A Teacher's Journal: Learning to Figure Skate...

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to best stimulate student thinking. The passionate educator in me wants to believe that open-ended learning experiences where students explore topics and wrestle with interesting questions are the best way to encourage inventive thinking. I often chafe at the restrictions that standardized testing have introduced to my classroom, simultaneously defining and limiting the content that we can study and preventing the detours that inevitably occur before students make independent discoveries.

But I've also grown frustrated with gaps in knowledge that I would consider to be common. Basic facts that I assume children will bring to my classroom are rarely understood by all. Questions testing essentials such as the parts of a sentence, the date that the Declaration of Independence was signed, the three branches of government, and the multiples of 5 are often greeted with blank stares or nervous giggles.

Hoping to find some answers to the cognitive dissonance that stood between what I wanted education to be versus what I knew was essential for success, I asked my digital friends in the Teacher Leaders Network the following question:

Do you think that we should restrict student thinking to ensure that there really are some "basics" that we know that every child will be able to parrot easily? Does an overemphasis on encouraging inventive thinking lead to a range of "knowledge-bases" in classrooms, making instruction inefficient because teachers are constantly forced to back track before they can address their own curriculums?

An even better question: Is the kind of inventive thought that we all hope students will engage in even possible without a solid understanding of foundational knowledge that might be best learned through drill and practice? Does every subject have a collection of "basics" that are essential for simple fluency with the topic that can be taught in a "formulaic" way? What role does forumlaic thinking play in being able to refine and revise new ideas?

Susan Graham---a friend teaching middle schoolers in Virginia---gave me permission to share her genuinely brilliant answer with you:

When answering this question, I always look at figure skating as an analogy. We all like to watch the really good skaters but no one enjoys watching bad figure skating---just like no one enjoys reading bad Haiku poems!

Sometimes in a rush to get the free skate expressive program we forget that:

1. We build on basics: Figure skaters start with skating figures, not triple jumps. We often set expectations for creative thinking without providing sufficient knowledge on which to build. The results are likely to be poor quality, the skater is likely to become frustrated, and improvement is likely to be pure change.

2. Practice is necessary: Good skaters hone their skills to the level of automaticity so they don't have to think "Now which foot should I take off on and which one do I land on?" Skaters quickly learn to simplify their program when they are struggling.

When we push kids to apply skills before they have some level of mastery of "the basics," we just frustrate them. When we don't take time to go back and reteach for mastery, we increase the risk of failure.

3. Creativity involves a lot of failure: Skating looks so nice that it is a shock to watch a skater take a bad fall. We forget that we only watch the most skilled who are performing at their best. It takes a tough coach and a detached parent to watch a skater hit the ice and the wall time after time and say, "Get up. Get over it. Try again."

We may be unwilling to ask this of students and even it we are, parents may not support it. We want happy well rounded kids and may not really want them to pay the price of creativity.

4. Creativity comes after proficiency and requires focus and commitment: Even the most proficient skater may lack the passion and focus to put their skating first and the coach or parent ought to honor the skater's decision about how far he or she choses to go. It may be unrealistic to expect every child to care about being creative and expressive.

We have an obligation to equip our students with the skills to discover their own passion and creative outlet. We need to provide the tools, to show our students the possibilities, to leave the door open and to encourage them to go through it.

But we frustrate them and ourselves if we insist that everyone ought to attempt a free skate program when some of them just want to get to the other side of the ice to pursue their own goals. They may see something on the other side that we missed. Maybe their passion is to drive the Zamboni with skill and accuracy.

We ought to honor that direction rather than try to push every child out on the ice in a costume.

Posted by William Ferriter at 07:29 PM on April 21, 2007 | Leave Feedback

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