Creativity comes in many forms as I learned through my CEP 833 class this past semester. We tend to think of creativity as Big-C creativity - big breakthroughs like the invention of sliced bread. But little c-creativity, small changes to simple objects, or noticing new or old things around you and how to appreciate them in different ways can be just as valuable and important. Students (and adults) struggle to accept little-c creativity as creativity. Or they often see creativity as an artistic endeavor rather than a scientific (or mathematical!) endeavor. I sometimes struggle with this as well and don’t often think I am very successful at being creative, but these past two weeks I pushed myself to be creative and I learned a few things about how I can improve my creative muscle. For me, taking a break from the creative task and doing something else that is completely unrelated - a chore, a walk, a shower - helps me to settle my mind and usually when I come back to the creative task I feel better about coming up with new ideas. Another thing that truly helps me to be more creative is to collaborate with others. Last week while trying to come up with an activity based on the “bodily sensations, reproducible patterns'' tool in Root-Bernstein & Root-Berstein (2001) “tools for thinking” I created the Magic card below that represented the overall topic of solving linear equations. This was fairly broad and couldn’t really be used in the sense that a Magic card is (I should mention, Magic the card game is a head to head card game where players attempt to defeat each other by playing cards that make you lose health points or run out of cards to draw). Luckily I was able to collaborate with my husband (and classmate) and my professor and came up with an even better idea for my classroom that would make the Magic card idea even more dynamic. What I would do with my students is give them an equation that they would need to defeat (or solve) and then they would need to create as many cards as needed to complete that task. Typically you would shuffle up, draw a card, and then play a card and this could potentially be problematic when solving linear equations as we want to solve in a specific order, but I also think this could open up really interesting conversations about if and when solving in a specific order does matter. Overall, I think it is important that I don't doubt my creativity. I want to empower and encourage my students' creativity and I think I need to do that for myself as well. Resources:
Misura, M. (July 15, 2022). Magic Card. [Image]. Root-Bernstein, R. S., & Root-Bernstein, M. (2001). Sparks of genius: The thirteen thinking tools of the world's most creative people. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
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AuthorMarissa McGregor, high school math teacher extraordinaire. I love my husband, daughter, and family dearly. Archives
August 2022
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