How Do I Love Thee: The Final Project
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Some say, “Great minds think alike.” But do we want to think alike? Or do we want to create? Inspire? Change the world and help others see things differently? CEP 818: Creativity in Teaching has helped me to see beyond the traditional norms of teaching and thinking, and has challenged me to become a creative thinker myself. Instead of thinking the “same” as someone, we should instead be using the same cognitive tools to instead generate our own ideas and understanding of the world around us. When choosing the content area “Shapes of Alphabet Letters,” I thought I had a good grasp of this topic, as I manipulate the letters on a daily basis during instruction in my Kindergarten classroom. However, by the third week of the class, I began to see the letters not just as basic shapes, but as comprised of basic elements, hidden in the world around us, as abstractions in American Sign Language, and even as an art form through some origami folding. What was once a mundane, basic set of lines and curves became new, unfamiliar, and revolutionary.
Without the use of the cognitive tools of perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, play, and synthesizing, none of this would have been possible. Perceiving allows the individual to break a subject down to its basic elements to reconstruct its meaning. Which also entails taking what was once a renowned understanding about a subject, and creating a new, previously unexplored connection. Patterning encourages concepts to cross over from their traditional medium, into another. The concept keeps its integrity, yet is found in a non-traditional (possibility previously unexplored) manner. Abstracting encourages individuals to focus on one particular trait of an object or subject (shape, color, composition, size) and create a new meaning from that trait. The emphasis placed on one specific trait allows the inquirer to explore uncommon (often unseen) features, and possibly further the connection with other subjects to create an analogy in relation to different objects/subjects.
Modeling requires individuals to create a physical representation of their idea. Projects, ideas, and hypothesis can be established through a wide variety of models and materials, each with a separate purpose and function. Embodied thinking reflects on the traits that we as beings do instinctively, yet it was only through learned practice that we were able to master them. We are able to complete the activities without recognizing all of the cognitive processes that go in to performing the task. The concept of alphabet letter writing is an example of embodied thinking. As adults, we do not think about forming the shapes of the alphabet while spelling and writing. Humans are inclined to move, to feel, to explore the sensations around them. We build on our prior experiences and personal interests to create new meanings and new interpretations.
Play allows individuals to forget about traditional rules and structure, and freely explore a topic or item of their choice. Play permits users to create their own representation and characters (dramatic play) and improvise as needed. Lastly, Synthesis encourages thinkers to combine all of their cognitive tools and focus on their senses to create a deeper understanding of the world. In their novel, Sparks of Creativity, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein explained, “No major problem of the world today can be boxed neatly within a single discipline or approached effectively from any particular angle alone. Innovation depends on transdisciplinary thinking and, as we’ve discussed throughout, our abilities to use our senses and knowledge in an integrated way. The future will depend on our ability to create true, deep understanding (314).” This is the perfect quote to not only sum of the cognitive tool of synthesis, but also creativity in general.
Creativity requires a person to use his or her own thought processes to produce a unique idea, which results in an innovative outcome that has never been achieved before. Yet, being creative does not mean that you have to formulate something fresh and new each time. Our past experiences and our personal knowledge serve as “stepping stones” for cultivation. Re-thinking the familiar and re-formulating our views allows every individual to be capable of creative and innovative ideas. As course members, I believe the aim of this class required us to achieve the “unique” aspect of creativity throughout the modules and readings in this course. We are asked to establish what we already know or see about our topic area, but then re-invent and re-imagine those ideas to create a “unique” pattern or understanding.
In a standards based educational system where higher test scores “reign supreme,” there is little focus generally given towards encouraging creativity. As educators, we are concerned with an expected outcome on assessments, benchmark testing, and report cards. But when I see my students truly shine is when they are allowed to break away from the educational constrains and are allowed to create, invent, and explain their own thinking on how they see the world. During an interview with my brother earlier in the semester he mentioned, “A test can serve as a benchmark for certain areas of study, but it should never determine whom a person can or should be. Creativity is personalized for each individual and cannot be assigned a letter grade.” After reflecting back on my own teaching practices, I could not agree more.
In a past course at Michigan State University (ED 800: Concepts of Educational Inquiry), I was introduced to a TED Talk from Ken Robinson about how schools are no longer fostering the creative abilities and talents of their students. (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en ). This course however has shown me that hope can be restored in supporting creative practices in the classroom. Harnessing and activating the seven cognitive tools discussed this semester will be vital. With selecting a topic that is studied daily in my Kindergarten classroom, I was able to incorporate some of the module activities and demonstrations (patterning, embodied thinking) with my students and have them “do the work for me.” To this day the students still recall the time they were able to create playdough letters using only basic lines, curves, and dots, and also creating letters with no other materials other than their bodies. Though the activities may have been only a small portion towards beginning to activate their cognitive tools and reasoning, it generated a memorable, lasting impression on the students that strayed away from our mundane daily activities.
Twenty energetic, bright-eyed students are found in my Kindergarten classroom. They amaze me on a daily basis. The way that a five year old can evaluate the world, create connections to past experiences (both personal and those from our classroom lessons), and their imaginative untamed spirit, all remind me that inspiration really is found in the smallest places. Given the chance to partake in “free explore” or “Free Choice Friday,” there is always a large group of students that participate in pretend play. They create “Batman’s secret liar” out of foam blocks, unifix math cubes are used as money at a pretend store, and our library area transforms into a house complete with a mother role, father role, and as many “pets’ as they can fit in the area. After this course, my view of this play has been revolutionized. At first, I would smile and laugh at my students’ innovate creations and “new families,” but now I embrace and encourage their stories, their imagination, and their excitement.
This course has helped me realize that simple, inspired activities can be incorporated into daily instruction. This past week my class was permitted the opportunity to decorate our classroom Christmas tree. While the tree is comprised of green butcher paper and only stands 5 feet tall on our classroom door, it became a blank canvas for my students. I allowed them to use wrapping paper, draw pictures, cut out various shapes, anything they saw fit—and come together to create their own “ideal” Christmas tree. In the past, I would only allow student to use different kinds of wrapping paper to decorate the tree. But seeing the joy they had as they glued on an over-sized picture of Santa and his reindeer onto the bottom of the tree was priceless. This tree became a symbol of them, their creativity, and their spirit. While it may look unconventional to some, the students gathered around the tree at the end of the project and looked at their creation in awe. These are the moments I believe inspire us as educators to continue creative methods in our instruction.
While we may not be able to create giant art projects each day, using the cognitive tools discussed this semester has also helped me to better differentiate my instruction on a daily basis. While some of my students struggle with fine motor skills or sitting still for extended periods of time, I have begun looking for new solutions to harness their abilities and energy. Using alternative mediums like paint, play dough, sand, pipe cleaners, noodles, and magnets not only keeps them more engaged on the topic and activity, but I believe it also creates a more meaningful experience for them as a whole. Allowing students to touch, interact, and be social with friends is another method that is being incorporated within my classroom. When general classroom norms ask students to sit still, stay quiet throughout the entire lesson, and keep their hands in their lap, I have a hard time believing that students are experience life, lessons, or skills the way that they are intended to. We ask so much from our students on a daily basis. Why not let them touch, play, and move? This whole body approach requires students to engage all of their senses and their emotions, which in turn promotes cognitive synthesis as well.
By activating the cognitive tools of perceiving, patterning, embodied thinking, playing, modeling and synthesizing, we as a culture are able to think, venture, and create like the great inventors before us. Relying on our experiences and personal knowledge also helps to foster the growth and development of a creative lifestyle. In a world where everything in education is becoming mainstream, it is exceptionally important for us to incorporate creative thinking exercises for our students on a daily basis. Allowing students to have more free-form activities, meaningful experiences, and sensory rich experiments will deepen not only their personal knowledge, but also their creative cognition skills. While we have focused on our personal and professional lives and our responsibility to foster creative students, I believe we are also advocates for the older generations as well. You are never to old to create something great!
Some say, “Great minds think alike.” But do we want to think alike? Or do we want to create? Inspire? Change the world and help others see things differently? CEP 818: Creativity in Teaching has helped me to see beyond the traditional norms of teaching and thinking, and has challenged me to become a creative thinker myself. Instead of thinking the “same” as someone, we should instead be using the same cognitive tools to instead generate our own ideas and understanding of the world around us. When choosing the content area “Shapes of Alphabet Letters,” I thought I had a good grasp of this topic, as I manipulate the letters on a daily basis during instruction in my Kindergarten classroom. However, by the third week of the class, I began to see the letters not just as basic shapes, but as comprised of basic elements, hidden in the world around us, as abstractions in American Sign Language, and even as an art form through some origami folding. What was once a mundane, basic set of lines and curves became new, unfamiliar, and revolutionary.
Without the use of the cognitive tools of perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, play, and synthesizing, none of this would have been possible. Perceiving allows the individual to break a subject down to its basic elements to reconstruct its meaning. Which also entails taking what was once a renowned understanding about a subject, and creating a new, previously unexplored connection. Patterning encourages concepts to cross over from their traditional medium, into another. The concept keeps its integrity, yet is found in a non-traditional (possibility previously unexplored) manner. Abstracting encourages individuals to focus on one particular trait of an object or subject (shape, color, composition, size) and create a new meaning from that trait. The emphasis placed on one specific trait allows the inquirer to explore uncommon (often unseen) features, and possibly further the connection with other subjects to create an analogy in relation to different objects/subjects.
Modeling requires individuals to create a physical representation of their idea. Projects, ideas, and hypothesis can be established through a wide variety of models and materials, each with a separate purpose and function. Embodied thinking reflects on the traits that we as beings do instinctively, yet it was only through learned practice that we were able to master them. We are able to complete the activities without recognizing all of the cognitive processes that go in to performing the task. The concept of alphabet letter writing is an example of embodied thinking. As adults, we do not think about forming the shapes of the alphabet while spelling and writing. Humans are inclined to move, to feel, to explore the sensations around them. We build on our prior experiences and personal interests to create new meanings and new interpretations.
Play allows individuals to forget about traditional rules and structure, and freely explore a topic or item of their choice. Play permits users to create their own representation and characters (dramatic play) and improvise as needed. Lastly, Synthesis encourages thinkers to combine all of their cognitive tools and focus on their senses to create a deeper understanding of the world. In their novel, Sparks of Creativity, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein explained, “No major problem of the world today can be boxed neatly within a single discipline or approached effectively from any particular angle alone. Innovation depends on transdisciplinary thinking and, as we’ve discussed throughout, our abilities to use our senses and knowledge in an integrated way. The future will depend on our ability to create true, deep understanding (314).” This is the perfect quote to not only sum of the cognitive tool of synthesis, but also creativity in general.
Creativity requires a person to use his or her own thought processes to produce a unique idea, which results in an innovative outcome that has never been achieved before. Yet, being creative does not mean that you have to formulate something fresh and new each time. Our past experiences and our personal knowledge serve as “stepping stones” for cultivation. Re-thinking the familiar and re-formulating our views allows every individual to be capable of creative and innovative ideas. As course members, I believe the aim of this class required us to achieve the “unique” aspect of creativity throughout the modules and readings in this course. We are asked to establish what we already know or see about our topic area, but then re-invent and re-imagine those ideas to create a “unique” pattern or understanding.
In a standards based educational system where higher test scores “reign supreme,” there is little focus generally given towards encouraging creativity. As educators, we are concerned with an expected outcome on assessments, benchmark testing, and report cards. But when I see my students truly shine is when they are allowed to break away from the educational constrains and are allowed to create, invent, and explain their own thinking on how they see the world. During an interview with my brother earlier in the semester he mentioned, “A test can serve as a benchmark for certain areas of study, but it should never determine whom a person can or should be. Creativity is personalized for each individual and cannot be assigned a letter grade.” After reflecting back on my own teaching practices, I could not agree more.
In a past course at Michigan State University (ED 800: Concepts of Educational Inquiry), I was introduced to a TED Talk from Ken Robinson about how schools are no longer fostering the creative abilities and talents of their students. (http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en ). This course however has shown me that hope can be restored in supporting creative practices in the classroom. Harnessing and activating the seven cognitive tools discussed this semester will be vital. With selecting a topic that is studied daily in my Kindergarten classroom, I was able to incorporate some of the module activities and demonstrations (patterning, embodied thinking) with my students and have them “do the work for me.” To this day the students still recall the time they were able to create playdough letters using only basic lines, curves, and dots, and also creating letters with no other materials other than their bodies. Though the activities may have been only a small portion towards beginning to activate their cognitive tools and reasoning, it generated a memorable, lasting impression on the students that strayed away from our mundane daily activities.
Twenty energetic, bright-eyed students are found in my Kindergarten classroom. They amaze me on a daily basis. The way that a five year old can evaluate the world, create connections to past experiences (both personal and those from our classroom lessons), and their imaginative untamed spirit, all remind me that inspiration really is found in the smallest places. Given the chance to partake in “free explore” or “Free Choice Friday,” there is always a large group of students that participate in pretend play. They create “Batman’s secret liar” out of foam blocks, unifix math cubes are used as money at a pretend store, and our library area transforms into a house complete with a mother role, father role, and as many “pets’ as they can fit in the area. After this course, my view of this play has been revolutionized. At first, I would smile and laugh at my students’ innovate creations and “new families,” but now I embrace and encourage their stories, their imagination, and their excitement.
This course has helped me realize that simple, inspired activities can be incorporated into daily instruction. This past week my class was permitted the opportunity to decorate our classroom Christmas tree. While the tree is comprised of green butcher paper and only stands 5 feet tall on our classroom door, it became a blank canvas for my students. I allowed them to use wrapping paper, draw pictures, cut out various shapes, anything they saw fit—and come together to create their own “ideal” Christmas tree. In the past, I would only allow student to use different kinds of wrapping paper to decorate the tree. But seeing the joy they had as they glued on an over-sized picture of Santa and his reindeer onto the bottom of the tree was priceless. This tree became a symbol of them, their creativity, and their spirit. While it may look unconventional to some, the students gathered around the tree at the end of the project and looked at their creation in awe. These are the moments I believe inspire us as educators to continue creative methods in our instruction.
While we may not be able to create giant art projects each day, using the cognitive tools discussed this semester has also helped me to better differentiate my instruction on a daily basis. While some of my students struggle with fine motor skills or sitting still for extended periods of time, I have begun looking for new solutions to harness their abilities and energy. Using alternative mediums like paint, play dough, sand, pipe cleaners, noodles, and magnets not only keeps them more engaged on the topic and activity, but I believe it also creates a more meaningful experience for them as a whole. Allowing students to touch, interact, and be social with friends is another method that is being incorporated within my classroom. When general classroom norms ask students to sit still, stay quiet throughout the entire lesson, and keep their hands in their lap, I have a hard time believing that students are experience life, lessons, or skills the way that they are intended to. We ask so much from our students on a daily basis. Why not let them touch, play, and move? This whole body approach requires students to engage all of their senses and their emotions, which in turn promotes cognitive synthesis as well.
By activating the cognitive tools of perceiving, patterning, embodied thinking, playing, modeling and synthesizing, we as a culture are able to think, venture, and create like the great inventors before us. Relying on our experiences and personal knowledge also helps to foster the growth and development of a creative lifestyle. In a world where everything in education is becoming mainstream, it is exceptionally important for us to incorporate creative thinking exercises for our students on a daily basis. Allowing students to have more free-form activities, meaningful experiences, and sensory rich experiments will deepen not only their personal knowledge, but also their creative cognition skills. While we have focused on our personal and professional lives and our responsibility to foster creative students, I believe we are also advocates for the older generations as well. You are never to old to create something great!
Elevator Pitch
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