What makes a creative teacher? Three elements

Amplify’d from www.agent4change.net

Sal McKeown welcomes a booklet on creativity from Future Creative Creative Teaching for Tomorrow: Fostering a Creative State of Mind is a very attractive booklet which gives a good overview of the current thinking and research.

The overall findings in this research, conducted for Creative Partnerships Kent by Future Creative in partnership with Canterbury Christ Church University, are that there are three key elements which define the creative teacher. The individual teacher’s personal qualities are crucial. They need to possess curiosity and a desire to learn, a sense of humour and enthusiasm. They should have a "secure knowledge base" and understand children’s needs and interests.

The second element is the pedagogy and teaching approaches. A creative teacher is likely to adopt a “questioning stance and will link ideas together, finding different ways of drawing pupils into the subject. This seems to be a two-way process as pupils are encouraged to be active participants, asking questions and stretching the teacher too.

The final factor is the school’s ethos. Creativity is only possible if risk taking is allowed and even encouraged. The best outcomes were seen when schools had opened their doors to outside influences such as Creative Partnerships and the wider community.

The booklet is particularly strong on research but it has its weaknesses. First of all, it is small scale, just focusing on 20 schools in Kent which had been closely involved with Creative Partnerships. Sometimes the research seems to be rather skewed. One of the questions children were asked was: "We have been told your teacher is very creative. Tell your neighbour in what way you agree." What about the children who found the teacher as dull as ditchwater?

More significantly, the publication seems to have a limited knowledge of ICT as a creative force, “In one school the teachers made inventive use SMART boards.  Pupils were asked to arrange a list of features under a number of pre-selected headings. Using their fingers they moved the words round "magically" to an appropriate new position. As SMART boards become more common, it is likely that their interactive qualities will be exploited by creative teachers in a wide range of ways.”  Where have they been? Drag and drop is probably one of the least creative uses of an interactive whiteboard!

Nevertheless, despite these limitations, this is a beautifully produced booklet which will be useful both to practitioners and to those engaged in research. Read more at www.agent4change.net

 

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Becoming a Teacher of Creativity

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Teaching itself is a unique invention. The process of becoming a creative teacher is like the process of thinking creatively. If you count on your education courses, the classes you've given, your students contributions, you'll be disappointed. You may learn about the subject being taught, the children's nature, the learning process, the methodology, and institutional materials; however, all of this will never be sufficient. You may inform yourself about the gifted student, or the one with special needs. Even then, you will not have unveiled everything. Added up, all these will not prepare you to teach. They will need to be combined with your own abilities and potential, plus the needs of your students in such a way that they'll lead you to your very own invention: your unique way of teaching. This unique invention is tremendously important to teach creativity or to teach creatively, leading the students to the discovery and use of their own potential. The search for a pre-established goal - the invention of your own way of teaching - emerges from you own creative process.

If you fail, you will gain consciousness of your deficiencies and defects; you will know the existing gaps in your strategies and techniques; and you will discover the holes in your knowledge. You will base yourself on your life experiences and you will seek out indicators of how to improve your performance over the next try. You will have to read a lot. From then on, you study what you read and your questioning evolves increasingly. You will come to see things never before realized. Therefore, you will come to formulate and bet on hypothesis, and to search for solutions. You will become creative for you will be problem-solving. You yourself will be trying to become a good teacher through the experience of Methodology of Creative Action. Through your attempts, from the ecstatic successes and the acceptance of mistakes plus the very exclusion of these in the process, you will be vivifying the occurrence of your own invention - it'll be you being the teacher you've always wanted to be!

Paul Torrance used to say: "Your own personality resources, your intellectual resources, your needs and abilities and those of your students, plus the expectations of the community to which you'll be teaching interact to determine the most effective materials and methodology. It is possible, however, to derive some general principles from the experience and research that'll increase the chances that your teaching will increment and promote the potential of talented children. It is possible to create teaching methodology and materials that will be based on already tested principles. It is the teacher's creative task to combine them to answer to the needs and abilities of the students, maintaining the harmony with their own needs and abilities.

To teach creativity it is required that a teacher be greatly receptive to activities of listening, feeling and seeing the world. S/he needs to be, on his/her own, of upbeat personality, polite, curious and excited about the students´ learning, completely free of hostile attitudes and punishment when it comes to the students. A teacher can never have tendencies to punish. S/he has to be able to let one thing or a fact lead to another thing or yet another fact.

TOP 10 REQUIREMENTS FOR A TEACHER TO CREATE

There exist some teachers who are used to placing the responsibility for not being creative on facts and things in the environment, accommodating as such over the years. Of course, in the environment, within society, and the educational system, there also exist many forces which inhibit the individuality of the creative teacher, which leads him/her to conform. In the search for our very own best way to teach, an analysis of the most common inhibiting forces is the least we should do.

2. Lack of time to think and to dream

They are: 1. Random thinking versus absorbing thought 2. Lack of time to think and to dream 3. Lack of intellectual honesty 4. Desperate mind 5. No more investigation and exploration 6. No more in-depth investigation of new things 7. Deterioration of imagination reserves 8. No more jotting ideas down 9. Fear of individuality 10. Not being yourself anymore When we analyze each and every one of the 10 items considered obstacles for the creative teachers, we have: 1. When you try to be the only inventor of your very own way of teaching, there are times in which you have to concentrate on the problem. Some people incorrectly associate invention and discovery with mere chance, with random behavior. It is true that many good ideas seem to occur when the person is relaxed - in the tub, during religious services, by the pool. However, these occurrences are ALWAYS preceded by attentive concentration during which the mind maintained itself occupied with the problem in question. 2. The absorbing thought takes up your time. The clock is a tyrant and much can be done to soften its tyranny. The activities have to be developed with authenticity. Don't freak out. Set aside a part of your day for some free time, don't be reserved about daydreaming occasionally, and don't be embarrassed if someone catches you floating outside reality, thinking and concentrating on something that interest only you. 3. We are rarely honest with ourselves when it comes doing things that truly interest us. To become the creator of your own manner of teaching, you have to free yourself from all the coverings and masks that hide you inside your won work; from all your beliefs that are false; and from all conventions and forms that are outdated. 4. Some people think that the more you know, the less you are capable of invention and discovery. That is false. According to Pasteur, the chances increase for the prepared minds. But there is a paradox here. Familiarity along with existing knowledge is necessary to attain more knowledge; however, the existence of previous knowledge about a certain problem can become an impediment to its solution. Pre-concepts are accused of hindering discoveries. 5. For the teacher, there can never be one single period in which the experimentation process and that of testing will cease. 6. In general, the students complain about studying and having to repeat certain topics, thinking that the emphasis causes discouragement. This occurs because the students have not dominated the ability of looking to the subjects approached with neither different things nor great depth. From studies on perception, however, it is clear that an object's meaning changes as we change the point and perspective through which we object it. Previously forgotten details can suddenly become extremely important. After we change the goals or after we obtain additional information, the meaning of something changes as well. Many are the inventions and discoveries through the deliberate use of certain methods, which made the familiar strange and the strange familiar. 7. The person will have difficulty in thinking creatively if her brain isn't rich in memories. Mental reserves filled with images will be useful to the creative teachers when s/he is searching for his/her own invention. One way of enriching the imagination is through the developing consciousness of the environment followed by detailed experimentation. This will be possible through sensory experiences, first-hand experiences, through personal identification with other professionals, through involvement with life. Another effective way is through immersion within world literature. 8. We feel deprived of ideas until the day in which we decide to write them down. Then our lives change! We frequently stop fixating on our own ideas, failing to capture them more so because they occur in inappropriate and uncommon places than because they occur where we'd like them to. Even the children have to be guided regarding the importance of "holding" ideas, taking notes to be used in the future, or to develop them when the opportunity comes. 9. It is difficult to free ourselves from the opinion that people formulate about us. We are always trying to adjust to the expectations of others, to the fact that we shouldn't harm nor offend. This causes us to severely reduce our potentialities. Very few of the creative who contributed magnificently to society were popular or well-accepted by others. In fact, many of them were hated. The creative person always has something urgent to say and is constantly searching for new aspects of the truth. 10. Perhaps the best advice to be given to the teacher who's being capacitated in creativity is: "Be yourself if you wish to contribute with any original thing that you believe to be worthwhile." This is a piece of advice difficult to receive because we are hindered by our pretension and/or shyness, our doubts and weaknesses, beyond the confused self-concepts. Seek to know the value of your intuitions. Treat them with care and cultivate the conditions to give them the means to sprout and grow. The process of becoming a creative teacher is, finally, an exciting adventure which brings unexpected returns. Trust in your dreams and from them, build your reality. Dr. Eliane Leao is a native of Brazil, South America. She has a background in Education from Purdue University (Masters) and a PhD in the Department of Educational Psychology from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP)/Purdue University (Ph.D.). Dr. Leao has also three Bachelor’s degrees, one in Piano, another in Musical Education, and a third in Voice. Dr. Leao is currently a professor of Music Education and Music Therapy conducting research on the influence of Music in Early Childhood Learning. Dr. Leao hopes that the trials and successes of her family may inspire and convince other parents to stimulate their children during early childhood so that they may enjoy a rich, stimulating, integrated, and happy life always. Visit our site at: http://www.baby-can-read.com for free articles, ebook and free giveaways! Read more at ezinearticles.com

 

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Intersection of talents, passion and education...

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[May 2010 - TED] In this poignant, funny follow-up to his fabled 2006 talk, Sir Ken Robinson makes the case for a radical shift from standardized schools to personalized learning -- creating conditions where kids' natural talents can flourish. More

Robinson returned to TED earlier this year and talked about the intersection of tale

Ken Robinson returned to TED earlier this year and talked about the intersection of talents, passion and education.

As he did in his first TED talk about creativity and education, he sums up in less than 18 minutes key ideas that seem so obvious, yet are so far from the practices we employ in schools and society. Some of Ken's insights from his 2010 talk: There is a crisis of human resources -- we make poor use of our talents. Many people simply endure what they do rather than enjoy what they do. But some people do what they ARE and engage part of their authentic selves. Education dislocates people from their natural talents. We have to create the circumstances where talents show themselves. Education should be where this happens, but too often it's not. Education REFORM is not enough -- reform is only improving a broken model. We need not an evolution in education, but a revolution ... to transform it into something else. It needs innovation, which is hard because it challenges what we take for granted. Quoting Abraham Lincoln, Ken talked about "rising with the occasion" and the idea of "disenthralling ourselves." Life is organic ... not linear. We are obsessed with getting people to college. College does not begin in kindergarten. Kindergarten begins in kindergarten. Problem of conformity in education -- like fast food where everything is standardized. Human talent is tremendously diverse. Passion -- what excites our spirit and energy -- is important. Education doesn't feed a lot of people's spirits. Education, which is primarily based on a manufacturing model, should shift to one based on principles from agriculture. Human flourishing is an organic process. We cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do is create the conditions under which they begin to flourish. Customizing and personalizing education is the answer to the future. And he finished with a poem excerpt from W. B. Yeats about how we spread our dreams before others' feet -- like kids do everyday -- and askied us to "tread softly, because you tread on my dreams." If you care about the future of children and education and society, show Ken's two TED talks (and this one, too!) to your friends and colleagues and family and talk about how you can begin to act to make positive change in the ways we educate and work. Show these clips in a public meeting at your children's school. Show them in your workplace with your colleagues. Show them at the public library. You'll be amazed who cares about these topics, who shows up and what you might accomplish together. Imagine what if ... Read more at appliedimagination.blogspot.com

 

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Learning Two Languages

Is it OK?

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Is it OK to speak to my child in my native language? Talking to your child regularly lays the foundation for her language and literacy development. If you are most comfortable with your native language, you will be better able to communicate your feelings and ideas in that language. You can use words to label objects and describe what is happening as a way of teaching new words. You can recite rhymes and poems to develop her awareness of sounds. You can take turns talking about the day, things she notices, and books that you read together. By talking together, you teach your child about the purpose of language, while helping her express her feelings and ideas. And by speaking to your child in your native language, you also teach her about her culture and her identity.

But will speaking to my child in my native language make it harder for him to learn English when he goes to school? Before children start school, they may be exposed to English on TV, in the playground, and in the print they see on cereal boxes and street signs. Children will learn a lot about English from the environment around them. If your child has also had some formal exposure to English, such as going to a playgroup in which English is the primary language spoken, then school can provide additional opportunities for him to learn the language. Children and teachers alike can serve as models, helping your child communicate what he knows and can do. You may even be surprised by how quickly he picks up the language as he plays and learns alongside other English-speaking children. If your child has had no formal exposure to English, he will use what he knows about his native language to learn English - which will be a major task. Talk with your child's teacher about your goals for your child, as well as any concerns you have.

My husband speaks to our daughter in English. I want to speak to her in my native language. Won't she get confused? Learning even just one language is a complex process. But young children have the potential to learn more than one language. Again, what is most important is that you talk with your child in the language with which you are most comfortable, so you can have the types of conversations that promote your child's thinking and language development. It is also important to be a good language model and not mix up languages. That is, when talking with your child in English, don't mix in phrases and sentences from your native language. However, don't be surprised if your child uses words from both languages in one sentence. This is not a sign of confusion, but her current way of communicating what she wants to say.

If we only speak to our child in English, will he lose his ability to speak in native language? Yes. You will therefore need to decide if you want your child to maintain his skills in your native language. Consider your long-term goals. If you and your family will not return to your home country, maintaining the native language may not be a priority. Also consider your family situation. If extended family members don't speak English, it will be important for your child to maintain his native language so he can communicate with people closest to him. Also consider how your child might feel about losing his native language and a sense of his cultural identity when he gets older.

My child insists on talking to me in English. How can I help her maintain her native language? It requires time, persistence, and creativity. Some parents speak to their child only in their native language, even if their child responds in English. Other parents send their children to afterschool programs to learn more about their native language. You can also create routines to help your child maintain her native language - from outings with family members to watching movies and reading books in your native language.

My child is learning English as a second language. What should I do if he makes mistakes? Avoid correcting your child or you might discourage him. A good way to help your child learn the "right" way to say something is to affirm what he says, using the correct pronunciation, sentence structure, or grammar. For example, if your child says, "The mail comed," you might say, "You're right. The mail came. Let's see if we got a letter from Grandma." Read more at www.pbs.org

 

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"A Vision of Students Today"

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A SUPER-STREAMLINED CONCEPTION OF CRITICAL THINKING

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1. Is open-minded and mindful of alternatives 2. Tries to be well-informed 3. Judges well the credibility of sources 4. Identifies conclusions, reasons, and assumptions 5. Judges well the quality of an argument, including its reasons, assumptions, and evidence 6. Can well develop and defend a reasonable position 7. Asks appropriate clarifying questions 8. Formulates plausible hypotheses; plans experiments well 9. Defines terms in a way appropriate for the context 10. Draws conclusions when warranted -- with caution 11. Integrates all items in this list Developed (revised 3/24/04) by Robert H. Ennis, Professor

Developed (revised 3/24/04) by Robert H. Ennis, Professor Emeritus, Univ. of Illinois. rhennis@uiuc.edu Read more at www.criticalthinking.net

 

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Learn New Words with Travel Vocabulary Cards

Amplify’d from www.education.com

"Look Mommy! The baggage carousel!" Kids encounter so many new words every day, and when they're traveling, there's even more to learn! Names for things your child will encounter on his next trip somewhere will help him make sense of the journey. Before your next family getaway, make a set of picture/word vocabulary cards together. Along the way, use them for fun games that will build your child's language and comprehension skills.

What You Need: 5" x 7" index cards Internet connection and printer Scissors Glue stick Marker Transparent adhesive paper, two 6 x 8 sheets per image Spoon What You Do: Make a list of travel vocabulary with your child. Start with basic vocabulary, then add words related to your specific destination (grandmother, amusement park, skyscraper, etc.) Have her write the list if she's up for it! With your child, find and print photos for each of your vocabulary words on your list by searching online. If you can't find suitable pictures for any of the words on your list, have your child draw a picture of the vocab word instead. Photos of each word will help your child make the picture/word connection which will help him expand his vocabulary. Support learning with photos that "isolate" only the item named: one suitcase rather than a stack of suitcases, carry-ons and garment bags. Next, invite your child to help you cut the images to fit the cards. Trim oversize images yourself. As you snip together, name the images and explain what each of them is. Have your child lay a card on the table and choose an image. On back of image, have him apply a dot of glue in each corner, then turn image over and stick on card. Make sure you leave room on the index card to write the corresponding vocab word. Then have your child write the corresponding vocab words below each picture in lower case letters. If you have a little trouble remembering names for the images, your child might remind you! Now it's time to laminate! Show your child how to peel the backing off an adhesive sheet. Have him peel and hand you sheets while you laminate. Lay a sheet on table, sticky side up. Center the card on the laminate. Match the corners with the second sheet, making contact with a long edge first. Have your child use the bowl of a spoon to smooth laminate from the center of card all the way out to the edges so that all of the air bubbles are smoothed out. I Spy in Line! The next time you're on a trip and you see some of your travel vocab words out and about while you're waiting in line, hand your child 4 or 5 cards showing some items visible at that moment. "Read" the cards together, then invite your child to hand you the card when he sees the item. Help him find them all (if needed) before your turn. Read more at www.education.com

 

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