Inventiveness

Encouraging inventiveness and imagination: give kids choices!!!

Freedom within certain boundaries is the key to encouraging inventiveness and creativity. Because people have different learning styles, likes/dislikes, and personalities, their creative energy is going to manifest itself in different ways and forms. One way to encourage creativity in students is by giving them choices: allowing students to pursue topics that are especially interesting to them. In my own experience as a student, I can testify that it is pretty well impossible to complete a project/assignment creatively if I am not interested in or in some way connected to the material.

Some may target modern culture such as evolving technology as the creativity-depleting element of today's learning and teaching. In my opinion, this is not the main issue. As long as teachers are providing students with many new and different opportunities to learn and choose their learning, cultural advancements (such as technology) will only serve as helpful reinforcements. Sure, if a teacher puts on a video for 45 minutes of every class period (as my economics teacher did in high school), "technology" is probably going to inhibit the students' creativity because for 45 minutes every day, they will be functioning at a low level of cognitive thinking (probably knowledge, maybe comprehension, if the teacher is lucky). Similarly, lecturing for an entire class period is most likely going to have the same affect on students.

While there are many factors that can influence the way students do or do not exhibit creativity in a classroom setting, I think the factor that ultimately determines this choice. Creativity is part of who we are as human beings; we've been "creating things" since our existence. The real question becomes: what conditions are best suitable for one to exercise creativity? As teachers, it is our duty to provide as many outlets for students' creativity as we can.