This morning's email included an update to the Committed Sardine blog by Ian Jukes and his consortium. The posts in it are always interesting. In the post of this week, someone had commented on this article from Psychology Today. It made me think about how many times we teachers rush kids along and don't give them time to think and get their creative juices going. We sometimes have so many rubrics and parameters for our projects that we destroy the natural and normal creativity our students have. Maybe this is why all students identify themselves as artists when they are in kindergarten and not so much when they get to the upper elementary grades. Is there anything you can do to nurture creativity in your class? How about in yourself? One of the good reasons this class is shorter this year is that revising shouldn't be of the same material every year. Each year of teaching should have some elements that you haven't done or tried before even if you are teaching the same curriculum. After all, the students you have are different too. (Getting off of my soapbox now.)
Science Tools
13 years ago
1 comment:
This is a critical area of consideration in the art room. Thinking creatively DOES require time and room for experimentation, exploration, trial and error. It also calls for reflection, and self evaluation. Guiding students towards these ways of thinking is critical to teaching them how think creatively. Sadly, as you said, there's so much rushing and so many standards that students are expected to meet in a short time that as a teacher, I work hard to respect an individual's internal processing/learning time. The fact that creativity is more and more frequently considered important in student work is an exciting aspect of student learning and teaching. (Y
ou hit upon one of my soapboxes, too!)
Post a Comment