BLOG 701 #5 Can We Teach Creativity?
Creativity, like intelligence, seems to me to be a result of some nature, some nurture, some life experiences, and some personal awakening. All human beings rely on creativity as a source of problem solving and our survival as individuals and as a species depends on creativity. There is that old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have all gathered plenty of evidence for just how creative even very small children can be in order to get something they want, something they have determined they “need”. In my experience volunteering with preschoolers, I have been so entertained by their creativity and unique way of interpreting the world and it does seem that some preschoolers just have more creative expression in their play, art, and ideas than other children. The way a child is raised, the nurture factor, is presented by Gardner as he talks about the Creative Mind. Gardner says that there are things we can do to foster a creative mind and one of these ideas is to not have just one right answer. A lot of what Gardner describes as the right way to foster creativity sounds like Carol Dweck’s ideas about growth mindset. Teaching people to see failure as a way to learn and not a final end of story. Gardner states that people who are labeled as creative are often risk takers, not afraid to fail, and when they do they simply bounce back from failure and see it as a learning opportunity. Carol Dweck calls this “growth mindset”. Gardner holds up people like Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and Vincent Van Gogh as examples of creators and stresses that the creators’ work “changes the way other people think and behave”. He also points out that sometimes the creator’s brilliance is not understood by the masses until after the person is dead. It takes a long time for the rest of humanity to catch up to the ideas of the creators. I remember thinking this during our geology unit this year in my classes. We were studying plate tectonics and continental drift, which was a theory put forth by Alfred Wegener in the early 1900s. Other scientists laughed at his ideas but it was only a matter of time before more evidence confirmed what Wegener had creatively proposed decades before. Louis Mobley from IBM shares this view that creative thinking begins with asking radically different questions that create a non-linear path of learning. This made me think of our discussion last time about brain cells and intelligence being the result of many branches between brain cells. The more connections between the brain cells, the more branching, equates to more intelligence and creativity. Steve Jobs is famous for his creativity and innovation in the technology world. Jobs is famous for saying, “Creativity is just connecting things.” It seems like vision has a role to play in creative thinking. In order to create the connections the creator has to have a different perspective in order to see a pattern between things or ideas and make the connections. Mobley highlights this in his six insights about teaching people to be creative. He says it means unlearning old ways of thinking and thinking in a new way- that’s when creativity is born. He also says that if you want to be more creative, hang out with creative people. There is a synergy that happens when people are creating together. I have seen this in my classroom which is why I appreciate the powerful learning that comes from doing projects together. Every spring when students begin state testing, my PLC partner and I do an endangered species project as part of a unit on ecosystems. It is a group project with roles, jigsaws, presentations, and model building. It is as Mobley describes “controlled chaos” for 2 weeks. It is a perfect release from the pressure and intensity of testing. My classroom is transformed into an art studio and the most beautiful projects are created with so much creativity, collaboration, and enthusiasm for learning. I remember watching a student that had been very unproductive all year come to life as his “homo faber” as JSB refers to it came to life. Finally I was speaking his language. He was a maker! He was an expert maker and his team recognized and celebrated his skill immediately. He never looked so happy in my class as when he held a glue gun or Xacto knife in his hand. Finally I decided to ask the real experts, my children. I asked the children I gave birth to and the children I have the privilege to spend my school days with this important question, “Can creativity be taught?” Their answers with excellent evidence to support their claims was nearly 100% yes. My favorite response came from a very wise seventh grade boy, “I think you can teach a person to be more creative but some people might need a little spark to become creative.” And then another great response that was a bit convicting as a teacher came from one of my top seventh grade girls. She said, “Yes, I think they just need to see more creative content.” Ouch! The wordle up top is a collection of their responses. Enjoy!
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BLOG 701 3/7/21 Education Evolution
This week, please blog about how implementation of such policies could affect change in education and in public schools. Include both the moral/ethical imperative stated in John Dewey’s quote made one hundred years ago, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, we must want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” The last few chapters we have read in Flat World Education have been very eye opening for me. I have been a teacher for almost 18 years now and did not fully grasp the power of assessments and the damage they can do to the quality of teaching and learning that happens in classrooms. I feel like I have been a naive part of the machine, administering tests, preparing and coaching kids for state “test season” like we were getting ready for a CIF championship game. I am just embarrassed remembering a school wide plan to have kids fill out a table top tent style card which they would put on their desks during testing (NCLB days). The card had the names of people they were dedicating their test performance to, usually moms and dads, or supportive grandmas and grandpas, maybe a past teacher that had made a difference. All this to motivate / manipulate students to do their best on the test so we could prove student growth and avoid having our school put in the dreaded “program improvement” status. This was such an unhealthy approach to assessment. I saw exactly what Hammond described in Ch 3 and Ch 9. People began teaching to the test and less time was given to an actual hands on practicing of science skills and problem solving. Testing styles reflected the standardized tests with mostly recall of facts and very little true problem solving, experimental design, or deep thinking. All of this seems exactly opposite to how we know brains work best. The testing environment is far from nurturing or creative, and the stress levels experienced by students and teachers during testing would surely shift the brain down into what Dr. Pat Wolfe refers to as the “reptilian” brain, where survival is the primary purpose. (Wolfe, 2010). I can imagine a more brain compatible testing style that includes collaborative problem solving like Swartz describes in his Good Thinking presentation and Gee refers to in Good Video Games + Good Learning. Gee suggests that completing the quest in a video game would prove student proficiency at problem solving, require collaboration and knowledge on a topic, and be engaging in a way that the brain experiences as pleasure, versus stress. Completing the quest would be the test. In science, I am happy to report, the new science standards, NGSS, focus heavily on problem solving and thinking skills. Every unit in our new Amplify curriculum starts with a hook style phenomena or problem, then builds content, science skills, and vocabulary as needed to describe events happening in the inquiry. After students have multiple opportunities to explore the problem and solutions as they play the role of student chemist, geologist, or physicist, they evaluate evidence using set criteria and then have a discussion about the best solution. The final part of each unit is a new problem where they can apply what they have learned to a new yet similar problem. The assessments are definitely not spitting back memorized facts, but they are multiple choice. I have been supplementing the units with writing activities and also some assignments that require creating with technology because I just know my students enjoy and need this right now. One point that Hammond makes is that assessments in other higher performing countries are not tied to diplomas, school funding, or used to shame underperforming schools like we find in the U.S. testing system. In these high performing countries, the assessments are used to guide the learning, to assess pupil progress. It’s almost like the assessments are what we would call a formative assessment. Another point that Hammond makes throughout The Flat World and Education is the equity issues. Even within our own school district I see these equity issues from school site to school site. If we struggle to even the playing field in a fairly small district like NVUSD, I can’t imagine what a huge problem it must be across states with counties of poverty next door to counties of affluence. This problem really has to be a top priority because it is so basic to the foundation of our democracy. Education is supposed to be that great equalizer, everybody gets a fair chance. This is the idea we communicate to people from the time they are young, “work hard and you can reach your dreams.” I grew up believing this idea, believing in this idea. For many young people this idea is a frustrating lie because the playing field is not level, it is a giant slope, and they are at the bottom and see all the opportunities other people are given because of where they live or what family they belong to. I am just bewildered by how we got this so wrong for so long. How can so many well educated, intelligent people working in U.S. education systems and in our federal branch of education not figure out how to effectively get resources to these needy communities and implement an assessment plan that shows student progress in a useful, student honoring way? I don’t have the answers, but I know what I need to work on in the realm where I have the greatest influence, within the walls and halls of Redwood Middle School. |
AuthorHello! Welcome to my blog! This will be a fun place to share thoughts about teaching and learning. I am a middle school science teacher at Redwood. When I'm not teaching, I'm hanging out at home with my family or enjoying nature somewhere in the valley. Archives
March 2021
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