What is it about?
The creative act of writing has the power to push light into dark places. This paper explores the benefits writing has on a learner inside and outside of the classroom. It is a meditation on the impact allowing creativity into the classroom has. The experience of teaching and living a life outside the classroom is blended together and chronicled in this article in order to reflect on why creativity should be a central part of a student's experience.
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Why is it important?
Blending personal and professional experiences, this article is a reminder that allowing creativity into a classroom setting empowers and emboldens an individual both as a student and as a person. In educational systems that often prioritize standardized testing and rote methods of writing, often because of forces outside of an educator's control, finding pockets of time where you can allow your students creative freedom is invaluable.
Perspectives
This article came from a deeply personal place. As a student, I floundered and was lost in the middle of the pack during middle and high school. I had no love for education or the process of learning. It was not until my third year in college that a professor showed me what education is. What it means to learn. Largely, this was because he encouraged me to be creative, to tackle analyzing a piece of literature in my own way. I carried the encouragement he gave me into my own career as a teacher and to this day, I try and inspire my students to let their inner creative self come out. As I continue to teach and work with students, new activities from professional development courses come and go, new ways of assessing and collecting data and students change like coastal winds, but that desire to foster my students creativity remains. It is the central focus from which I drive all of my decisions as a teacher. That is why I chose to articulate my feelings about its importance in this article.
Jake Roche
The Queens School of Inquiry
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Writing as a Means of Finding Meaning, January 2025, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004716728_017.
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