Creativity

Creativity: When we think about creativity we automatically associated it with art, crafts, culinary arts or just “kids stuff”. But in reality, creativity is about so much more than that. Creativity is the ability to see beyond an object or a problem. For example, I can buy a simple t-shirt but I would like it to be more fashionable, what can I do? Well, I can use a pair of scissors and create a new design for the t-shirt, I can bedazzle it or add applications with dramatic designs, or ultimately, I can just go to the store and buy a more fashionable shirt, but where’s the fun in that? The truth is that you might not have the money for a new shirt that looks more fashionable, but you do have a really good t-shirt, a pair of scissors and a lot of imagination. That’s how creativity works. It’s when you decide to use your imagination in a way that it can help solve a situation or need when you are lacking resources or materials. These are challenges that teachers have to deal with everyday.

During my practice teaching, I was placed in a center that had a bountiful of materials for me to teach. It had technology, such as projectors and computers. It had an organized and functioning library. Teachers were provided with teaching materials, such as books, web pages, markers, smart boards, ipads, professional seminars, a comfortable space to work in, among other things. When I got to my practice center, I felt like I had just entered utopia. Although this is what would be considered the ideal environment, it is not the reality in our schools. The reality is that teachers spend more time searching for materials than actually having them, and they usually have to make the best of a situation with what they have, which is nothing 90% of the time. They have a curriculum given by the department but no curriculum materials. They have to come up with ways to get students that are below the standard to the standard that they are suppose to be in and they only have two semesters to do it. They have to find ways to connect with the students and make learning meaningful while fighting against parents’ apathy toward education and good grade demands when their children have not done their work. Its finding a balance between everything that can go wrong and everything they can make go right, without losing their minds or going “off the wagon” as many would say. But, it doesn’t stop there. They also have to coordinate activities for their students, such as field trips, English week or a week of the subject that they have specialized in, funding events, graduating class activities and getaways, students’ day, earth day, and the list goes on; all without the support from the parents and sometimes even the school. Not to mention, the fact that each day they have to take work home; they have to grade exams and projects, revise lesson plans, think of new strategies to improve the way they teach and attend professional seminars on their off days because someone found a new psychologist or theorist that created a sub theory, based on the original theory, of some dead theorist, that can change the way we teach as we know it.

Dealing with all of this chaos, while maintaining our sanity and having a personal life, takes creativity. Because I cant imagine someone that can survive the educating world without creativity.