Creative Teaching Makes School Meaningful

411 Words2 Pages
Bob Jeffrey’s article revolves around the idea of innovative and creative teaching that benefits students in numerous ways. He explains that the CLASP program (European Commission funded our Creative Learning and Student Perspectives) ,based in the UK, is a program that helped schools develop creative teaching and learning practices defined as involving innovation, ownership, control and relevance for students in the classroom. (Jeffrey, 401) Jeffrey explains that innovation is when something new is created, a new skill mastered, insight gained, knowledge acquired, etc. Ownership of knowledge is when the students learn for his/herself, which is internalized more than just jotting down notes that the teacher has made. Creative teaching benefits the a student by giving them control of his/her own learning, causing them to be self motivated and not just given task oriented exercises but causing them to look deeper to uncover answers. Jeffrey describes relevance as making the material meaningful and important to students’ lives so they are able to apply the information personally and not as an abstract concept. For students to apply innovation, ownership, control, and relevance in their learning practices, educators have to instill positive creative learning techniques. Jeffrey’s research shows that students benefited from educators that “drew out students’ ideas and celebrated them, invested time in discussion and critique, acted spontaneously, worked alongside imported agents such as artists and workshop leaders as well as joining in the learning processes stimulated by them and they exhibited pleasure from innovatory action.”(Jeffrey, 406) In my school history I feel that creative teaching was lacking. It was difficult for me to grasp concepts when they had no meaningful application to my life. I kept questioning, “Why do I have to learn this?” and “how
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