Creativity

Creativity is an extremely important skill to have in today's world. In a world where technology is constantly changing, more and more jobs are dependent on workers being innovative and creative. However, we are raised in an education system that is completely focused on passing standardized tests. This makes for an interesting challenge for classroom teachers. On one hand they have to prepare their students for the yearly standardized tests, and on the other hand prepare students for a world that is constantly seeking creativity and imagination in workers. Creativity is hard to teach, and hard to assess because it comes in a variety of forms and is largely self-driven. I think the most important thing teachers, and schools can do is to give students opportunities to express their creativity. This could be as simple as letting students decide how they want to present their research project to the class, giving them choices and allowing their own creativity to come through. Multiple choice tests do not allow for creativity, and while they are an appropriate form of assessment sometimes, other assessments such as projects and presentations encourages creativity while still assessing student learning. Another way that schools can promote creativity is to support and encourage fine arts in the schools. Music, art, dance and theatre programs allow student creativity to come through in ways that cannot be taught in regular classrooms. Fine arts help students to become more well rounded people, and learn to express themselves through other means. Unfortunately, the fine arts programs are often the first to be cut in schools. After school programs are forced to end because of inadequate funding, and less music and art classes are offered during the school day because of budget cuts. Schools that want to prepare their students for the real world, and promote creativity need to think twice before cutting fine arts classes. And administrators who do not see the importance of the arts should go to a choir concert or look at student artwork because they would clearly see how talented students are, even at a young age.

Time for Reflection

"Ok, now what did you learn from this experiment?" is a phrase we've all heard in science class at one point or another. And whether students know it or not, they are participating in reflection. Reflecting is extremely important to learning and processing information. Genuine student reflection allows kids to see the bigger picture of a problem, experiment or project. They are forced to think in a different way, and link concrete learning of a concept with its real life application. In other words, reflection is the time where students take a step back to process what they just experienced, and how that one experience can be related to other experiences. This is one of the reasons why reflection is so difficult. It is easy for anyone to learn how to do a problem. It's another thing to explain why learning that problem is important and useful in solving other problems. Reflection requires a different way of thinking. So much of the world around us is in the 'here and now' barely stopping to think forward to how one situation may serve as a teaching tool for a future situation. Teachers are an integral part of all areas of a student's learning, not just the academic part. Their job is not to simply teach formulas for solving math problems, but critical thinking and problem solving skills that often require reflection. The more a student is forced to reflect on their learning the more they will gain from a specific experience in the classroom.
It is also very important for teachers to reflect on their own work as well. Effective teaching is a learning process. College education students don't step into the classroom with all the answers; they are constantly learning from every new situation and experience that arises. Teachers need to take the time after a lesson that was very effective to reflect on why that particular lesson worked. It's easy to just store the good lesson away and use it again next year, but its necessary to take the time and reflect on why that certain lesson worked so well, and how the same strategies can be used in other lessons as well. Reflection is an important part of every learning process, and needs to be done by students and teachers alike.