Synthesis: The Grand Finale
Sonia Jolliffe
CEP 818
WHITE PAPER: A CALL FOR CREATIVITY IN THE CLASSROOM
In a world that is rapidly changing, evolving and presenting new and complex problems, humanity depends upon the abilities of its members to develop innovative solutions. Innovation is the product of creativity; hence, it is critical that our schools begin working to promote creativity in the students whose future work will help determine the course of our planet. And it is not enough for schools to simply recognize and foster creativity in those fortunate children for whom creative thought comes naturally; it is imperative that all children be given the opportunity to develop their capacity for creative thought. As Sir Ken Robinson remarks, the road to creativity and inspiration is not simple and cannot be left to chance; “It's a disciplined path of daily education” (Azzam 24).
One of the most critical pieces of nurturing creativity in students is providing them with a wide range of knowledge and skills. In “Twisting knobs and connecting things: Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century,” Henriksen and Mishra point to the ways in which the “unique combinations and blending of varied knowledge, experiences, and interests are… excellent catalysts for successful creativity” (18). Clearly, the most successful creative thinkers are those who have a diverse “matrix of knowledge” (Henriksen and Mishra 18) that provides them the necessary pieces to arrange and rearrange, making connections that lead to innovation and creativity. Schools should seek to provide students with a broad range of content and experiences, while simultaneously helping students build and refine their skills. This means allowing time in the daily schedule for electives such as art and music, and it speaks to the need to forego the “drill and kill” in core subjects, an approach that encourages rote memorization of a handful of facts and skills. Instead, curriculum should be designed to expose students to a wide range of subject matter and skills, allowing for students to individually select the content matter that most interests them and expand their knowledge of that area through guided, independent study. This approach will lead to a generation of students with a broad range of shared experiences and knowledge, as well as individual areas of strength that are marked by a depth of knowledge and a high level of interest.
In their book, Sparks of Genius, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein identified several cognitive tools that are used by creative people. Among these tools are perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, playing and synthesizing. Each of these can be used in the classroom to design learning activities that encourage creative thought and help lay the stepping stones of the “disciplined path” to creativity envisioned by Sir Ken Robinson. Within the realm of high school English, I propose the following ways to employ these cognitive tools and thereby encourage and develop student creativity.
PERCEIVING
First, perceiving. Perceiving is more than simply observing. It is more than sight. Perceiving is not so objective. When we perceive something, we are seeing it through the lens of ourselves, our understandings, our experiences and our biases. In the English classroom, perception is one of the most critical aspects of writing - writing is the way in which we communicate our perceptions of the world and ourselves. Perception is subjective, individual and the basis for creative endeavors. Providing students with the opportunities to write creatively in descriptive, compare/contrast and narrative genres encourages them to think carefully and critically about what they are seeing. Taking time to compare the various ways in which a single object, event, person or situation can be viewed and written about helps students learn about any inherent bias they might have, and also helps them to appreciate that no single perspective is correct or absolute. Perception allows for perspective taking, and this is a critical piece of creativity as it permits students to imagine the alternate possibilities, aspects and connections necessary to the creative process.
PATTERNING
Next, patterning. The human mind seeks patterns because they help us form our understanding of the world around us. Small children, for instance, become socialized by observing and internalizing patterns of human interaction. In the classroom, teachers seek to help their students identify the patterns in the various academic disciplines. Once students recognize and master these patterns, they can apply them to new content, allowing them to make connections that improve their understanding. In the English classroom can be as simple as recognizing the patterns of anaphora, alliteration and rhyme scheme in poetry, or the patterns of rhetoric in speeches and essays. Once students begin to recognize and understand these patterns, they can begin to adapt them to their own writing purposes, enriching the overall quality of the poetry and prose they themselves are creating.
ABSTRACTION
Abstraction is the consideration of a subject from one particular point of view or with one emphasis and focus that excludes all other considerations. By focusing the attention of a student on a single aspect of a piece of writing or literature, it might be possible to spur them to involve themselves in a deeper level of critical analysis. For example, focusing on the way in which a single metaphor shapes and develops a poem could help the student to identify the subtler nuances of the metaphor and its echoes in other parts of the work. Recognizing the ways in which a single device can impact a poem or story as a whole encourages students to make connections within a work and can foster their own creativity when they craft their own writing pieces.
EMBODIED THINKING
Embodied thinking is the process of exploring a concept through movement or emotion. Empathy, a trait that many educators strive to enhance and develop in their students, is one of the most common types of embodied thinking that happens in the classroom. In teaching literature and composition, empathy plays a central role in my classroom. My students are asked to define tone in poems, stories and speeches, and they seek to identify with the emotions experienced by characters in these works. Without the ability to explore literature through this means, my students might be left struggling to connect to the literature that we read. Human emotion is a constant across time and space. Whether they are reading poems from ancient Egypt, letters from Stalin's Soviet Union, or poems from World War I, my students can use embodied thinking in the form of empathy to connect to these distant and disparate pieces of writing. This capacity for empathy can influence the students’ capacity for creativity by helping them to anticipate the ways in which an audience might view their work. It can also help them to more effectively craft their own characters and narrative voices.
MODELING
Modeling is another cognitive tool that encourages creativity. The Root-Bernstein text states that modeling is meant to “make accessible something that is difficult to experience easily” (229). For instance, a small-scale model of the solar system can help students in an elementary science class understand the relative distances between planets and the spatial relationships between heavenly bodies. Creating models requires thorough understanding of what is being modeled, but it can also lead to new and better understandings for the creator. Creating models of writing pieces in the form of plot maps or outlines can help students identify the ways in which one moment of a story or essay builds to the next. This recognition provides them with critical information they need to write effectively.
PLAYING
Play is “the enjoyment of doing and making without responsibility” (Root-Bernstein ). This includes symbolic play a process which incorporates modeling, play acting, and empathizing. Play is a central component of encouraging student creativity because it allows them to create, following their impulses without worrying about whether they will pass or fail. Indeed, creativity needs failure because failure allows for students to learn, adapt and improve. It also teaches resiliency. Play is particularly valuable because it encourages students to identify what inspires them. “It's a fundamental human truth that people perform better when they're in touch with things that inspire them” (Azzar 25). Play allows for this, laying important groundwork that can create habits of mind that ultimately spark innovation. In the English classroom this can take the form of free writing, word play such as the creation of Shakespearean insults and role play.
SYNTHESIZING
Synthesis is the cognitive tool that asks students to unite what they have learned in order to create something new. Synthesizing can look like composition, invention, design or construction. In many ways it is the most important of cognitive tools with regard to developing creativity, because it is the cognitive tool that leads to innovation and creation. Each of the products that we created during the CEP 818 course required us to synthesize what we had learned in a particular unit, taking our new found knowledge about a particular cognitive tool and applying it to our own teaching topic or area of interest. One of the most common synthesis activities in the English classroom is the creation of position or analysis papers that are based on multiple sources. Another important way in which synthesis is used in creative writing pieces based on literary works. For example, asking a student to assume the persona of a character from a story and craft a new piece of writing capturing their point of view requires the student to analyze characterization in a given text, employ empathy to anticipate the character’s response to a particular series of events, and a recognition of patterns employed by the author in presenting the character, such as dialogue patterns.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the problems of the 21st century, problems such as climate change and overpopulation, combined with an increasingly global world that is shaped and connected by technology, requires that we strive to educate students to be creative thinkers who will be capable of providing our world with the innovative solutions it needs to survive. Teachers and parents are the first front of this battle against the stifling of creative thought created by a reliance on standardized testing and an industrial-era educational system. By fostering student creativity through development of cognitive tools, by affording students the time and space needed to create, by building student knowledge of content and skills, and by presenting students with open-ended learning tasks that allow for innovative responses, teachers can help create a generation of imaginative innovators.
REFERENCES
Azzam, Amy A. "Why Creativity Now? A Conversation with Ken Robinson." Educational
Leadership, vol. 67, no. 1, 2009, pp. 22-26, http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational- leadership/sept09/vol67/num01/Why-Creativity-Now¢-A-Conversation-with-Sir-Ken-
Robinson.aspx. Accessed 9 Dec. 2016.
Henriksen, D., Mishra, P., & the Deep-Play research group. "Twisting knobs and connecting
things: Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century." Tech Trends, vol. 58,
no. 1, 2014, pp. 15-19.
Root-Bernstein, Robert and Michele. Sparks of Genius. New York: Mariner Books, 1999.
ELEVATOR PITCH
The world is an increasingly complex place.
Technology, global communications and a global market have changed the way we live and the way we do business.
Why haven’t we changed the way we educate our students?
In the coming years, over-population, climate change, pollution, deforestation and diminishing resources will present a host of problems that demand solutions.
These solutions will rely on innovators.
So how do we teach innovation?
The key to innovation is the capacity for creative thinking.
Educating students for creative thinking requires a new way of teaching.
We need to build students knowledge of a diverse range of content and skills.
We need to provide students with opportunities to engage in open ended learning activities.
We need to engage students through the use of cognitive tools that will help them become confident, creative thinkers.
Above all, we need to let students play.
Time is running out. The world and its problems won’t wait forever.
The change must happen now.
Because it’s their future, and we need to prepare them to face it.
TWEET
