Here follows a link to the TED Lecture by Sir Ken Robinson on how schools discourage creativity:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html .
The Blake Archive, where you may find images of Blake’s prints, may be found here: http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/ .
After watching Ken Robinson speak on creativity, I was left wondering how we as English teacher candidates and future educators could incorporate his ideal of “personalized education” into our interactions with students. He speaks repeatedly of revolutionizing the education system, and while this obviously is necessary in the long term if we are to get back on the right track with education, in the short term we as teachers are bound by the constraints outlined by the existing educational structures in our society.
So how can we, as English teachers, work to foster creativity and support students’ individual abilities within this framework? I believe that the key lies in the theory of multimodality. We live in a world where text is increasingly linked to visual, audial and spatial representations, a world of multiliteracies. In any give class, there will be students who are visual, audial and kinaesthetic learners, and that only scratches the surface. As Robinson illustrates in telling the story of Gillian Lynne, if we expect our students to flourish we need to pay close attention to this reality. How can you expect a dancer to succeed if she isn’t given the opportunity to dance?
As teachers of English we have a great deal of opportunity to foster creativity and support the diversity of talent that undoubtedly exists within all classrooms. We as educators need to make it clear to our students that we value their creativity and individual strengths, and we can do this by implementing the concept of multimodalities into our lesson plans. Provide opportunity in lessons for learners of all different types to stretch their creative wings, rather than sticking to the book. We also need to make it know that we understand the value of the creative process. Not everything needs to be for marks or have clear relevance to the provincial exam. Allow students room to take chances, make mistakes, get messy (Miss Frizzle quote), colour outside the lines, and to see what happens. Give weight to the process, not just the product, to the talent of the students and not just the expectations of the school board.
Ken Robinson’s speach on creativity is refreshing to hear but also a reminder of what school was not for me in highschool. The unnerving part being that that was not too long ago. There was two activities I was allowed to do on my own for the 4 years I was in highschool. Both I had to fight for a bit to be allowed to do them. In the study of Greek history I requested to do a sculpture. I had never done a sculpture but I had fallen in love with the Greek statues and wanted to do Athena. The amount of research I did and put together to accompany my sculpture was incredible. The most enthuisiasm for research I had had. Another instance was being able to write and sing a song about the Romeo and Juliet Tragedy with a male friend. Again, an opportunity to pursue the arts in a language course.
Sadly, most of the ideas and multi-modalities that I loved to do were forgotten when I left a world of homeschooling where everything was a possibility, to highschool, where everything was systematized for the eaze of grading and formalities. Minutes and hours of boredom that could have been passion if left on my own to learn and ask questions, explore, discover, creatively asscertain possibilities with a guiding instructor close by if necessary.
My story is just a story but it makes me want to never forget the moments of passion I had when I was allowed to think for myself, do what I wanted, and not be chastized for it, but nurtured for my braveness to do something new I had never done before.
I forget this often. Even here at the BED program, things are systematized and the quantity starts to outweigh the quality and originality of work. Where is our creativity going? Is it being acknowledged? Are we being asked to do things in the creative way we want to do them? How do we want to learn how to be teachers?
I agree with Ken that we do tend to “grow out of creativity” rather than to “grow into it”. Whoever said that a response should be a written one, or that a blog should reflect written and maybe some media-based understanding of teaching? Where are the paintings, drawings, music, and drama? Where is the realness of ourselves in the process of becomming educators? Are we all this perfect and literacy based in the world? No, so why are we now?
The point of all of this, is this…When do we start to recognize what Ken is saying at this point in our education? The problem is that we “talk” and exercise the rhetoric of nurturing creativity and multi-modalities and yet we are barely practicing any of this in our journey to become teachers. Look at any syllabus of the 8 classes we are taking. How many have anything different than response, journal, exam, blog response, etc? Everything is literacy based.
Like Ken said, the education system is set up for those becoming professors and we can see this even at a graduate level teacher certification where we are still practicing a rhetoric of educational philosophy without breaking through the mask to real teaching, real teachers, real scenarios, real students.
The rhetoric does not match what we are doing in individual classes now, how is it supposed to transpire than as soon as we walk out the door with a certificate? Are we treading backwards from years of volunteer and work experience? Are we building upon these experiences with the means to bring out creativity or are we just recycling teaching philosophy without practical applications or examples in the classroom now.
The creativity has to start with us. Teachers, professors, students, coaches, tutors, parents, etc… Is it starting with us right now? As students are we practicing a creativity that we feel is in each one of us? Is it coming or being called out of us? If it is not, than for our sakes and our future students we need to demand that it comes out, that it is recognized and held up as valid because we know that it is valid to us. It should not be judged as good or not and be measured and graded against a scientific microscope that dissects every inch.
Creativity is alive because it exists, and it exists because/when we decide to let it exist.