Although I've had very little time for personal creative pursuits these days, I thought I'd share a few reflections on things I've learned from an online course I've been taking. The course, Learning Creative Learning, offered by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group and the Learning Initiative at MIT Media Lab, is free, open to the public, and has resources available in many languages. The resources will be left online even after the course ends, and there is no deadline for completion of assignments, so it's definitely worth checking out, even now.
Here are a few ideas that stood out to me:
Other times, I'll use a cartoon character the kids are interested in, or a story they told me about their life. I'll put it on the board, using it as a fun context from which they have to figure out the grammar.
Here are a few ideas that stood out to me:
A-Students vs. X-Students
Most institutions groom "A-students" who follow the rules and jump through the hoops needed to get the top grades. However, what is needed in today's world with its complex problems and a rapidly-changing global economy are "X-students," who are willing to take risks and explore new ideas. These students are not satisfied to simply answer the questions in the textbook, but instead, they define their own problems, and come up with innovative solutions. They explore, experiment, push the boundaries, and develop ideas and solutions that are relevant to their life experiences, and meaningful to their community.
Naturally, I turn my thoughts to the English language classroom. In many English schools, a lot of focus is put on grammar, and getting students ready to pass tests. Consequently, students tend to lose focus on why they are learning English--to communicate. I remember a student in Boston, in an advanced level class, who told me that he wanted to learn "all English grammar" before learning to speak well. It just doesn't work like that. Learning a language needs to be communicative from the start so that it can be used in the real world, and not just in a book.
So many young people here in São José are focused only on passing tests and jumping through hurdles that the system has put in front of them, but they have no idea why they are doing it or where they are going. When English students reach the intermediate level, they know how to conjugate verbs and put them in different tenses, but do they really know why, or what they can do with them? Are they merely circling the right answer, or are they discovering tools that can enable them to share their ideas? So many times, when asking students to share their thoughts, the response is, "I don't know." My students know all about the almighty "verb to be," and all its forms, but, do they know who they are?
My challenge is to reach these intensely goal-oriented students, and open their eyes to the possibilities opened up by speaking a global language like English. If, while teaching grammar, pronunciation, and other skills, I can equip them with tools that they can use to discover and pursue their passions, I'll be happy. If, through English, I can bring the world, not just the United States, to the classroom, and spark their imaginations to pursue meaningful goals, I'll feel like I've done my job.
The Creative Learning Spiral
In his book, Lifelong Kindergarten, Mitchel Resnick calls for more play and fewer controlled exercises for children to develop creative thinking and to thrive in this fast-changing world. He describes a spiral of creative learning, pictured here, that begins with imagination. Once the imagination is sparked, a young person will create something new, bringing the idea into physical existence. The next natural step is to play with the creation, tinkering and exploring the possibilities. Next is sharing, as young people collaborate with peers, dividing tasks, taking part in the experience together. After that comes reflection. Maybe the model breaks or the machine doesn't work the way it was intended to. A teacher might ask how they could make it stronger, or some personal reflection might suggest an alternative approach. Young people then take what they learned from these experiences, and start the cycle over again, imagining something different, taking their idea in other directions through a new creation.
I loved visualizing this spiral, and I can say I've seen it at work in my students and nieces, as well as in my own creative work.
I think the part of imagination is often neglected in this culture. I can't stand it when teachers bring in a craft project, saying, "Today we are going to make ____." What if we brought in a story, a task with wide parameters, and/or some materials, and then asked the students to envision what they wanted to make?
Perhaps the part I find to be the most challenging is sharing. Students are often so competitive, and they don't always work well together. Whenever I bring a maker challenge to class, I put students in groups, often of three. That way, if one gets stuck or doesn't fully participate, there are still two who can continue, and perhaps influence the other for the better. The teacher of another amazing free online course I took through Stanford University (International Women's Health and Human Rights), encouraged us to do the same in our meet-up groups, calling it the "economy of threes."
I, myself, prefer to work alone and do the sharing and collaborating after having developed something on my own. Sometimes this may be a better approach for young people. However it plays out, young people often need some coaching to constructively work with their peers.
One part of the spiral that I've seen neglected in my own classroom is the space to reflect. Often, with limited time, we're building and playing up until the end, with no time to think about or discuss the approaches and decisions made. Sometimes the focus is so much on the final product, or on taking a cute picture of everyone holding the final product, that reflection is altogether cast aside.
One way I've managed to bring reflection into the maker movement in the English classroom is to bring it back to the target language--the grammar or vocabulary that the students had learned. I may give them a sentence in a particular structure, and ask students to complete it, saying something about the choices they made. Or, I may prompt students to use the vocabulary to comment on their own experience of the activity. This is a start. As an artist, I know reflection is important. As a teacher, I know I can think of better ways to make sure it happens.
This spiral of creative learning happens naturally in kindergartens and children's play spaces, but gets replaced by worksheets and lectures as kids get older. However, it's what makes the creative process work, from toddlers to artists to MIT innovators. I'll echo Mitchel Resnick's question in Lifelong Kindergarten: How can we give room for this spiral to take root and flourish outside of children's playtime?
In his book, Lifelong Kindergarten, Mitchel Resnick calls for more play and fewer controlled exercises for children to develop creative thinking and to thrive in this fast-changing world. He describes a spiral of creative learning, pictured here, that begins with imagination. Once the imagination is sparked, a young person will create something new, bringing the idea into physical existence. The next natural step is to play with the creation, tinkering and exploring the possibilities. Next is sharing, as young people collaborate with peers, dividing tasks, taking part in the experience together. After that comes reflection. Maybe the model breaks or the machine doesn't work the way it was intended to. A teacher might ask how they could make it stronger, or some personal reflection might suggest an alternative approach. Young people then take what they learned from these experiences, and start the cycle over again, imagining something different, taking their idea in other directions through a new creation.
I loved visualizing this spiral, and I can say I've seen it at work in my students and nieces, as well as in my own creative work.
I think the part of imagination is often neglected in this culture. I can't stand it when teachers bring in a craft project, saying, "Today we are going to make ____." What if we brought in a story, a task with wide parameters, and/or some materials, and then asked the students to envision what they wanted to make?
Perhaps the part I find to be the most challenging is sharing. Students are often so competitive, and they don't always work well together. Whenever I bring a maker challenge to class, I put students in groups, often of three. That way, if one gets stuck or doesn't fully participate, there are still two who can continue, and perhaps influence the other for the better. The teacher of another amazing free online course I took through Stanford University (International Women's Health and Human Rights), encouraged us to do the same in our meet-up groups, calling it the "economy of threes."
I, myself, prefer to work alone and do the sharing and collaborating after having developed something on my own. Sometimes this may be a better approach for young people. However it plays out, young people often need some coaching to constructively work with their peers.
One part of the spiral that I've seen neglected in my own classroom is the space to reflect. Often, with limited time, we're building and playing up until the end, with no time to think about or discuss the approaches and decisions made. Sometimes the focus is so much on the final product, or on taking a cute picture of everyone holding the final product, that reflection is altogether cast aside.
One way I've managed to bring reflection into the maker movement in the English classroom is to bring it back to the target language--the grammar or vocabulary that the students had learned. I may give them a sentence in a particular structure, and ask students to complete it, saying something about the choices they made. Or, I may prompt students to use the vocabulary to comment on their own experience of the activity. This is a start. As an artist, I know reflection is important. As a teacher, I know I can think of better ways to make sure it happens.
This spiral of creative learning happens naturally in kindergartens and children's play spaces, but gets replaced by worksheets and lectures as kids get older. However, it's what makes the creative process work, from toddlers to artists to MIT innovators. I'll echo Mitchel Resnick's question in Lifelong Kindergarten: How can we give room for this spiral to take root and flourish outside of children's playtime?
Coding...Is Like Writing...(?!!)
Resnick proposes that rather than doing puzzles to learn computer programming, young people should be engaged in projects. In the same way, we don't teach writing only with word puzzles, drills, and exercises, but by getting students to express their ideas in stories or other kinds of texts. Just as in writing, coding is best taught in a project-based approach, with the goal of fluency. Not every student will become a professional writer or programmer, but, through writing or coding, they develop life skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking, as well as develop their own voice and identity.
The idea that coding can be similar to writing brought about a paradigm shift! I've always considered myself to be good with words, but not so good with numbers.
The idea that coding can be similar to writing brought about a paradigm shift! I've always considered myself to be good with words, but not so good with numbers.
I write many sentences that just don't work. I re-read them, take them apart, try another construction. Then I read them again, tinkering and tweaking until they smoothly and effectively communicate the message I want. In the process of revision, I become a better thinker. As I arrange words the way I want, I find my voice. When my voice is shared, I start to better see who I am in relation to society, shaping my identity. I'm understanding that the same can be true as people learn fluency in coding through interesting projects. And so, maybe, just maybe, this means that I, too, can learn to code!
Just in the past few weeks, I've taken the first few steps in my journey with coding! If you want to see some of my artwork brought to life with Scratch, an intuitive programming language developed by MIT, check out this link. (It has to be viewed on a computer and not a phone or tablet).
Just in the past few weeks, I've taken the first few steps in my journey with coding! If you want to see some of my artwork brought to life with Scratch, an intuitive programming language developed by MIT, check out this link. (It has to be viewed on a computer and not a phone or tablet).
Projects and Passion
Why do we make students invest so much energy in things they don't care about?
It's not often that the material as presented in the book piques students' curiosity or gets them excited to learn more. The teacher has to step up and help them make the connections. My teenage students couldn't care less about a news story about a butterfly that had been thought to be extinct. Making them search for examples of the passive grammar structure in the audioscript would have been joyless drudgery. Instead, I brought the lesson back to something they cared about--the "myth or fact" game I had started the class with, and the myth that eating chocolate causes acne. I had them match a few quickly-drawn illustrations to a sentence, thus creating a short, but meaningful story. I created something that they cared about, and it mattered to them if the verbs were in the right form or not, because it affected the meaning.
Other times, I'll use a cartoon character the kids are interested in, or a story they told me about their life. I'll put it on the board, using it as a fun context from which they have to figure out the grammar.
Many times, students aren't interested in the vocabulary in the book, but they have so many questions based on series they've been watching or songs they've been listening to. At the end of the day, I think my final-semester advanced students may remember more from our little rabbit trails than from the book.
How can we get students to be agents of their own learning?
That's where the first two of four P's come into play: Projects and Passion.
As mentioned above, working on projects rather than puzzles brings about greater fluency and helps establish the student as a thinker with a voice and a role to play. But if the projects are boring, students will lose interest. People will naturally work harder on things they care about. If they are personally invested in a project that they love, they are willing to put in the extra effort to learn how to do it well.
Students often need guidance to select an interest and connect it with ideas to develop. It's not enough to just say, "Do things you're interested in!" I love the question asked to pre-teen girls at a Boston-area Computer Clubhouse: "If you could invent something that would improve your everyday life, what would you invent?"
Open-ended questions like that bring incredible results. "What if..." and unreal conditionals shouldn't be a boring grammar structure; instead, they can be a powerful call to action: "If you could _______, what would you ______?"
Maybe we can fill in the gaps with something relevant, and ask ourselves the question first.
These are just some of the things I've been learning lately. Feel free to check out these course videos for Projects and Passion, and in a few weeks I'll share what I learn about the other two P's, Peers, and Play.
Meanwhile, check in again on Monday for another #MakerMonday post!
How can we get students to be agents of their own learning?
That's where the first two of four P's come into play: Projects and Passion.
As mentioned above, working on projects rather than puzzles brings about greater fluency and helps establish the student as a thinker with a voice and a role to play. But if the projects are boring, students will lose interest. People will naturally work harder on things they care about. If they are personally invested in a project that they love, they are willing to put in the extra effort to learn how to do it well.
Students often need guidance to select an interest and connect it with ideas to develop. It's not enough to just say, "Do things you're interested in!" I love the question asked to pre-teen girls at a Boston-area Computer Clubhouse: "If you could invent something that would improve your everyday life, what would you invent?"
Open-ended questions like that bring incredible results. "What if..." and unreal conditionals shouldn't be a boring grammar structure; instead, they can be a powerful call to action: "If you could _______, what would you ______?"
Maybe we can fill in the gaps with something relevant, and ask ourselves the question first.
These are just some of the things I've been learning lately. Feel free to check out these course videos for Projects and Passion, and in a few weeks I'll share what I learn about the other two P's, Peers, and Play.
Meanwhile, check in again on Monday for another #MakerMonday post!
Comments