Research Project: Creative Thinking

Summary:  I really enjoyed watching the activity my classmates participated in with the tic-tac-toe.  They had such unique answers and it seemed they got great practice in not only identifying the different levels of creative thinking but actually creatively thinking, themselves.  The questions seemed to go well, also.  For the first question, Ashley opened up the discussion giving some practical ideas for implementing creative thinking in the classroom.  She wanted to incorporate the "remote associates" into vocabulary lessons and writing activities to bring students further comprehension and an opportunity to develop their creative thinking skills.  Sue had an interesting approach where she would like to read a story with characters solving a problem and have the students come up with their unique solutions to that same problem.  This would be easy to incorporate into a reading class.  Carrie wanted to have students come up with questions/solutions and have students label them with which level of the creative thinking taxonomy period it fell under.  She also wanted the students to use the hats as they brainstormed in the classroom.  Then, they all discussed how to overcome creative roadblocks in the classroom, and Carrie was proposing ideas to involve FUN learning in the classroom as opposed to a classroom "all about business."  The second question about our own creative roadblocks led to a great discussion about we as teachers needing to model stepping outside our comfort zone and even failing and learning from it for our students.  They are afraid of failing, so we have to model how to overcome and learn from failure to help change their mindsets.  Ashley brought up the greatest achievements of mankind experienced failure and we as teachers need to be teaching that outlook/mindset for our students. Carrie asked how we help more shy students step out and not fear their peers' opinions of their creativity, and Sue suggested having the whole group applaud each time someone makes a tiny step in the right direction.  Overall, the activity and discussions were very insightful and I feel we really developed the concept of creative thinking.

Evaluation:  

After completing this project and taking time to examine my submissions in comparison with the rubric, I feel there are definite strengths and weaknesses to be noted.  In terms of my research information, I am very satisfied with what I covered.  I believe that the information was very relevant, in-depth, and engaging for the students in the grad class.  I can say this quite confidently because I feel I gained much understanding from the research I discovered and I believe it did the same for my classmates.  I also felt my handout was well designed and displayed the most important information from my presentation.  I spent a lot of time on the research, the PowerPoint, and the handout, and I feel like the quality of the three reflected such.  I think my activity did a fine job in requiring my classmates to dig deeper into the topic of creative thinking and they began to synthesize and evaluate the material.  I also worked intentionally to create questions that helped my classmates not only synthesize the information but also evaluate and apply what they learned from their research to their own thinking, and I believe I did so.  My aim was to uncover disabling mindsets among my classmates and to help them overcome the limitations in their own life that hinders their creativity.  Through my classmates' discussion, I feel this goal was accomplished.  The one area I wish to improve, however, is my presentation of the unit.  I have not had experience with presenting in front of a camera with no actual students present.  To be honest, this made me feel nervous and definitely pulled me out of my comfort zone.  It is difficult to not be able to see the faces of the audience and gauging my performance on their body language.  I don't think I did poorly, but I do think I definitely have room to improve on my confidence and articulation as I virtually present.  However, on a positive note, I do feel like I definitely showed understanding of the content I was teaching, and I was confident in the information.  My goal is that through the rest of this class, as I have countless opportunities to practice, I will show improvements in my virtual presentation.  With all this being said, I am overall very satisfied with my final product of this project.  I worked very hard, spent a lot of time, and I feel like the quality of my research, PowerPoint, handout, and presentation reflects this.  I believe I deserve an "A" as I followed the rubric as closely as possible and put forth my best effort.

Reflection:

I truly feel a sense of satisfaction after participating in this assignment.  I feel I gained a wealth of insight on a topic about which I had little understanding prior to the research. In my classroom, I tried to include creative opportunities in my English lessons (ie. "Create a solution to this problem") only because I saw it was at the top of the Bloom's Taxonomy pyramid.  However, through analyzing the research, I really gained a new understanding of the growing importance of teaching students creative thinking skills and incorporating them into not some activities, but most.  As I viewed the facts with people referring to creativity as "the new economy," I felt a little fire start in my heart for developing these skills in my own students and helping other teachers to do the same in their classrooms. I just loved the simplicity of creative thinking and learning how it is not nearly as complicated as I once assumed.  This is what I wanted for my classmates to understand the most: Creative thinking skills are not only completely imperative to survive in today's working world, but also, it is not difficult to develop them.  I also loved reading the researchers' work indicating that everyone has creative thinking capacity, the skills just need to be fostered and developed.  This aspect was another overarching concept I wanted my classmates to grasp as well.  Just because someone isn't musically gifted or talented in visual arts, that does NOT mean they aren't creative.  All people are born with creative potential.  As I wrote the question about what mindsets do we, ourselves, have that limit our own creative thinking, I realized that I need to come to terms with a roadblock that I have in my own mind--"what if I fail/what would people think?"  I realized this hinders me in my professional risk-taking because I so aim to please my administrators and coworkers that I can shy away from a new idea that would be a risk.  I think when I really look at the truth, I can see that my administrators and coworkers really appreciate and admire when I take risks in my classroom and with the program I'm developing, even if I "fail."  They would probably view it as admirable that I am trying to be creative and grow my program.  In listening to my classmates, I feel I started to get more ideas about how I could creatively implement this research into my classroom.  I really liked Ashley's idea of using "remote associates" for vocabulary or writing activities, and Sue furthered the KJ method and its use in the classroom.  Overall, I really enjoyed this project and feel it has really opened my mind to a very important topic relative to developing my pedagogy.