Changing to Embrace Creativity in Schools

In the well-known 2007 TED Talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity," Sir Ken Robinson asserts that our current school system was designed around the factory model in order to create trained workers, and that the current model is outdated for the needs of the 21st-century workforce. In fact, he asserts that the current model of education is killing creativity.

For the most part, I find that I agree with Robinson. As the current educational system is constructed, children are pressed into a one-size-fits-all model of instruction and assessment that encourages like-mindedness and largely marginalizes (at best) students who are divergent thinkers. Students are rushed through curriculum in order to match a pacing guide that is set up so that students can pass a test that shows that they have attained a certain amount of knowledge. There is little to no allowance for students who learn at different rates or who want to explore a topic in more depth.

The educational system desperately needs an overhaul.

While sweeping change in education will take a very long time, a lot of effort, and political mountain-moving, small changes made by many can start to shift the balance toward the changes that need to happen in order to develop an educational system that serves the creativity and critical-thinking needs of the 21st-century workforce.

With the introduction of technology into education, teachers have an unparalleled opportunity to create changes in they way they teach, and in the way students learn. Technology offers an opening that provides teachers with a reason to rethink what they do, why they do it, and whether there are different, or better, ways to approach student learning.

Digital media can be used for students to delve into a topic in depth, to provide them with opportunities to create their own knowledge, to share their learning, to solve problems, or to enter into a much larger community to discuss and solve problems.

In my last year in the classroom, I discovered that using digital media brought not just my students, but their work, to life. When my students were required to blog instead of write an essay, they learned the real meaning of audience, because they had an audience. When I told them to consider what they could add to their blogs to make them better, or to engage their audience, they found videos, other blogs, articles, and even songs that were related to the topic. While their basic writing skills were pretty much unchanged (except for the students who paid more attention to the nuances of writing because they didn't want to look bad), the quality of the work they produced improved significantly. When they realized they had an audience besides the teacher reading their work, my students' creativity in how they approached the assignment increased dramatically. Because they used a digital medium, they were able to incorporate so much more than they could in a traditional essay, and they embraced the process.

Had I stayed in the classroom, I would have incorporated even more use of digital media throughout the school year. Since I am now in a different position, I find myself encouraging teachers to incorporate digital media in their own classrooms. As I work with teachers and have conversations about planning their instruction, I challenge teachers to come up with ideas for how to use digital media. I ask questions, and I provide feedback to ideas that they generate. When a teacher is particularly struggling to find an idea, I will make a suggestion, but I try to keep it limited so that the teacher owns whatever they decide to do.

I find that teachers are currently my students, and the way that I can incorporate digital media to increase creativity is through providing a push for them to use it themselves in their classrooms. In this way, needing to plan how to use digital media in the classroom is the motivator for teacher creativity, which, in turn, should spark student creativity.

I am hopeful that if I do my job well, and even some teachers embrace changes that promote student creativity, I can help become a part of the shift in momentum that transitions education from a 20th-century model that encouraged conformity to a 21st-century model that embraces creativity and critical thinking.

Reference:

Do Schools Kill Creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED Talks. (2007). Retrieved November 20, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY