Part One
When answering the question, “How would you describe yourself as a creative individual?” at the beginning of the course, my view of creativity was limited. I thought of creativity in solely an art-based sense. When seeing the question now, I focus more on my creative thinking and ability to connect creativity to multiple areas outside of just an artistic sense. I see myself as creative because of my ability to think creatively and critically, connect, and problem solve in creative ways.
While I do still feel creativity harnesses imagination and brings it into a more realistic form, I think there my definition should include the importance of the thought process that makes that imagination join reality. There must be an exploration of thought and direction, trial and error, and a challenge of typical boundaries before imagination can be harnessed and brought to our reality.
Part Two
The thinking tools I connected to the most were modeling and play. I connected with these two tools the most because they are the two I am the most familiar with utilizing to foster creativity within my classroom. During our morning and afternoon play time, I strive to present tools and an environment that allows students to use play to explore and solve problems leading to a fuller understanding of the idea they are interacting with. Modeling is something that constantly takes place within my room. I always maintain an open-ended set of instructions so students can individually model ideas or concepts in their own unrestricted way.
When considering “emotions” and the subtopics that live within the umbrella of emotions, I originally planned to focus on basic emotions and their sensations. As I continued to explore the thinking tools of creativity, I was able to dive further into subtopics that created a unit layered with depth for the content area that my students would understand and be able to use to deepen their own understanding. Using the creations in the “Emotion” unit, I am able to build a foundation of the various creative thinking tools now that my students have a full understanding of the topic and begin to alter their experience of observing or discussing tools, to exploring their own creations using the tools.
The best way to foster connections between thinking tools for my students to truly grow a full understanding of topics using creative thinking, would be based in an idea mentioned on page 298 in Sparks:
“Some, like Lighthill, actively immerse themselves in experience, learning to connect its many aspects with information acquired through education.”
Full immersion into a connection of “what I know” and “what I am learning” can create a more meaningful learning experience. Each creation and creative thinking tool used for my unit is rooted in the experience of my students. In planning this, when students view my disgust sensory map, they are able to connect to their own feelings of disgust and that disgust may later show itself when we track our pattern of emotions we feel within a day.
While reading about the “transdisciplinary, synthetic education,” I found a pattern of the importance of open-exploration. For ideas outside of this unit, I strive to continue the process of play and open-exploration to learn about various topics. Beginning with play (for my students) provides the experience of wanting to learn more or answering questions that arise. From there, there is room to bring light to perceiving, abstracting, patterning, modeling, embodied thinking, and synthesizing, but in my classroom there will continue to be an encouragement of learning through interests and curiosity. These active immersions of exploration, based on my own observations as a teacher and examples presented within Sparks, some of the greatest discoveries and connections begin with play or that light bulb idea of “What if…”
Part Three
The artifact I have expresses the most foundational aspects of teaching creativity based on what I have learned through this course and my own definition of what creativity is. This mind map includes overall ideas that can be broken down into smaller pieces and implemented easily into daily teaching. By incorporating these components and ideas into the school day, content is still able to be met with moments set aside for sparks of innovation and creativity. These ideas of implementation are built from the idea of full immersion into open-ended exploration and playing to learn. This is something I practice often in my classroom. From these basic ideas, further infographic or more in depth professional developments can be taught based on the specific thinking tools of creativity (perceiving, patterning, abstracting, modeling, playing, and synthesizing) and ideas for practice and incorporating into the classroom.
Click the button below to explore the artifact.
Root-Bernstein, M. & Root-Bernstein R. (2001). Sparks of genius: The thirteen thinking tools of the world's most creative people. Mariner Books.
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