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In Everything is a Remix, Kirby Ferguson points out that creativity is often seen as a spark that comes quickly and spontaneous to the genius. He instead points out that creativity is borrowed from our past experiences and that inspiration comes in various forms.
What Value is there in Creativity?
One of the recent concepts that I have latched onto is teaching for the 21st century and focusing on the 5C's: creativity, critical thinking, communication, cooperation and community. These concepts seem to answer all sorts of problems that I began to see with the education system. If we take on Ferguson's view that creativity is not magic and that nothing is truly new, but rather borrowed and remixed from endless sources then what value can we actually place on creativity?
As teachers, we often have creativity as a rubric category in our success criteria. Is this truly fair? Perhaps we should look at capability or capacity (sticking with the C theme) of students' ability to work with, reimagine and rework the information they have been given and/or can find. The ease with which people can get a vast amount of information is mind boggling. You can now even tap a Bluetooth combadge and connect to your smart phone to get answers via a web search. Our ability to truly create something "NEW" seems even further and further from possible. Celebrating the capacity to accomplish the given goal may thus be more important that putting value on creativity or "newness"
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Taking something we are familiar with and juxtaposing it against something unfamiliar or new is a tale as old as time. Stories can be considered “popular culture artifacts” (PCA) –a variety of written and visual media that emerge from the social contexts of our lives (Callahan, Whitener, & Sandlin, 2007). In grade school I remember these 6 minute animations about Fractured Fairytales - they took something beloved and treasured and turned them upside-down making you think about the original story and the world around you. The classic tale of Snow White consists of a young girl with white porcelain skin and bright red lips. Tormented by the jealous, Evil Queen she escapes to live as the fairest in the land in the forest with the 7 dwarves. In the Fracture Fairytale from 1959, the Evil Queen is taken advantage of by 7 enterprising dwarves. They capitalize on her narcissism and the cost is her crown, jewels and castle. Snow White appears at the end of the short story and is not what we might expect her to look like. The dwarves also capitalize on her narcissism. Having students rewrite classic tales in new ways provides an opportunity for critical comparison and commentary on important issues. ABC has come out with their own take on fairytales in Once Upon a Time. Filled with as many different fairytale and Disney characters as they could muster up. In this iteration of fairy tales, Storybrooke is home to a cast of characters. In Storybrooke, the Evil Queen has taken the memories from everyone and trapped them in the town. The saviour, Emma Swan, and her daughter, Snow White, are tasked with saving the memories of the town in Season 1. Each episode focuses on a character backstory making you rethink what you once knew about these characters. Often times the storylines are blended together in a fractured, rebuilt and fractured again tale.
Jenkins and Kelley (2013) note that when we allow writers the opportunity to get in there and rework our old stories we create a participatory culture that reduces barriers. In their book Reading in a Participatory Culture they interview playwright Ricardo Pitts-Whiley about creation of the play Moby Dick: Then and Now. The remixed story features a female lead and a drug addiction that killed her brother. She seeks vengeance for her brother against the "WhiteThing" cocaine cartel. The story of Moby Dick provides a jumping off point and brings the themes of that story into context with modern characters and situations. It allows the reader/writer to participate in a way they can't from simply reading the text. Fans participate with their beloved storyline and characters in a way that goes above and beyond in some ways. They dress up, act and talk like the characters they look up to. From Trekkies to Whovians to manga characters, fans immerse themselves with head, heart and soul. In stories like Glass Slippers are Illogical and Sleeping Spock: A Star Trek fairy tale, fans are able to participate with the characters, create their own storylines and bring two common elements together in a new piece of fiction. Jenkins and Kelley (2013) urge schools, libraries and other public institutions to promote and create equitable opportunities for individuals to participation. They urge literature teachers to help students make sense of mixed media, develop as consumers of literature and take ownership of new media literacy skills. In this way our students create new pieces of work that tap into their personal interests and strengths. Resources: Callahan, J. L., Whitener, J. K., & Sandlin, J. A. (2007). The art of creating leaders: Popular culture artifacts as pathways for development. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 9(2), 146-165. Jenkins, H., & Kelley, W. (2013). Reading in a Participatory Culture: Remixing Moby-Dick in the English Classroom; Ed. By Henry Jenkins. New York, Teachers College Press. The reading this week revolved around the participatory culture of the documentary. In a much smaller scale we are documenting our journey together in the classroom this year as a new form of communication, community and collaboration. In the past the method of communication for myself and parents has been the telephone call. Parents and teachers alike often dread that phone call. There are times when this still happens, however, the majority of the communication is done on a public basis these days. As such, we look to highlight the major accomplishments, the fun learning and engagement and the process we have taken to get to where we are. We document the struggles, the victories and the life of being a student. This year I communicate via webpage, blog and Twitter. We used this process as a platform to learn about digital literacy. We educated ourselves on proper use and etiquette while creating a presence on the internet. Together I modelled the process with students and starting this week turn it over to them. As November begins the students will now become the curators of their own digital presence. The scaffolding process was an designed to lessen what Jenkins calls the "participatory gap" (in Ratto and Megan, 2014). Students watched and were encouraged to help before but weren't given the responsibility to participate. Now they will find they take turns curating the school Twitter account www.twitter.com/WIDWildcats and the class account www.twitter.com/kmackay_hdsb. They will also take over writing the weekly Blog update to parents. The one thing that I have noticed about the process has been better documentation of the process and successes. We have begun to explore different formats for these updates - both video, text and photo. Next step is to explore Snapchat, Instagram and whatever other new methods of social media that become popular with the students. Perhaps it is a weekly summary using Lego stop motion animation, podcast or regular old phone call. The choice will be theirs - allowing them to be writer, producer and star (if they so choose). References Ratto, M., & Megan, B. (2014). DIY citizenship: Critical making and social media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. I have come to notice that the same thing has happened to many individuals in our school systems. The treatment of native Canadians has just started to become a topic of discussion and point requiring awareness, education and action. My step children are native, live near a reservation and have very little appreciation for their history, culture or struggles. Perhaps it is an unspoken shame or simply a lack of education and understanding. During the final Tragically Hip concert, Gord Downie decided to take the opportunity to highlight how grossly negligent Canada has been in acknowledging and righting the wrongs that have been done. In Secret Path, Chanie Wenjack's story is told. A boy taken from his home and put in a residential school. On a trip home along the train tracks, he dies. Chanie's family talks to Gord Downie about their lost brother in the documentary. Every time his sister Pearl comes to a set of tracks, she stops and looks down them. She realizes the immense distance that still needs to be travelled, not just for her brother but for all people. Her one desire is that schools be built on reservations so that the young people don't have to leave to get an education. In the CBC discussion panel Road to Reconciliation (also available at Secret Path), Tasha Hubbard suggests that the animation of the piece helps us enter into the conversations by providing us an entry point into the discussion. Every parent could walk into the classroom and ask how my ______ program is. In Rabbit Proof Fence, an unwanted third race is in question and how to breed the native origin out because the white blood has "finally stamps out the black colour. The aboriginal has simply been bread out".
We must apologize for what has been, for the pain and suffering of "stolen generations".
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered his apology to the First Nations people of Canada and acknowledged that they are the past, present and future of Canada. We can't right all the wrongs, but education and awareness of what happened so as not to be repeated is paramount. And with this, we see the decay of all things we have known as truth, clung onto as a moral compass and the way in which we view our place in society. The Decay of Society Zombies in their current iteration come from a long history of undead creatures (Zombies: A Living History, 2011).
Mary Shelley warned us in Frankenstein that when we mess with the natural we end up creating something "unnatural". In these cases we are forced to come face to face with the decay of humanity and society as we know it and hard choices about who and what we are. Fear of death and the unknown leads humans to do things they may not have thought possible. Human nature may be the most troubling monster to deal when a society starts to break down. While they study of zombies in my special education classroom might not be appropriate, we do use current events as a jumping point for discussions and critical thinking. We seek to understand others and become culturally proficient. Nuri Robins et al. (2006) state that "cultural proficiency is a way of being that allows individuals and organizations to interact effectively with people who differ from them". When we seek to understand others we minimize what can become the fear that can fuel our basic human instinct of self survival. A zombie survival kit looks an awful lot like a flood/tornado/storm survival kit. Those prepare for the unthinkable will be better prepared for the next catastrophe, whatever that may be. While I may not have a zombie survival kit I do have a general idea of what I would do in the case that society starts to collapse. Can I tell you what that is? NO - it's every man woman and child for themselves and my family comes first! Sources: R. Kirkman, T. Moore. The Walking Dead #1: Special Edition. Berkeley, CA: Image Comics. (May 2008). Comic book. Retrieved October 8, 2016. D. Nicholson (2011). Zombies: A Living History. History Channel retrieved October 8, 2016. K. Nuri Robins, Randall. B. Lindsey, Delores. B. Lindsey, & Raymond. D. Terrell. Culturally Proficient Instruction: A Guide for People Who Teach (2nd ed.). 2006. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 2016 Georgetown Highland Games - myself and the Grand Celtic Pipe Band By the Right...Quick March This weekend marked the start of the competitive highland games circuit. As I stood there with the band I wondered what style of leadership would best describe our dynamics. The band world is full of individuals with different levels of involvement, emotion, skill and passion. It is also filled with politics, criticism and judgement by others. While on the field performing and competing we follow strict rules. "By the right" means that you take your cue for position and movement from the person on the right. That person is the Pipe Major. We look to the Pipe Major to tell us when to start, where to walk and how to play during our set or medley. It is a commanding style of leadership due mainly to the military background of this hobby (Goleman, 2000). Do what I say, as I say and when I say it - without any negotiation. In a mass band situation with over 1000 people playing on the field there isn't much room for emergent leaders! Below is a recording of the Glengarry Highland Games mass bands version of Scotland the Brave. Drummers look to the Lead Drummer who takes his cues from the Pipe Major. When we are off the field and practising our music, the leadership style changes to a mixture of pacesetting and coaching. The change in leadership style "off the field" still comes at the direction of the band leaders, however, the way they work with the band changes. Shephard (2014), maker of bagpipes and an authority on band dynamics, shares information on the responsibility of the band members. Figure 1 shows the responsibility that different members have under this dynamic. Figure 1: Pipe Band Leadership Model: Management and Leaders [Shephard (2014)] During practice sessions we see highly motivated and skilled players challenged to maintain or improve through practise, drill work and group play. Those that struggle then benefit from coaching with players who have been asked to take a leadership role (e.g., lead drum, pipe sergeant) and they help with technique, setting up the instruments and providing tips for success. The goal during these sessions is to build a stronger, united team in both skill set and bond. The key becomes having those emergent leaders work with others on the common vision/goal (e.g., a well executed musical set). When this works well we are a band family who work and play hard together. Problems arise when the vision is not the same, or the leadership style drifts towards a more commanding style during non-competition times. In my daily life, as teacher, I play different leadership roles. In my hobby, however, I must remember trust in the vision and follow the leader. References Glengarry Highland Games (2015, August 2). Scotland the Brave [video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYcFIYpz7W4 Goleman, D (2010). Leadership that gets results. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/careersandemployability/pdfs/resources/leadership.pdf. Shephard, B (2014) The Successful Pipe major. RTS Seminars. Retrieved from http://www.shepherd-bagpipes.com/pdf/RTS_Seminar_Thesuccessfulpm.pdf As our schools move forward with a vision of what the 21st-century classroom should be they are starting to realize that the leaders are really amongst the staff, students and community.
My students go to a small school with an open concept design (e.g., 1970's board initiative). It is one of the last schools left in the board with this design. The kindergarten rooms have their own doors and space, but the rest of the areas are sectioned off with dividers from the library space. I was surprised to read that this little school of no more than 150 students, that appeared physically to be stuck in a building from a board experiment, was putting this design to great use and bringing it into the modern era. They are creating a Makerspace in their library. The maker movement is about tinkering, exploring, inventing, learning and leading. Students work with simple materials to create and share something new, repurposed or re-envisioned. Makers become the experts, through trial and error, in real-world areas and share with others through moments fueled by "OH! How did you do that?" or "Can I try that?" Congrats to the forward thinking staff and community Thank you for being prepared to let the students take the lead and build skills essential for the 21st century. Hopefully my own children enhance their ability to create, collaborate, communicate and think critically. First problem to solve: where to store all their new creations? References Educause (2013). 7 Things You Should Know about Makerspaces. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7095.pdf Werrell, B. (2015). How Online Education Builds Career Readiness with the 4 Cs. Retrieved from http://www.connectionsacademy.com/blog/posts.aspx?BlogTagID=dc666b53-0f844098-b4eb-9be54c8b3d9d Students in the self-contained learning disability class often have a hard time being leaders. Asking these students to take a lead in a language based task seemed like a big step to take. In order to set them up for an experience that would allow them to feel like leaders we partnered with a K-5 school in our neighbourhood. In fact, some of the students went to this school. We had a plan to walk over every other week, read a book with 2-3 reading buddies, engage them in an activity and then play outside together. One of my grade 6 students, who has a decoding level of approximately grade 1, was adamant that he was not going to do it. Now what? The students in the classroom have become skilled at using laptops, Chromebooks and iPads to overcome some of their learning difficulties. Even though he could manage understanding text by using the iPad to read the content aloud to him, he refused to participate. Other students picked simple story books to read but this student wasn't going to budge. You see, this student not only has a learning disability, he also has a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. The more I thought about how he has used technology to work with written material the more I thought the students in Grade 2 might also benefit from seeing this too. Here is how it played out: Reading Buddies Week 1 Teacher: "We are going to partner up with students in a Grade 2 class at the other school and read simple stories with them" Student A: "NO" Teacher: "We will work together to pick out a good book that is a good level and practise how to read to other people" Student A: "NO" Teacher (to Student A after others have gone off): "We can look at having the iPad read the text to them. The same thing you do in class all the time." Student A: "NO, I'm not coming to school that day." Teacher (to Student A): "Let's take a look at what is in iBooks" Student A: "NO" Teacher (begin to work through an interactive book called Find Me that had text and images to click on). Student looks over my shoulder from the Lego bin but won't participate. "I can't find the image to click on in this picture. Hmmmm" Student A: "It's there." (clicks on the image and sits down). Teacher: (fumbles to get the student's iPad to read and can't make it work) Student A: "Let me do it". From here the student goes through the rest of the book. During further practise sessions the student will not go through the rehearsal, but will answer my questions about the book. The best I hoped for was that he sat at the table with me for the actually Reading Buddies experience. He agreed that if I couldn't find one of the clickable images he would help me. Week 2: Reading Buddies Student A (yellow shirt) leads 3 students through an iBook We walk over with a wagon full of goodies to the other school and meet our reading buddies. The teacher has paired students up to join one older mentor. Student A is second in line and gets his three buddies. Teacher: "Just sit with them and get the iPad ready and I will be right over" Student: "OK" As I get the other 6 students settled with their buddies, I look over to see Student A not only reading the book, via the iPad app, but interacting with the students. He was asking them similar questions to what we had rehearsed in class. He kept track of who had had a turn already and let everyone have a chance to interact with the book. Teacher: "Are you OK here?" Student A: "I'm fine" Week 3: Reading Buddies revisited On the next visit to our reading buddies Student A had a second book loaded into iBooks that he was able to read with his two reading buddies. They listened to the story and then did some simple retell and comprehension work. Within 3 weeks this student went from a firm "NO" to a solid "I'm fine" to a position of no hesitation at all. Together the student quickly worked through Tuckman's stages of group development: forming, storming, norming and performing (in Bonebright, 2010). The group was formed for the student and then he had to come to grips with this role, figure out the expectations and then performing the task. He was a resistant, reluctant, hesitant leader, but he got there in the end. Children as Reader-Leaders Geeta Dharmarajan is a writer, educator and Executive Director of the non-profit Katha Organization. In her TedTalk, Geeta talks about starting a school in the slums of Delhi with a story-based learning philosophy. As a part of the program the students get their first computer and quickly learn more about how to work with it than their teachers. The students move into an emergent leadership role and show the adults what they could do with computer. Hunt and Crockett (1955) hypothesised that "emergent leaders will occur more often in groups where the official leader does not perform the leadership functions". The students in the Katha school invite the business men and women from the neighborhood into their classroom and teach them about fashion trends, new recipes and what is happening around the world. Geeta points out that while children initially need to learn to read for fun, they also needed to read for meaning. When we read for meaning we can develop as leaders in a given area. The students in the Katha classroom became leaders in various areas through use of the computer. Student A became an unexpected, emergent leader during this process. References
Bonebright, D. A. (2010). 40 years of storming: A historical review of Tuckman's model of small development. Human Resource Development International, 13(1), 111-120. Hunt, J. M., & Crockett, W. H. (1955). Emergent leadership in small, decision-making groups. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51(3), 378-383 Dharmarajan, Geeta (2012). Children as Reader-Leaders: Geeta Dharmarajan at TEDxOxbridge. Retrieved June 01, 2016, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifsbycP4V-o It is not enough that we have to teach the 3R's, now we need to teach the 4C's? As a student I remember being taught the 3R's, having gym, art, music and recess. The teacher stood at the front and delivered the lessons. Drill-based work was used to reinforce the lesson. The "sage on the stage", so I came to learn in teacher's college, was the someone who teaches by imparting information via lecture. I was able to figure out how this system worked, adapt and thrive. While this worked for me, it did not target the learning styles, strengths and needs of many others. The 4C's In order for students to stay relevant today, however, we must give them a strong foundation in the 4C's (Common Sense Education, 2014). Today people must also be creative, proficient communicators, collaborators, and critical thinkers. Exposure and practice with these skills will enable students to compete in the modern world and create change within the 21st-century learning and work environments. Those teachers with a transformational leadership style have embraced this change and are working with students to create an dynamic and engaging learning environment. Transformational Leaders Transformational leaders develop a vision and then encourage, motivate and support team members to achieve the goals. They help facilitate the process but allow it to be adaptive and fluid. The elementary teaching environment is adopting this framework more and more. With full-day, play-based kindergarten the learning environment is transformed to match student interests. The teachers use the students' various passions to work toward achievement of provincial curriculum expectations. My son, for example, is in junior kindergarten and loves trains. This isn't a love like most 4 year olds have - this is a passion (or obsession?). The vision to teachers have is authentic learning experiences through interactive play and exploration. The classroom play centre was transformed into a train station. This isn't just play as it includes:
Maker Movement Seymour Papert, dubbed the father of the Maker Movement, has spent his life "creating tools, theories, and coercion-free learning environments that inspire children to construct powerful ideas through firsthand experiences (Martinez and Stager, 2013). Building authentic experiences and practical activities has been the strategy that I have tried to use in my classroom. As a teacher in a self-contained class, I have 8 students with a primary diagnosis of learning disability. These students are of average intellectual ability, but have significant difficulty in one or more area of organization, acquisition, retention or processing of verbal/nonverbal information. Students have been placed in this class to help them bridge the gap between their expected level of achievement and actual level of achievement. As my teaching, learning and leadership styles have evolved I realize I am not going to bridge the gap by forcing content based lessons at them filled with information they can't process. Those students who have been able to cope with stress and solve the problems they are faced are those that have learned to use technology to overcome their limitations (e.g. using text to speech to overcome a lower than grade level reading ability). Those students who were the most capable at dealing with stress, adapting and persevering are those that have come back to visit with the stories of their success. It is the partnership of skills with technology that has made the greatest difference for students like mine. Moving Ahead In most elementary classrooms we have gone far beyond the sage on the stage. No longer do teachers stand in front of the class for the entire period and impart knowledge. Through a transformational leadership style, teachers and students, work together towards a common vision. Good teachers now provide guidance and try to empower students to be leaders in their own education. We allow students choice and transfer ownership of the learning path to them whenever possible. Sheridan College, for example, has developed an undergraduate certificate program in Creativity and Creative Problem Solving. They have come to realize that in order to train students for a future in this ever-changing world that we will have to give them skills to cope, adapt and problem-solve. It is an exciting time to be an educator and a lifelong learner. I am currently active in both of these roles and look forward to applying more transformational leadership with the students in the class. Some students will spend 3 years in this class and sharing a common vision in the learning environment will be essential. References Common Sense Education. (2014, 11 03). Introduction to the 4 C's [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNVQNz2Hto8 Common Sense Education (n.d.). Retrieved June 20, 2016 from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/videos/introduction-to-the-4-cs Martinez and Stager (2013) Invent to Learn: Making, Tinkering and Engineering in the Classroom [Kindle version 1]. Retrieved from Amazon.com Sage on the stage. (n.d.). Retrieved May 27, 2016,from http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sage_on_the_stage) Sheridan Board Undergraduate Certificate in Creativity and Creative Problem Solving. (n.d.). Retrieved May 27, 2016, from http://www.sheridancollege.ca/academics/faculties/humanitiesand-social-sciences/degree-breadth/board-undergraduate-certificate-in-creativity.aspx |
AuthorI am a teacher in Halton and have spent 12 years dedicated to learning about and working with students who have special learning needs. I have been teaching since 2005. I have 4 kids (2 + 2 step), I play bagpipes, ride a motorcycle and love being outdoors. Archives
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