Make Something!
May. 27th, 2009 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
franceslievensThere are certain things I'd like to do better when teaching. I never quite achieve the standards I set myself, partly due to lack of time when preparing my classes, partly because you can't control all parameters. A lesson with my fifth graders on Friday at the end of the day, will always turn out less good then teaching the same matter to my group of sixth formers earlier the day. I do my best with what I can, and tweak and smooth my lesson plans (at least when I've got a proper lesson plan... oops) every year again.
What I always try is to smuggle creativity into my lessons. I don't mean ordinary drawings or painting something. No, I want my pupils to be completely free in their creative thinking. Everything they do in life will ask for a certain degree of creativity, and I try to stimulate them finding that part inside themselves.
Traditional school systems don't like free-flowing creativity. Children aren't really stimulated to be wild in their thinking. Whenever something "creative" is done, the pupils need to follow the teacher's direction. Then I tell them to "Make something", and most are lost. Whiny Kid can actually spend half a lesson going on and on about how she doesn't know what she's supposed to do, and she doesn't have any inspiration.
But kids don't need much inspiration to make something, just simple encouragement that whatever they do will be great and fun, and even great fun. Most of the times the journey is much more important, because that journey learns you how to use your creative thinking, and be wild again. For that reason I like initiatives like "Make Something!!". It addresses kids who are never seen within the traditional creative courses. Out of school music or art lessons are for the privileged kids who have parents who nurture their child's creative side. But lots of parents are lost when it comes to creativity, or think it isn't important, or simply find all these extracurricular activities very expensive. "Make Something!!" gives those kids the opportunity to find out what they are worth, and that everyone's an artist. Some of these ways of education are finding their way into traditional teaching, but looking at my pupils, we still have a very long way to go.
(Link to a page on Wooster Collective.)
What I always try is to smuggle creativity into my lessons. I don't mean ordinary drawings or painting something. No, I want my pupils to be completely free in their creative thinking. Everything they do in life will ask for a certain degree of creativity, and I try to stimulate them finding that part inside themselves.
Traditional school systems don't like free-flowing creativity. Children aren't really stimulated to be wild in their thinking. Whenever something "creative" is done, the pupils need to follow the teacher's direction. Then I tell them to "Make something", and most are lost. Whiny Kid can actually spend half a lesson going on and on about how she doesn't know what she's supposed to do, and she doesn't have any inspiration.
But kids don't need much inspiration to make something, just simple encouragement that whatever they do will be great and fun, and even great fun. Most of the times the journey is much more important, because that journey learns you how to use your creative thinking, and be wild again. For that reason I like initiatives like "Make Something!!". It addresses kids who are never seen within the traditional creative courses. Out of school music or art lessons are for the privileged kids who have parents who nurture their child's creative side. But lots of parents are lost when it comes to creativity, or think it isn't important, or simply find all these extracurricular activities very expensive. "Make Something!!" gives those kids the opportunity to find out what they are worth, and that everyone's an artist. Some of these ways of education are finding their way into traditional teaching, but looking at my pupils, we still have a very long way to go.
(Link to a page on Wooster Collective.)
