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Teaching and Learning as a Joyful Creative Process with Dr. Shamini Dias, director of the Preparing Future Faculty program at Claremont Graduate University // June 15 – 17, 2021

Kathy Hays

We are honored to welcome Dr. Shamini Dias as our Exchange Host. Dr. Dias works with graduate education students at Claremont Graduate University where she focuses on integrating ideas from complexity science to explore imagination as a creative, adaptive capacity and a critical aspect of human development and leadership. Her research locates teaching and learning in constantly changing, diverse, and inter-connected contexts that define life today. She incorporates this research to help graduate students develop identities as inclusive teachers who strive for educational equity for all learners. In addition to teaching English literature and writing, Dr. Dias is a teaching artist and works with museums, libraries, and schools to develop creativity and communication skills in people of all ages. 

In Chimamanda Adichie’s Danger of a Single Story, she talks about the danger of only looking at one part of the narrative. The same can be said for offering students only one format to share their understanding of information. It’s non-inclusive. Providing students with the sensory experience of incorporating art, role-play, dance, singing, poetry and other activities as a way to express their understanding allows them to connect with others while building a multi-literacy thinking process.    

There are many opportunities to incorporate creative expression in OER Project activities (Draw Your History, Star Comics, Active Accretion, Alphonse the Camel, Our Interconnected World, Traveler Postcards, and the many graphic biographies to name a few). How do you move beyond traditional instructional strategies to allow students the opportunity to creatively share their understanding?  Dr. Dias has shared two documents (see below) with suggestions on how to get started integrating creative learning practices. 

The Exchange will be “Live” June 15- 17 but go ahead and start posting your questions for Dr. Dias in the comments below. You may want to ask how you can incorporate sensory learning into a specific OER Project activity, or to ask for more information on how providing students the opportunity to express their understanding in multiple forms is beneficial. We’d also love to learn from you on strategies you incorporate to allow students to share their knowledge. How do your students respond? 

Whether you are currently incorporate creative expression in your class, or you want to try new strategies, but this is outside your comfort zone, Dr. Dias can answer your questions. Let’s learn from each other! 

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Parents

  • Hi Dr. Dias- This past school year has been a challenge for students and teachers alike.  Many of my students have struggled socially and emotionally. While I am closing out this school year, I have begun to plan for the upcoming school year.  I am going from a hybrid model to fully in-person next year.  Do you have any suggestions for how to bring back the energy of the classroom and help my students rebuild the sense of community that was lost a bit this year? How can I support my students and help them feel comfortable in the classroom after this past year?

  • in reply to Megan Suits

    Hi Megan - what a heartfelt question and something I am sure so many of us are thinking about. 

    This past year was a true radical break with life as we have known it; everything changed with the pandemic; the year also coincided with multiple social upheavals, not just in the United States but globally. As with any crisis, we all entered a kind of triage - being strong, managing, dealing with things to keep life going. In expending this energy and focus, we might not realize the impact of loss and destabilization. Now as we go on to the next thing maybe the most important thing to do is to pause and recognize the road we've travelled and that our students have travelled. And then to make a space and time for it. Also, to recognize that we are not "going back to normal" - we are moving into a "new normal" and the hopeful spirit in me thinks also that here - in this fluid space of an emerging new normal - we can actively find opportunities to alter teaching away from the more harmful effects of the traditional system. 

    In concrete terms - to your question of finding a sense of community and scaffolding returning to the classroom.

    TIME & SPACE. Let's explicitly give ourselves and our students permission to reflect about the past year. I find that creative forms of reflection are safe and healing ways to connect with each other. Letters to our digital selves - where students in the physical classroom write a letter to themselves in the past, their digital selves who did remote learning to express what they will miss, what they are looking forward to; Poems or drawing about "reimagining my classroom" where they can think individually and collaboratively about how teaching and learning could go in a new normal. Take time in the first few weeks for this kind of work.

    Another way to create an on-going space is to create a dedicated wall space in your room for notes, letters, poems, drawings ... all reflecting the past year as well as anticipations of moving forward. Launch it with a dedicated session to make things to put up, and then after that, students can add on their own any time through a few weeks - important to explicitly call attention to it to ensure it remains active - a few minutes each lesson to gallery walk the wall to look for new additions. 

    CO-CREATION OF COMMUNITY. I have always found that inviting students to help build community is in itself a means of seeding community. Make it explicit - we've been through a tough time and now we're in our physical spaces again. How can we create a good and joyful learning space together - what do they feel is important? What might be their ideas for feeling comfortable? - if we first assure them that we acknowledge that adjustment is not easy, that we are willing and invite them to think of the best ideas, students generally are forthcoming. Listening to then and taking action WITH them can build a strong sense of community. 

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  • in reply to Megan Suits

    Hi Megan - what a heartfelt question and something I am sure so many of us are thinking about. 

    This past year was a true radical break with life as we have known it; everything changed with the pandemic; the year also coincided with multiple social upheavals, not just in the United States but globally. As with any crisis, we all entered a kind of triage - being strong, managing, dealing with things to keep life going. In expending this energy and focus, we might not realize the impact of loss and destabilization. Now as we go on to the next thing maybe the most important thing to do is to pause and recognize the road we've travelled and that our students have travelled. And then to make a space and time for it. Also, to recognize that we are not "going back to normal" - we are moving into a "new normal" and the hopeful spirit in me thinks also that here - in this fluid space of an emerging new normal - we can actively find opportunities to alter teaching away from the more harmful effects of the traditional system. 

    In concrete terms - to your question of finding a sense of community and scaffolding returning to the classroom.

    TIME & SPACE. Let's explicitly give ourselves and our students permission to reflect about the past year. I find that creative forms of reflection are safe and healing ways to connect with each other. Letters to our digital selves - where students in the physical classroom write a letter to themselves in the past, their digital selves who did remote learning to express what they will miss, what they are looking forward to; Poems or drawing about "reimagining my classroom" where they can think individually and collaboratively about how teaching and learning could go in a new normal. Take time in the first few weeks for this kind of work.

    Another way to create an on-going space is to create a dedicated wall space in your room for notes, letters, poems, drawings ... all reflecting the past year as well as anticipations of moving forward. Launch it with a dedicated session to make things to put up, and then after that, students can add on their own any time through a few weeks - important to explicitly call attention to it to ensure it remains active - a few minutes each lesson to gallery walk the wall to look for new additions. 

    CO-CREATION OF COMMUNITY. I have always found that inviting students to help build community is in itself a means of seeding community. Make it explicit - we've been through a tough time and now we're in our physical spaces again. How can we create a good and joyful learning space together - what do they feel is important? What might be their ideas for feeling comfortable? - if we first assure them that we acknowledge that adjustment is not easy, that we are willing and invite them to think of the best ideas, students generally are forthcoming. Listening to then and taking action WITH them can build a strong sense of community. 

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