Creativity in the Classroom

How's this for a quote:  "All kids have talents, and we squander them ruthlessly."  Sir Ken Robinson said this.  In the same speech, he also said, "If you're not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original", and shortly following this "We are running national education systems where mistakes are the worse thing you can make....we are educating people out of their creative capacities."  This should give all educators pause.  Think of it for a while.  It's true, isn't it?  Ever felt the public humiliation of being wrong in the classroom? 

In this era of standardized testing, creativity is a challenge for anyone.  And yet, there are those who argue that creativity will the THE driving force of the century.  Author Daniel Pink calls it the "revenge of the right brain". Of course, our brains need to be whole to function.  I can't write, draw, read, run, walk, or sing without utilizing my entire brain.  But still, the argument for creative thinking resonates.  It is through creative thinking that genius occurs.  Inventions and innovations are part of creativity.  Einstein thought creatively.  So did Picasso, Shakespeare, and Thomas Edison.  Martin Luther King, Junior, was creative enough to imagine a post-Jim Crow world.  I could go on and on. 

So how to teach without squelching creativity?  Allow students the right to be wrong.  Encourage them to make guesses if they don't know the answers.  Teach them about what a hypothesis is.  Make it exciting to discover their own mistakes.  Make it fun for them to discover yours.

A Teacher Talking

Here's a man who expresses a certain passion for teaching.  I remember when one of my professors said, "You won't go into law, will you?"  Oh, it might have made a certain financial sense, but I was, like my professor, inclined to go in a different direction.   

Stories

I was thinking of stories today.  Specifically, I was thinking of the stories that we tell each other, in families or communities, and how those stories work to create our reality- our past, our beliefs about the world around us, our values, and even our perceptions of what is right and wrong.  I love stories, of all sorts.  I love to read, I love to write, and I love to both talk and listen.  Sometimes I like to talk more than listen, but I've realized that if I don't keep quiet and listen, I don't get to hear any new stories! 

In Hawaii, people don't just sit around and talk, or chat, or recount their weekends.  In Hawaii, people like to talk-story.  This, to me, is the perfect way of putting it.  I didn't grow up in Hawaii, but still, my family knew how to talk-story.  When I was a kid, I loved driving up over the Oregon Coast mountains, going to my Uncles' houses in the valley.  The main reason is that they all knew how to talk-story.  They would laugh, telling about near disasters, motor-cycle accidents where no one was badly hurt, the time their parent's parrot got drunk after stealing sips out of glasses left behind at a party, the size of the mosquitoes swarming around on a camping trip, the crazy way one Uncle tried camping in a hurricane.  I remember the way they tossed their heads back and laughed.  This was my family at their best. 

Our Spot

Welcome to this blog.  It will be used as a site for myself, as a student and someday educator.  It's place for sharing information and thoughts. 

First, to share where the name comes from:  Virginia Woolf wrote an essay about a mark on the wall, and how, from that one spot, arose meditations on life, the world, of nature and the workings of her own mind.  She wrote about thoughts themselves, "how readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it."

This is a spot for thoughts.   Feverish or otherwise.