Creativity and Origniality

Kids have always been encouraged to show their creativity and ingenuity. We are encouraged to be original in our thinking, or "outside the box" as some people might say. There are even classes devoted to being expressing your creativity: music and art, to name a few. But they are always the ones getting cut from the budget first if a school is running out of funds. How do we expect our students to be creative and inventive if we do not allow them to do it in the class by keeping more of the narrow focused classes like math and science that have specific equations to find the right answer. Although a writing class is usually left after cuts, I think that is not enough to allow a child to be creative. That is why it is good to have extra-curriculars to be able to help a kid feel creative. I have always been terrible at math, but pretty good at music, and I think this is because I don't have a set of laws and theories to follow, I can just go wherever the music takes me, as corny as that sounds. And if it weren't for my music being my creative outlet I don't think I could have concentrated in the more instructional classes such as math and science.

Role Playing

Many people learn from doing, role playing is no exception in teaching. I have found from experience that teachers usually learn more while doing than just learning. Although you can not learn everything from role-playing, such as the hard facts of teaching, but you can learn from observing and taking part in the role of being a teacher. That is why mostly more experienced teachers are able to be better teachers. They have been in the role as a teacher and have made mistakes or good judgements and are able to learn from those experiences. In class on Monday night, a few weeks back now, we were taught in a different way from the other Monday night lecturese. We were able to learn by all participating in a activity to voice our concerns of a certain cut-back in a school. I think that I learned a lot more by being involved in that discussion because I was interacting with people instead of sitting in an uncomfortable desk listening to a professor drone on, no offense, about a topic that could be more interesting if I were able to be apart of topic. Although most people do not learn the same way, I believe that it is beneficial to have certain aspects of learning how to become, not only a teacher, but a good teacher to have students interact with each other in big or small group activities.