Creativity in Writing and Observation

One of my goals this year is to understand and utilize more creativity in my classroom in addition to trying to understand how we, as educators, can build our creativity as teachers too.

Ken Robinson pointed out some ten years ago that formal education may be what is killing creativity in our children, so my focus is to really come to understand creativity in a way that we can help our educators become more creative, and help them understand the importance of creativity in our classrooms.

Some of our best ideas come when we come across mistakes we cannot control. I had a bit of a tech issue in class and leaned on a chapter of Tina Seelig's InGenius and a few of John Spencer's Video Prompts to help me today. Apparently a network filter saw A Teen and a Trolley Reveal Society's Dark Side as an explicit text (spoiler - it isn't), so we didn't get to it today (though the Trolley Experiment is really a great discussion tool with middle school students).

So today, I threw out the lesson plans, handed out paper or had students open up Google Docs and we just freewrote. I gave the students one of Spencer's prompts and ten minutes. Then, I tossed them another prompt with ten minutes. At the end, they could choose either to go back to and add to for ten minutes. The last ten minutes of class, they shared their favorite bit of writing with one another in groups.

My instructions were clear - keep writing, even if you're writing "I don't know" over and over, observing a classmate or that you hear the air conditioning buzzing - just write. Don't stop. Keep writing. I walked around class saying "Keep writing" while glancing over shoulders.

This sounds too easy - too simple, doesn't it?

Every. Single. Student. Was. Engaged.

They wrote for 30 full minutes. They didn't complain or put their head down on their desks. At the end, I asked what they thought about the assignment and the writing - they loved it.

Sometimes, when our best laid plans take a flying leap out the window, we need to just stop and freewrite our way out.

Lesson learned.