Children are born with a natural
inclination toward exploring and questioning.
Our challenge as educators is to teach them the material in the
curriculum in a way that lends itself to these instincts. While it may be easier and faster to hand
them material, practice it with them, and finally assess it to make sure that
they’ve learned it, this is not an effective practice. This method of teaching takes away the
student’s control over their learning and fails to recognize that a specific
method, even one that has proven itself to be effective with a number of
children, will not lead to understanding for all of our students. In order to reach more students, we must demonstrate
to our students that we value creative thinking and let them help us to use
creativity in our classrooms.
It is really fulfilling
to witness the moment in a student’s learning when they make sense of a concept
or find the answer to a question they’ve been researching. It is also important for students to be a
part of the questioning process. They
need to challenge the boundaries of what they have learned in books by asking their
own questions. In chapter two of Sparks
of Genius the authors discuss the problems that can arise when we treat
each school subject as an independent entity.
If we can show our students how art can help them with math or how math
can help them understand poetry, then we can help students use their strengths to
overcome their weaknesses.
I do not consider
myself an artistic person, but I do enjoy it.
The product of my efforts is sometimes disappointing, but the process
never fails to feed my spirit. I chose
poetry as my content area not because I consider myself a poet, but because it
is a challenge for me. I hoped that by exploring
poetry using the tools in the book, I would feel more comfortable teaching and
even writing poetry. Fortunately, that
is exactly what happened. I discovered
that my strengths in other areas can help me make sense of poetry
In school we read poetry to
students and ask them to write poems of their own. I do not recall, however, being asked to observe
poetry. Observing and using imagery can
help us better understand poetry as well as other subjects. A word or concept will bring different images
to mind for different people. Discussing
these differences can help us see other points of view. Using observing and imaging are often thought
of as strictly visual behaviors. In
Sparks of Genius we learned about how we might observe using our other senses. We might know what an insect looks like, but
what it sounds like or smells like may tell us more about it.
Patterns are everywhere and we
experience them with all of our senses.
There are patterns in music, language, history and science. By recognizing patterns we are able to find
solutions to problems and sometimes identify problems that we didn’t know
existed. I often associate patterns with
math. Rarely does the word pattern come
up when I am teaching other subjects, but it is just as important to the other
disciplines and completely appropriate.
Once students are comfortable with recognizing patterns, they can more
easily form patterns of their own. We
want students to make connections and form patterns that will help them make
sense of things. In the process they may
also show us new ways of seeing things. We
can challenge our students to question patterns, alter them, or continue them. The concept of patterns can be applied to
subject areas other than math. In
language arts I ask students to connect the things they read to other stories
or events. This is a way of recognizing
patterns. Asking students to form patterns is a bigger
challenge. Poetry almost always fits a pattern. Poems are also very conducive to
creativity. Just writing poetry in
itself is an act of creativity. The
challenge then is to help students not only to recognize the patterns in
poetry, but to form them for themselves and to give them the opportunity and
freedom to challenge the patterns.
Abstracting involves really
focusing on the basics of an object or concept to get to the fundamental
workings of it. It might involve using all
of our senses. Picasso told us that we
must see with our minds, not our eyes.
Truly getting to know to know the nature of something is challenging,
but rewarding. When something is
stripped to its core we are better able to see how it relates to something
else. Analogizing takes place when we “remove
all traces of reality” to find the “idea” of something. Analogies are the relationships that two
things have based on a single, basic characteristic. Analogies are relationships where no obvious
similarities can be seen. Children may
be better than we assume them to be at creating abstractions and making
analogies. They are likely to have fewer
preconceived notions to prevent them from seeing things in new ways. Abstract
poetry uses rhythms, textures, and sounds to convey its message. It is sometimes the way the words are printed
on the page that tells us something about the author’s intention.
There are many things we can do
without thinking. Some of those things
we can do because we have done them so many times that they have become
automatic. We rely on muscle memory. Other movements we just feel. It was the process and not the final product
that the artists in chapter eight were trying to convey. The sculptors revealed that it was a very
physical experience to create their pieces.
They referred not simply to the act of adding to or removing from their
medium, but the way they had to use their bodies in order to feel what it was
they were trying to express. Dance is a
physical experience already, but when I am learning new choreography and my
instructor asks if we want to try it with the music or without, my response is
always with. The steps don’t fully come
together for me until I feel how they interact with the music. I can know the steps, but it is the music
that will tell me how to perform them. I
had not thought of empathizing in such a physical way before reading this
chapter. I always described empathizing
as seeing a situation from someone else’s point of view. I hadn’t considered that it also means
imagining what it is like to actually be someone or something else. Poetry is rarely a physical experience for
the reader. The author of a poem,
however, may have to live an experience as the sculptors in the chapter did in
order to write about it authentically.
In order to express an experience in words you must first know exactly
how it feels.
The
chapter on dimensional thinking talked about many ways to think about dimension
that I had not thought about before. One example is the way that shadows
behave under different conditions. A single object can have an
infinite number of differently shaped shadows depending on its position,
the position and type of light, and the material from which it is made. I
was thinking back to the first zoom in from this course for which we zoomed in
on an object and asked others to figure out what it was. Perhaps students could capture several
shadows of an object with the same goal in mind. Similarly, what
would different objects look like when sliced into layers? Two
different layers of the same food or toy may look like completely different
objects.
I
sometimes forget in the routine of the day to stop and look at the concepts I
am teaching from other angles. In math, zooming in on a concept and
really breaking it down into its simplest form can do a lot to help students
see what is really going on. Zooming out on the other hand, for instance
in social studies, can help us to see how events in one part of the world
relate to those in going on in others.
The events that are happening in other parts of the world affect events close
to home. To teach history without
zooming out to capture the big picture would leave out large pieces of the
puzzle.
The chapter on modeling illustrated
the importance of model building in order to fully understand something. The act of physically creating a model allows
a person to adapt and make changes when they are met with unforeseen
challenges. Models give us the feeling
of being there and allow us to control a situation, or to find aspects of the
situation we can’t control. Even those
who we consider to be original and innovative thinkers confess that they looked
to people who came before them for a place to begin. While their end product was something that
had not been seen before, they used models created by previous artists and
academics as inspiration. Building
models teaches us how to use imaging, analogizing, and dimensional thinking
skills. In the classroom models are
imperative for teaching about things that we cannot show students in person.
A functional model can help us show students how the heart pumps blood through
the body. A physical model can show us what the inside of our ear looks
like. Models also serve to help students to imitate a process such as
poetry or multiplication. They can use our examples as models and try things
for themselves.
In the classroom,
as well as other areas in our lives, we get into the habit of separating work
and play. The people in the Playing chapter lived their lives in a
way that enabled them to play within their fields. Taking the play out of work makes it
drudgery. Allowing for play and worrying
less about doing things solely for a given purpose makes the work feel
effortless. The math curriculum used in
my district created games, some that kids already know, and tweaked them so
that they reinforce the concepts taught in the text. The games build on each other as students get
older. This way of giving students
practice but making the learning fun is very helpful. Students don’t feel that they are behind or
being punished when they are offered the chance to play the games, yet they are
getting practice they need. Poetry is
fun to read and to write if you find the right style and subject. People play with poetry in many ways. They play with the content, the rhythm, the
words, and the layout as they write. The
definition of what can be considered poetry is in the eye of the creator. I am encouraged to do some more creative
poetry with students by letting them throw away some of the rules.
An initial step to transformation
has to be the acknowledgement that something other than what you “know” to be
true is possible. Instead of creating a
picture based on the information they were seeing, they tried to make the
pieces they had created fit- which they could not do. Instead of asking if their information was
flawed, they assumed that the new information was. Transformational thinking only occurred after
modeling, painting, and reenacting took place. The chapter on transformation showed us that
ideas, not conclusions, should be the goal.
We need to be looking for answers, not the answer. Finding answers
should not be the end of our exploration.
If the first method we attempt leads us to an answer we are often
tempted to stop there. If we think about
that as a beginning, however, and look for other ways to think about a problem,
that is when transformation happens.
Designing our curriculum to cover a topic for a specific period of time
and then assess it and move on gives students the idea that they have learned
all they need to know on that topic.
While assessment is an integral part of school, assessment should be
presented to students as a way of finding out what they have learned so far.
Sparks of Genius has made me look
at every area of my teaching in a new way.
I have always aspired to be a creative teacher, but sometimes that
concept is a bit abstract. What exactly
does that mean? This book has given me
tools with which to examine teaching, thinking, and learning. It is a lot to take in, but I am certain I
will reference this book in the future to remind myself to look at my teaching
in new ways.
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