Dear HLT Readers,

Welcome to the April issue of HLT. First some Pilgrims news… We hope you have been able to tap into the Erasmus+ grants, and that the reply you are waiting for will be positive. This will mean we will be able to welcome you in Canterbury in the summer, 2015. But remember there are also courses in the autumn, 2015, and in spring, 2016, and special group offers and deals if your school or teachers’ association need a tailored course. Just get in touch with us.

Also there are other opportunities for us to meet; there will be the IATEFL Conference in Manchester in April, the APPI Conference in Portugal in May, 24th BETA-IATEFL Conference in Sofia, Bulgaria, in June, and above all the Pilgrims Conference in Portonovo, Italy, end of August. / For more on the latter read Pilgrims News/. Please look up Pilgrims trainers if you attend any of these events. We will be ever so happy to chat to you, brainstorm and make plans.

As for this issue, I am happy to say that it is a very special one, very close to my heart. Some time ago teachers, teacher trainers and authors who believe in creativity, and are concerned that there is not enough creativity in ELT, have decided to join forces. We set up a group which you can join at

http://thecreativitygroup.weebly.com/group-members.html

We also animated a very special event at IATEFL Harrogate 2014

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/sessionreport/15041/creativity-symposium

This issue of HLT is exclusively devoted to creativity and is hosted by two creativity devotees, Alan Maley and Chaz Pugliese, who I suppose need no special introduction. They have animated the C for Creativity Movement and the contributions to this issue of HLT. The plan is that after this special issue of HLT on creativity, we will start a special regular ‘Creativity’ feature in HLT. Chaz Pugliese will be looking after this new section. This is how he describes it: The column will offer a mix and an array of different articles, including exercises, not necessarily in alphabetical order. This will be something along the lines of A-Z of Creativity, like A for Attitude, B for Books on the subject. C for Challenge, D for Dictation…

And now over to Alan Maley and Chaz Pugliese to introduce this issue of HLT.

Happy reading

Hania Kryszewska
HLT Editor
e-mail: hania.kryszewska@pilgrims.co.uk

Bringing Creative, Critical and Compassionate Thinking into ELT

This issue of HLT is dedicated to Creativity in Language Teaching, and, by extension, creativity in education. We are deeply grateful to HLT and its editor, Hania Kryszewska, for giving us a voice and letting use the space. But why creativity?

Creativity is at the heart of learning. But it is not usually at the heart of education. Institutionalized education depends on control, measurement and conformity. Creativity is anathema to systems based on control. However much they claim to be promoting creativity, institutions are dependent on a control paradigm, and thus resistant to anything which threatens that control. Creativity will always have a hard time of it. Like education in general, foreign language teaching, with some notable exceptions, rates rather low on creativity. Teaching is, by its very nature, a conservative profession. The institutionalization of teaching into regular classroom hours encourages the development of relatively comfortable routines. Examinations further encourage conformity. And, in the present global economy, market forces tend to discourage publishers from taking creative risks.

But we believe that perhaps another, even more fundamental, question must be asked: What is education for? In 1967 Ronald Reagan just after he became the governor of California, famously declared that taxpayers shouldn’t ‘be subsidizing intellectual curiosity’ and that ‘there are certain intellectual luxuries that perhaps we could do without’. He then promptly moved on to slash spending for the University of California system and its eclectic palette of instruction. In a similar vein, and much earlier, Benjamin Franklin had expressed disdain for people who spent too much time in lecture halls. Fast forward to President Obama and his dismissive remark about art history degrees, just last year. He has even called for a rating system that would take into account how reliably colleges place their graduates into high-paying jobs. So this is what education has been reduced to. It is about making students secure places in top universities, become great engineers, doctors. It’s the law of the market, they say. What we say is that there is much more to education than just getting a young man/woman ready for the market. We believe education is about helping a student grow and develop into a fuller human being, as Bruner used to say. Certainly, students shouldn’t be blind to the employment landscape. However, our view is that it is fundamentally wrong and misleading to insist on this super-utilitarian view of education, where all that seems to matter are test scores and grades, and accountability. We believe that a freer education, schools which value creativity and liberate the students from the shackles of grades and of the dictatorship of the correct answer - these schools are priceless. Ask yourself: what is the most transformative educational experience you’ve ever had? And was this a luxury?

So, in this special issue we have gathered together what we hope will be a stimulating and thought-provoking selection of articles and other contributions in support of a more creative take on language education, and a challenge to the current utilitarian, measurement-obsessed ethos of education..

The Major Articles raise some important issues. Alan Maley’s article, Less is More: The Power of Constraints emphasises the importance of constraints in developing creativity and offers some practical examples. The role of performance in teacher development is presented in Luke Prodromou’s Performance: a Tool for Creative Teacher Development. Peter Lutzker focusses on the way literature and creative writing can be combined in his article: The Complementary Roles of Literature and Creative Writing in Foreign Language Learning. The way creative writing can bring teachers to greater self-understanding is at the centre of Jane Spiro’s article, Writing the Self: Creative Writing and the Search for Authenticity. There is also a series of eight interconnected articles on Creativity for Change in Language Education which appeared in English Teaching Professional in 2014. We thank ETp for graciously allowing us to re-print them here.

In the Short Articles, the emphasis is on more creative ways of working. David Heathfield offers ideas on implementing story-telling in Storytelling and Creative Response Tasks. In From Genesis to Exodus: The Life-story of an Idea, Tessa Woodward anatomises the way new ideas can be generated and developed. Danny Norrington-Davies explains how teaching grammar can be made more meaningful by engaging students in the formulation of rules in Don’t Call the Police – They Are not Important Margit Szesztay’s, Unlearning Learned Helplessness, shows us why we need to decondition students from the condition of passivity which the system favours, and how we might do it. There are some new ideas for teaching writing in Samah Elbelazi’s article, Creative Expressivism: A New Vision for Teaching Writing, which presents a re-vamped version of process writing with a focus on imagination, creativity and voice. The importance of incorporating a critical and a compassionate dimension on teaching are explored in Uwe Pohl and Margit Szesztay’s, Bringing Creative, Critical, and Compassionate Thinking into ELT. Chaz Pugliese’s article on Teaching with Miles Davis, focusses on the lessons we can learn from great musical improvisers. Finally, Glikeria Selimi describes creative work in a Greek primary school in Creative Teachers for Creative students: Creativity in the EFL Class of the Greek Primary School.

The Lesson Outlines section contains a plethora of practical ideas for implementing more creative practices. Andrew Wright’s article, Creativity on the Classroom, offers a wealth of practical classroom activities. Using drama with children with special needs is the focus of Susan Hillyard’s contribution, English in Action: A Typical Lesson, Teaching English Through Drama in SEN State Schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Peter Levrai and Avril Bolster offer an intriguing idea for developing narratives in Blind Set-Ups. The Scents and Tastes of Reading and Writing by Malu Sciamarelli sets out a practical way of working with the senses in a young learners’ setting. And in Creativity in Teacher Education, Jill and Charlie Hadfield offer some helpful frameworks for creative ways of working for teachers.

In Corpora Ideas, Paul Davis and Hania Kryszewska introduce language games with the Sporcle programme; Corpus Fun and Games with Sporcle. The Student Voices section also offers some interesting insights into students’ views about creativity in Think ‘Creativity’: What Is It?, collected by Hania Kryszewska. And Adrian Underhill describes his own experiences as a learner of clowning in Clowning: A Way of Catching the Passing Moment. And there are the usual sections: Jokes, Publications, an old exercise – More-In-One-Stories from Adrian Tennant, Poems and Book Reviews. So there is an exceptionally rich issue of HLT Mag with plenty here for everyone.

Chaz has powerfully set out the reasons we need creative practice in our teaching. And the articles and other contributions in this special issue each focus on different areas of our practice, whether these be ideas for classroom activities, materials, teacher development or whatever. But how about our own, personal creativity? We believe that we would become more creative in our teaching if we ourselves became more creative in our everyday lives. It is not much use recommending our students to be creative if we ourselves are not. So how can we cultivate our own personal creative force?

What follow are no more than some suggestions you might like to try. They are not a formula for creativity. But we would argue that, in one way or another, all of them will help foster and sustain our own personal creativity.

• Do something every day which violates one of your routines. Routines are an absolute necessity if we are to get through life without burning out or seizing up – but they can also get in the way of more original ways of doing things, if we allow them to. A habit or routine is like a rut – and ‘a rut is like a grave, only longer’, as some sage once remarked. And the deeper we dig the rut, the more difficult it is to climb out of it. So you might consider changing your eating habits, your route to and from work, your sleeping pattern, your clothing, leisure activities… Anything that might jog you out of your rut, even for a limited period, will help you see the world slightly differently.
• Keep a day book. This could contain your own observations, jottings for new ideas, quotes you want to remember, drafts of poems or other creative writing ideas, snatches of conversations you have overheard, etc. Keep it with you everywhere you go.
• Try writing in a genre you do not usually practice. For example, try writing poetry in a variety of forms. (Stephen Fry’s exuberantly informative book, The Ode Less Travelled, is a great source of ideas for this). Try writing dictionary entries, or letters to the editor, or recipes – anything you do not usually write.
• Try walking in the countryside, preferably alone. This is a great way of clearing your mind, and of getting ideas. (Sara Maitland’s book How to be Alone is a good source of ideas, as is her A Book of Silence.)
• Try drawing. If you think you can’t draw, you are wrong. (See Drawing on the Right side of the Brain by Betty Edwards ) Take any object, perhaps a flower, a leaf or a plant and really observe it, then draw what you see.
• Try looking at things. All too often we resort to a kind of visual shorthand when we look at things. We look but we do not see. Try taking any object – a stone, a pen, a toothbrush – and spend 10 minutes observing it really closely, until you are almost inside it. Then write down your observations.
• Try listening to what people say – on buses, in airports, in shops, on the street, in TV interviews and ads. Keep a record of just how weird some of this sounds when you re-read it (or listen to it again). You will find a lot of nonsense but also many instances of really creative language use. As Carter (2004) says, ‘linguistic creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people but an exceptional property of all people’.
• Try doing nothing. If possible, set apart 30 minutes a day when you simply sit and try to think of nothing. Empty your mind of all the ‘booming, buzzing confusion’ .that normally fills it. As some wise person once said, ’Don’t just do something: stand there.’ There are plenty of books which can help you do this more effectively, if you need them. (Will Johnson’s book The Posture of Meditation is one of them.)
• Try learning another foreign language. Apart from reminding you of the pain, uncertainty and difficulty your students experience daily, this is guaranteed to shake up your little grey cells. And each new language offers new ways of seeing the world.

So we hope you will enjoy this special issue, and that you will be inspired to work on your creativity both in class, and on your own account too.

Alan Maley and Chaz Pugliese
Host Editors

References

Carter, R. (2004) Language and Creativity: the art of common talk. London: Routledge. Edwards, B. The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. London and New York: Harper Collins.

Fry, S. (2007) The Ode Less Travelled. London: Arrow Books.

Johnson, W. (1996) The Posture of Meditation. Boston and London: Shambhala.

Maitland, S. (2009) A Book of Silence. London: Granta Books.

Maitland, S. (2014) How to be Alone. London: Macmillan.