Piaget, Education, And Creativity

Ultimately he concluded that children's reasoning power was in no way flawed -- on the contrary it was often as good as many adult scientists! However, children's limited life experience meant that they had not amassed and processed enough information about the natural and social world (nor imbibed the same biases) to come to the same conclusions that adults did.

But Piaget did not conclude that children should, ergo, be force-fed more facts at an earlier age. In fact he believed quite the opposite: that such force-feeding would condition children to expect the answers to come from outside themselves, robbing them of creative initiative. He also believed that adults must exercise caution about correcting children's "mistaken notions." If done too harshly, or in a condescending manner, such correcting shamed them into intellectual passivity, causing them to abandon their innate urge to figure things out for themselves, and to come up with new and creative ideas.

http://www.nndb.com/people/359/000094077/

Qualitative research - phase one - What themes are present in my writing?

Cmap #1: Roles of Teachers and Students

Cmap #2: Environment, Motivation, and Identity

To begin the qualitative research based on this blog, I first went through and highlighted words and phrases that seemed significant to me. I did not verbalize any standards for significance before highlighting, I was going by gut feeling. The ideas that were floating around in my head before starting this process were the universality of change and movement, and the importance of systems thinking. 

I originally wrote ideas on note cards and sorted them on my kitchen counter. I liked that system better than the CMaps I have posted. It was easier to see the interconnections between different categories in real space. I used Cmap to have a representation to post on this blog. CMap is limited by screen size so I have posted two Cmaps. There are points of overlap between the two maps that would make it unified if I could post something that big. Then again, if size weren't an issue, I could have just posted a photo of my kitchen counter!

The themes that popped up during this process were:

1. The role of teachers
2. The role of students
3. How motivation affects creativity process
4. How culture and environment affect motivation
5. How teachers can affect environment
6. How culture can affect teachers
7. How education affects identity
8. The interconnection between students and teachers

Keywords: Roles, culture, environment, motivation, education, identity, interconnection

Right now I am seizing upon an overall systems view of education, socialization, and identity formation, with a recognition of movement and interrelationships.

Updated Representation of My Teaching Heritage

The Joy of Teaching

At the beginning of the semester I visualized my teaching heritage as a chocolate chip cookie. My influences were categorized as the ingredients in the cookie. Bad influences were cat fur/contaminants.

For my final lineage representation, I am expanding my original idea to become a digital cookbook. My concept of my teaching lineage has morphed into the concept of a hand-me-down cook book - a book that has been passed down from generation to generation, has been written on, been altered by ingredients during the cooking process, had recipe cards added, and is falling apart. The worn cookbook is converted to a  digital format to preserve it for future generations. Changes to the digital cookbook in the future would of course be expected to be digital edits, computer text, scanned or digital photos, and inserted videos.

Week 12 Peer Responses

Katie-

I am curious, about how many hours do you think you put in creating and revising this lesson? It seems like a really good lesson that you are enthusiastic about.

I like how you used fun activities as part of your instructional activities. Play is how kids "work." Relating certain character traits of the artist to student's behaviors was also pretty slick. The students will connect with the artist more once they connect those dots. Giving the coloring sheet to work on while other students were reviewing also helps engage the kinesthetic learners during the review time. The students can get quiet, listen and think while they coloring safe zone.

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Erika,

You stated that some students seemed apprehensive about modeling new techniques, were as one girl really took off with creating new techniques. Have you ever heard of SCAMPER? It is a creativity strategy for younger students, but you can modify and use it for students who think more concretely.

Substitute.
Combine.
Adapt.
Modify.
Put to another use.
Eliminate.
Reverse.


I also agree with Sheryl about creating a stock video. If you have an iPod for the classroom, you could store videos on it for students who were sick or need a review before they get started. You might even make a private YouTube channel for your videos.

Week 12: Lesson reflection

Pre-viewing: The lesson was successful. At this point in the year the kinders are more "trained." We completed the lesson about 10 minutes earlier than the other classes had. We had enough time for clean up - paint on tables and chairs - so I didn't have to worry about my next class waiting as I wiped things down. They are still developmentally sooo self-centered. When I explained the students were going to be sent two at a time to the sinks to wash their hands as we have done before, they didn't seem to understand why they had to wait because their hands were dirty.  Later in the day a third grade boy came up to me and asked, "Art is about getting dirty, isn't it?" I was so happy that he was focusing in on the process of art making and had accepted that there is a time for being messy and getting dirty.

Post-viewing: I am always amazed with how the camcorder sees things I don't pick up on in class. There are twenty little balls of energy bouncing around the room and I don't ever just step back and watch them all as a whole. I am the twenty-first ball bouncing around the room. Each table group of six students is its own little island of interactions and personalities. Every once in a while, a person travels over to another island. 

I think I am realizing that movement me is just as important for me as it is for my students. I am a kinesthetic teacher. Even when I am standing near the board, I am gesturing with my hands.  I am pretty sure my behaviors and procedures are unconsciously there to facilitate my need to be moving around. The few times I have sat at my desk while the students were working this past year I have felt so dejected and bored.

The second video showed a class that started quicker with less distractions, and cleaned up with one Indian chief orchestrating the actions, not five or six. Before viewing the video, I felt like so many students wanted to be at the sink at once. The actual difference was that most students kept to their seats even though they were vocalizing their desire to run to the sink. I also noticed in the second video that the students were responding to inflections in my voice as their cue to stop chattering and listen to what I was saying. The students tend to verbalize what they are drawing as they are drawing it, and their opinion of it. I do not think it would be possible to teach them something new and have them be quiet about it. They also moderate other student's drawings to see if others followed the teacher's directions. This is a contrast to what happens in the upper grades as the students are more peer centered. When they are off task, they look to see what their peers have done instead of looking at the teacher sample. In the lower grades, I do not have to question a student about copying off their neighbor instead of looking at the board.

I am also noticing some design flaws with my room other than its small size. The  room is not designed to facilitate movement. Watching the video of myself walking between tables in my room is like watching an auto-crosser navigate a curvy road course. My room also does not handle noise well. Students talk while they work, but I have no surfaces that absorb the noise. My voice doesn't project in my tin can like it did when I was in a regular classroom.

Week 12: Video Pre-thinking

My revised goals are two part: one organizational and one part enhancing reflective thinking. For the second video I am sticking with the same kindergarten class. They are my Friday morning/energetic/gifted and quirky class. To survive them I have to be even more prepared than with the other kindergartner classes. I am still focusing on organizational skills for this class. For example, earlier this year they had a teddy bear week in their classrooms. I took a class to VTS a bear sculpture show them how to draw bears with texture. The first four classes elaborated their bears with bows, vests, dresses, tiaras and the like. The fifth kindergarten class ended up synthesizing a ninja ballerina bear, with masks, nun-chucks, ballet shoes, and tutus.

1. Organization and Structure in the Classroom

• identify student needs and teacher needs, physical and social
• This class needs to have movement built into their routine. They also need to learn when movement is appropriate. For example, in this lesson students are using paint and I want them at their seats when they have messy supplies. This class also shares their discoveries about their supplies verbally with their neighbors and sometimes with their friends across the room. I want to validate their social interactions, but at the same time contain excessive mess and distractions to the flow of the lesson.
• identify my patterns of organization and structure
• My desk and counter tops are  cluttered - totally visual spatial. But the student tables and supply shelf are organized and labeled. I do have an overflow student table in the middle of the room. It is converted into a supply table later in the day as my classes get younger and smaller. It is the point where my style of organization directly intercepts the student work space. My room is so small that I have to be flexible with supply and project storage. I tend to start the day by organizing my room and putting away projects that dried overnight. At the end of the day I am spent and only do cleaning up.
• evaluate the effects of organization and structure in meeting student and teacher needs
• If I set out my supplies on the center-most table, students can catch a glimpse of what supplies they will be using, and I can be centrally located to orchestrate student movement.   
• create modifications to meet student and teacher needs. 
• This past quarter I have implemented a clean up song at the end of class for grades 2-5. Students are able to pace their clean up. I have had only one student who ignored the cue of the clean up song and continued working. I have not implemented the clean up song with kindergarten or first. I think they would focus on the song and get distracted. They still get a count down for clean-up. I pick helpers as opposed to having students put up supplies themselves.  Kindergarten and first grade still seem to do better with more structure and less wiggle room for getting too experimental with the supplies.

This week I have started a tried and true lesson plan with kindergarten. It is a space shuttle lesson from Deep Space Sparkle http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2010/06/22/blast-off-space-shuttle-art-project/. It always turns out nice. It is a close ended lesson. I don't like to do many of those, but the students like being taught a schema for representing items they find interesting. I do not find it harmful to give them those schemas as confidence builders as long as by third grade we are elaborating and interpreting our symbol making. 

My goals for this lesson are to acknowledge student need for movement and interaction while at the same time giving a guided lesson that requires student attention and organization. To meet my goals I have been better about giving some of the supply management over to the students, and allowing for chatter during my instruction so students can vocalize their excitement. I have to use my bell or chime to transition the students back in. Before, my bell was a "you've gone too far and need to get quieter," signal. 

Week 12: Chapter 6 Reading and Reflection

Chapter 6 of Teaching as if life matters  reinforces my opinion of teaching systems thinking in schools. The author explained different ways to get students to experience relationships that exist in a system. The chapter was also a good metaphor for living holistically. If a person can be in tune with the natural world, then perhaps the same person can listen to others' (students') personal languages and respond in kind...reducing conflict and frustration.

I didn't find Chapter 6 too controversial in content. The context of the classroom for the messages was different in that the teacher is enforcing a worldview. Education has already been revolutionized through the services now demanded of it. School isn't just a training ground of reading, writing, and arithmetic for a blossoming middle class. It has become the major socializing institution of most American children. The roles of schools are even more profound in economically depressed areas because they'd provide the majority of the food children eat, cultural exposure, health care, and often clothes and shoes.

By the way, You Are Stardust is a children's book that has recently been published. It is about the interconnectedness of being. I found it on the new acquisitions shelf at the library and read it to my GT kids this past fall. Upon second thought, it would also be a good beginning of the year book for art class, leading to a multi media project  in which students explore their relationships to the universe. It could also be continued into a u about change or interconnectedness.