EDIM 508 Unit 4 Summary Posting

Consumers to Creators

I’ve enjoyed reading your discussions this week. I hope that the readings have better opened
your mind to fostering the creative mind in education. I’d like to highlight some thoughts
from this week’s discussions.

Abigail- I think that giving students options, whether it be in the electives they
explore, or the assignments you assign, helps students to tap into their creativity and not
feel so trapped. I know most teachers do this, and its not a new concept, which is why I
don't necessarily think education is killing creativity; because the educators certainly are
not

Alexis- We need to teach kids that through mistakes, we learn new ideas.
Through mistakes we go back to the drawing board and adapt what may have already been done and we try
something new. The world and government behind education is scaring kids out of creativity. This has been my
new philosophy this year and I find it refreshingly ironic that our reading mentioned the same thing. I am
embracing the whole, "make new mistakes" motto!

Alexsandra- I am hopeful with this shift in Corporate America that individual creativity is cherished
and supported. It would be great to see that trickle down into our schools on a more widespread scale. How can
we expect our graduates to be creative when many of them have experiences that go against that exact notion?
We must start from the beginning of their educational careers and support that growth the whole way through.

Ashley- The biggest challenge I feel with creativity and fostering that is how do you fairly and
appropriately grade that? Creativity is a great thing for students, and it should be practiced at school, but I do
not feel that our education system allows time for us to do that with our students. Our education system wants
us to prepare our students to be able to select the “correct” answer on the standardized tests. I feel that we are
pressured to get through so much curriculum in a short amount of time. Allowing students to display the
information in creativity ways, will take much more time than if the students all take the same quiz or test that
can be graded in a shorter amount of time than it would take to grade projects that will all look very different.

Courtney- I agree that identifying a fundamental human desire is vital to fostering creativity in
children and I do believe that there is a movement to bring that creativity into the schools. Most likely there will
be ups and downs just like the businesses experience, but it needs to be a well thought out plan with input from
the community, staff, and students to make it successful.
 Jason- I gain on teaching them the basics and information of the lesson I was able to tweak it to
present to the students at the other school. I don't know about the whole big business way of cultivating
creativity, I think it could work but the unknowns kind of scare me. I think it would be incredible to be able to
have the access to the technology that amazon or Google has, I am amazed to see how they develop their
creativity with open environments and team work sessions and yes I think that these forms of creativity being
used are very interesting.

Jill- Thinking creatively and building creative experiences for students doesn't mean always
reinventing the wheel. It's sometimes inventing new ways to use the same wheel. Sometimes, its just seeing
where your students take that same "wheel".
I think that cultivating creativity can help students to find new ways to solve problems, find innovative or
divergent ways of thinking, and it can help them figure out important design skills that can help in a variety of
areas in their lives.

Kaelin- I feel like this should be the way of thinking for education. All too
often I believe teachers have the best of intentions and try but life usually gets in the way
and they never fully develop their creativity and authenticity into their lessons because it
just takes so much work. If there was a way to foster and create time to enable teachers to
want to be creative and put their whole efforts into every lesson being engaging and
creative then education would be as flourishing as big business.

Kali- The use of the creative mind needs to be split with our students. There are
times we need to use our creative minds when we are delivering content, differentiating,
and creating performance assessments. Our students should be encouraged and provided opportunities to use
their creative minds during the school year. From interactive notebooks, foldable organizers, various platforms
to summarize learning and apply their learning, fostering our students creative minds can be weaved into our
classrooms on a small scare or large one.

Karl- I think we don’t know what the future holds in technology and education is usually behind the
eight ball on meeting those pieces of technology in the classroom. I know that we all do our best every day
otherwise we would not be teachers. And yes testing, paperwork and other non-essential things do get in the
way no questions asked. I think the biggest thing is how do we do our best each year and that involves making
changes that are not always comfortable.

Katherine- Technology seems to be where the answer lies. Gone are the days when being creative
was cutting, pasting, and using our Crayolas. Our focus is now about making all material relevant to their lives
and their lives are full of technology. Having students use their creating minds needs to regularly occur
throughout the school year. As teachers we need to believe in is importance.
 Lauren- I know for me the biggest struggle is teaching my students to take the risks to be creative. If
something doesn’t go their way or goes wrong, it can create a huge meltdown or they just give up easily. In our
discussions about the disciplined mind, I think teaching them creativity is in turn going to teach them to have a
disciplined mind (or vice versa).

Luke- There have been numerous occasions when I tried to encourage creativity by making my
project directions a bit more open-ended so that students would have some creative freedom in their work, only
to find myself later staring at an assignment that blew my expectations out of the water (and I don't mean that
necessarily in a good way). In those moments I realized that I hadn't been prepared (and I hadn't done a good
job of preparing my students) for the demands of creative assessments.

Matthew- I believe that we can improve creativity by first giving students more time. While it’s not
always easy because of the tests, it is something that needs to happen if we are allowing students full creative
potential to shine. Also, I believe that more independent (real life) projects and experiences can also be helpful.
Giving students guidelines and some structure is always necessary, but allowing them to step “outside the box”
isn’t a bad thing either.

Melissa- I definitely think I need to step out of my comfort zone and lead by example. I need to use
more technology and create more for my students. The more comfortable I can get with different tools the
better I can be to help my students use them to show what they learned. Unfortunately, I do not have enough
technology for my students. I have 3 chrome books and 3 desk top computers.

Natalie- I have great ideas to reach my curriculum goals and student personal goals. However,
some of my ideas have bombed due to different reasons. I know that it is OK to fail sometimes because it just
makes us a better person and educator. Having hit rock bottom makes you realize how wonderful it is when you
finally get to the top of the mountain with your goals.

Nicole- While we do need to get our students learning, practicing, and mastering the standards that
they will inevitably be tested on during the course of the PSSAs, we still maintain control over how students
learn and practice that material.

Rachelle- Although I am not a district teacher, I hear a lot of fellow district colleagues talk about
Common Core and how it focuses on the process instead of the product. Why does it matter how a child does
something as long as they get an accurate measure? I LOVE to see children getting the same answer, but their
process to get that answer is different, creative and unique!
 Rebecca- Creativity is important and my mom always told me that you make time for what is
important. I think creativity is something that becomes more possible the more familiar a teacher is with the
curriculum that is being taught. I do feel like education would be flourishing more if we were able to spend
more time cultivating creativity. The problem education runs into comes back to your first question. There is
not enough time to do everything that we need to do to meet state standards and the demands of the
standardized tests on top of cultivating creativity.

Sarah- If we want students to be prepared to work in big, creative companies, then we need to
prepare them for those environments: how to think for themselves, how to come up with problems and solutions
on their own, and how to work with others in a creative environment. In order to prepare students for the
future, whatever that will look like, we need to prepare our students to be flexible and to be creative thinkers.
Multiple choice questions do not encourage creativity. Even the writing assignments in the classroom are not
creative. The teachers don't have the time or are not given the time to use creative methods to teach.