When you think of creativity in school, most people refer to the arts. Budget cuts across education have forced many schools to reconsider the necessity of these areas. In a world of continually growing demands of standardized testing, creativity has been forced to take a back seat in our schools. I have heard multiple teachers share the idea, "If it's not on the test, there's no time for it in our classroom." As a first grade teacher I do not have quite as many demands on me as teachers in the upper elementary and beyond do when it comes to standardized testing, but even without that demand, I feel a pinch for time with district expectations for core subjects. So what is the school's role in the creative process, especially when the arts are slowly being eliminated from our schools?
Do schools kill creativity?
In his Ted Talks, Ken Robinson states that students "don't grow into creativity, they grow out of it" (Robinson, K, 2007). According to this belief, it is our job as educators to not develop, but to foster creativity in our students. It is much more difficult to encourage creativity than it is to encourage the already creative mind. So how do we do this? Ken Robinson believes that, "If your not prepared to be wrong, you can't be creative" (Robinson, K, 2007). As a first grade teacher, its easy to witness the fearlessness of failure, and along with that the phenomenon of natural creativity. Students at 5,6, and 7 year old salivate over the opportunity to express themselves through art and creativity, but as the demands of our rigourous curriculum get their hands on them, they slowly experience that wrong answers and mistakes are common in education. I believe that it is important for students to experience failure and mistakes, but how we help our students deal with that and overcome those mistakes will have everything to do with their comfort levels in creativity. So how do we help students incorporate their desire to express themselves artistically while meeting the demands of a content heavy curriculum? I believe that technology holds the answer.Digital media and creativity in the classroom....
With a plethora of online software and applications available through computers and other media devices, opportnities for students to be creative with technology is everywhere. Writing in first grade is a detrimental part of our curriculum, and because of this it is very time consuming. Every year I have a decent percentage of my class that will write, but demands a high level of motivation from me to fight through the difficult process. This year was the first of my three years that I decided to incorporate digital storytelling in my classroom. Students were informed that their writing would be turned into a digital story, but this would take some creativity and a lot of hard work on their part. There wasn't a student in the class not willing to take on the task. There was one particular day when students were doing some final touches on their illustrations for their story and it was time to stop to move to recess. The students literally asked me if they could "do recess later so they could work on their projects." I don't know if this is common, but this was completely a new feeling to me. In an area where my motivation to students was required to help them through, ALL students were not engaged in order to finish their illustrations so we could scan them into the computer. Creativity was present and the students were in love. They knew that right around the corner they would be on the computer narrating their stories and adding their illustrations to their words on the screen. This was their story, and their creation, and even though it was writing it didn't matter.I know this is just a single example of how creativity motivated my students, but I have other since this project, and I am sure many more to follow. There are so many ways to incorporate creativity and the arts into our core subject areas, so they no longer need to be viewed as seperate entinties but as collaborative tools that our students can use. Digital media and technology has made it easier than ever to allow students to express their creativity while demonstrating their understanding of the necessary areas, so why not let the two go hand in hand so we can continue to aid students creativity and not kill it.
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