Creativity in classrooms Essay

The reason why student complain of boredom and lack of variety in the classroom is, because of the lack of engagement, inability to make choices, and the lack of voice in the classroom. The biggest reason most students does not engage in classroom activity is because of the criticism they get from their teachers when they try to express their feels about something. Most teachers tend to focus more on quantity instead of quality, they focus more on how it’s being said instead of what’s been said. An evidence that supports this can be seen in the book Rethinking School- Teaching Standard English in our School by Linda Christensen pg 130. â€Å"When more attention is paid to the way something is written or said than to what is said, students’ words and thoughts become devalued. Student learn to be silent, to give as few words as possible for the teacher criticism. † Meaning, due to the criticism of teacher students tend to talk less to avoid been judged. In this this evidence one can clearly see that the criticism of teachers has a very big impact on us students in such a way that it makes us feel like what we have said is wrong, or bad, or stupid; due to this feels we tend to be less engaging in the class activity to avoid been judged. This problem can be avoided if teachers know when to correct, and how to correct a student mistake. When correcting a student don’t make them feel stupid or dumb for saying what they said but instead, let them know that you understand what they trying to say, and if you want to correct them, say something like, Here is another way to say what you just said, or you could say something like instead of using that vocab you could say this instead. By doing this, you are making the student feel more comfortable in making mistakes and also creating an atmosphere of growth in the classroom. Another reason students complain of boredom is due to the inability to make choices. Students are been told what to do and how to do it instead of allowing us to explore our interests. When we explore our interests, we are given an opportunity to bring in a unique set of perception and abilities that can be cultivated to expand our understanding. Different students have different ways of learning. For example, if we are giving a project in class to write an essay about a particular topic, some students will feel strong about writing an essay because they love writing essays, while other students wouldn’t feel strong because writing an essay isn’t their strong area. Instead of writing an essay they probably want to give a presentation, write a poem, or do other things and still answer the question which is the project. However, we are not been giving the privilege to do so because we are been told what to do and how how we are expected to do it. This method isn’t healthy for our education because those teachers are eliminating our ability to make choices which puts a limitation to our creativity or in some cases kill our creativity because we are being told indirectly our uniqueness isn’t important. This problem can be stopped/avoided by letting us do what we are more comfortable with, and by letting us explore different ways of ways of answering questions instead of enforcing us to answer the question the same way as everyone else,because we can’t grow from doing the same thing all the time. Lastly, another reason why students complain of boredom in PSA is due to the lack of voice in the classroom. The biggest reason students feel silenced is because, most classrooms tend to be more teacher-centered instead of student-centered. Most teachers love to do all the talking in the classroom which is unhealthy for the education of the students because it stifles the capacity of students to be active learners. Another reason why students lack voice in the classroom is due to some teachers inability to welcome/deal with controversies. Some teachers tend to avoid controversial issues such as racism, sexism, abuse, because they are not comfortable in sharing their own opinions on these issues with students. The inability of those teachers welcoming controversial topic and saying their opinion doesn’t only affect the student, but it also affects the teacher in such a way that they wouldn’t have the confidence in critiquing their own curriculum and method. Students voice can be regained by making them feel comfortable in sharing their ideas,and also creating an atmosphere of freedom by letting conflict and discussion unfold in classrooms. By doing this, students wouldn’t only learn to find their voice, they will also learn to be tolerance of others opinion and beliefs. Student boredom is a very big issue not only in Highschool, but also in college because at one point in time every students would have experienced either the lack of engagement, inability to make choices, or the lack of voice in the classroom. These problems can all be avoided by the simply creating an atmosphere of freedom in the classroom, meaning making students comfortable in making mistakes, nurturing our creativity by making us explore our interests, and making us comfortable in sharing our own opinion about controversial issues. By doing this, it will increase students maturity by making them tolerance of others beliefs and opinion, and it also makes us deeper inquirers because our ability to respond to controversial issues will make us voracious.