Creative Expression

As I explored my interests throughout my four years as an undergraduate, I became increasingly aware of how imperative the creative arts were to my ability to express myself, share my opinions, and work to create change.  I realized that this was something I wanted to share with my students; if I can engage my students’ creativity in the classroom, they will become more comfortable with vulnerability and self-expression, which leads to nuanced and insightful conversations about various curriculum areas.  In order to extend my exploration of this concept, I designed my own major in Creative Expression and Education.  As I stated in my self-designed major proposal, I wished to supplement my education classes with studies in creative writing as well as visual and performing arts because “I hope to acquire the skills that will help me develop lessons that involve all aspects of creative expression, including  music, painting, and dance.  This ensures that every student will be given ample opportunity to develop and showcase their creative strengths while learning the course material.”  Though the transition to remote learning did not allow me to fully realize my dream during this unorthodox year, I still included many components of the creative arts in my lesson planning, including using musical theatre warm ups (tongue twisters) to help teach assonance and consonance, allowing students to write their own mathematics word problems for friends to solve, and including music as a method of teaching and retaining key concepts.  These lessons allow students to get invested in the material by including personal touches; for example, many students wrote word problems that included themselves and their friends, as well as many references to celebrities, games, and characters that they enjoy.  In order to successfully complete these word problems, students had to critically engage with the mathematical concepts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to understand how they could craft a problem and solution with the creative elements they had in mind.

Classroom Community Built through Individual Care

As I began my year of student teaching, the most pressing issue on my mind was the construction of a durable and palpable classroom community in a digital space.  This school year would be unlike any that had come before; students and teachers alike were stepping into the unknown world of remote learning.  As I wrote last fall in a letter to parents, I aimed to prioritize the preservation of “friendships and the classroom culture of belonging, acceptance, and community that teachers always strive to create, by making time for student-to-student interaction, community building exercises, fun learning games, and more.  I want our classroom to be a place where students feel supported in expressing themselves, taking risks, and furthering their exploration of topics that interest them.” In my classroom, students can be vulnerable, ask questions, and admit when they need more help. 

The foundation of my classroom community is mutual respect.  As teachers we have to be very careful with how we show respect in the classroom.  It can be very easy to disrespect or invalidate our students accidentally — if a student is having trouble getting their point across and the lesson is running out of time, if we don’t stop to hear the full story when mediating a conflict between two students because we think we understand what happened, or if we are not thoughtful in the ways in which we instruct students to revise their work, students can feel that their teachers do not understand or respect their lived experiences.  We have to ensure that students are given the time and space to express themselves fully in order to feel valued.  In order to show my students that I respect and value their individual contributions, I get to know them as individuals.  It’s the little things that matter most; if I remember the names of my students’ dogs, remember what they like to eat for lunch each day, remember their favorite video games and subjects in school, then they will remember that I care.  In addition to respecting my students, I have to ensure that I am worthy of my students’ respect.  As author Regie Routman states in her book Teaching Essentials, “if we don’t have positive, trusting relationships with our colleagues and students, not much of any consequence is likely to happen.  On the other hand, when we do have that trust, we can ask for and expect more from our colleagues and students.” This is why it is so critical that I am respected and trusted by my students.  In order to deserve this trust, I strive to be fair in my discipline, strong in my convictions, and open to well-intentioned criticism.  If I listen to students, give reasoning for my actions, and admit when I make a mistake, students will know that I am in their corner and accept my decisions as being in their best interest.

It is also important to the construction of a classroom community that my students show care for each other.  One crucial element of our classroom community is our daily mid-day meeting.  “Mid-day meeting” refers to our daily morning meeting, which was moved from the busy morning to the block immediately after lunch to ensure that students had enough time to answer the daily prompt and engage in discussion with each other.  Mid-day meeting has become my favorite part of the school day; students are always thoughtful in their responses and supportive of their classmates’ opinions.  Mid-day meeting has become a time of laughter and fun for students; several inside jokes have developed as a result of discussion, which I make sure to reference whenever possible throughout the school day.

Teaching to the Times

I also use mid-day meeting as a space for students to discuss and ask questions about the world around them.  In my year of student teaching, students have experienced a global pandemic, a heated presidential election, BLM protests, and the march on the Capitol, among many other historic events.  In fourth grade, my students are old enough to see what is going on around them, but not old enough to understand and make peace with current events by themselves.  I have used mid-day meeting as a way to spark conversation about these topics without controlling the dialogue.  For example, I have used the mid-day meeting prompt “If you were president, what would you do?” to engage students with the political atmosphere of the country without first inserting my own opinions.  As a white educator, I think it is imperative that my students, many of whom come from economically disadvantaged households and identify as people of color, direct the flow of conversation about issues that impact their everyday lives.  Kids have been going through a massive shift over the past year, and they are experiencing all the turmoil that goes along with that.  By giving them space to express their feelings and concerns, as well as ask plenty of questions, I can help them cope with current events while also engaging in culturally sustaining dialogue about their lives and the systems of power that operate throughout them.  As such, when discussing the news, I refrain from giving my own opinions but instead ask open-ended questions that prompt student discussion and inquiry.  I do my best to answer any questions they have and follow up with their concerns as events evolve.  Student inquiry is heightened when I engage them with culturally responsive curriculum by carefully selecting the lens through which I approach the curriculum; for example, I used Encounter by Jane Yolen, a book that not only features characters of color, but directly addresses the colonization of the Americas, as a crucial element of some lessons on theme, and I included discussions of The Great Migration of African Americans, as well as the Long Walk of the Navajo, in discussions about various US regions.

While the backdrop of the pandemic was certainly a unique time to hone this skill, I know that this practice will be applicable throughout my teaching career; student culture and concerns will always evolve and I will need to evolve my teaching with them.  As an educator for students of color, I need to overcome my implicit biases and white privilege in order to understand my students, their cultures, and their relationship (and in many cases, disconnect) with mainstream American society.  I can do this by engaging with my students about their interests, as well as their fears, hopes, and dreams, both through informal discussion and the development of curriculum-based content.