Creative Instinct

Getting the kids to think creatively is one of my weird focuses/obsessions here, and I pursue it at the expense of other skills I could be teaching, such as... I don't know, reading. Or grammar. Or vocabulary.

I'm sure this vexes my counterpart to no end, such as today when I hijacked the lesson on using modal verbs in interrogative and negative sentences ("I must go to school. Must I go to school? I musn't go to school.") and made them write dialogues instead. Usually I keep my subversive creativity-building activities to the first five minutes of class, when we write journal entries and I make fun of the kids for all writing the same answers.

"Imagine you want to study in the USA. Write one unique reason why."

After 20 kids told me that they want to go to the US to make new friends and to learn English, we had a nice little discussion about what the word "unique" means. Then, as usual, one student raised her hand and gave a bizarre answer on which I lavished praise, and which my counterpart thought was almost abnormal enough to be wrong.

"I want to study in America to see what kinds of grass grow there."

I was delighted with this response. Creativity! Perhaps I'm mistaking non sequiturs for creative answers, but it's a start. The problem is that in the rest of their classes, they're taught that there's one right answer to every question. So one day I brought a sock to the 10th grade class and asked them what they could do with it.

"We can wear it on our feet when it is cold."

Right. So I explained the purpose of the activity, which was that they should brainstorm as many ideas as possible and not worry about whether or not the idea is stupid. I tied it around my eyes as a blindfold. I mimed putting a rock in it and hitting a thief in the face with it.

"We can wear it on our hands when it is cold."

Improvement.

"We can put nuts in it and hang them to dry."

Better! Thus concludes a satisfying brainstorm activity. It really is a skill they all have, but it's the process of tapping into it that takes all the patience. It's one of those things that has to be addressed before you start cracking open the new-agey, no-walls classroom activity books that Peace Corps gave us. This is something I didn't yet know when I began my long and distinguished teaching career in September 2006.

"Okay kids, we have the names of 15 animals on the blackboard. Pretend to be one of these animals, and then write answers to the questions on the board! For example, what do you eat? What are you afraid of? Where do you live?"

Twenty minutes later...

"A bear lives in the wood." "Fish eat smaller fish." "Cat is afraid of a dog."

Then I'd go home and stomp on my copy of "Grammar Games & Exercises." The next lesson would be spent reading and rereading a text about a Doberman that was rescued by a firefighter, and there was really nothing I could do about it, what with my track record of failed alternatives.

No more! Well... occasionally more. But less often! Now that my students are familiar with the antics of their crazy American teacher-- speaking in English all the freaking time, playing games, cowering in the corner as they throw paper at each other-- they have a better understanding of what the purpose of these activities are.

(The secret purpose is that they will do better in the Writing Olympics contest next March, but of course I have the goal of improving their trajectories in life next to my heart, too)

Back to that lesson which I hijacked today... It was the 6th grade class, which is the most delightful little collection of hyper-talented language learners that I've seen in Georgia-- I had them last year, too, when they started English. Their assignment was to write group sketches about an English lesson at which something happens, and then I gave them pieces of paper on which said event was written. Among the events were a dog entering the room, the teachers falling asleep, and President Saakashvili coming to the lesson. Perhaps it was a bit of a stretch to have one group write a sketch about if it started raining apples at the English lesson; they traded for a new event.

It was this last group that had the most creative presentation. Scene: They're at the English lesson, and the flowers on the windowsill start speaking English. Action! The students said that the flower asked them questions in English, and they wrote the answers on the blackboard. Then the bell rang and the lesson was over. They said goodbye to the flower, who assigned them some homework, and left. End scene.

I gave them some stickers.