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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

  • Shamini, I could not help but think of this thread as I listened to the story on NPR this morning. While the story focuses on the struggle to get treatment for the Havana Syndrome, the treatment that seemed to have the greatest impact was art. You hear this so often with PTSD, Parkinson's and other brain injuries. Music therapy is a growing field and the results have been extremely positive. If art and creativity is having such big impact in these areas, doesn't it make sense to incorporate into our learning on a more consistent basis? The traditional way of learning leaves behind a lot of incredibly capable students. How do we change the stigma that creativity is not learning? 

Reply

  • Shamini, I could not help but think of this thread as I listened to the story on NPR this morning. While the story focuses on the struggle to get treatment for the Havana Syndrome, the treatment that seemed to have the greatest impact was art. You hear this so often with PTSD, Parkinson's and other brain injuries. Music therapy is a growing field and the results have been extremely positive. If art and creativity is having such big impact in these areas, doesn't it make sense to incorporate into our learning on a more consistent basis? The traditional way of learning leaves behind a lot of incredibly capable students. How do we change the stigma that creativity is not learning? 

Children
  • in reply to Kathy Hays

    Kathy - I could not agree more! Creativity is the brain energized and open to learning.

    All of these arts-based therapies have very positive outcomes. Why indeed are they not more present in all classrooms? 

    We need creativity in ALL our teaching-learning spaces and not just as therapy. One issue is that Creativity (with the capital C) has been made into something overly specialized, that only qualified artists can do. But we just have to look at people who play to see creativity alive and well in diverse spaces. That sense of play and art can enter our classrooms in small and large ways. 

    Traditional schooling (which I distinguish from "education") does unfortunately see creativity as restricted to "creative subjects" like art and music classes in the traditional silo-ing of disciplines. This keeps it out of the vision of other teachers. 

    The most effective way to change this is through practice -in the spirit in which Sherry Atta in this forum asked, how do we edge in or take baby steps? There is such power in many teachers doing small moves. More power in a collaboration of teachers working together to bring arts and creativity into their subject areas within a school. 

     Kennedy Arts Center has excellent resources for teachers that can be filtered by level.  

    I'm curious about what other educators see as the barriers to bringing art and play into their classrooms. And I am curious also about what art and play educators in this forum are already using. I invite everyone here to share their concerns and examples.

  • in reply to SHAMINI Dias

    I wonder if possible barriers are

    1) Extra time in planning or gathering materials?

    2) Others seeing creative expression as "play" and thus not serious learning or demonstration of learning?

    3) Hesitancy in putting a grade onto creative work?

    Here's my thinking about #3 above. Can't we assess and "grade" creative work as a demonstraion of innoviting thinking wihout putting a score on the quality or subjectivity of "pretty"?

    We are supposed to encourage "critical thinking" and have ways to assess that?

    How can we make administrators or other teachers see value in trying to infuse and assess creative expression as a kind of necessary thinking?

    How can we get more support for that?

  • in reply to Donnetta Elsasser

    WOW! so many fabulous questions and possibilities ...what does everyone else think? let's add to this thread and we'll consolidate what we have. 

  • in reply to Donnetta Elsasser

    I think you've definitely identified some obstacles, Donnetta. However, as many of us know, after a teacher does them once, they sort of live forever! 

    I wanted to share a video I made a couple years ago - mostly as a way to bring "fun" into the classroom, but reflecting on this conversation, I thought this video would be relevant.

    This actually was an assessment for Big History Project Lesson 3.0 - How Do Stars Form? The students were given some supplies and about 15 minutes to design and then act out the process of star formation with their group....without speaking!

    I think their joy is apparent in this video. I wonder what you think about doing something like this as an assessment...

  • in reply to Erik Christensen

    Love it. The students were so into it, and clearly had thought very hard about how to explain something - in 15 minutes. They had to retrieve information to solve a problem, recall what they had learned; organize it into a "correct" sequence that was coherent and logical (having to show it physically really tests this), And as - a traditional quiz cannot do - they had to communicate, collaborate, be creative. They also had fun and engaged with each other. The learning will go deeper. There was joy.

    This is assessment that actually can be graded and will hit the standards for the subject AND was engaging and joyful and creative.Imagine other assessments that did the work of traditional assessments and brought these additional elements of play, joy, creativity, and connection in.

    Thanks for sharing Eric. So inspiring!