Schools, Creativity, Sir Ken Robinson and JAM

I first heard of Sir Ken Robison last year when I was doing a Harvard Wide World course online as a team member. Our team was compromised of two JAM teachers, Adriana and I, and we were blown away by how magnificent his lecture was (see "Schools Kill Creativity" link in the Recommended section on the right).


After we saw the video, we felt inspired to try a new experiment in the classroom, and for our Harvard course we wrote about both the video and the experiment. Here's what we wrote:

"Sir Ken Robinson says that education will take us to a future that we can’t grasp, and we need to educate the children so they can be ready for that future.  We believe that this is very true. We are preparing the children for a world we don't yet know about.  Are we giving them the basic tools?

He also says that children are not afraid of being wrong, and that if you are not prepared to be wrong you will never create anything. This was particularly inspiring to us, as we are always aware that the little children in our classroom will be adults in the blink of an eye, and we need to provide not just the information they'll need, but the confidence in themselves to be comfortable with who they are, as well as with their knowledge; to be adaptable, to be listeners, enquirers, and thinkers.

Well, after watching this video lecture we decided to do something completely unorthodox in our classroom. Our students, at times, are afraid of trying things and getting them wrong, so Paula brought a remote control helicopter into the classroom. As it happens, she is not very good at flying it, so there were crashes. As she showed the children that it was quite hard for her to fly it, we asked, what does she need to do to get better at it? They answered: Practice!

In this AHA! moment, we asked then straight after: what do you need to do to get better at writing? - and they answered with huge smiles: Practice! Afterward, we showed them that the controls of the helicopter have two parts: one to go up and down and another for turning and going forward and backward. We then explained that for me it was easier to learn the up and down on its own first, and then start using the other control and for Adriana it was easy to use both at the same time. We then related that to writing…left to right…sounding out….and so on.

We kept the helicopter in the class, so the children could use it (and crash it – no harm done, it's almost indestructible!), and it was a reminder that we need practice to get better at things, and it’s okay if we don’t get it right at first: it's ok to get things wrong – it can even be fun while we’re learning."

Social, Emotional and Behavioural Skills

In teaching kindergarten, we spend most of our time on measurable skills - reading, writing, and counting, primarily - and it's easy to forget that the first few grades are absolutely critical in terms of developing the children's emotional skills. Emotional skills include how to interact with each other, with the teaching staff and the school, and especially how to do so when they are experiencing strong emotions they may not entirely understand themselves – and which can become a barrier to their social and academic success. 


I feel that these issues are most easily addressed early in the child's school career: any issues are still relatively overt, because the child has not yet learned to conceal feelings well; few non-constructive coping mechanisms have developed yet; and the children are open to learning coping strategies and tactics that will serve them in later years. 


The teacher's perspective and goals differ significantly from those of a psychologist: while a psychologist is focused on “problem” behaviors, a teacher must address the problems that can arise when relatively “normal” behaviors are triggered in the classroom. Conversely, a teacher should not be expected to - or try to - address serious behavioral problems.


In an international school, where there is an unusually great amount of diversity, there are in some ways more triggers and opportunities for emotional and behavioral problems - which is a good thing, if we hope to teach constructive coping skills early! In addition, from time to time individual children can turn out to be a greater challenge than we had originally anticipated.

As a teacher, I have found it especially rewarding when I can show a child how to deal with confusion, alienation, frustration or anger in more constructive ways – whether the child is simply an over stimulated “normal” child, or a somewhat “hyperactive” one, or even one with an autistic spectrum disorder such as Asperger's.