Elevator Pitch:
Creativity in Education
by: laceyspieth
White Paper:
There are seven cognitive tools that can alter the teaching and learning inside your classroom to promote more creative students. But before I can sell you on integrating these tools, I assume you may wonder why promoting creativity in your classroom is a positive. Sure, in the artroom creativity is important, we all can agree on that, but creative thinking should extend into every classroom within our schools. Integrating creativity into the core curriculum will allow your students to create a deeper understand of the subject matter. Creative thinkers are the people who bring us new technologies, new inventions, new product designs, new theater and music. What can you do as an educator to promote our future creative thinkers? Integrate the seven key trans-disciplinary cognitive tools that advocate creative minds. The seven tools are: perceiving, patterning, abstracting, embodied thinking, modeling, playing & synthesizing. Below I will illustrate how I have integrated these tools into an art classroom, and hopefully my journey will help you understand how it can help you and your students.
The cognitive tool of perceiving allows students and educators to learn and teach information in new ways that can open doors for student understanding. Perception is how we view information and “see” things around us. Students are given information everyday and the information is usually delivered the same way. If a student doesn’t comprehend the information from the day before, do you think they will comprehend the new information delivered the same exact way? Probably not. Using perception as a tool for teaching, the educator should focus on paying close attention to detail and be aware of all five senses. Develop lessons in which the students need to acquire and use the skills of perceptive learning, such as creating representations. For example, when using writing prompts encourage students to use all five senses. Students should practice lessons such as these to better their creative thinking skills. The more opportunities students have to enhance their perceptive learning skills the stronger they will become.
Patterns are introduced to our students at a very young age. In the first grade, we discuss patterns in art class. It takes the students some time to realize the difference between the patterns they learn in their regular classroom to those we see in art. In their classroom they comprehend patterns as a linear element that repeats the same numbers, letters or symbols. In art class, we like to look at patterns in two different ways, one it can be repeated shapes and colors or it could the arrangement of the composition that creates the pattern. Exposing students to patterns, they will be able to view and label patterns in our environment. I never considered patterning as a way for students to create deeper understanding, such as organizing information rather than just focusing on memorization, before implementing these tools. If a student has the ability to reorganize information it should be an indicator that they comprehend the material. In terms of art history, it would be beneficial for students to organize information into a timeline rather than memorize single dates for specific art pieces. It is not necessary that students know the actual date for the Starry Night, if they understand where it lies in the whole scheme of things. I think this would give students a broader perspective and greater understanding of what pieces were produced when. For high school students, Prezi.com would be a great tool to create these timelines. They could show actions that when presented would have animations, pictures, videos, etc instead of a linear timeline. 
Source: http://prezi.com/f7oeqrsitzhg/art-history-time-line/
Abstracting is reducing. I know I always make analogies and references to the visual arts, but it is what I know. So here is another one, when studying, analyzing or creating art, abstraction refers to reducing the subject to simple forms. For example, Pablo Picasso painted figures using basic shapes, but the viewer can still understand that the painting is of a woman. or whatever his subject matter might be. Recently, I taught my middle school students the process of abstracting. Each student picked an object from the classroom and created a drawing of that object in the most photo-realistic way they could with their ability. The second drawing the student started the abstraction process by making the drawing non-photorealistic but still representative of the object, so that the viewer knew what the object was. The third drawing was total abstraction, without the other drawings next to it the viewer cannot determine what the object is.
Abstracting in education can be used to teach our students to think, rather than the more common practice of memorization. Many teachers have resulted in memorization as a method for successful teaching. I am living proof this does not work. In high school I was a decent student, I was on honor roll almost every semester, though some classes I really had to work for that B-. I can remember cramming information in my head to quickly memorize facts, dates, vocab or equations. If you were to give me those tests today, I would fail miserably. i see it today, I have spent time in the fourth grade math class and they do not remember simple things such as starting a subtraction problem from the right and move left. The fourth grade math teacher took a unique approach at multiplication a few weeks ago. Using manipulatives she had the students visually represent factors of a number. She shared with me that she thought if the students could physically see and hold the number it may click for a few of her students. being a visual learner myself, I loved this activity. Some students still struggled to grasp the concept of finding factors, but other students caught on right away. It just goes to show us, multiple learning styles do exist and we need to address them.Embodied thinking is learning with our bodies. Normally when studying color theory we would not use our bodies in the notion of dance. Studying the artist Piet Mondrian offers a great learning experience. Inside the MOMA you can view one of this most interesting pieces, Broadway Boogie Woogie. The time period in which this piece was created offers a great way to teach cross curriculum with history, the year was 1942. Having the students reflect on the piece of why the artist may have created this piece in correlation to the time period is one type of embodied thinking using the notion of empathy. The students will be thinking as another person trying to figure out why they made the choices they did. After the reflective thinking students will actually learn the dance the piece was based on.
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Modeling in education is a very important aspect. Students naturally have a grasp on representing subjects on a two dimensional surface, but when planning to create three dimensional figures the students many time struggle. The ability to see the object in your mind as a physically thing you can touch and hold does not always make sense to children. The notion of building a three dimensional object is easier them, they can take parts and make a whole, the visualization of that whole prior to the construction is the tough part. One way we use modeling in the art room is by having preliminary sketches prior to construction/creation of a three dimensional project. This allows the students to imagine the finished product before the creating begins. I think this allows the students to put more thought into the project rather than just slapping paint down. Of course, this process is only needed for certain art mediums. As mentioned earlier with perceiving the more activities and lessons you create to reinforce these skills the stronger they will become.
Playing. That should not be a part of education should it? Why of course. Students and adults need play in their lives. As a creative learner and educator you must allow for some creative flow. My first semester of undergrad I sat in my ceramics class the very first day and the professor had a large amount of clay on the table. He told us we needed to become one with the clay. We were to get to know the clay and the clay needed to get to know us. I know it sounds a little “out there” but what happened next was very playful. We began playing with the clay. Manipulating the clay to make objects, walking barefoot on the table in the clay, writing in the clay, everything we did seems very similar to what elementary students would have done if they had the same opportunity. That is one of my clearest memories from this course. The opportunity to be free and explore the clay released all the worry about starting college and working with this new medium I had rarely worked with. Now, in my classroom I go about clay a little differently. I integrate creative dramatics into elementary lessons all the time. The elementary students at school where I am employed do not have any access to performing arts. I try to use creative dramatics in my classroom as mind captures to introduce new units or lessons. For example, every year with my second grade students we create an “under the sea” painting. Before we begin the creating process, I have the students go scuba diving with me. The kids love it and always tell amazing stories of what they “saw” under the sea.
Jordan, Age 7
Brennen, Age 8
The final installment of the seven tools is synthesizing. Synthesizing may be the most crucial part of all. We must be able to pull all this information together to create one curriculum that uses the seven tools to build off one another to promote our creative thinkers. This is not a notion that will happen over night. Don't be discouraged. Take it one step at a time and slowly integrate the seven trans-disciplinary cognitive tools in your classroom. You have seen how it can be used in my classroom, teaching art, how can it enhance your teaching, and better yet your students’ learning?
