Teaching Creativity?

Photo from: GreekGods.info

Teaching creativity is something that I once thought was an oxymoron. The idea of teaching someone to generate original ideas seemed like something out of science fiction where someone would have to unlock the hidden potential of their brain and run the risk of becoming an all-powerful psychopath. However, in my youth, I overestimated originality. This lead to my interest in adaptation. Watching things that I loved in my childhood evolve into new masterpieces, near unrecognizable trash, or something in between has been a constant fascination ever since I was able to recognize mythological references in other works after a summer class about Greek Gods in fifth grade. As I grew, I realized that it was less about teaching creativity and more about getting the best from people. It became clear in third grade that the most creative endeavors were heavily inspired by things from the past. Ideas come from everywhere: things we love that we want to emulate or put our spin on, things we hate that had an interesting idea that went underused, etc. The part that makes something interesting is having an outlet or a form, and the further I got into college, the more my language arts education widened my understanding of these paths.

In the classroom, students are just learning different ways to be understood. They often don't know what fleshes out a character or paints a scene. Just saying 'describe it' does nothing. It produces wordiness and clutter. It becomes about creating a structure that the students can use to create different and unique visions of their own. Thus, whike observing a freshman high school English class, I was tasked to make a creative writing lesson from O. Henry's “The Gift of the Magi.” The task was to change the point of view while keeping the story's message. I was given the old assignment, which as a series of questions that looked like they were composed on an old typewriter. After pairing down some essential story elements and learning that the students were working with simile and metaphor, I came up with the following:

Creative Writing: Jim's Day

The story, “The Gift of the Magi,” is presented from Della's point of view. The reader goes through the day with her and lives her experiences, but the reader doesn't see any of Jim's actions.

Assignment: In groups of 3 or 4, describe Jim's Day from after he leaves Della that morning to the start of the gift exchange that night. You can put him in any situation as long as the event doesn't wind up contradicting the original ending. Your story should be about 4 paragraphs.

Pre-Writing:

1) Where and when does the story take place? Keep these in mind when thinking up your events.

_________________________________________________________________

2) List things Jim might have done during his day. Do you want to include any irony in these events? Remember, there are two things he must do by the end of the story.

1. __________________________________________________ #_____
2. __________________________________________________ #_____
3. __________________________________________________ #_____
4. __________________________________________________ #_____

Writing (sequence):

3) Start with putting Jim in a setting. Is he just leaving the apartment? Is he already on the street? Is he at work? Is he somewhere else? ____________________________________________

4) How is Jim feeling during each of the events? Write some notes in the column next to the event.

5) Does your original arrangement work? If not use the side # spaces to reorder the events.

Writing (Details): O. Henry uses a lot of indirect characterization in the original story. This involves using sensory details to describe a way someone acts and shows who they are as a person.

6) List some traits Jim has: ____________________________

7) List some actions a person with those traits might do? What parts of your story might they fit in?

1. ________________________________________________ #_____
2. ________________________________________________ #_____
3. ________________________________________________ #_____
4. ________________________________________________ #_____

8) Similes and metaphors can be used to add flavor to pieces of writing. List some things you can compare Jim to and how they compare: __________________________

9) End with a sentence that shows Jim's reaction to arriving home and seeing Della.

______________________________________________________________

Now grab some Chromebooks, and start writing your story about Jim's day!

During the lesson, the first issue came up when I tried to get the students into groups. While trying to create some different groups I had them count off and then collect into groups. The groups came out too large. This left me to reassemble the groups and wasted around five minutes of class time that could have been better used. After getting the students to quiet down, I went straight to doing the assignment. This left the students either ahead or behind and require me to both repeat the instruction and stall students who got too far ahead. Both of these solutions are simple ones: count better and preview the material, respectively.

The biggest issue came from the inclusion of metaphor and simile. I had been assured that the students had studied the concepts. A few students asked me about how to compare Jim to something but most just ignored it. Despite this, many of the students came up with solid pieces of figurative language. Most of the class took the framework in entirely different directions with one using a flashback to illustrate how Jim received the watch from his dying father. However, there were three groups that just didn't succeed at the assignment. Thus, when I wanted to revise the task, I thought of these students. How could I spark their creativity? What do I give them to think about? I came up with a mind mapping activity involving describing Jim to help start the process. Then using those descriptive words or actions to think up new items as displayed to the right. This is similar to the Concept of Definition Word Maps in Richard T. Vacca, Jo Anne Vacca, and Maryann Mraz's Content Area Reading eleventh edition (p. 258). In that book the concept word map helps "clarify the meaning of unknown words." Here however, it shows the connection between known concepts that the student might not have been able to see before.

This start would help but in my own class, I'd like to take it further. The inclusion of a short research component could help tremendously. Something as simple as looking up the usual activities in the early 1900s could easily give students ideas. The students in that class already had access to Chromebooks, so it seems like a simple optional step. If I give this lesson in the future it is one that I will certainly include.