Ken Robinson, in his TED Talk entitled, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” stated that education is meant to take us into the future that we cannot grasp. We don’t know what the world will look like, but we are preparing our children for it. This is why instilling creativity in our children is key. Robinson stated that children have a great capacity for innovation. One quote that really stood out to me was when he said, “Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” What a powerful statement! All of our research this week has supported this statement. Let’s look a little more into this.
John Seely Brown stated that there is a big shift from a predictable world of equilibrium, to an exponential world of constant flux and dis-equilibrium. He talked about how the 21st century infrastructure is driven by the continual exponential advances of computation, storage, and bandwidth with no stability in sight. The image Brown showed was of an S-Curve that represented how a rapid set of change didn’t allow for a long period of stability. The infrastructures that define how we do things (i.e. universities), have been driven by an S-Curve with punctuated change followed by a period of stability. There is now one punctuated move after another, roughly after every two years. It really stood out to me when he stated that the half-life of a particular skill is shrinking. He said the skills we are teaching our children have a half-life of roughly five years! This is a very strong argument for why is important for children to learn creativity, along with content, so that they are prepared to take their innovative minds into their future job that doesn’t even exist yet. When Brown talked about a social way of learning, I automatically thought of digital content companies like BuzzFeed. Companies like this produce a range of media from current events, to pop culture, to videos, to interactive quizzes. Each article has a plethora of images, GIFs and videos embedded into the text. This is engaging for the reader. It is no wonder that textbooks are hard to stay engaged with for students when they are used to this more interactive form of reading being put out online. Digital reading also allows for direct and constant communication with others about what is being read. This could be in the comment section of an article, blogs, or on various other digital platforms. The ability to interact about what you are reading on the spot is another way that media has changed the way we think about communication. Brown discussed about the importance of communication and collaboration when he talked about a group of kids in Maui with a passion to become surfers. One child in particular, Dusty, wanted to become a professional surfer. Dusty and his group of friends, aligned with the same passion, began meeting. They would watch videos of the best surfers in the world and analyze what made them the best. They would watch/critique each other, film each other, etc. These boys would pull the best ideas from adjacencies such as skateboarding, snowboarding, motor cross, mountain biking, etc. They maintained deep collaborative learning with one another. They honed in on using digital media is order to “swap ideas” with others. The big take way from this is that when recreation becomes an act of re-creation/remix and productive inquiry, then a culture of learning that thrives on participatory life-long learners and a quest to always become. Dusty and his friends were willing to fail constantly in order to get a move right. How incredible would it be if we could get our students this excited about their learning in school? I want my students to feel passionate about what they are learning, and get to a point where they feel successful failing. A student may not feel as passionate about a math concept as they do about surfing, but they can still engage in math in a positive way. How can I get my students passionate about the "how to" of learning/the process of learning? A partial answer is to encourage collaboration and a growth mindset. If I am teaching my students to feel successful failing, because they know that is part of the path to learning, then hopefully that mindset will transfer over to the passion they want to peruse in life. By teaching collaboration, I am teaching my students skills for how to successfully communicate with peers and to work together with a common goal to achieve. If students are learning these principles in school, then imagine how successful they will be by taking these principles and applying them to what they are truly passionate about perusing in life! It will also create more meaningful learning experiences for what they are learning in school. This really ties into the importance of teaching with the four Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity through opportunities to work together and access technology. Dan Pink in, “The Puzzle of Motivation”, makes a case for rethinking how to run businesses (or in our case, our classrooms). Pink discusses the power of incentives. He states that extrinsic motivation doesn’t always work. Extrinsic rewards, by nature, narrow our minds to complete a goal to receive a reward. When we have problems that require creativity and out of the box thinking, then extrinsic motivation that narrows our thinking isn’t going to be as effective because it will limit that creativity. Intrinsic motivation, the desire to do something because it matters and is important to us, will be a much more effective form of motivation. Dusty and his friends were intrinsically motivated to excel at surfing, therefore passionate about gaining mastery over this skill. Giving students autonomy, control over what they are learning, is extremely effective. What if a portion of the school day could be devoted to this? For example, a student could research and create a google slides presentation about something they are passionate about. They would still be learning research and presentation skills, but under the context of something they are passionate about. When teaching new vocabulary words, students could break into groups to create skits that represent what these words mean. This would allow for collaboration and creativity to take place while still learning the required curriculum. The drive to do things for their own sake/because the thing matters leads to motivation and productivity to go up. August Turak’s article, “Can Creativity Be Taught?” he discusses the insights of Louis R. Mobley. Mobley states that success depended on teaching to think creatively. Mobley’s first insight is that most education focuses on providing answers in a linear step by step way. Mobley discovered that asking different questions in a non-liner way was the key to creativity. Second, he stated that becoming creative is an unlearning, rather than a learning, process. Getting students to think of something in a different way is the start of creativity. Mobley’s third insight is that we don’t learn to be creative, we must become creative people. In order to foster creativity in my classroom, I need to provide those experiences. This could mean asking open ended questions followed by time for students to collaborate with one another with different technologies and tools available to them to work with. This will open them up to alternative modes of thinking. I think of the Singapore Model Method for math where students use a bar method to work through word problems. This strategy provides a different way to solve world problems. Providing students with varied strategies to solve the same problem encourages different ways of thinking. Mobley’s fourth insight is that becoming creative becomes easier when you are around creative people. I cannot think of a more creative group of people than children! Allowing kids more opportunities to create together will foster an atmosphere of creativity in the classroom. I notice this in my class when I allow for total “play”. My students earn free choice time at the end of the day on Fridays, and one of my centers has Model Magic clay and all a ton of tools to use with the clay. I am always amazed at the creativity that I hear during this center. They are engaged, laughing, creating, interacting, teaching each other how to create different things, and building off of one another’s ideas. Mobley’s fifth discovery is that creativity is correlated with self-knowledge. His school is described as being designed as, “one big mirror.” Sixth, Mobley always gave his students permission to be wrong. This pairs well with what we have learned about the brain. When we make a mistakes, our synapses fire up and learning takes place. Jo Boaler has stated, “Mistakes are not only opportunities for learning, as students consider the mistakes, but also times when our brains grow. Understanding the power of mistakes is critical, as children and adults everywhere often feel terrible when they make a mistake in math. They think it means they are not a math person, because they have been brought up in a performance culture.” Celebrating mistakes and acknowledging how they are helping us grow will be an important step in fostering creativity in the classroom. One quote that stood out to me from this article is, “Make friends with frustration.” It is okay for students, and teachers, to feel frustrated at times when trying something new. This is a necessary step for fostering creativity. Tenacity is required for creativity as well. Not quitting, despite frustration, will lead to growth. These are not just important classroom skills, but life skills as well. This ties into what Howard Gardner discussed in, “Five Minds of the Future”. He talked about how the, “Creating Mind” does something new. It comes up with new questions, discoveries, and thinks outside of the box. There is a willingness to fall down and get back up. To cultivate a creative mind, students have to learn to deal with things that don’t work out, and then keep on working. Teaching our students how to have grit in the classroom is going to support them into growing in their curiosity and creativity. Ken Robinson talked about how our society as a whole has stigmatized being willing to fail and make mistakes, and that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. I found it very powerful when he stated that, “We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.” It is vital to not educate students out of being creative.
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Darling-Hammond discussed five key elements for a high-and equitably achieving nation:
John Dewey’s quote: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must we want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” Even though these words were spoken a hundred years ago, his words are just as true and powerful today as they were then. It is imperative that we, as teachers, are advocates for each one of our students. Wanting the best for our students, and providing the best for our students, will benefit the future these students will live in. We are educating the next generation of citizens right now, and it is imperative that we are teaching students skills that will make them informed, critical thinkers who will better the communities they live in. If we, as teachers, all have this as our goal, then we have a bright future for our nation. One important way to prepare our students for the future is by teaching 21st century skills. This week, I watched the video, “Grounding 21st Century Learning in Good Thinking” by Dr. Robert Swartz. He talks about the importance of infusing skillful thinking in content instruction to engage students to think in deep and rich ways about what they are learning. One powerful tool he talked about was developing questioning strategies with our students. Developing questioning skills in our students (i.e. how to ask the right questions to make informed decisions), will help them in the classroom, and provide them with real-world skills that will benefit them in the work force. |
Jennifer PerkinsTouro Student, Master's in Innovative Learning Archives
November 2018
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