Creativity Counts!

For a link to the prompt on Mrs. Kallas's blog click here.

I believe that what I am going to be teaching my students is killing creativity. I would like it to be otherwise, however, because of the school system and how my mentor teacher's classroom is set up, I cannot do what I truly wish to do.

Sir Ken Robinson describes creativity as "the process of having original ideas that have value". Creativity is important in education because without it many of the students would feel out of place or they didn't belong. The students would get bored and stop paying attention if every classroom had no creative ways of getting the information to the students.

I can remember in middle school having project after project being required to follow very strict guidelines, and when they were being presented it was almost the same project being repeated over and over with small details changed. This year in my AP English class we get to have almost complete control over what our projects get to be. For instance we get to choose our topic for the project, and how we present it .

One of the major problems that Sir Ken Robinson discusses in his Ted Talk about creativity is how our education system teaches to one side of the brain more than the other. If we started having more required creative classes, creativity would flourish. We are required to take 16 credits of combined math, english, social studies, and science, but we are only required to take one credit of a fine art. Creativity would grow in students if they were required to take not only more creativity oriented classes but also different types of creative classes like a musical class, a dance class, an art class, and a theater class.

For more on Sir Ken Robinson click here.
For more TED Talks click here.

My State Teach Tomorrow Summit Highlight

For a link to the prompt on Mrs. Kallas's prompt click here.

My state experience was a rollercoaster. I had so much fun getting to be closer to all of my classmates and getting to know the morning class and Stevens's class better. Although the hotel could be considered subpar and there got to be some tension between the roommates, I wouldn't want to spend the state trip with anyone else. We sang songs, saw very impressive key note speakers such as Dave Burgess, and got a blue ribbon on our chapter scrapbook that I helped on. The trip was so much fun, and I learned so much about everyone that went. I am definitely going to try and go to state next year, and I suggest that everyone should try it.