Many students Monday night said they didn't have a creative bone in their body, because they're more analytical. I want to tell you that I find this idea to be quite preposterous. When I am doing something "creative" I often google ideas, and from there I make one of my own. It's not like I conjure creative ideas from thin air. Even though I use tools to help, I still consider myself a creative person.
I also consider myself quite analytical. Everyone talks about English brains and Math brains, and how different these students are. My two best subjects were English and Math...maybe my brain has something wrong with it. Granted, my mom is a math teacher, so I had a great built in tutor. Math is a step by step process, and i'd like to argue that creativity is as well.
I think it's beneficial as a teacher to force your students to be creative. It's great to be analytical, and to know tons of facts. But, without creativity you're just like a machine with no new thoughts. The best kinds of people are analytical AND creative. It might be like getting a tooth pulled for some people to make a poster, but it's worth the skills they learned.
I hated doing research in school. But, I am so happy that I was forced to learn this, and to be analytical about topics. If all I had was creativity, there would be no facts behind what I made. A lot of times art has meaning to it. You can analyze a painting that was done during WWII, and see the influence. The artist was analytical and creative when they made that painting. They were trying to depict a certain time period in their own creative way.
I know you can't force creativity, or be specific about how your students should be creative, because then it's not really creative. But, giving students options to express their creativity is a great idea. Some people might really like music, so give them a project where they relate songs back to a book you just read. Some students might love social media, so have them create a twitter as the main character of a novel. Other students might be artists, so have them draw a picture depicting an important event in a book. There can always be the option of a research paper, but this seems like the easy way out to me.
It's cool to give a bunch of options to students to asses their knowledge, you just have to make sure they're all equal in content. Some students will spend more time on their projects, but that's out of a teacher's control. At least if you give students options they will be more engaged in what they are creating. Students tend to learn way more when they actually care about what it is they're doing.
Creativity is inside of everyone. Some people just have to dig a little bit deeper to find it. As a teacher, it is your job to help students discover what their creative potential really is. I am so excited to see all of the creative things my students will make in my classroom one day.
