me to learn, I have to write it down.  Many professors give us “study sheets” for tests and I spend hours not only writing but color-coding index cards in order to help me study.  When it comes to test time, I know the answer because I have visualized it with the definition.  Ofte...

  Let’s continue the discussion on WHY teachers should be putting creativity into the classroom.  This week’s theme was a continuation of last weeks and made some excellent points of the necessity of Creativity in the Classroom. We were linked to another TED Talk, this time with Catherine Thimmesh .  She referenced Ken Robinson’s talk I listened to last week in which he questioned if schools were killing creativity.  Thimmesh offered valuable advice in which she remarked that we can use what we have creativity-wise and add it to the existing structure of lessons.  I mentioned something similar in my last post about the fact that obviously we have to teach the curriculum, but the curriculum does not specify exactly how we have to teach it.  In fact, the curriculum is written wonderfully for our purposes by specifying that the student “will be able to…”  This is excellent news because that means we aren’t required to teach everything a specific way....

      My Education 324 class is literally titled, "Creativity in the Classroom".  At first glance, someone (like me) may be a bit puzzled as to why we need an entire class to learn about incorporating creativity into a classroom environment.  I thrive on creativity, but I have to remember that not everyone does!     Naturally, the first few weeks of class is all about defining Creativity and exploring what creativity is in a classroom environment.  Week 2's task was met with the essential question: what is creativity to you?  I wrote a long summary, as per usual, so I'll spare all of you an even longer post and give you the finer points.  Prior to reading any material issued to us, creativity to me is thinking outside of "the box".  That is to say as teachers, we have a curriculum we have to teach from.  A creative teacher will take that lesson and give the students an experience from outside of the textbook.  Textbooks ca...