Don’t Stifle Creativity
I was just surfing the net, avoiding my real work when I came upon the strangest video… a beat boxing flautist.
Now personally I never would have thought of trying this – mostly because I don’t play the flute… or beatbox, but also because it’s such an odd combination. This made me think of all the “odd ducks” we have in our classes, who could be brilliant in their own ways, but we thumb them down to meet our standards. Are we providing our students with a chance to show their potential? To think outside the box and to develop something new? All innovations come from people who tried something different. Let your students try. If they fail, so what? We learn from failure not success. I used to tell my students you can’t learn something you already know, and it’s a sad day when you don’t learn something.
This reminds me of the old apple commercials (which I like to use whenever I give an inservice)
So don’t stifle your children’s creativity… with out it we’d all still be living in caves with no wheels……
Aside from the jaw-dropping inspiration that creativity can spawn and the self-confidence it can breed, I think we do a lot of good things purely from an educational standpoint when we allow kids (or in some cases force kids) to be creative. Certainly creative thinking and problem solving is a 21st Century skill that all humans benefit from in the work world. I’d also argue that it deepens the learning experience and understanding of key concepts when we can be creative with them (as opposed to memorizing them).
One of the more shocking revelations to my math instruction came to me about 5 years ago when I first read John Van de Walle’s book on elementary math instruction that was shared with me by another truly inspiring educational math consultant from our district, Lorelei Gibeau. When I first read Van de Walle speaking about allowing kids to “invent” their own strategies for things such as number operations, I nearly hit the floor. What? I am going to let my students make up their own way to multiply a 2-digit by 2-digit number? Are you crazy? These were the first few things that went through my mind, but the more I read and tried it out with my students, the more it made sense. When the kids first made their own strategies (often with manipulatives), it forced them to understand the concept behind the operation. Then, when the standard ‘carry this, add this, do that’ technique was taught to them as a ‘shortcut’, it actually made a whole lot more sense to them. Raise your hands people – can many of you remember many of the math formulas we memorized in high school? Do we understand many of them? Not me.
In sum, Mr. G’s advice, “don’t stifle creativity” makes a lot of sense from a wide number of perspectives, not the least of which is deepening the learning experience for kids. Well done Mr. G, you creative so-and-so