I teach mathematics at a typical Midwestern high school.
You ask how to foster a culture of creativity in the classroom? That's difficult if not impossible. You must understand that a teacher has little control over the material that she must teach. The public school system is very much top-down. Indeed with the near universal adoption of the new federal Common Core Standards, almost all schools are now controlled by a single governmental entity.
I don't choose what I teach. Others choose for me. My classroom is not really my own. I am merely a mechanism for the delivery of skills that others say my students must know. Those skills are codified in the Common Core Standards, which are quite lengthy and detailed. Mastery of those standards requires mastery of hundreds of little bits of "knowledge".
Students will be tested on those standards. Teachers will be judged by their students' performance on those tests. Thus teachers must teach them. If they do not, punishment will be severe.
I know geometry best. It's all that I teach. The geometry standards easily fill an entire school year. My hands are tied here. I have little control over what I must teach and that rate at which I must teach it. I can't stop to consider a side-topic not in the standards. I can't let students take the time necessary to arrive at results on their own. If I do, I won't get through them all.
Creativity requires time, the time to independently develop and then ultimately reject many mistaken solutions to a problem; and I just don't have the time to let my students do that. If I do, we're all labeled and inadequate.
Would creativity be fostered in business if there were a single governmental entity were to dictate all business decisions? Of course not. Why assume that the classroom is any different?
My conclusion: if you want creativity in the classroom, you'll have to radically restructure the standards and how they are taught and tested
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A comment on Conversation: How do you foster a culture of creativity and innovation?
I teach mathematics at a typical Midwestern high school.
You ask how to foster a culture of creativity in the classroom? That's difficult if not impossible. You must understand that a teacher has little control over the material that she must teach. The public school system is very much top-down. Indeed with the near universal adoption of the new federal Common Core Standards, almost all schools are now controlled by a single governmental entity.
I don't choose what I teach. Others choose for me. My classroom is not really my own. I am merely a mechanism for the delivery of skills that others say my students must know. Those skills are codified in the Common Core Standards, which are quite lengthy and detailed. Mastery of those standards requires mastery of hundreds of little bits of "knowledge".
Students will be tested on those standards. Teachers will be judged by their students' performance on those tests. Thus teachers must teach them. If they do not, punishment will be severe.
I know geometry best. It's all that I teach. The geometry standards easily fill an entire school year. My hands are tied here. I have little control over what I must teach and that rate at which I must teach it. I can't stop to consider a side-topic not in the standards. I can't let students take the time necessary to arrive at results on their own. If I do, I won't get through them all.
Creativity requires time, the time to independently develop and then ultimately reject many mistaken solutions to a problem; and I just don't have the time to let my students do that. If I do, we're all labeled and inadequate.
Would creativity be fostered in business if there were a single governmental entity were to dictate all business decisions? Of course not. Why assume that the classroom is any different?
My conclusion: if you want creativity in the classroom, you'll have to radically restructure the standards and how they are taught and tested