Veja Du is about making familiar look strange. Can you discern the identity of this object?
I’ve never thought myself to be a creative person. In fact, I said so the other day to one of my coworkers. She laughed and said, “that’s what I would say about myself, but not about you, Jess!” I guess it’s all in what you are comparing yourself to and how you define creativity.
The moment I read William Lipscomb’s account of researching the boron, I felt a connection with creativity. He describes an aesthetic response in which his emotions and intellect focused in and then he says “it was followed by a flood of predictions coming from my mind as if I were a bystander watching it happen.” I have experienced this before, but I never perceived it as creativity. I’ve considered myself to be analytical and a good problem solver. Now I see that many times I experience this focusing in and that gut feeling of solving a problem before I even can put words to the idea. That can be a frustrating feeling! I’ve been listening to The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman this summer and one of the skills he lists as critical for our times is explaining. The great explainers can make a business out of explaining it to the rest of us! I strive to be one of these, but as I tried to explain the math centers chart this week to my new teaching partner, I’ve discovered that I could use some honing of this skill as well. I understand the idea, but explaining it in such as way to create that understanding in someone else is a whole different ball game. Now that I see the creativity potential in myself, I find myself looking ahead at this week’s lesson plans and searching for the potential in my students. Am I making the arts the fourth R in education in my own setting? Am I approaching my lessons as universal process ideas? Sadly, as I look at this upcoming week and see all the places we are practicing walking in straight and quiet lines, learning how to move in order from one center to the next, and learning how to turn to page 7 in the math book, I fear that many of my big ideas from summer classes and amazing professional development are falling to the wayside due to the ease of doing what I know. One of the biggest concerns I shared with my partner teacher at the end of last school year was that we didn’t let the students talk ideas out enough. In a class of 46 with double curriculums, we just didn’t find the time. I’m grateful to have this course right now so that as the semester goes on and we explore more of the thinking tools, I can examine their place with my young students and try to implement more opportunities for thought and expression of thought. I am especially interested in this with some of my advanced students (1st graders that did the 1st grade curriculum with me last year as Kindergarteners.) Not that I am saying that creative thinking should only be done with them; just that I am looking for new ideas for them right now and I’d like to start there. I am ready to start our examination of thinking. I don’t want to be a teacher who half-understands thinking and therefore half-understands teaching. How I can actually put it to work with the young minds in my classroom will be my personal ambition. |