Creativity and Teaching

The first years of my teaching, I taught in what would be termed a difficult county...low wealth, discipline issues, very limited resources, and little administrative support within  the school.  Everything I learned about teaching I really learned in these three years.  I started teaching English in 1993, and I was, of course, over the moon excited about teaching.  This is what I have wanted to do for a long time, and I was going to spread some culture to the young ones, and thus save another generation.  What I learned is that I needed another education beyond the education that I received at East Carolina University.  After all, I was going to be the first college graduate in my immediate family, I had some troubles growing up, and I did not have the world handed to me.  I could relate.

My first year was less than desirable.  All of the things that I had thought up in my mind to impart knowledge to an eager young generation was tested by students, other teachers and ultimately myself.  I soon learned that students didn't really care about Longfellow, or the students cared more about Usher than the "Fall of the House of Usher."  There were no resources.  When I asked where were the novel sets for students, I got blank stares.  No Huck Finn.  No Hester Prynne.  No Jay Gatsby. Oh dear! Not to mention, I was in a school where traditional values of teaching were revered.  Effectiveness was measured by how quiet your class was and how well they took notes and spit them back at you on a test.  I was young.  I was crazy, and I was scared as hell!

I was teaching American Literature to a group of students whose claim to fame was driving new teachers from the school, and they were successful on many counts. There are many horror stories of my first year:

• The day the screen fell from the ceiling and knocked me in the head just as Cassandra and Corey re-entered the room from their latest trip to the Principal's office. This was all they needed to tear up 6th period.  That day, they won.

• The day that we were reading The Crucible, and a chorus of students kept asking, "what page did you say? Could you repeat the page number- I had it written on the board.  I stood in the middle of the room and shouted, "If you all would shut the hell up, you would know what page we were on." The class was quiet.  I longed to be like Ms. Coplin down the hall whose students hung on her every word.

• The day  that I intervened between a girl and a boy who were going to fight over the fact that the boy had stolen her hair weave (allegedly). This ended with me  on the ground, bleeding from my chin, and the young lady finding her hair piece in the hood of her sweat jacket.

• The day that Wesley explained to the class that "negligent" was a lady's nightgown.

This was a long first year, and I left for the summer not with plans to find another position at a closer high school to my home, but to regroup and come up with a gameplan to win.  I had to work a second job that summer, but in my spare time, I totally revamped my lessons and thought about how to reach children and what they needed and didn't need, and what I did wrong.  I was reflecting when reflecting wasn't cool.  By the way, I had all of my evaluations from the AP in the spring in a span of a week, so there was no feedback there.  What I decided is that I had a gift and a passion and the students had a need.  I wasn't meeting their needs through the endless worksheets that the school supported or the transparency packs that came with book adoptions.  There was no learning going on with answering mindless questions in the back of the book after reading a story.  We were humans who had to come together for 55 minutes each day and do something. My job was to connect students, and to this day, I ask, why are we doing __________________.  Why are we reading Oedipus? Why are we studying The Great Depression? and if I cannot give a relevant answer, then I can't teach it.  Of course, I always could.

I learned that we needed to interact. I had not really learned teaching strategies in college, so I went on about redesigning my classroom.  It was not an easy job and not always successful . Early on in my second year a group of young boys in 5th period decided that they would mimic the Budweiser commercial and chant Bud. Weis. Er from various parts of the room during my lesson. Then the next day, they had decided to do a chorus of farm animal noises.  "Bahh" came from the corner.  Then a "mooooo" from the center of the room, a cluck, a snort, etc.  This time I was ready, I calmly turned around and said, "Now who is going to be the Jackass?" and carried on with my lesson. No more noises and I won. Sarcasm was a tool for me.

When we approached our study of The Crucible, I was ready.  We were reading this because 1) It was in the curriculum and the book  and 2) more importantly, it is a study of human nature, and haven't we all been there when something goes too far or we tell an untruth that takes on a life of its own?  When we had finished half of the play, I broke the students into groups (they were shocked).  I did not have a worksheet. I did not have questions that were recall.  I did not have a transparency.  Each group had a card with a word: Revenge, Honesty, Understanding, Responsibility. We spent a few minutes talking about what these words meant in life, then I told the groups to be able to explain how this abstract idea revealed itself in the play so far, and give me details (take that Common Core!) from the play to support.  My classroom came alive!  Students were talking and writing and looking back at the play.  They were arguing, coming to conclusions, debating....it was beautiful.  The Advanced Placement teacher next door thought that I was just a young idiot, but what I saw was pure magic.  These kids were making connections to what we had done in class and they were enjoying it. My creativity did not stop there.  I set about to designing ways that students could dig into the content.  What about writing.  By the way, when I asked these students to write a definition paper after reading, these were some of the best I had ever gotten. I had made it possible for us to have discourse about learning.  I looked for ways that students could contrast ideas from work to work:  How was Phoenix Jackson like Granny Weatherall? We were bound by the stories in the book, so I had to keep the ideas flowing.

I say all of this to make the point that creativity is a cornerstone of good teaching.  I work with some teachers now who say all the time:  I had to cut this project out because of the curriculum, or I can't be creative because we have these PLCs, and You want me to teach like everybody else, or This new curriculum has taken any creativity that I have about teaching and thrown it out the window. With these assessments, I barely have time to cover the curriculum.  Now, I am told what I have to teach.  Newsflash: We have always been told what to teach- it is called the curriculum.  Never have I seen a curriculum that tells you how to teach anything. I have an ongoing debate with some of my colleagues about the PLC (Professional Learning Communities) idea- another blog for another time. In essence the teachers say that the PLCs keep them from teaching the way that they want to teach.  I immediately reply that they are likely PLC-ing incorrectly. The team does not dictate how one does something but analyzes the effectiveness of how a lesson or a series of lessons are taught. If your methodology is showing little improvement in students' understanding compared to the other team members, then you have an obligation  to change your approach.

So, let's dwell on assessment a little here not too much because I am cooking up quite a post about assessment.  I hear over and over that with the new tests, I don't have time to do what I used to do.  What are we doing in class all day? Going over released test items? That is a colossal waste of time. When I taught English I and English II, I did not dwell on the test (Well, I did until I saw the light!).  I still had my Renaissance Fair and my African Feast. I still had students do Multiple Intelligences Projects to help explain the thematic ideas in All Quiet on the Western Front. We still did group work where we looked at motivation of characters and how the setting (physical environment) influences our actions. My students did as well or often better on the tests than the classes who were memorizing a litany of literary terms or who were answering questions that look like the test. What they were doing was actively participating in developing theme statements, looking at irony, setting, and the structure of the story.  

The Common Core asks us to infuse literacy throughout all content areas (AMEN!), and how that looks is different for everyone. Weren't good, effective teachers already doing this? What teacher would not find having students read and extract information and discuss one of the highest forms of engagement?  Isn't that how we were trained? Don't we want students to find information and use it in some way? My wish is that we stop blaming initiatives (flavor of the month syndrome, which is another blog post about how this is a myth), curriculum, and assessments and get to teaching kids who are inquisitive, connected to media where there are sure to be stories that parallel our curriculum, who may not be able to fully name and explain all the conflicts in To Kill a Mockingbird, but who may understand discrimination and the results of those conflicts in their own lives. I wax poetic here, an I have completely ignored Science and Math and other technical subjects.  I am reminded of a quote in the movie Shadowlands about the great CS Lewis.  At one point, the character portrayed by Anthony Hopkins says, "We read to know we are not alone."  I think we teach and learn to know that we are not alone. See, none of this stuff is about draining creativity.  In reality, it is about empowering teachers to be more creative, and develop ways to relate to humans in this ever shrinking, complex world.