Inventiveness/Creativity

I realize that i should probably be commenting on my ability to incorporate creativity as a future teacher, however, this is one of my weaker dispositions. As I was growing up, I appreciated teachers who incorporated unique and creative ideas/techniques in their lesson plans but they were unnecessary for me to learn; they made class more interesting but I was able to learn just fine in the typical, boring, straight-out-of-the-book way. For this reason, it is sometimes difficult for me to think of new and interesting ways to present information that will be effective. It is one of the areas that I need to work on most in the future, and that I hope increased exposure to classroom settings and lesson plan writing will help correct.

However, what I want to talk about is creativity in students. While creativity is very important as a teacher, it is more important that we encourage it in our students. In the book that I had to read for our final project, To Understand: New Horizons in Reading Comprehension, by Elin Oliver Keene,the author talks extensively about the need for a renaissance of understanding. What she meant is that as adults we praise people who are unique, we value minds that can think outside the box and we applaud individuals who continually forge their own paths. Yet Keene feels that historically, educators have done everything they can to turn their pupils into little robotic copies of themselves. Teachers wanted their students to fit into a neat little mold. Education was more like a production line of sorts where we fill each person with the same information and we try to fix all of their "flaws" so that the end product looks the same, a bunch of perfectly-shaped, beige squares. She contends that we are setting our students up for failure if we kill their creativity when they are young and then punish them for not having it as adults. Keene likens her students to Michelangelo's unfinished "slave awakening" sculptures:

"I think back to the moment when i first saw, in Michelangels's sculpture, the outline of a person straining to break free of the stone, and I can't help but relate that to our lives in teaching. Can we commit to liberating our children from the route and routine, the drill and kill, the mind numbing repetition that characterizes too many classrooms? Can we agree at least in part with the humanists of the Renaissance and proclaim that all of us have nearly unlimited capacity to produce original thought?"

Keene is calling us to help break our students out of the marble confines of modern education, and in so doing free ourselves as wells. She wants us to encourage creativity and curiosity. To ask questions and not be afraid if we do not know the answer. To try new things that seem strange and adventurous. To live fully and to experience everything we can get our hands on. She says that only by living fully can we be free thinking, creative, inspiring individuals.