Special Blog Post #12A Creativity and Curiosity: My Thoughts

Education is the key to our ever changing future. As educators, we are having to go through this huge transformation in order to meet the needs of our children and what it takes to teach in an age of technology. By it being an age of technology, creativity and curiosity of the educators, the students, and the parents is a necessary collaboration. Without it, the learning process is not taking place in our classrooms. The system is the blame for being oblivious to the need and hindering our children from learning in a way they will meet the educational needs of the future.

Let me begin by defining creativity and curiosity. Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. Curiosity is an emotion related to natural inquisitive behavior such as exploration. If you examine the definitions closely, you'll find that they are emotional skills they feed off of each other. By creativity being an intrapersonal emotional skill and curiosity being interpersonal, it brings me to the assumption that both skills are responsible for stimulating the learning process. A student may be prone to use or is better at using one more than the other, however, we as educators, are responsible for incorporating their use in the classroom and identifying specific qualities and preferred ways of capturing information.

How has the school systems in the United States inhibited the development of curiosity and creativity in the students?
The "No Child Left Behind" and the introduction of standardized testing has caused activity in the classroom to be limited to the Educators teaching the test. Test scores are the measures used to determine if a student has met the standards, regardless if any learning has actually taken place or not. Suppose the student is not a passive learner and relies on hands on and imaginative skills in order to learn. Are these types of students rendered SpecialEd? Probably so.

The key to putting the two C's into the curriculum is through the use of technology. When developing a curriculum that increases curiosity in students,it is best to assign task that are only basic objectives with very few guidelines and perimeters. These assignments would,however require extensive research and there would be no right or wrong answers. The grading criteria would be measured by the final product and the creativity involved. The key components are the use of various websites, creating blogs, establishing collaborates outside the classroom, and allowing individualism.

The teacher's primary objective should be to stir up curiosity within the students. I, personally, would create a mound of curiosity in my lectures. Once they are winded with curiosity, I would have them to write down 3 questions on the topic and have them to research the answers. Later, have each student share their findings with the class through a given project. This will unleash their creativeness.

As a teacher, its sometimes hard to go outside of the box in order to promote curiosity and creativity in a student. In Mobile County, teachers are required to teach a subject within a timed cycle of instruction. The cycle is as follows:
Bell ringer or icebreaker introducing the topic 10 minutes
An Essential Question is posted but not answered until the end of class
Essential vocabulary words are defined 10 minutes
Lecture 20 minutes
Student engagement 20 minutes
Evaluation of Learning or Assessment(At this time the essential question is answered) 5 minutes
Each class, regardless the subject has to be taught in this manner. If an administrator comes into the classroom during the first 10 minutes of the class, the students are expected to be engaged in the bell ringer. It makes it very difficult and quite uninteresting at times for a "Curious George" in that type of classroom setting.

How to break the cycle as a teacher? I can't answer that question, but it is always a thought in the back of my mind.

ELLI- The Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory- the 7 dimensions of learning power (qualities and dispositions that enable students to learn now and throughout life) For more information about ELLI go to:
http://www.beds.ac.uk/bridgescetl/through/reports/elli