Welcome

Welcome to my little blog and first post; I’m so pleased you stopped by!

I’ve already spent time in my About page explaining the reasoning behind my interest in growth mindset and design thinking, as well as a bit about my unique work experience. So instead, I want to touch briefly on why I believe so strongly in encouraging creativity within classroom settings.

For most of my teaching experience I’ve worked with students who have not experienced success at school. For a multitude of reasons, by the time they arrive in my classroom they are typically wary of the daily process they are expected to follow, negative towards teacher requests, and inwardly down on their own abilities.

For most of my teaching experience I’ve also seen these exact same students thrive when presented with alternate ways to show their learning, when given opportunities to work with their hands, when offered voice and choice. And yes, I recognize there will be people who say “But they have to learn to print/public speak/etc etc.“. At a later date I will delve further into that argument, but today will quickly remind you to keep this in mind:

 What is the purpose of your assessment? Is it to see how well the student prints, or is it to see that they can accurately draw information from a reading? {as an example}

As I’ve stated in my About page, every student at my school has a severe behaviour coding; they’re also some of the most expressive, unique, out-of-the-box thinkers I know. Their creativity absolutely shines when given the chance, and it’s glorious to behold. As Sir Ken Robinson says,

“The real role of leadership in education…is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control – creating a climate of possibility. If you do that, people will rise to it and achieve things that you completely did not anticipate and couldn’t have expected.”
{How to Escape Education’s Death Valley, TED Talk}

This is why I encourage creativity at every turn. This is why I allow crazy ideas to get tried in class {heck, its often me who suddenly comes up with them!}. To many of my students creativity is scary and new and evokes fears of failure, but it also opens them up to experiences they haven’t had, and knowledge they may not know about themselves.

And as we all know, knowledge is power.

So now please tell me … what are your thoughts on creativity in the classroom?