Sir Ken Robinson on Creativity

As I listened to Sir Robinson’s inspirational take on creativity, or lack therefore, in the schools and in general, there was a quote in regards to Gillian Lynne’s psychiatrist’s take on her struggle to maintain concentration during school that caught my attention. After all of the success, prosperity, and fame Gillian established for herself, Robinson declared, “Somebody else may have put her on medication to calm her down.” In the year 2008 ADHD is one of the leading diagnoses of behavioral and learning disabilities, in my opinion. It seems today teacher, parents, and physicians are all too eager to classify a child with this particular behavioral trait. I believe the first solution should be to first see what outlets can be utilized to help a student express the ideas and actions that seem to overtake their attention. As was revealed in the video, once music was played, Gillian Lynne had a means to contribute her form of intellect and originality in the manner of dance; an art form that is continuously overlooked as insignificant in the academic spectrum. Being able to decipher complex arithmetic formulas or transcribe a philosophical paper should not be the only standards to which others measure intelligence. Being able to dance, draw, act, and produce music all require some sort of astuteness. Therefore, placing some children under medication may stifle their offerings of ingenuity and novelty. My best friend is diagnosed with ADHD and has often stated that the medication leaves an effect of numbness in which leaves her feeling unlike herself. No one should be stripped of who they are because they do not meet the standards of what an adult measure attentive in a certain setting. No one knows of they will ever be able to access that spark again.

Deep Learning: An Interview with Elena Aguilar

I watched Deep Learning: An Interview with Elena Aguilar, (an instructional coach guides teachers through the challenges of presenting a fully integrated curriculum).

This video was very interesting and beneficial. Ms Aguilar spoke about integrating lesson plans while still achieving the course or curriculum “standards”. Traditionally, teaching consisted of 40-50 minutes time slots reviewing textbook information. Although this can be an effective way for some students to learn, not all students learn in this structured, non-creative environment. Ms. Aguilar’s approach is to combine lesson plans and focus on elements that can cross over into students’ home-life.

Ms Aguilar believes it is time for a change in education and that students learn best through integrating learning. Integrating learning can help close the achievement gap and addresses all of the students different learning styles. Although planning integrated lesson plans take more time to plan than traditional textbook lesson plans, it is worth the time and the effort.
Ms. Aguilar also talked about assessments and rubrics. It is important to set up goals for the lessons before you start. You need to know what the goals are and communicate the goals to the students.

Blog Post # 3 Pursuing Passion After School

The video that i watched is called Pursuing Passion After School: Chicago's Model Educational Enrichment Effort. The video is about a program that is called After School Matters. It is a program that takes place after school. It was formed in an abandoned warehouse on what is called the 37 block. The program first started out as a art program called Gallery 37. After School Matters now consists of not only Gallery 37 which teaches kids Visual Arts, Performing Arts, and Culinary Arts, but Words 37,Tech 37,Sport 37, and Science 37. The program teaches Web Design, Robotics,Graphic Design,chemistry,sports as well as many other subjects. Kids enjoy coming to the program, were they are free to find what their passion is. The program is great because if a kid is struggling in school and they go to the program were their learning something their good at it can be uplifting, inspiring and motivating. The school raises private funds to help kids who wouldn't normally be able to attend the program. The kids from all different backgrounds get along and learn to trust each other and build lasting relationships. The program is not taught by teachers it's taught by professionals who are the experts in their field they bring the passion for their art to the table and are anxious to teach others and watch their talents flourish. I think that this program is terrific i wish every community had a enrichment effort like this. I think it allows students to have not only a safe place to learn but also to have fun. I especially like the idea that it allows individuals who are not otherwise academic to excel at other areas in which their talents are valued. Not everyone is meant to be a doctor, or lawyer. Some are meant to be Dancers, Architects, Interior designers, and Chefs.

Teaching Math as a Social Activity

We all remember math class in school. Simply sitting in a seat, listening to a teacher with the lights off, as she scribbles non - sense on a projector. At least that is how I remember it. I was never engaged in learning when it came to math. As a social person, I become very bored while learning math. Alas, a new way to teach math. Allowing students to converse with others while working on math problems which are often word problems. This allows those students who do not do well while sitting a seat for an hour, to get up, move about the room, and work out problems. Allowing students to work together creates new connections to the material instead of pure notes on a page. Furthermore, allowing students to work together helps students manage their emotions, improve conflict resolution, resolve conflicts nonviolently, and to make good choices. This was a great movie for upper - elementary teachers to view.

Global Village

I watched the video, "A night in the global village," on edutopia and I'm blown away. In Perryville, Arkansas they've taken a Heifer farm* and created a global village where students may spend the night as part of a learning experience to walk in someone else's shoes. The villages featured are replicas of what one might see in the following locations: Thailand, a generic urban setting, Zambia, and a refugee camp. Each location is a learning spot, and the students can read about how others live in that location. After the tour, they are assigned groups, and the groups receive a bucket of their resources. They have to cook their own dinner, and work with other groups around them to do so, as people do not have everything they need to make dinner. The refugee camp does not have anything.

Students are learning about others in a classroom, by reading from a textbook, and then for a night they get to actually experience it. "Nothing beats living the experience." The students now have new knowledge they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. They know a bit more about how the choices or decisions they make can effect others, and hopefully they will use it to better the world we inhabit.

I think this is a really neat idea. There are three other places in the US that do this, maybe as teachers we could get one started in Georgia? I recommend watching this 9 minute video.

*This may not actually be a Heifer (a type of cow) farm, but perhaps the company who is doing this is named Heifer. The video wasn't entirely clear.

Stealth Mental Health Video

The video that I watched was called Stealth Mental Health. This video shows that it is better to avoid formal counseling and use the school system as a way to get through to children. Many children at the high school age suffer from depression and it is always good to have someone there to guide them through the hard times. Peer relationships are very important to children and we should try to build on them and help students to hold others as accountability partners. The schools are now getting extra professionals to do group talks in order to help the students and give them someone to talk to when they need it. I believe this is good because it allows the students to network with others, and share problems that most all students have. We need to always support all students because many of them have tuff lives that we will never know about or learn anything about unless we ask questions and try to help. We need to inspire children to do their best and realize that things can always be worse. As counselors they must educate students on good decision making and provide them with good role models. Role models are important to have because they shape the way students act.

Sir Ken Robinson: Creativity

Creativity is my heart and soul of education, as a student and a teacher. My undergraduate degree is in Theatre and without theatre I would be just another high school drop-out. I can go on and on about how much I agree with Sir Ken Robinson. However, I would like to share two of my thoughts on ways creativity is important.

Schools and parents focus on academic studies and not the arts (creative). I believe that all people have passion and a passion for something: math, the law, medicine, painting, dancing, religion, sports, etc. Some passions are academic based, some passions are arts based and some are neither. Combining academics with creativity to support a child's passion can enhance a child education. Perfect example is a child who does not like writing, but loves baseball: have the child write a story about a baseball player (combine academic, creativity and passion).

Creativity is the forerunner of technology. We would not have cell phones, internet, automobiles, airplanes, etc without creativity. We needed to imagine the possibilities before we could design and engineer the technology.

Be a creative teacher and encourage your students to be creative. We need to focus on each student's individual capacity!!

Creativity v. Literacy

I firmly beleive that creativity is as important as literacy. Think about some of the best singers/songwriters in history. Some of them could barely string sentences together, however, their music has left an impression on people for many years to come. When this question was raised i thought of one of, if not the greatest, musician in modern times :Bob Dylan. Mr. Dylan could barely make it out of grammer school due to poor attendance, and performance. He even made a "D" in chorus. My guess is that the choir teacher felt pretty silly a few years later as Bob Dylan's music provided an in depth look at the struggles in our society at that time. This also gets into why were are abolishing musical education prgrams in school. In the movie Mr. Holland's Opus (if you have not seen it, rent it immediately) when the music program is cut from a suburban school due to lack of funding, Mr Holland spoke up and his famous words were "If you we cut out musical education and art, who will the next generation of kids have to write about?"

Sir Ken states, "Creativity is as important as literacy in education, and we should treat it with the same status." Do you agree, disagree or fall somewhere in between? Explain.


I agree with the statement by Sir Ken. I really do believe that creativity is equally as important as literacy when it comes to educating a chid. If a child is not encouraged to be creative then they will have a problem when it comes to thinking for one's self and making decisions. I also believe that social skills are just as important as book skills. If a child can't communicate their ideas and introduce themselves to a new person then they will not be successful in life. I grew up being encouraged to be creative and sociable. However I do not think that creativity can be taught. Creativity is individual. Educator's and parents can cultivate and encourage creativity but they can not teach a child how to be creative. As a teacher I hope to encorage my students to develop creativity and social skills as well as teach them to be literate.

Blog Post #2

I think that I agree with Sir. Ken Robinson, In his idea that creativity is just as or even more important as literacy. Think about William Shakespeare he was a great writer but do we watch his plays because of the words he used or that his grammar was just off the charts? No we watch his plays because they were creative, inventive, attention catching. If Shakespeare had never had creativity he wouldn't have had anything interesting to make a play about. I also agree with Sir. Ken when he states that " If your not prepared to be wrong your never going to come up with anything unique". Sir Ken also stated that he believes that children are being educated out of their creativity. I think in some cases this is very true, children are taught that even if your fantastic at something if it's not gonna make you lots of money, you shouldn't bother with it at all. If you can't get a job using that skill it doesn't matter, that skill is overlooked and seen as not - valuable. I also think that he is right on when he says that the hierarchy of subjects in school need to be rearranged or taught more evenly. The subject are valued in order of value, Math, Language, Humanities, then the Arts. Why is Art last? Hundreds of people make good livings as Artist but why is having that talent undervalued in our school systems, isn't being artistic a gift, something just as great as being a mathematician. I think that to a point we are stifling the gifts of many children as well as adults. Not everyone is meant to be a college professor, or Physician, etc. People have different gifts and I believe that if your calling is to be a Plumber and you can fix any problem know to the Plumbing world and people need your services than so be it, be a great Plumber. When did we stop letting people follow their hearts and do what they wanted to do in life, when did we trade self-choice in for a paycheck?

Hummingbirds

I recently watched a video on Ted.com which is a site of "inspired talks by the world's greatest thinkers and doers." This video was a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson titled, "Do schools kill creativity?" Sir Ken is an amusing speaker with a British accent that serves to underscore each phrase with credibility. He discusses the world we live in, and how educators are charged with teaching students and preparing them for the future, even though we do not know what the future looks like. He also talks about creativity, and how teachers emphasize subjects such as math and science, but deemphasize other areas such as music, dance, or art. The video slammed home for me in the last segment, when Sir Ken began speaking about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

When I was a child I found it difficult to concentrate in school. No, that is not true at all. I could concentrate, it's just that I could not focus on one particular thing. The teacher was talking, but the girl behind me was erasing something, and I could hear each rub of pink eraser against the white blue lined paper. There was a fly buzzing against the window, futilely seeking access to the outside world it could see but could not reach. I could hear each little bump of its body against the panes, even though I sat in the middle of the class. I could hear each and every little thing, and even though the teacher was talking, I could not give her my undivided attention. At home my father would teach me how to focus. My mom set a timer, 30-60 minutes per subject. I would get yelled at if I strayed from the homework table. At school I was sent to a special room called the Academic Learning Lab, where two teachers also helped me. It was in this manner that I avoided the label of ADD until the 11th grade. I had learned amazing coping strategies over the years.

Now I am back in school to become a Speech Language Pathologist. I am currently seeing a 10 year old little boy whom I shall call Wednesday. Wednesday has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. He has the soul of a hummingbird caged inside a little boy's body. As we are talking I let him move across the room freely as long as he is giving me responses. He will spin, touch each wall in the small room, then drag a finger across the blinds before coming to rest at the edge of his seat. In a few minutes he will repeat this circuit.

When Sir Ken discussed the Ballet Dancer who was taken to a doctor to be medicated for ADHD, I found myself nodding my head. It can be very difficult working with these children, but how much of their creativity are we killing by medicating them into a quiet child? In the story Sir Ken told, the doctor asked the girl to remain in the room while he and mommy left. He turned on the stereo and asked mom to watch. The little girl moved to the music and the doctor said, "There is nothing wrong with your child. She only needs to dance." I believe that children and adults with ADD and ADHD can be taught how to focus, how to self monitor and correct their behaviors, and that their extra energy can be channeled into vigorous activities. As teachers, we can help structure our classrooms to give these children advantages over their disorder. Seat them in the front, install white or pink noise machines , and help them monitor themselves so they are focused on you instead of the student behind them.

Who knows? Maybe we will have the pleasure of teaching the next greatest dancer.

I sent Wednesday's mom the link to the video on Ted.com and I hope that she will see it and be inspired to enroll Wednesday into an active sport.

Blog Post #2

I do not know that I agree with the statement “creativity is as important as literacy in education,” although I do think that creativity is important. I think it is important to have literacy skills, without them how would we be able to hold down jobs and perform. Schools focus so much on literacy, but I believe that they do this because they know how important it is. We should be creative, because being creative gives us new and inventive ways to explore and learn new things. Being creative helps turn something boring, into something amazing and fun. We often strive off of creativity when trying to capture students and make them eager to learn. Although I do not feel like the two even compare, I feel that they are both important traits to have in life. In our life we use both literacy and creativity so much that the two have become essential. I still feel that in order to achieve in life we must value literacy more than we value creativity.

Blog Post 1 11/12th grade math

I first reviewed the last blog on the list. It was for an 11/12th grade math class. Having a tool like this for an advanced math class would be a wonderful help. Not only did it encourage free commenting and dialogue, which is important for students, but it also has many educational factors. One thing that stuck out to me was that you could view this blog is many different languages. So, for those students who may speak another language at home, could in turn do his/her work in a way to be the most successful. It also allowed for the students to evaluate the teacher and post comments about how much the enjoyed or disliked the class.