Creativity and Teaching

The first years of my teaching, I taught in what would be termed a difficult county...low wealth, discipline issues, very limited resources, and little administrative support within  the school.  Everything I learned about teaching I really learned in these three years.  I started teaching English in 1993, and I was, of course, over the moon excited about teaching.  This is what I have wanted to do for a long time, and I was going to spread some culture to the young ones, and thus save another generation.  What I learned is that I needed another education beyond the education that I received at East Carolina University.  After all, I was going to be the first college graduate in my immediate family, I had some troubles growing up, and I did not have the world handed to me.  I could relate.

My first year was less than desirable.  All of the things that I had thought up in my mind to impart knowledge to an eager young generation was tested by students, other teachers and ultimately myself.  I soon learned that students didn't really care about Longfellow, or the students cared more about Usher than the "Fall of the House of Usher."  There were no resources.  When I asked where were the novel sets for students, I got blank stares.  No Huck Finn.  No Hester Prynne.  No Jay Gatsby. Oh dear! Not to mention, I was in a school where traditional values of teaching were revered.  Effectiveness was measured by how quiet your class was and how well they took notes and spit them back at you on a test.  I was young.  I was crazy, and I was scared as hell! I was teaching American Literature to a group of students whose claim to fame was driving new teachers from the school, and they were successful on many counts. There are many horror stories of my first year:

• The day the screen fell from the ceiling and knocked me in the head just as Cassandra and Corey re-entered the room from their latest trip to the Principal's office. This was all they needed to tear up 6th period.  That day, they won.
• The day that we were reading The Crucible, and a chorus of students kept asking, "what page did you say? Could you repeat the page number- I had it written on the board.  I stood in the middle of the room and shouted, "If you all would shut the hell up, you would know what page we were on." The class was quiet.  I longed to be like Ms. Coplin down the hall whose students hung on her every word.
• The day  that I intervened between a girl and a boy who were going to fight over the fact that the boy had stolen her hair weave (allegedly). This ended with me  on the ground, bleeding from my chin, and the young lady finding her hair piece in the hood of her sweat jacket.
• The day that Wesley explained to the class that "negligent" was a lady's nightgown.

This was a long first year, and I left for the summer not with plans to find another position at a closer high school to my home, but to regroup and come up with a gameplan to win.  I had to work a second job that summer, but in my spare time, I totally revamped my lessons and thought about how to reach children and what they needed and didn't need, and what I did wrong.  I was reflecting when reflecting wasn't cool.  By the way, I had all of my evaluations from the AP in the spring in a span of a week, so there was no feedback there.  What I decided is that I had a gift and a passion and the students had a need.  I wasn't meeting their needs through the endless worksheets that the school supported or the transparency packs that came with book adoptions.  There was no learning going on with answering mindless questions in the back of the book after reading a story.  We were humans who had to come together for 55 minutes each day and do something. My job was to connect students, and to this day, I ask, why are we doing __________________.  Why are we reading Oedipus? Why are we studying The Great Depression? and if I cannot give a relevant answer, then I can't teach it.  Of course, I always could.

I learned that we needed to interact. I had not really learned teaching strategies in college, so I went on about redesigning my classroom.  It was not an easy job and not always successful . Early on in my second year a group of young boys in 5th period decided that they would mimic the Budweiser commercial and chant Bud. Weis. Er from various parts of the room during my lesson. Then the next day, they had decided to do a chorus of farm animal noises.  "Bahh" came from the corner.  Then a "mooooo" from the center of the room, a cluck, a snort, etc.  This time I was ready, I calmly turned around and said, "Now who is going to be the Jackass?" and carried on with my lesson. No more noises and I won. Sarcasm was a tool for me.

When we approached our study of The Crucible, I was ready.  We were reading this because 1) It was in the curriculum and the book  and 2) more importantly, it is a study of human nature, and haven't we all been there when something goes too far or we tell an untruth that takes on a life of its own?  When we had finished half of the play, I broke the students into groups (they were shocked).  I did not have a worksheet. I did not have questions that were recall.  I did not have a transparency.  Each group had a card with a word: Revenge, Honesty, Understanding, Responsibility. We spent a few minutes talking about what these words meant in life, then I told the groups to be able to explain how this abstract idea revealed itself in the play so far, and give me details (take that Common Core!) from the play to support.  My classroom came alive!  Students were talking and writing and looking back at the play.  They were arguing, coming to conclusions, debating....it was beautiful.  The Advanced Placement teacher next door thought that I was just a young idiot, but what I saw was pure magic.  These kids were making connections to what we had done in class and they were enjoying it. My creativity did not stop there.  I set about to designing ways that students could dig into the content.  What about writing.  By the way, when I asked these students to write a definition paper after reading, these were some of the best I had ever gotten. I had made it possible for us to have discourse about learning.  I looked for ways that students could contrast ideas from work to work:  How was Phoenix Jackson like Granny Weatherall? We were bound by the stories in the book, so I had to keep the ideas flowing.

I say all of this to make the point that creativity is a cornerstone of good teaching.  I work with some teachers now who say all the time:  I had to cut this project out because of the curriculum, or I can't be creative because we have these PLCs, and You want me to teach like everybody else, or This new curriculum has taken any creativity that I have about teaching and thrown it out the window. With these assessments, I barely have time to cover the curriculum.  Now, I am told what I have to teach.  Newsflash: We have always been told what to teach- it is called the curriculum.  Never have I seen a curriculum that tells you how to teach anything. I have an ongoing debate with some of my colleagues about the PLC (Professional Learning Communities) idea- another blog for another time. In essence the teachers say that the PLCs keep them from teaching the way that they want to teach.  I immediately reply that they are likely PLC-ing incorrectly. The team does not dictate how one does something but analyzes the effectiveness of how a lesson or a series of lessons are taught. If your methodology is showing little improvement in students' understanding compared to the other team members, then you have an obligation  to change your approach.

So, let's dwell on assessment a little here not too much because I am cooking up quite a post about assessment.  I hear over and over that with the new tests, I don't have time to do what I used to do.  What are we doing in class all day? Going over released test items? That is a colossal waste of time. When I taught English I and English II, I did not dwell on the test (Well, I did until I saw the light!).  I still had my Renaissance Fair and my African Feast. I still had students do Multiple Intelligences Projects to help explain the thematic ideas in All Quiet on the Western Front. We still did group work where we looked at motivation of characters and how the setting (physical environment) influences our actions. My students did as well or often better on the tests than the classes who were memorizing a litany of literary terms or who were answering questions that look like the test. What they were doing was actively participating in developing theme statements, looking at irony, setting, and the structure of the story.  

The Common Core asks us to infuse literacy throughout all content areas (AMEN!), and how that looks is different for everyone. Weren't good, effective teachers already doing this? What teacher would not find having students read and extract information and discuss one of the highest forms of engagement?  Isn't that how we were trained? Don't we want students to find information and use it in some way? My wish is that we stop blaming initiatives (flavor of the month syndrome, which is another blog post about how this is a myth), curriculum, and assessments and get to teaching kids who are inquisitive, connected to media where there are sure to be stories that parallel our curriculum, who may not be able to fully name and explain all the conflicts in To Kill a Mockingbird, but who may understand discrimination and the results of those conflicts in their own lives. I wax poetic here, an I have completely ignored Science and Math and other technical subjects.  I am reminded of a quote in the movie Shadowlands about the great CS Lewis.  At one point, the character portrayed by Anthony Hopkins says, "We read to know we are not alone."  I think we teach and learn to know that we are not alone. See, none of this stuff is about draining creativity.  In reality, it is about empowering teachers to be more creative, and develop ways to relate to humans in this ever shrinking, complex world.

Accountability (One of Four in Focus on Education Series)

"Accountability" is a term that we hear  lot in education.  Teachers want to hold students accountable; teachers want parents to be accountable' administrators want to hold teachers accountable, but few want to dig in to accountability.  The fact is accountability and holding people accountable takes a lot of energy and introspection. For when someone feels we are not being accountable, our job is to show that we indeed are or work to make sure that we take responsibility for whatever, and work to make sure that we are indeed being accountable for our work.

I will be the first to tell you that educators have a very difficult job, and we are asked to do a lot, and teachers are the nucleus of any educational institution. However, as educators we are quick to throw up smoke screens to explain why X,Y, or Z was not successful.  We are all guilty at some point of the pitfalls to avoid taking responsibility for learning and teaching: The parents are not engaged, the administration expects too much, there are just not enough resources, I do not get paid what I am worth (does anybody?), that all takes time that I do not have, the students are disrespectful, the state mandates make it impossible for me to teach...just let me teach and leave me alone!!!  I am not suggesting here that these are not at times valid arguments and these happen daily in schools. What we have to do as educators is find ways to do our work and be effective despite some of these things, and we need to spend our energy overcoming these and not dwelling on them as excuses for not being effective.

Do not get me wrong! I am blessed to work in a school with extremely talented teachers who care and are fantastic at what they do, and most of them are effective, but all of them (and me) have been guilty of throwing up these screens to avoid accountability. In fact, I have been known to throw them up for the teacher in conferences or post evaluation sessions, and I could kick myself when I do it.  The fact of the matter is that we are at schools to teach and make sure that students learn. I believe that all students can learn.  They may not meet all of the goals or every expectation that you have, but they should grow from the day you have them until the last day you teach them. (I know, there is a teacher out there now saying that if the student came to school, then I could teach him or her.  She is NEVER here!)  I do not want to minimize the problems that some students have, and I know that there are some that have attendance issues or other issues that are far from our control, but what I am talking about is reaching the kids we do have and working to ensure that these students are learning.

Accountability for teachers is interesting.  Teachers are in the business of accountability.  We check progress, we grade papers to give feedback, we get undone when kids don't do homework or classwork (as we should if the work is legitimate- later post), but yet many of us do not want to be held accountable because we take issue with the accountability measures.  Well, we have to measure effectiveness, and I am the first to admit that there are many ways, both qualitative and quantitative to measure effectiveness. We do tend to hone in on the quantitative measurement logically as this is something we can point to as a measurement,  I do fault school leadership generally in this arena as we have placed a great deal on test scores and academic readiness data, etc., however, these are important-- so much so that I will blog about assessment data separately. For now, it is important for us to pay attention to all kinds of data and hold ourselves accountable.  I hear all the time: We have to teach to the test, these state exams are ruining my classroom, let me just TEACH, and leave me alone.

We as educators are always drawing comparisons between ourselves and other professions, when many of us have not been in other professions and the world of education is different than the world of business.  Believe me, accountability is the cornerstone of any successful business or profession.  I read recently on a Facebook comment about teaching: "Do doctors get bonuses when they have more healthy patients or get penalized when their patients are sick?"  I am sure that if a doctor has repeated cases of sick patients, his business will drop off, and if  he or she has multiple patients die (heaven forbid), then there will be accountability.  If a lawyer loses case after case, then likely no one will ask for services.  On the other side, if a lawyer wins many cases, then he or she may have more business than they can handle, and there is a bonus of sorts with more business. I am not saying that I am a proponent of merit pay or bonus, etc., but what I am saying is that if year after year a teacher, an administrator, a doctor, a nurse, a pilot, or anybody continues to be ineffective with no intervention or no signs of improvement, he or she should not continue to practice. Ask most people and they will tell you that there are little things in their jobs that are not the best or "useless."  Accountability is not one of those; the method of accountability may be. One of the issues in schools is that ineffective educators (teachers, counselors, administrators) continue to be ineffective and there is little accountability, so the cycle continues. As an administrator and as a teacher, I say bring on the measurements of accountability because if I am doing what I should be doing daily, yearly, I will get results....and I have.  When I get bad results, I reflect back on that to make them better next time.  I cannot lay back and make 3000 excuses as to why my results were not what they should be, but I have to find ways to change the results.  The great Steve Jobs, said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."  Each day that I am an educator I am inventing [creating] the results because I am focused on the how and not the why.

I am not saying that all teachers feel this way, but what I am saying is that the philosophy is becoming more pervasive in the school, but this makes sense as we hear more about testing and testing tied to performance, etc., etc.  When we as a school come to this mentality or allow a group to bring the school down with this philosophy, then we have begun a steep decline. These are big stakes and they are not all right, but here is the advice that I give to new teachers or to teachers who are willing to listen. Teach the standards, that is what we have always been asked to do. Use your creativity to reach multiple learners as long as you are teaching the curriculum.  Take risks and don't worry about the tests.  The tests will take care of themselves.  These are measurements that we administer at the end of a course or a year, but you will already know what your kids can do.  I like the advice that one of our Instructional coaches gave to a group of our STEM teachers recently: The test is 20-25% of the grade, do not make it become 100%. The most dynamic classrooms that I have been in are those where the test is not mentioned daily.  Believe me, students do not need practice on how to bubble an answer sheet.  They need all the rich lessons that teachers say they want to teach but cannot.  I am here to say you can and you should. The kids deserve all that you have.  Let your drive be their learning and not your accountability measure.

Focus on Education Series

I spend a lot of time in the educational world both working in a school and working with my own children as they navigate the through their own education.  This series will focus on several key blogs about some of the biggest debated issues in education:

• Accountability:  This is a hotly contested and often discussed idea.  "Accountability" is a huge word that we often misunderstand and throw about way too often in education.  This post will focus on external accountability and internal accountability and why we need it.
• Creativity: Why teachers feel that they can no longer be creative, and why creativity is a MUST in this complex learning environment.
• Assessment: This is the hottest topic in education today, and everybody has an opinion about this.  I will delve into formative assessments, summative assessments and even high stakes assessment and discuss why we need assessment.
• Teacher Evaluation: Having been assessed as a teacher and as an assessor of teachers, I will discuss this controversial process, and discuss how evaluation can be a good thing.
• Instructional Technology: This topic is near and dear to my heart. For those of you who follow me on Twitter (@adhsapi) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/athenshs).

I will go ahead and disclaim that these blogs may make teachers irate or may inspire. I am not going to say that these ideas are true for all, but they are based on my experiences and beliefs, and I welcome your comments!

Writing as Therapy

So, since I was in college, I have been writing, and some of the crap is pretty good.  I learned so much about writing when I began teaching Creative Writing, and as I reflect that was the best time that I had as a teacher: when I was able to work with students and watch them write and see them grow and sometimes see students who didn't know they could write leearn to express themselves through writing.  Most of my writing is steeped in the experiences that I had growing up, which is of course the first rle of writing: "Write what you know."  There is a delicate balance between writing what you know and writing universally.  the challenge as a writer is to take those things that are common and translate them to relate to everybody, so that when someone reads about my Granny, he or she is reading about their grandmother; when someone reads about my daddy, she sees the strain and struggle between herself and her father.  That is the trick to writing, I think! from time to time, I will share some of my writing here.  Feel free to offer feedback-- even if you think it sucks!  At any rate, here is a poem that I wrote recently after I pondered why I have really begun to take to country music, and I really realized that I had been living in a country song most of my life-- on a serious note, they tell a story, and these stories I hope come through my writing.  On this poem, I thought about the biggest events that shaped my ife, and they all boiled down to my mama and daddy,a nd I really see them reflecting on them to be like Tammy Wynette and Johnny Cash- my mama standing by her man, and my daddy singing the Fulsom Prison Blues, though daddy didn't go to prison.  So, here is the poem that I etched out to remember mama and daddy:

Johnny Cash and Tammy Wynette

those summer nights when a rustle

of breeze was a thirty second relief from

the heat of the day— The air at midnight as thick as

noon’s—fireflies’ light mingles with the harsh

glow of my daddy’s Marlboro, its brightness rising

and falling with each breath—



there he sits, mad as hell again, long arms, black hair and eyes that

melt into the darkness—old t-shirt, blue jeans and

black leather shoes—he slouched in that old lawn chair

reminds me of a harsh Johnny Cash song—my daddy walking

that line between sin and glory and between love and hate,

he puffs on his cigarette as if it’s his last before a firing squad

and sucks on his one bad tooth, as he watches the night, lord knows

what thoughts swirl in his mind.



My mama watches from the window, the coldness in her thunders

and rivals the summer’s heat. She watches my daddy, slouched in that

chair. She sees the end creeping and circling like that

ring of smoke above his head. She sees the raindrops that fall—

he oblivious to them, and she hoping this will be the next baptism that will

save their souls—it’s the myth that she dreamed—a generation bore.



There they are this history between them and reality bigger than the

sky that he contemplates and that she prays to and that the smoke

from the tip of that cigarette fades into--he walks in that ring of fire,

and she summons her strength to stand there by her man one more time.