"If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."
"See children for the hope that they are."
"...educating people out of their creativity."
After watching the TED conference video, I was truly put into deep thought. I completely agreed with everything that Sir Ken Robinson said throughout the video, and it really brought to my attention just how important it is for teachers to encourage creativity in the classroom. We educate the future with every class we teach.
The first quote I chose represents creativity very well. It reminds us that we will not always be successful in our endeavors, but it is still worth the struggle to make mistakes and learn from them. We should not be discouraged when we do not succeed, but to use each failure as a learning experience. This is an important lesson to instill in our students. They need to be comfortable trying new things and becoming their own person. Kids can come up with amazing things if they are able to express themselves.
The second quote speaks of our students being our future. Our job is to equip them with the knowledge they need to be successful in life. Regardless of their learning differences, every student should be given the same opportunities in the classroom. Even if some children struggle with instruction or are hard to get through to, we need to look to their strengths and give them feedback positively.
One of the negative sides of education today is that teachers often can discourage creativity in their students, even if it is unintentional. Teachers provide very straightforward and narrow assignments that do not allow for wiggle room in regards to creativity. Students must follow every rule and cross every t the way teachers intend them to in order to receive the passing grade and "understand the material". This is extremely damaging to students. Teachers need to allow for creativity in students to ensure that they understand what they are being taught. Given the fact that every student learns and interprets information differently, they should be able to complete assignments in a differentiated fashion to show what they know.
The TED video was a wonderful addition to the many resources we were presented with this semester. Everything given to us will help each teacher candidate tremendously in our endeavors to teach our future.
