Module 8: Creative "I" - Architecture of Space
James Frye
James Frye
Picture this: sitting in your classroom, watching your students give life to the lesson you spent hours developing the days and weeks prior to this day. Sure, it was a bit risky, but it is playing out beautifully - students are engaged in group work, they are coming up with new and striking perspectives on concepts up for discussion during the lesson, and they are unafraid to question what is considered "popular opinion." The spatial environment where I feel most creative is, yes, right in the middle of my own, student-filled classroom.
This space is engaging because of the students who fill it. Each time I see students problem-solving in my classroom, the all-knowing hand smacks me in the face, and I have a "eureka!" moment where I discover a new and original avenue for curricular creativity. I thrive off of a student-led environment because it revives, in my heart and soul, the passion that led me to pursue creative teaching in the first place. I can see that what I am doing matters (see board above). The space, in relation to students and myself, is the perfect ground for creativity in its versatility for arrangement, and I love it.
The article, "A Room of Their Own" (Mishra), gave me some food for thought regarding my timidity in freely designing my learning environment. As a new teacher, This article empowered me to feel more comfortable about tech implementation and creative lesson planning - like what I am doing does mean something, is backed by research practices, and isn't just a waste of instructional time. For that, I am eternally grateful.
I have rearranged my classroom seating arrangements for different instructional practices a few times during the semester, placing myself and students at different places in the class to attempt to trial new and creative lessons and assessment strategies (see photos above). One of these included a Wagon Wheel, where I had the inside students rotating in two circles of desks facing one another to discuss a Driving Question (I teach on a Project-Based Learning framework). While rotating, students had to find resources to support their stance on the question using their mobile devices, and then post those in addition to their group's own insights on a Padlet/Wallwisher that I had projected (for discussion post-Wagon Wheel). Some teachers might believe that this rearrangement for such an activity is a waste of time, because the assessment of students could be done much more simply in a Socratic Seminar, but student engagement in the discussion is much higher when combined with embodied movement. This article has reinforced my feelings about my curricular risk-taking in my school.
This space is engaging because of the students who fill it. Each time I see students problem-solving in my classroom, the all-knowing hand smacks me in the face, and I have a "eureka!" moment where I discover a new and original avenue for curricular creativity. I thrive off of a student-led environment because it revives, in my heart and soul, the passion that led me to pursue creative teaching in the first place. I can see that what I am doing matters (see board above). The space, in relation to students and myself, is the perfect ground for creativity in its versatility for arrangement, and I love it.
The article, "A Room of Their Own" (Mishra), gave me some food for thought regarding my timidity in freely designing my learning environment. As a new teacher, This article empowered me to feel more comfortable about tech implementation and creative lesson planning - like what I am doing does mean something, is backed by research practices, and isn't just a waste of instructional time. For that, I am eternally grateful.
I have rearranged my classroom seating arrangements for different instructional practices a few times during the semester, placing myself and students at different places in the class to attempt to trial new and creative lessons and assessment strategies (see photos above). One of these included a Wagon Wheel, where I had the inside students rotating in two circles of desks facing one another to discuss a Driving Question (I teach on a Project-Based Learning framework). While rotating, students had to find resources to support their stance on the question using their mobile devices, and then post those in addition to their group's own insights on a Padlet/Wallwisher that I had projected (for discussion post-Wagon Wheel). Some teachers might believe that this rearrangement for such an activity is a waste of time, because the assessment of students could be done much more simply in a Socratic Seminar, but student engagement in the discussion is much higher when combined with embodied movement. This article has reinforced my feelings about my curricular risk-taking in my school.