Inspire creativity.

Do traditional classrooms inspire creativity? Can anyone really inspire creativity?

These questions are what today's blog is all about. Face it. Most schools still use the traditional School room format for instruction. Sure, some schools are different, but for the most part in America it is traditional. Obviously we aren't doing everything identical to the 1930's. I mean we have computers and new class opportunities. Things are different, but still based on the same system. I once read that we should "scrap" the current system and start from scratch building a new education system with no set framework to start with. we should simply say "what do we want kids to learn? and how can we best accomplish that?". Wouldnt that be great. It won't happen anytime soon. So what can we do?

We can help to inspire creativity in our students, ourselves, and our colleges. First, inspiring creativity in other teachers I think is the easiest. All you have to do is show how well something creative you've done is working in the classroom. It will get others thinking. Now some may straight up copy what you have done, but that isnt bad. Hopefully over time they will adjust it to better fit their style and class.

Inspireing students can be much more difficult. One easy thing to do is reward creativity openly. That can be just praise, grades, or perhaps a prize. Sometimes you can simply have a project and give a prize for the most creative even if it isn't the best. You should recognize creativity for all that are creative, not just the most creative. Also we need to talk about creativity and what it means. Teachers like to say "be creative", but what does that mean to them. Give them examples of past creativity within the assignment. It gives them an idea of how others have been creative. You could even do creativity assignments in math class. Say "I want you to use your imagination to think of the most creative way to add the numbers from 1 to 10 together." You might tell them that a past student said "write one number one, two number twos, three threes and so on. then count up all the numbers you have". They may not think that is creative at all and that is great.

In the end I think to inspire creativity you need to be creative and affirm the value of creativity. Maybe someone does something wrong but does it in a very creative way. They should still have the method recognized.