My Educational Guru

Who is Ilana?

Hi everyone, my name is Ilana Jacobson! How does one sum up their educational experience? And how does that translate into the desire of becoming a teacher? I am going to try my best to give you a summary around my decision of becoming a teacher. As one could say, I was not the smartest cookie in elementary and middle school due to some educational setbacks throughout the years. It all started when I had speech intervention beginning in first grade. I would always get pulled out of class to go into a small room and work on my speaking. Speech intervention ended after elementary school; however, I continued having reading intervention until eighth grade. All the interventions stopped after middle school and I was finally able to be seen as an equal to my classmates in high school but being in the background taught me a lot. I was taken away from my classmates during times of the school day where creativity and play were offered, which does not occur often. I now understand why it happened, but at the time, I was not amused with this idea of missing the fun. There were some positives to these interventions which included effective learning skills, how to be proactive, the importance of study (including strategy and tips), and how to manage my time wisely to achieve my goals. This being said, there was still something missing, creativity! During my college years, I have been able to learn about all the different theorists and educational influencers in the world today, one in particular being Sir Ken Robinson. Robinson, plus my past and present experiences, is why I want to become a teacher!

Sir Ken Robinson

Who is Sir Ken Robinson? Robinson is an internationally recognized speaker from the United Kingdom. One of his most famous talks, the one I will be discussing in this blog, is Do Schools Kill Creativity? Simple answer, yes! Robinson led the development and realization of inputting more creativity in the classroom. A large part of his philosophy revolved around taking creativity and teaching children that it is okay to be wrong. With creativity, there are rarely any wrong answers because YOU are the one creating the piece. One of my favorite lines from his TEDTalk is “if you’re not prepared of being wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original” (Robinson). Educational systems now are corrupting the minds of little children, convincing them that there are consistent answers for every question being asked. Robinson also looks at creativity as an intelligence divided into three separate parts. The first being it’s diverse; as in thinking visually, experiencing different sounds, and kinesthetically. The second part has to do with the dynamics. Creativity, in itself, is one big interactive experience. It comes through the interaction of “different disciplinary ways of seeing things” (Robinson). The third and final part of this intelligence is the idea of being distinct, adopting new conceptions or human ecology/capacity. To summarize the ideas of Robinson, he wants creativity to help see children for who they are and most importantly, educate the WHOLE being in order to help them make something of it. Think of the educational experience as a never ending puzzle.

Connecting Pieces Together

From an early age, you and I will start off with multiple “puzzle” pieces, not knowing where or how to connect them into your life. Obviously, I don’t who will be reading this, so I am going to continue on with my puzzle. As I progressed through elementary, middle, and high school, I was able to add pieces to my puzzle. These pieces could have included educational strategies, teacher influences, or experiences that influenced my education. Moving onto college, I have slowly been adding pieces to this puzzle as I learn more and more about how to actually become a teacher. Now comes to the philosophy of my teaching, which is one of the most important puzzle pieces. Sir Ken Robinson is not the only philosopher that I see connect into my educational philosophy but is rather one that I connect with the most. Personally, creativity influenced my educational experience in a way that I cannot even explain. I’ll be honest with you all, I am a terrible test taker. My grades always depended on the extra stuff, which teachers always considered less important than big assessments. However, that “extra stuff” was and still influences me greatly. You may be asking yourself, what the heck are “extra stuff”? I think of this stuff to be projects, papers, and other non-assessment coursework. Projects, connecting into the creativity of Sir Ken Robinson, were always my best and most enjoyable aspects of school. I want children to be able to experience this as well as tap into their creativity, because everyone has a creative mind somewhere. Creativity also helps apply the content of the curriculum better as you are relating and dealing with it for more time than taking a 50 minute test. Moving back to the idea of the puzzle, I can connect the ideas of past experiences with the ideas learned currently. The puzzle pieces intertwine connecting everything into a beautiful creation, which can be expanded on, adding more pieces, as I experience more learning, begin in the classroom, and see the effect everything has on my future students. Robinson says educate the WHOLE student, which can be done through the never ending puzzle created by the educator themselves, because in the end, educators will have a major influence on their student, and it is their job to show them how school can be FUN!

Video to Robinson’s TEDTalk

https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en

Resources:

Robinson, S. K. (2006). Do schools kill creativity? TED Talk: Ideas worth spreading. Retrieved September 8, 2022, from https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity