As part of our Shared PLD with Hadlow School around creativity I asked teachers to read an article Sir Ken Robinson had written for the Guardian several years ago
Click the image to go to the reading
The article is his response to the Minister for Education in Britain, who had made some claims around creativity that Robinson disputes.
Robinson defines creativity as "a process of having original ideas that have value". The ideas don't have to be new to mankind, nor earth0shattering, but they have to be new to you/peer group, and have some kind of value. He argues that as it is a process it is both teachable, and assessable. It is about fresh thinking, and about being a critical thinker as well...is what I'm working on any good, have I created the message I wanted in my writing etc.
We need to allow curriculum space for the kids to be creative, not to focus entirely on skills, and to ensure our teachers have the freedom to try new things, that they aren't bound by the pressure of shifting students to 'At'.
While his ideas about what creativity is are clear, he isn't giving out a programme for teachers to follow. There isn't a right path, a set way of teaching, certain units to follow...so as a profession we need to be questioning of each other, asking those critical friend questions...why did this happen, what was the impact?
In my practice I am going to try giving the kids some independent learning space to focus on a creative project. I have a child that is keen to write a chapter book and has made a start. I need to provide his both the opportunity, and encouragement, to pursue this creative task.
I've been curious about this for awhile now...several years ago I saw some photos appear, twitter perhaps, of Amesbury School students working with signs next to them saying "Please do not disturb, I'm in Flow".
Last week I had the opportunity to attend a day with Mark Treadwell, a post will be coming about that, and he spoke of this 'flow'. He was discussing creativity, and how our brains cannot do 2 conscious things at once...so to be creative, people need the cognitive space to be so...to get into that zone, the creative flow state. He challenged us to allow children to become 'bored', as it is only then that creativity and imagination are possible. Encourage day dreaming, and if children are 'in flow'...leave them to it, hence the Amesbury signs.
This challenges some of the ways I operate in the class, having a set of tasks for the children to work through when not with me...Must Do's, Can Do's. While great for allowing choice, and giving them the opportunity to timetable their learning day, it doesn't leave much space for boredom or day dreaming. Also, the calling of groups...come down for your reading group, now its time for your writing workshop...am I getting in the way of this flow state? Should I leave them to it?
Shots of Awe, Jason Silva, illustrates this concept will with this short video...he calls his videos 'philosophical expresso', an intense burst of cognitively challenging prompts, messages and visuals.
Something I might try is removing some of my tasks, and replace them with blank spaces...what learning do they want/need? And, if they are working on this things they can opt out of some of the learning workshops I may call them to. Give them the opportunity to get bored, to enter that state of flow, and to enjoy the rush of creativity when constraints of time/space have been removed from them (even if only briefly!).
Our school (like many other no doubt) has a issue with Boys and Writing. The new entrants who walk into our gates have less than a 50% chance of meeting standard by the time they leave us for Intermediate. This isn't good enough, we know it, and currently we are working at addressing this area of need.
One of my inquiries last year was looking at the effect of Minecraft as a context for writing. I knew nothing of the game, other than the boys would babble in a strange language at the mere mention of it...words like nether portal, obsidian, pickaxe, zombie, and endermen...it made no sense. Many educators, much more talented than I, have been down this path with great success...so it is no surprise that the boys a) enjoyed writing about minecraft, and b) they used language that they never would or could in the kinds of writing they were doing previously.
12 months later, and a brief but awesome foray into writing about the zombie apocalype (also very engaging and full of greta vocab), I am back working with a group of lads writing about Minecraft. It is different now. no longer do we play the game, or build things in a world...we are using the world as a place for something to happen, for a narrative to play out. Mr Cubey has made an excellent series of videos called 'Life of a...' farmer/hunter/spartan/wizard/pirate...they have one central character, and a struggle they are dealing with. The worlds the narrative is played within are absolutely amazing, even showing 10 seconds is enough to generate massive discussion within the group.
The 29 boys and I will watch a section of the video repeatedly...using Padlet to record ideas, vocab, phrases, and ways they could structure their work. They then go about crafting a paragraph or two based on what we have watched, using the rich discussions recorded on the Padlet. I call down groups to work with me, using their current writing as the vehicle to develop and show their current learning intention (eg, using the speech from the video,cam we write and punctuate it correctly to add some impact?).
We have just completed a piece based on Life of a Builder...here is an example (largely unsupported). It's not perfect, but has some great elements to be worked on.
The current piece we are working on is Minecraft The Beginning...the video is a narrative showing a player play the game, developing from a shipwrecked man with nothing, to creating an amazing world and battling many foes. It has a twist ending also...not the best, but a good talking point. The boys use this group padlet to record their ideas, and use this to plan their writing each day. The boys are producing some magic stuff, and the language is amazing. At one stage in another video a character became 'dizzy' when put under a spell. The film described it as dizzy, but one of my lads said 'he is feeling nauseous'...wow!
I've now got disengaged writers who are writing their own narrative-type 'chapter-books' in their spare time...Wasteland of the Dead is a favourite...spelling? Punctuation? Grammar? Not so much, but enthusiasm and engagement? Yep, in spades!
Letting Boys write in a context they love helps, letting them work collaboratively helps, rich discussion about language helps, mixed-ability helps, and the fact the Minecraft has a rich language to it means yes, the Ender Dragon really can help save our boys writing.
One of the school goals for this year is to define what we mean by collaboration, and what it looks like for us.
During our staff retreat in January we tackled Greg Carroll's post, Collaboration - More than parallel play and discussed what we thought of his definition, and how our practice fit into it. The response was what I wanted, a critical look at what we do...and how easy it is to throw the term around. The general consensus was that we co-operated more than we collaborated.
We also looked at Waitakiri Schools 7 Co-Teaching strategies, which are based on the work of Villa, Thousand and Nevin (this blog describes them well). They gave us a starting point for considering how we might operate this year. In 2015 there were pockets of 'collaboration' in the school, so staff needed some ideas.
In June the Leaders reviewed progress towards the Annual Plan goals and it was noted that we still haven't developed the idea of collaboration very much, and confusion still reigned. Collaboration still meant whatever people wanted it to mean, and a shared understanding hadn't been furthered. As the school works in 4 distinct teams, operating in different ways...some with open spaces, some without, some sharing children, some not, some meeting often, some less so...planning a staff PLD to meet these needs was going to be challenging. I decided to take the approach that Collaboration is more than just sharing...more than sharing a space, more than sharing ideas, more than sharing resources, and more than just sharing the students out.
Hattie's recent work 'The Politics of Collaborative Expertise' became the basis of the session. I wanted to look at teachers working together, to improve practice...and to become effective evaluators of the learning that happens in the shared spaces. He argues that unless teachers work together to agree on the learning needs of their children, what progress will like for them, how will they know they have been successful as practitioners, that teachers fall into the trap of doing what they know and shifting the 'blame' for lack of progress to other issues (class size, student background, behaviour etc).
In this way I was able to make the session applicable to all teams, as the actions of shared spaces/ideas/students became strategies of collaborative practice, and collaboration then is teachers working together to improve practice, and outcomes for learners. We looked more in depth at 2 of Hattie's 'tasks', those related to evaluation of teacher practice and learning. He gives broad detail, so talking about what that would look like for teachers day-to-day was interesting.
We used George Couros ideas around what todays classes could look like, and applied it to a collaborative pair...replacing student with teacher in the descriptions (image below).
The discussion was great, but more will be needed.
So, we still don't have an answer to 'what is collaboration', but have taken a few more steps towards that.
