Creativity and Inventiveness

Schools in today's society do not praise inventiveness and creativity as much as they should. Schools are becoming more uniform in their education and focusing only on the knowledge and expression of the brain. Standardized testing can not show the intelligence of a child who expresses himself or herself through movement.

Arts and other forms of expressions are no longer praised in the modern school. Arts, music and theater and among the first activities lost during school budget cuts. How many top musicians are we losing with these cuts? How many kids no longer have an outlet from their everyday life? These activities are ones where kids can learn to make mistakes and how to fix them. Kids are becoming more terrified of making mistakes in their schooling because it is frowned upon. They are expected to always have the right answer. Critical thinking should be praised more than the correct answer because it allows creativity. In the video it said that teachers are supposed to be preparing the incoming kindergarten class for the year 2065 when they do not even know what the world will be like in five years. Degrees from college mean less than they did in the past. The educational system is under inflation and its hurting the students. Creativity is one thing that each child develops for themselves and it can lead to original ideas that will help them in their future. Because more kids are scared of being wrong, there will be less original ideas. Instead, they will be made into what some people think is the "ideal student." As the video stated, I also think that education is diverse. There is not one way to teach the youth of the world. They need to be allowed to explore new ideas and be given more freedom. There was the one girl who expressed herself through movement, but had trouble in the regular schooling atmosphere. She ended up being extremely successful. Why not give this opportunity to more children? Instead, we medicate our children because we think they are too hyper while they are just being themselves and being kids. Just because a kid will not sit still in the classroom, we believe he or she has a learning disability. I disagree. These kids typically just have another way of expressing themselves and a different way of seeing things.

Creativity is discouraged in the modern school system. Our youth are more afraid to make mistakes, which leads to less original ideas. Arts are among the first losses when schools face budget cuts. In the future, these kids' creativity is what will allow them to be successful because the average college degree means very little compared to what it used to. All in all, schools need to praise the creativity of its children and rethink the hierarchy of the school subjects taught in the classrooms.

Role Playing in the Classroom

Role playing is an effective activity for classrooms to use because it is not only engaging, but also makes students think critically. It is an effective teaching strategy if every student does their assigned part. They must take on the role of the person(s) or event that they are given. They will learn to look at topics from different points of view and develop a deeper understanding for the matter at hand. Some students learn better by being engaged in a topic and they are allowed more freedom to discover the topic for themselves. They are required to develop quick, but well supported, thoughts to prove their point and raise their concerns in a respectable manner. In regards to history teaching, role playing can help students to see how culture different in the past. This is important in them understanding how our society is the way that it is today.

I do not think it is completely necessary for students to have a solid base of basic knowledge in order to learn. It is possible to learn from experience and seeing things. They then will be able to demonstrate this knowledge back in the form of speaking because their writing and reading skills are not sufficient. However, I do believe that students should have a good grasp on their basic skills before engaging in complex learning tasks. They are able to make connections to different sorts of material to prove their point and use other techniques to follow up on their message. While students are able engage in complex learning without strong basic skills, they will not be able to make their point proven in many ways. They should be able to prove their point in different ways in order to reach a larger portion of their target audience.

Most communities listen to the high achieving families before they listen to the other representatives of other families. Schools like to show that their program makes some of the strongest students. I think that sometimes schools make the assumption that the lower achieving students just do not want to learn. They forget more of the economic and social factors that play into their learning and label these kids as challenged. The families of higher achieving students might be more willing to invest in a school or community than a family of a lower achieving student, so the district wants to keep the higher achieving people happy.

Emotional engagement in a subject can really determine how well a student is going to do in that class. Interest in a subject will lead to a child asking more questions and looking for broader knowledge of it and relating that topic to other areas in their life. If a student does not engage in a topic then he/she will just try to memorize and spit out the information for tests and quizzes. This strategy does not allow a student to develop a deeper level of thinking, which is critical to their development as a learner.

Passion

Passion can most readily be described as enthusiasm or excitement for a subject in which someone is usually dedicated. The passion that a teacher exhibits in his or her classroom is critical to the students appreciation and excitement for it as well.

I will never forget the passion that my eleventh grade United States History teacher had for her subject. In fact, she is what inspired me to study history and become interested in teaching. My teacher was extremely interested in learning about history and why things happened the way that they did. She frequently asked critical questions to make us think more about why our world is the way that it is. This was much more interesting to learn and think about rather than memorizing dates, names and locations. My most vivid memory of the class was when she told us to flip our desks over on the ground and make trenches. Then she began to teach us about World War One while we hit behind our desks on the hard ground. Surprisingly, it really made the material come to life when we were able to experience something outside of just another lecture and note taking.

On the other hand, a lack of passion in the classroom is really hard on the students. I had three poor math teachers in high school. None of them were excited to teach, or at least did not make it interesting to learn. Day after day we memorized one formula after another and the teachers did not apply it to real world examples. The lack of passion that these teachers had made me lose my motivation to learn math. Every year as I would go up one level in math I felt further behind than the rest of the class.

The amount of passion that a teacher has for his or her subject is going to affect kids in different ways, but I think it is safe to say that no kids will benefit from a lack of enthusiasm. Almost every kid will learn better if the teacher believes what they are teaching is important enough for the kids to know. Its not always the content that matters, but instead, digging deeper into the subjects and asking critical questions. I believe this is the strength that passionate teachers have over other teachers. They are able to ask deeper questions and have the kids answer critical questions and develop their minds in a way besides memorizing facts and spitting them back onto a page.

Passionate teaching is crucial to the development of a child. They often look up to their teacher as a role model and take the same interest in a subject that the teacher does. If an adult does not find math to be cool, then the kid will not think it is cool either. A passionate teacher has the ability to change and expand the minds of many kids if they are dedicated and enthusiastic about their area of study.