Rainy Days

"Let my teaching fall on you like rain; let my speech settle like dew. Let my words fall like rain on tender grass, like gentle showers on young plants."

-Deuteronomy 32:2-

Students are not robots.  Students are not mindless emotion.  Students are not stupid, or hateful, or incapable.  There are many things students are not.  The important thing to think about as educators is what they are.  Students are tomorrow and the next day, the next year even.  Students are opportunities to create.  We should have tremendous faith in our students.  Students should have the chance to genuinely learn for themselves.  Everyone has something to say about today's standards, today's educators, today's parents, but the important thing is that we take what we have in front of us, and do our very best.  We as educators, parents, friends, and leaders must let our teaching fall like rain.  Rain is not sleet.  It doesn't cut into the ground, freezing what it touches in its tracks.  Rain is not boiling.  It doesn't burn what it touches with fiery anger.  Rain is not poisonous.  Rain is pure, natural, honest, replenishing, and necessary to live.  We must not force knowledge on students.  Rather, we should present facts, be open for questions, fill up students with things they need.  We must let them feel refreshed.  Rain implies thirst.  We must create schools where students thirst for knowledge and don't do it because it is required.  We must exemplify our faith without having to say it out loud in a world that doesn't allow us to.  We must see that students are unique and need different amounts of rain at different times in different ways.  Some kids need a storm to see, and others need a mist to flourish.  We can't get caught up in what is required of us.  When it comes down to it, kids need rain.  And we must give it.  We must give education as a beautiful gift in the best way we can, with all of the effort we can.  Let it rain.

I'd let her program my computer.

     I'm sure you've heard about those with beautiful minds.  Maybe you've seen the movie, "A Beautiful Mind."  But do you know that all of our minds are beautiful? From the day we're born, even.  Here's a wonderful little story about someone I met who reminded me of that.  Maybe you'll see it too.
     This weekend, I worked with students in the area where I live at a program that introduces them to the idea of careers in science and math.  This particular event was focused on computer science.  Students from all over came to see computer programs for the first time, watch a 3D printer work, and gain understanding about the basic to advanced running of a computer.
     The station I worked at was about basic programming commands.  One girl came in, sat down, introduced herself, and began working at the 12-level game.  I sat nearby, ready to help if she needed it, but eager to let her plug away at it herself until she really needed me.  I had been helping students all day.
     Anyway, she made it astonishingly fast to the 7th level, and all she asked me for was a little bit of guidance.  I simply placed my finger on the computer screen and kept up with where the commands she had used were taking her.  That's ALL she needed.  Nothing more.
     She continued to work, eventually getting to levels that taught her about loops and repeating commands.  She made it through an entire game that I couldn't have even figured out without a basic programming class I took freshman year of college.
     Here's the kicker.  Guess how old she was.  11?  12?  No, the little girl was only 6.  Take a moment to absorb that.  A 6 year old was rivaling the knowledge of most of the children and college students there.  Her brain is beautiful.  With brains as amazing as that, why do we try to restrict and take away students' power of thought?  We let them dance and sing and imagine that they're in a land far away until the day we sit them down in a desk and indoctrinate them for upwards of 15 years.  By the time they reach high school, they've forgotten what it's like to question the authority of a teacher.
     That's why we have to make a change.  Instead of sitting teenagers down in a classroom and making them work problem after problem, we have to let them hear about engineering, build their own masterpieces with math, tell their teachers they're wrong and back it up, and just live.  We have to let them smile when they see that there's so much more out there for them than 34 homework problems due the next day.  

The Inauguration of Imagination

     As is tradition, I'm going to make the inauguration of my blog posts for Educreation123 of the introductory sort.  This blog is going to have one main purpose:  to serve as a demonstration of the movement to infuse creativity into education.  Now, I don't mean to add an art class or two, or since modern times, bring art back.  I mean to completely alter the way most think about how our students should be educated.  I mean going so far as to make mathematical thinking a creative process.  Because I think it's possible.
     Maybe it's hard to get where I'm coming from.  Take, for example, a moment in your educational past, a time when a teacher told you there was only one correct answer, that was the way it is, and that's all there was to it.  I'm quite confident you can think of a time like that.  "Well, yes,"  you say, "There was a time like that, but it really wasn't a bad thing;  sometimes there is only one correct answer."  However, while you are true on the surface, students most definitely don't need to be taught that way.  Because, to them, 2+2 isn't 4 yet.  America wasn't founded in 1776 because they've never heard that story, and the pH level of an acid really means nothing to them.  They are the discoverers of tomorrow:  why teach them in a way that doesn't give them freedom to imagine and question? 
     So,  essentially, I'm going to post quite often about various ideas, provide you with bountiful resources, and help everyone who shares this interest (and everyone who doesn't)  work towards a more imaginative tomorrow.  I'm not saying it won't be hard, but what's life without a little challenge?  Bring it on.