When I began to contemplate the way that I would design my course, there was a lot of brainstorming and bad ideas that came before I ever completed a rough draft. After I had decided on the idea to design a creativity crash course that I would present in an elementary school, the next step for me was getting approval for my project. I met with Professor Halverson and her TA's to discuss the ideas I had. After getting the thumbs up from them I dove into my design process.
Choosing my audience was an important part of the design for me. I didn't want to just go to any random classroom and present but wanted it to be a meaningful experience that could have a lasting impact for me and the students. Deciding which elementary school to go to actually came very naturally for me, however, as I thought back on my elementary school experience. I remembered that in 6th grade, our class curriculum covered a wide span of ancient history which paralleled much of what we learned in class this semester. So I reached out to my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Walker, and presented my project proposal to her. She happily approved the project and invited me to present it to her classroom on December 8, 2016. I collaborated with Mrs. Walker to better organize my content so it would parallel their classroom curriculum and provide a meaningful experience her students.
In addition to deciding what elementary class I would design this course for, I also considered the influence I could have on a wider audience of teachers. For this reason I chose to submit my project online in the form of a blog. My hope is that teachers who might be looking for ideas will come across my blog and use my presentation as a model for their history teaching methodology.
As I began to design the content of my course, I had a hard time choosing what to discuss. We went over so much information in our semester class but I didn't want to overwhelm the students with too much information. As I began searching through the textbook for ideas of what to teach, I was reminded about the acronym FLOW which represents the necessary characteristics of a thriving civilization. As the textbook discuses early on, a new mindset in humans accompanied the development of civilization which sparked creativity, "lifted their spirits and expanded their visions" (p. 1). After being reminded about that, I decided that the characteristics of FLOW would provide the foundation for my discussion and content. I divided these four characteristics among the 4 ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China, showing the students how each civilization displayed one particular key characteristic outlined in that model. I discussed "food in abundance" in Mesopotamia, "labor specialization" in Egypt, "order and organization of society" in India, and "writing system" in China. It was very meaningful to discuss these with the students and it was particularly fun because they have studied many of these civilizations and had A LOT to contribute to the discussion in class.
After designing the content I wanted to teach, I began designing my creativity challenges. I wanted these challenges to relate to the content I taught as well as course content we covered in the semester. My real purpose, however, was to engage students in a creative thinking process that would get them excited about creative thinking. The first project I designed followed my discussion about labor specialization in Egypt. We discussed the different roles in society such as farmer, craftsman, doctor, lawyer, and even talked about the Priests and Pharaoh. After discussing Pharaoh, I presented them with their first creative challenge, "Building a Tomb for Pharaoh," using only certain materials I had provided for them in a mystery bag. I provided 13 unique materials which they had to use entirely to create a memorable masterpiece Pharaoh could rest in. They each worked in groups of 6-7. It was fascinating to see how the students responded and I'll write more about that in my blog post about challenge #1. As I mentioned earlier, however, each material I gave to them represented a particular key term from our history course and has been described in the appropriate section.
The purpose of my second challenge was to help students express their creativity to create a new form of communication and understand the critical role transferring knowledge plays in creativity. I gave each group a “mystery message” which they needed to communicate to another group without using written or spoken English. All other mediums of communication such as representative symbols, song, dance, etc.… were accepted. In congruence with this challenge, I taught them about creativity in India and China. As they participate in this creativity challenge it was my hope that they would recognize the importance of clear communication and explore creative methods to forming an accurate medium to convey an important message. It turned out to be much more difficult than I had imagined it being, but it led us into a great discussion about the importance of failure in creativity which ended the presentation in a very powerful way. I of course couldn't come to class without having treats, so I brought some milk chocolate bars to show my appreciation for their participation. I was thrilled to have great feedback not only from the students, but from Mrs. Walker.
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