Why Creativity?

  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.  We can incorporate our own creativity skills into that.  Thimmesh gave a few “prompts” she suggested as activities at the start of each day.  Instead of telling children to, “think outside of the box” (which Thimmesh says they don’t even understand), she tells us to ask them questions.  She gives examples of activities such as a 3-d object and says to ask the students what it “could” be.  We watched a video last week about “When There is a Correct Answer” that mentions specifically what Thimmesh was getting at.  Often times we tell students, “Complete this the right way” when we really should be telling them, “complete this”.  The “right” or “correct” way is subjective.  When students thought they needed to do it a certain way, most of their drawings were similar in nature.  When students were given the opportunity to “think outside the box”, they flourished by drawing a number of things that weren’t all the same.  Thimmesh had a wonderful idea about students seeing an object and figuring out what it is.  She mentioned that you’ll get a lot of similar answers, but sometimes you’ll get extremely creative answers.  She gave a few other prompts such as writing on anything but paper and turning circles/squares on a paper into something else.  She said these are different than art lessons because, with art, students often compare themselves to others.  With these exercises, there are no wrong answers.  In turn, this gets a student’s creative juices flowing which I agree is an EXCELLENT way to start a day.

Our professor linked us to some videos from a Maryland Schools (theaemalliance) that specifically talk about Creativity in their classrooms.  Two very important things I noted from the videos is that we’re all competing for the student’s attention and test scores improve when the students want to learn.

When it comes to a student’s attention span, they have a dozen things distracting them throughout the day.  I’m not even an early learner and just today I was distracted by a video I wanted to watch, a game I wanted to play, and a snack I wanted to eat.  I was trying to study for History when I realized: maybe I need to find a way to be more engaged in the lesson.  So instead of studying history, I moved on to Educ 324 HA!  Why?  Well, obviously because my major is more important to me, and it interests me more.  I’ll be honest, I abhor US History.  I know I’ll have to teach it, and I know I need to refresh my memory on it, but I’m reading from a textbook and listening to hour-long lectures.  One of the teachers in the videos mentions (in a comment to someone who thinks her students are having too much fun) that sitting in one place for an hour, listening to a lecture, every day, for 180 days of the year is BORING.  I only have a semester to deal with and I AGREE.  I have plenty of ideas on how to teach “boring” subjects to students in the classroom, but how do I take a boring subject to me and make it interesting?  I’m not the one teaching the subject matter - I’m trying to learn it.  Perhaps I need to add some “creativity” into my learning plan.  It would make me much more excited to click on my history lessons.

I have a History TEST due in 3 days.  I’ve just admitted that I’m not very interested in the subject which means I’m also not interested in learning it.  What happens to our students when they aren’t interested in the subject?  THEY DON’T LEARN IT!  “Test scores improve when students want to learn” is EXACTLY right. Thankfully, I’m only taking a Unit test and if I bomb this one, I’ll have plenty of chances to make up my grade, but it still begs the question of how to be motivated to learn a subject.  I’m clearly motivated to learn about Creativity in the Classroom.  I already read my assignment for my reading class.  I’ve nearly finished my project for Psychology, but here I sit with History looming in the background.

Let’s go back to our question at hand, “Why should teachers incorporate creativity into the classroom”?  I think these last two points are the key.  We must be captivating our student’s attentions.  Why do we need to grip them into the lesson?  In order for students to learn, they must WANT to learn.  When they are learning, their test scores improve.  Now we can make the correlation that Creativity in the Classroom ultimately improves test scores.

I’ll report back about history next time, but for now, I’m going to test some of these theories on myself.  It might take a little more time (unfortunately) but in the long run, I know that having more interest in these subjects will lead to a better test score.  I don’t have to make an “A” in the class, but it sure would be nice.  I’ll just have to get creative about how to get that “A” :)