Sunday, September 7, 2008
Ken Robinson: Schools vs. Creativity
What did I think about this speech? It was amazing. There was not one word of it that I disagree with. Everything he said was, from my experience, absolutely true. It happened to me when I was in Calc 2. I was thinking to myself about all the homework I had: Rhet, Chem, Math, Religion, etc. I realized as I was trying to learn how to take the infinite sum of a series that "This school wants me to know EVERYTHING!" I was right. There is so much that I am supposed to know before I leave this institution that I'm afraid I might explode.
As a TA for Chem 202, I know how people feel when they don't want to learn about something you are teaching. It's not fun for you, and its DEFINITELY not fun for the student. As a future chemistry teacher, I know that a lot of my students will not be engaged purely by my subject matter. I will use many open ended projects in order to allow kids to express themselves in their unique way. If one child is exceptional with a video camera, he can make a video about a molecule, or one kid can write a song if she is so inclined. It is all about choices that let the students WANT to learn about the subject. After working with kids for a while, it is easy to see that if they don't want to do something, it is almost impossible to keep them engaged. Something has to be done that caters to the students, and not only to the teacher, the subject matter, or the big scary placement tests.
-Danny
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4 comments:
Danny,
I agree with your post. As someone who also wants to be a chemistry teacher, one of the biggest things I worry about is trying to keep all of my students interested in the class. I like your ideas about allowing students to express their own talents in a creative way such as making videos. I agree that having fun in the classroom is necessary in order to keep kids interested in school, and I think you have some great ideas on how to keep kids interested while allowing them to express their creativity at the same time.
Jimmy
I agree with you that in high school they want you to pretty know everything thta has ever happened on the earth and that's because they are most likely teaching towards the standardized testing. I also agree that giving students options will keep them more interested and will maybe get a better result. I believe that this could cause a problem by being so broad students might not know exactly what to do. You also will have students that are lazy and will do the bare minimum in their creativity but still may be very intelligence and you wont get the most out of them. It is important to give kids guidance in a project because they may not know where to go if you are to broad with a project or experiment.
Bill
Danny,
I had a chemistry and a biology teacher that had us do activities that were more "creative". I thought it was a great way to learn material because it gave us another way to think about what we were learning. I usually learned those lessons more effectively than when we were simply sitting there having facts thrown at us. Its also more exciting and keeps the students minds engaged.
I don't think we are teaching high school students too many subjects. Maybe you didn't realize it at the time, but when you look back now didn't you take at least something with you from all these classes? I don't think that the intention of every chemistry class is to produce future chemists, and history classes to produce future historians. We are teaching students what we feel every person should know. At the same time the wide variety of subjects lets students find what they are good at, and develop interests in particular topics.
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