I must admit that being a creative teacher in secondary education is not easy as some may think. From my point of view, I want to make sure that my students are learning at the secondary level while increasing their critical thinking skills. The painting to the left was created by my 10-year old son. His vision was to add colors separately but then slowly blend them in as they were a continuous spectrum. Just by looking at his artwork, I knew I needed to find a way to teach the objectives my students needed to learn but to slowly blend them together into one spectrum. It's not about reading a novel, writing an essay, analyzing a source, or even context clues. It's about learning how to blend one strategy into another so that they "colors" are still separate but connected.
The fact that 'how' I teach is different than most educators. This year I gave ownership to my students to see their own creative vision in how they wanted to be taught. While this does not seem as creative as one may think, it's a way to blend the different learning abilities and styles into one. For years, I taught how I was taught. While it took me some time to realize that times have changed, I needed to change too. Within the last five years or so, I tried to do at least one creative assignment to connect the objectives of the curriculum to other important skills students need to learn that cannot be taught but shared.
As I was creating these ideas, my OCD / Anxiety disorder started to increase. I had too many ideas with not enough time to actually use them. So I gave up. Every now and then I see other educators with so much time to create wonderful assignments. With every new idea, I find myself farther away from implementing new ideas. But as I look at my son's painting, I realized that as much as I try to separate my ideas, I need to learn to blend them instead. Instead of trying to create individual assignments, I need to focus on finding the creative assignments that match what I am teaching.
It's not about the teaching students individually but by blending them together to see their individual talents.
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