The problem with today's youth in my experience is we five them to much! We give them the knowledge they need and then more! We leave no room for personal growth. A day did not go by when a student did not come to me and asking me "Mr. Powers I can't do this!" I would always respond "Did you try?" And they would nearly always respond "No." We are ultimately creating a generation who cannot think for itself! The funny thing is it is not entirely our fault! There is an EOC test in which we are expected to give the students the knowledge to pass! In a way, this test determines if we are good or bad teachers. A teacher can give his or her passion and love for the subject everything they got and daily give 200% to their students and still only obtain 60% pass rate on the EOC. We are hindering our students by taking away creativity and problem solving from our students. In which hinders them in the future, who wants to hire an uncreative "I don't know how to do it" person. Let's consider creativity and problem solving as two entities.
Creativity is the ability to express oneself in a way that is unique. This includes the ability to write, draw, and create ideas that express ones individuality. With the EOC, activities I did when I was in grade school can not be done effectively and the learning process is slowly hindered. In my non-EOC class I ran into several problems in which the students did not want to create a creative poster for thier project. It could've been the lack of interest or pure laziness, but we as teachers know our students and these students could not do the math unless they had STEP-by-STEP instruction. It wasn't their laziness that prevented the to create an appeasing poster, it was the ingrainment of years of lost creativity!
What scares me more than lack of creativity is the lack of problem solving. Students are presented a problem in which has many solutions. However, they failed to find even one solution because they could not derive the four steps to problem solving. As they traveled through the grades they are forces to solve problems by the methods of books and teachers who have found that they have found the next best thing (I.E. LATTICE MULTIPLICATION AND MULTIPLY WITH LINES.) what happen to old fashion letting the student figure it out? Tricks and methods are good and necessary, but there needs to be some form of problem solving going on for something to truely stick in the minds of our students.
Implementing creativity and problem solving is hard, I know! I hope as I get into this blog I will be able to show you how I implement both, even in the slightest.
I loved teaching math during my student teaching. I asked the kids questions like, "How do you think you do it?" "How did you come to that solution?". Likewise, I'd have various students explain their reasoning and logic behind their work and solutions. I LOVED having them write stories to go along with the concepts or lessons I taught. So many of them grasped the information in more ways than just the standard and even helped the kids struggling.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, creativity in the youth of this country is at an all time low. However, as teachers, we are given the advantage to be creative ourselves, thus emitting such creativity to our students. If we allow them boundless opportunities, not only will we make a difference, but so will they.
You are so right. Most kids hate to think critically because they don't know how-- they're taught how to fill in bubbles with an A, B, C, or D answer.
ReplyDeleteThis is why we're in the business, dear friend! We will fix it.