Inspiring Inventiveness and Creativity

Sir Robinson was right when he said, "Our public schools focus on educating students out of creativity." I do believe that creativity and adaptability, not facts and statistics, are the keys to a successful future in today's world. After all, nearly all the information we will need to know as adults has not been discovered yet...
Our entire educational structure needs to be revamped if we truly wish to focus on producing the smartest and most competitive adults we can. Robinson focused on the fact that the world education is experiencing "academic inflation." Therefore, it is merely a race to see who can digest and regurgitate the most facts in a lifetime. However, if everyone is able to do that at a great capacity, employers and such will be looking for people who are different-people who are creative, adaptable, and those who can not only apply but those who can expand on the facts they know.
These new-age skills are not only not being focused on in our schools, they are hardly being taught at all. In order to prepare world-ready adults, an entirely new outlook for education must be put into place.
You may then ask, "well, how do we do that?" Truthfully, I do not know. For a national change, I can imagine it would take years of planning and a great sum of government money (which our country does not possess) to do so.
However, every teacher can make a difference-even if it is to just their students. We can choose to apply these analytical and creative processes into our curriculum and into they way we structure our classroom. We can ask students to do the factual, right-wrong, assignments-but then we can ask them to think deeper: to find something related or to journal about their confusions or insights into how the information may be used. We can ask them to demonstrate the higher levels of understanding and creativity by allowing them to structure their own assignments and show how they would apply the knowledge. Who knows, maybe your students have a new, and probably more engaging way of studying and applying factual subjects such as math.
I believe that if the teacher values creativity they can find a way to integrate it into their classroom, no matter how factual or structured their subject area is.

Role Play Exercises

I believe role playing activities can be affective in classrooms for students of the appropriate age level. It does help the students become emotionally and more intellectually engaged in the material they are working with. However, the situations need to be carefully planned out so that they are successful. In our recent role play, the groups needed to be smaller or there needed to be a larger time allotted so that they discussion got to a deeper level and more people could have participated.
I do believe that students retain information longer when they emotionally invested in the material. However, a teacher needs to realize that the students can't be invested in everything because they would never be able to cover all the topics required in the allotted time.
I do believe it is important for students to be knowledgeable about the factual parts of the material (which could be presented in a lecture prior to the role play). I believe that to truly debate a topic well, you need to have the facts to support your arguement. I do believe that lecture is helpful because all the necessary points are covered and explained, whereas in a role play, things can be misinterpreted based on the specific situations that they students are acting out.
I believe that listening tendencies of school boards and teacher groups is based on the beliefs of each different school district. I guess, as a whole nation, we actually tend to listen to those who are seeing/speaking for the underachieving students-whether they support them or not. I believe this because our current legislation is focused on the improvement of the lower percentiles of our student population and not the upper percentiles.

Passion in Teaching

In sixth grade, I had a wonderful art teacher. I used to think I was not very good at making things, I had a hard time creating pieces from scratch. However, when I got into my sixth grade art class, that all changed. He didn't ask me, or the other students, to come up with ideas from scratch for watercolor, clay, etc. Rather, he offered a theme or idea which allowed students, like myself, to hone in on a direction and idea. Once I had some guidance, it was much easier for me to create art that was totally of my own inspiration because I was given a more specific idea to brainstorm on.
He was very passionate about his job and through his passion, and desire to pass this passion on, he had adapted his teaching to reach all students.
I think the main thing I learned about teaching with passion from him is that it's not just about the teacher expressing their passion by what you say and do, but more about allowing students the opportunity to experience and be involved in that same passion and feel the inspiration that comes from it.