Creative Teaching for Today's Young People

Creative Teaching Design

My last two posts were Medicine Wheels and Dreamcatchers for a couple of reasons. Of course the Medicine Wheels help me introduce Cornel Pewewardy's masterful use of the Wheel from his own tradition to create a holistic plan for reaching students with multiple intelligences. My other reason is that I also needed a way to introduce my own wheel-like design for a creative plan for interconnected teaching and learning:

I began my blog talking about taking a sunwise journey to discover if I could find ways to become a more creative teacher. I digressed for many posts to plunge right in to strategies for developing listening skills. I digressed for a reason -- as a teacher myself, I don't like theory disconnected from practice, and I wanted to give my readers right off the bat some examples of the kinds of things I had found on my journey.

Now it's time to back up somewhat to fit what we've been talking about into perspective. I feel the need to fit what I'm talking about into the big picture of creative planning. And the big picture for me is my wheel above. It has in it all the components for creative planning that I will talk about in this blog.

I started my blog, you see, with listening skills -- how to focus students' attention -- and this fits into my wheel under the quadrant "Connect", for it is here teacher and student begin an exploration together, by connecting with each other, by connected to previous learning, by connecting to the outside world, etc. I deliberately wanted to connect with you, my reader, from the beginning, by giving you practical, day-to-day tips you could use in your own planning.

Now I want to begin to fit things I talk about into this larger context of Creative Planning for Interconnected Teaching and Learning. So bear with me.

Back in the north on my sunwise journey, I needed to take care that the balance between research and practice would be correct. Predictably, I got stuck. I was stuck for a very long time, going nowhere, writing too much or too little or nothing at all, and there was no wonder or joy to be found in the north, where wisdom resides. Significantly, it was another bitter winter in Minnesota and on evenings and weekends, I burned up the woodpile and all the scrap lumber in the garage as I sat at my desk, got up to stoke the fireplace and stomped back to my chair.

I was stuck in my thinking about all the aspects of creative planning -- there was holism, a balanced curriculum, constructivist planning, grouping arrangements, types of resources, and types of strategies, both for accessing information and reporting information. To be stuck in this theoretical web was not moving me forward in the practical world where I lived and worked with my colleagues.

Artist and fellow teacher Bill Slack (whose art adorns my book, Creative Planning Resource, which makes me very proud) suggested I take a break from words and draw my ideas. Clever man. I needed to know and show what my book about creative planning looked like as well as what my book was going to say.

Bill gave me a drawing of one of his ideas and then, when I drew my own, writer's block was released. My Interconnected Design clarified how all I had gathered might be arranged for creative teaching and learning. It was no little doodle.

Even though the drawing was a mere swirl with pen across paper when I did it, it was intuitively correct, and I could see where all the parts of my journey fit it. To me, at first, it resembled the cross section of a seashell. A colleague said it looked like a propeller or maybe a hubcap; another said it was like a section of the double helix, that spiraling staircase of DNA; a third said it was like some Thing under a microscope from CSI. Certainly not elegant, it was still for me the right graphic for several reasons.

Classically circular, it symbolizes holism. It is not a Medicine Wheel but a spiral, representing a wheel in time, with a gap at the top that is open to past and future. This suits a way of thinking about time for many indigenous people that says we are all moving events within a moving universe, shaped by and shaping our environment, with no starting or ending points.

This same idea was applied to American education by John Dewey as cyclic, recursive or dialectic learning, in which meeting an objective and assessing success are not ends in themselves but remain open-ended. Each educational experience is generated from what went before and generates new experiences, with meaningful ideas growing from and leading to related ideas, questions and problems. Thus was born our time-honored, familiar notion of spiraling curriculum and its companion, spiraling planning, or one coil unwinding into another as we develop a theme.

Another influence on my design is the theory that the number four contributes to harmony and balance, especially when applied to information on wheel analogies. This idea is reflected in my spiral, which is divided into four pie-shaped chambers of time for creatively planning events with and for students.

The design is interconnected, with influences in each event to be understood as flowing back and forth, as do dynamic and evolving aspects of creative planning in real life. In each event, decisions are up to individual teachers about when and how fast to move along. The events are driven by the propeller, if you will, in the center. The four blades represent choices to be made among grouping arrangements, resources and two categories of strategies.

At the core of the design is the whole child, who is surrounded by a balanced curriculum, around both of which all plans for teaching and learning revolved. Looking up through the gap, teachers and learners consider what has gone before and what should come next. The outside rim represents the continuing goal for creative planning: the development of interconnected student behaviors.

Now that I had a visual that represented my ideas as concisely -- if imperfectly -- as I could, I was as close as I could get to a definition of creative planning that might make me a better teacher.

Correction

Here is Cornel Pewewardy's Holistic Circle in its entirety.

Cornel Pewewardy

I have had Medicine Wheels and Dreamcatchers hanging on walls in my home in Minnesota for over twenty years. There is no question in my mind that they guide and protect me.

My last two posts here displayed digital photos I took of some of them, with various Photoshop filters applied that seem to me to bring out the unique energy and power in each of them. Look closely and -- if you care to find it -- you can almost feel the strength in these images.

This wasn’t an idle exercise.

The search I began over a decade ago -- to find ways to become a more creative, effective teacher – was given an enormous boost when I attended a lecture by Cornel Pewewardy (www.hanksville.org/storytellers/pewe/ ) about his “Holistic Circle of Learning” (©Cornel Pewewardy; see below from my book Creative Planning Resource ).

No one has more completely visualized interconnected teaching and learning than has Pewewardy in his “Native American Educational Philosophy, for which he designed the “Holistic Circle” with cardinal directions of the Medicine Wheel as passed down from his Comanche and Kiowa traditions. Pewewardy has explained that his philosophical view “encompasses the education of the whole child with many types of learning styles and teaching styles. A child does not live in multiple worlds but lives in one surrounded by sensations, events and feelings impacting him or her from all sides. A holistic educational philosophy is geared toward teaching the whole child and not just separate pieces of the child.” His words spoke to me forcefully at an important time in my sunwise journey to become a better teacher. His lecture was a turning point for me. I began to research interconnectedness, the world view found in many non-Western cultures.

At the core of Pewewardy’s Holistic Circle is the Self, the child himself/herself in an empowered position of strength within the learning environment. The outer ring represents the global, universal view of the world that shows we are all related and all things are connected, and a middle ring representing social values – Virtue, Significance, Competence and Power -- that are influenced by and have influence on the child.

The first inside ring has the locators on a Medicine Wheel – Mental (at the north, representing winter, fire), Spiritual (at the east, representing spring, earth), Emotional (at the south, representing summer, air), and Physical (at the west, representing autumn, water). (I had a typo in my last post that substituted the word social for spiritual, a major mistake for which I apologize.)

Eight pie-shaped spokes emanating from the Self are Howard Gardner’s (www.pz.harvard.edu/PIs/HG.htm ) original seven multiple intelligences (see Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 1993, and Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century, 1999), with Pewewardy’s own idea for an eighth, “Native American World View,” which balances the wheel and completes the circle.

Pewewardy explains that his addition in 1993 is like Gardner’s own addition in 1996 of a Naturalist intelligence, but Pewewardy’s World View does not apply solely to nature. He defines it as a person’s ability to recognize larger contexts about all things or to “see the big picture.”

Learners with this intelligence consider the larger spectrum in which any task is embedded,connect one idea to another, like to know backgrounds and reasons for doing things, encourage harmony among their peers, and make connections between work and play at school and the outside world. They are interested in large concepts, patterns, biographies, making things work, drawing, stories or mythology, and learn best in informal, social situations; by example and modeling; by sharing and helping each other, through peer tutoring and group problem-solving; and in noncompetitive efforts that foster pride in the group.

This intelligence is a world view that is part of the culture and spirituality of many non-Western peoples -- not only First Nations People but also the African Gaian, the Australian aborigine, the Hmong of southeast Asia -- and seeing the big picture can be brought into public schools without infringing on any student's belief system. It is an awareness of the interconnectedness of all life and does not take the shape of formal religion. As such it globalizes education for all children, not just for those from whose culture it may derive.

Pewewardy points out that attention to this aspect of human existence is noticeably lacking in American public education, but for First Nations People it can not be separated out, just as it can not be for other peoples who share this belief. It is a shame in our public schools that this world view -- for First Nations People and many of our immigrant children -- is ignored. Interconnectedness can be described as the self's interdependent functioning within a larger system, as a way of knowing, as an integrated brain processing. It must be recognized, welcomed and nurtured as such.

 

Medicine Wheels

The Medicine Wheel or "Circle of Life" is a symbol of wholeness and balance for the self that permeates the philosophy and thought of many indigenous peoples in North and South America. Medicine Wheels are carefully and respectfully fashioned in several ways, created on the ground as a circle of stones, or visualized in a person' mind as he or she stands in what is understood to be the center.

No two people find exactly the same thing when studying a Medicine Wheel, and as a reflection of one's personal way of living, it can be seen as a life journey in which all things and ideas are connected, related and welcomed as lessons. Medicine Wheels often are seen as representing points for the four directions, four basic elements, four races, and/or four dimensions of human existence (cognitive, social, emotional and physical). As such, they may represent paths to follow, as in the four directions for the Diné sunwise journey.

Original teaching of the Dakota/Lakota is that balance on the Medicine Wheel is achieved by "traveling the Red Road, when you are in the center, a holistic concept." The Wheel provides a metaphor for discussions concerning holonomy or the duality of existence, in which the independent self is surrounded by larger systems at work in the world, various aspects of which may be represented at points around the perimeter.

Dreamcatchers

I read about dreamcatchers
                                             to a group of kindergarteners

how Ojibway mothers make them
                                            still today for their children

to catch the bad dreams
                                            and let only good dreams in

a little girl raised her hand and said,
                                            “Teacher, can I have one of those?”

So You Want To Do A Play

So you want to do a play...

After spring break, when teachers and students begin to emotionally slide toward planning for the end of school, many of you think of having a grand finale, a play perhaps, or a class revue. Participatory storytelling (discussed in my last post) is one way to involve everyone in the class. That was always a priority of mine, to have all kids participate, especially classes of younger children, and although behind-the-scenes participation is fine, it's still much better if indeed each child can take center stage, however briefly.

I wrote a few plays early in my career to achieve just this egalitarian goal for elementary students, and here are a few things I found out that worked best:

• Adapt a story students already know, so that almost no time is spent on plot development, other than breaking the story down into its consecutive scenes.
• Choose a story with a number and type of characters that fit students who are available to perform. Main characters will need students who can read and perform well; provide for less-proficient students by changing a story to include a multitude of minor characters (farmers, toys, whatever it might be) who perform together as choral readers/reciters.
• Often you can group characters so that rehearsals can involve only a few students at a time. For instance, maybe all those farmers could be one of your reading groups that can rehearse on its own. I did one class revue that was never rehearsed with everyone present, and that certainly made scheduling easier on me as well as on the children. The revue was seamless when finally performed, even though I was the only one involved who knew it in its entirety prior to performance.
• Limit scenes with main characters or give them simpler, shorter lines. It's not fair for a few students to have much more to prepare than the rest of the class.
• Include a narrator to read prose sections, set the scene, and occasionally describe action.
• Use plain English and lines that are short or to the point, except when flowery speeches are just more fun.
• Uses echoes in dialogue as useful repetition for the audience as well as for the actors. Too many times, young actors will mumble, so the audience appreciates such repetition.
• Script some of the dialogue in a pattern for actors -- in which Kim follows Robbie follows Frank, repeated by Kim following Robbie following Frank, etc. -- to cut down on missed cues. Believe me, most audiences never catch on.
• Putting a long line of masking tape on the stage floor for Kim, Robbie and Frank to stand on makes the three nervous youngsters even more comfortable. And once again, the audience usually won't notice.
• Everybody gets makeup. Everybody. Just a little rouge on the cheeks. Your costumes and props may be very very simple, that's perfectly all right, but the slightest touch -- and smell -- of "greasepaint" is what makes a final performance real. And turns youngsters into stars.