“How can we foster imagination in the classroom? Why is it important for kids to be able to use their imagination?”
This was posed by Amanda Brace for Week #2 of the #saskedchat blogging challenge.
We need to teach creative strategies. Creativity is innate. It expresses itself in my classroom all the time through art and play, however, some struggle. I have sometimes been described as creative, yet rarely think of myself that way. I always use strategies, tools and models I have learned through others or independently. I think we are better able to synthesize and repurpose as opposed to create new. For example, we don’t create Minecraft, we use it to express something uniquely ours. Most students don’t independently discover collage, they are exposed to it, and then make it their own. As teachers, we need to introduce possibilities in student’s minds. Mostly, they will run with them.
I devote a quarter of my available space to making – mostly you would describe it as an arts and craft centre. Students use the materials for free play as well as trying curriculum related challenges. Every classroom from k-12 should have such a space permanently established in the room.
“If, as it seems, leaders wants schools to be “business like” then let’s create them to be like future businesses not past factories.”
That is the most positive spin I’ve heard on the business model of learning. I still find myself unreconciled to the concentration of young people into confined spaces with a poverty of resources for interminable hours each day. These conditions constrain imaginative expression.
I watched my class during indoor recess a few days ago. That, and my weekly Genius Hour period illustrate the problem. Solitary drawing and writing fit neatly into the room, as did groups of several crafters over at the Maker’s Space. Three dancers occupied the open space in the middle, but they were interfered with by the group of boys playing a pickup game of floor hockey they had invented. Their imaginative game had nowhere to go without disrupting others. Schools lend themselves to solitary, unobtrusive forays into imagination. Schools hate physical movement.
The Internet, and our learning networks are not the only source of creative teaching strategies. Our Saskatchewan curriculum, and the many textbook programs that support it, suggest opportunities for creativity. As we plan our units, we have to stop shying away from poster making, cartooning, model building, experimenting, role playing, and all the other time consuming or messy activities. Too often, we take the controlled path of GRR or workbooks.
This month we are trying the Canadian Heritage Fair. I provide a detailed scaffold for my students to follow. Students in fifth grade have not internalized inquiry processes yet. Very quickly, they use my scaffold as a springboard for their own solutions. The structure of an essay is followed by greater freedom to express their learning in a presentation. It is always fascinating to see how far some students take their projects when we have a fair in March.
Young people will use their imaginations. They need to know we not only value creativity and innovation when it occurs, we expect it as a matter of course in learning. What was it I read recently on Twitter? “We don’t need to think outside the box. We need to realize there is no box.” Learning in our classrooms should be untethered in every way.
