May 24th, 2023—What if anything does the word creativity stir in you? Do you relate to the term, or do you shy away? Is creativity given as a gift, or can it be acquired with experience? Are educators creative, or is that attribute only for artists? My answer to these ponderings is that creativity is essential to the craft of teaching. The best educators are inherently creative. There are too many decisions emerging out of the interaction between learner, context, teacher, and content to avoid the power of creativity. It is the lubrication that allows educators to move from one spontaneous moment to the next while remaining true to authenticity and learning outcomes. Creativity is central to my classroom practices. It is transformative for me and the students I teach.
Rick Rubin, music executive and producer for over 40 years, offers this insight on both the importance and embodied nature of creativity, “Our creativity doesn’t come from our ideas. Everything we do has all of ourselves in it. It can have all of ourselves, deeply in it, or it can just be surface level. But either way we are inhabiting the things we are making. The good ones have our soul. They have a piece of us in them” (Rick Rubin, from ONBEING interview, March 16, 2023).
There are several truths about teaching that I notice in his experience of creativity. The first observation is that anyone acting with creativity in the world always shows up fully. As teaching is a continual act of creative adjustment to the lived circumstances of a classroom this means that in all moments educators are fully present to students. The real question I hear is how much of yourself will be present or hidden from learners? This is reminiscent of Parker Palmer’s claim that “we teach who we are”. Do you know the difference for yourself or your learners when you are deeply invested or when you are skimming the surface?
Your students certainly know and they respond to that difference with a corresponding level of commitment to their learning. I know the difference when, for any number of good reasons, I haven’t planned enough, or I start a class distracted by other concerns. I feel flat, on auto-pilot, and not fully capable of accurately judging where to lean into the most productive learning moments. Creativity feels illusive and forced.
I have learned over the years that I have to choose how much of my essence to invest in the moments that make up the day-to-day tasks of teaching. The choice is not easy as it comes with consequences. What if students reject the gifts of learning I’m offering? What if a spontaneous moment of creative adjustment to a lesson goes sideways, leaving the students puzzled and confused? I have experienced both of these consequences in my teaching. And the choice is still mine. I take a deep breath, or structure a moment of small group conversation. This gives me time and space to regroup and reconnect with my inner call to teach. As I re-center I feel my classroom presence deepening and reconnecting with the deep longing of students to learn and grow. This is less a rational and technical move and more a moment of heart-forward teaching. It is embodied and spiritual.
The second truth in Rubin’s observation is equally consequential. Not only are there instructional consequences to shallow teaching, the deepest forms of teaching also have a direct impact on the core essence of the teacher. Rubin notes, “the good ones have our soul”. Deep teaching means deeply investing part of self, the teacher-soul, into instructional spaces and practices. How often have you felt at the end of a productive class session, a time when students are changing and growing, that a part of yourself is still circulating around the classroom? I know this experience, it is rare and unpredictable, but it is real. In those moments I often linger after the students leave, taking longer than usual to gather up my notes, books, and supplies. When the classroom and my energy quiets I walk clockwise around the room, breathing, touching chairs, remembering the learning moments and inviting parts of my inner-self to return. But likely what is happening is that the classroom has a part of my soul, we are moving closer to being one, the room and my calling to teach. Maybe this is what is meant when, as a complement to a great teacher, someone notes, “they are one with the classroom”.
In addition to the physical elements of the classroom, there are the students who might also have pieces of our teacher soul. At least the good ones do according to Rubin. But what does it mean to be one of the good ones as a student? Do you have criteria by which you make this designation? What if all students are the good ones? Is that possible or even warranted? I like to think of goodness as more than an either/or choice; either a good student or not a good one. Instead, I believe that all learners are good ones; some have more of my soul and others have less. The difference is due to a mixture of attributes, some in my control and others not, many in the students’ control, many not. Students I connect with initially don’t always have the greatest impact, and some students who I feel distant from end up deeply embedded in my soul.
The end of a course or during graduation is a chance to say goodbye to both the student and that part of me that they carry forward into the world. Teaching as a creative act becomes less a measure of technical or content expertise and more of a transformation of self and student. A faith that seeds well planted will find the right time and way to bloom, “the good ones have our soul. They have a piece of us in them”. Who are your good ones? Where do you feel in your body the evidence that the lesson is fueled by your soul? What do you look for in the presence and being of a student to gauge the extent to which they will be one of the good ones? What are you committing your soul too?
Kommentare