I find myself feeling like I’m on the defensive after reading and watching this content on creativity and the creative mind. I feel like so much of what I do in the classroom is not asking kids to be creative, but presenting and practicing basic skills. I feel like as a school we are focused on the “wax on, wax off” part of the Karate Kid movie where the protagonist has to repeat over and over again a forced, rote skill practice.
I find myself thinking about what a professor said to us in a Native American Lit class in college. He stressed the importance for minorities, like Native Americans, to master correct grammar and writing conventions, or “the code”, if they are to ever be taken seriously by the establishment. I feel we are trying to do this with the minority language learners in our school. We are trying to get them “up to speed” on internalizing and mastering this new code they are confronted with. They do need these basic skill sets in order to thrive in our society. Don’t they? Then I think about technology’s role in this. Is anybody else being bombarded with Grammarly ads on YouTube? This program edits people’s writing. It looks like there is a big interest in this, judging by the number of ads that are being given. It would seem that many people are learning these kinds of grammar skills not as a precursor to producing creative works, but while they do them. My kids also get instant editing in Google Docs while they work on their creative writing. Maybe we should trust the technology to teach many of these skills this while we focus primarily on setting up the context in the classroom that leads to creative collaboration, and creative, pbl projects. The motivating activities create the desire for learning the skills, and the skills are learned “on the fly” as students do creative work. I’m wondering if I should scrap my grammar lessons. Do kids need to know what a subject and predicate are, explicitly? Could I be using our time more wisely if they learn what they are intuitively through their need to communicate their thinking? The technology will increasingly take care of the mistakes in writing. What technology can’t do is be creative in the human sense where we get into that synthesizing and creative mindset that Howard Gardener talks about. Our country has been such a leader in the world up to this point because we have inculcated irreverence in a creative sense. The tech is freeing us up, it would seem, to do even more of this creative work. The tech also cannot teach ethics. In fact, as the Enron and MIT examples show, people can hide behind technology to justify unethical behavior. So a big part of schools should be on teaching this, as well. I’m also glad to report that our school is attempting to do this through our focus on restorative justice and restorative circles. A big part of this ethical discussion revolves around respect. When we teach respect, we bolster self identity and individualism. Sir Ken Robinson talks about the importance of this in creating the kind of school environment that gets away from the “one size fits all” production line, industrial model of education. When kids feel like their voices are heard, they can better find their own particular strengths and focus on those. Perhaps a shift of balance is in order. We need to include into every day’s lessons the opportunity for kids to use their new skills to perform open ended, collaborative, and challenging tasks. This is like the kind of learning community that John Seely Brown talks about, I think. We can only create social constructs of knowledge, where learning can be exponential, if people’s passion and playfulness are involved in a collaborative, “deep tinkering” context. I love how he discusses the importance of making mistakes is to this kind of learning. Luckily, we have started doing this in our school through a new focus on growth mindset. Mistakes are encouraged and supported as indicators of learning and growth. Where I fall short in my teaching is on the intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards argument that Dan Pink discusses. I feel a lot of pressure in our school to provide extrinsic rewards. I have adopted these in two cases out of pressure from other teachers. We are using Class Dojo points to reinforce “positive classroom behaviors”. We have also started using “brag tags” to do this. Our school also uses “tickets” to reinforce behaviors. In addition, I use a “marble jar” to reward the whole class on “quick transitions” and “acceptable classroom behavior”. I feel like we are teaching kids through these extrinsic rewards that it is ok to do what you don’t love with the promise of getting a reward that has little to do with the actual behavior. I feel like we are teaching kids to do the jobs they are not interested in, so that they get a reward that is actually a bit meaningless. This teaches people to do the jobs they are unhappy in just to get a paycheck. Intrinsic motivation actually increases productivity and satisfaction. If we set up our classroom context where kids are motivated to work together through their own questions and passions, then the need for these extrinsic rewards disappears. This is also what the Mobley article gets at. Instead of focusing on lecturing and memorizing, we should be focusing on questioning in non-linear and creative ways. When kids don’t tap into their questions and individual passions, it’s easy to fall into Mobley’s final pitfall: “Don’t ever quit.” Our kids are quitting because they are not tapping into their strengths. This is why I love Ryan and Evrim’s topic on strength based learning for their continuation high school, which has a high dropout rate. But I think many of our topics are pointed in this direction in this class. I feel we are all focused on creating rich learning environments that can lead to greater creativity through student collaboration, questioning, and intrinsic motivation.
2 Comments
Kathy Martin
10/29/2019 08:57:53 pm
I have the same wonder as you, where is the place for students to learn grammar? It has to be taught somewhere. While yes, I don't often look at a sentence that I'm writing or reading and look for the subject and predicate, it is also important to know that those two parts make up a complete sentence. There has to be a place and time for students to learn these things so that they can convey and share what they create in a legible and comprehensible way.
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Tracy Moskowite
11/12/2019 05:42:31 am
My favorite words you have written are " They do need these basic skill sets in order to thrive in our society. Don’t they?" . This is so powerful to me as a math teacher because I feel that people in society say things like when will you need that in the real world as well as math is more important than art. I don't feel that my content is critical in a child's ability to thrive in the world. I focus on learning how to take notes and read notes. How to work in groups and how to respond to people. Being comfortable to make mistakes. Am I preparing my students the way they need to be prepared?
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AuthorJeremy Smith teaches third grade at Calistoga Elementary School. Archives
July 2020
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