Creativity!

I'm a nerd.

...let's start there.

You can ask my sisters, you can ask anyone who went to high school with me and pretty much most of the people who met me post H.S. years. They will all confirm this fact. I'm a hopeless dork. I like to think I'm a "cool nerd," if such a thing exists. You know, not the kind that smells funny or has big round glasses (though in high school I did have a pair!), isn't any good at sports and gets sick a lot; I'm the kind of nerd who looks up random factoids on Google, or gets a kick out of listening to educational rap songs about nutrition. Still none of these qualities detract from my social skills (right?) thus, the "cool" part.

Some people say I'm curious...I just hope their refering to my curiosity as opposed to being a strange person. ;) In any case, as I've grown up, I've learned to love my nerdy self and delight in finding other, equaly "curious" people to befriend. Really, I believe that this is the root of my interest in education: curiosity about the world and a love for sharing what I discover.

So my nerdy inclinations have lead me to discover a vocation I never dreamed I would pursue, and, as I've found is true of most things, the more I learn about education, the more interesting it becomes. I don't "know" a lot at the moment, all of my opinions are based purely on experience and observation; but many times that is the best way to form opinons, right?

I spent the last two hours airing my opinions talking to my mom (a teacher). We talked about how much both of us enjoy sharing those learning moments with students and the importance of creativity in schools, which there seems to be so little of it here in Spain. I can't speak for the U.S. but certainly if I compare with my own childhood, these kids lack anything resembling creativitiy!

Maybe because my mom was a teacher or maybe because she insited that "only boring people are bored," I was always encouraged to explore, do, create and discover. I remember at about age six I was conviced that I was going to build a robot and for the next few hours, I rummaged through the garage for old scraps. An old pink tub with some leftover pipe and wheels (maybe?), was the best I could do.

My sister and I would never tire of building forts from couch cushions, lawn chairs and cardboard boxes. And when we were older we used to play with my mom's old Underwood typewriter and make up outrageous news articles or write formal letters to the president. I was never told these activities were worthless, or unimportant and I certainly wasn't given the option of watching TV. My mom refused to buy us a Nintendo either. (thank you, mom) I should also say that I always felt encouraged to be creative at school. I can't think of a time I was castigated for creativity.

In Spanish schools, however, I see the kids formed into perfect copy machienes. It's so bad that a fifth grader is very likely to ask you if he should use his pen or pencil to take notes of anything you've pointed out and writen on the board! They're so used to copying EVERYTHING that coming up with some original idea is the most impossible task. And many times, even the smallest inkling of originality is squelched. A second grader, last year, had his work torn up in his face because he had colored the bunny on the coloring page blue--"Rabbits aren't BLUE!"

In the midst of this conversation with my mom, Kristen sent me the link to this video: Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity Video on TED.com (I'm telling you, we have some kind of nerdy connection because this couldn't be more relavant.) This is Sir Ken Robinson, author and international advisor on education, speaking at the TED conference about the need to emphasize creativity in schools. He calls for a revolution in the world education system to move away from the traditional, cerebral, approach to learning and take more into account what we know about intelligence; we experience learning in all the ways we experience the world: emotionally, physically, visually, etc.

My favorite quote: "Creativity is as important now in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status." Think about that.