C is for Creativity
Chaz Pugliese is a trainer, presenter and author working out of Paris. Previously Academic Director for Teacher Training at Pilgrims, he’s now self-employed while he continues to be associated with Pilgrims. He is a regular presenter at all major ELT events and has published several book chapters as well as numerous articles for several ELT journals. He has two books out, Being Creative (Delta, 2010) and Principled Communicative Approach (with Z.Dörnyei and Jane Arnold, Helbling, 2015). His interests are: creativity and motivation, group processes, and corpus linguistics. He’s a keen guitarist and likes any music that’s raw, honest and real. E-mail: chazpugliese@gmail.com
In this new column we will look at ways creativity can enhance our teaching. More than what creativity is, we will consider where creativity is, and what it can do for us and our students.
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Why creativity?
The fight for attention
References
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So, to kick off, let’s talk about our motives for using more creative approaches to teaching: the great Italian film maker, Federico Fellini, used to say he needed an excuse for being creative. It turns out there are plenty of excuses for being creative in our classroom: think about catering for the great diversity that governs our classroom, for example. Or ways to spruce up an exam class, for example. Or ways to render practice more enjoying. The list could go on. My own main reasons for using more imaginative approaches to teaching is first because originality is appreciated by the students and makes them more attentive and secondly, it keeps me more focused on the people I teach.
I’ve never believed in a golden age for education, but one thing that seems largely undisputed is that nowadays it is much harder for teachers to make their students pay attention to what goes in the classroom. The neuroscientist Daniel Levitin for example writes that the average North-American processes five times more information that they did even 10 years ago. So, we’re literally flooded by information, but a wealth of information often leads to a poverty of attention as it’s been said. When the students come to class, if they’re not focused, it is not because they don’t care, aren’t motivated, or are uninterested. It’s that their attention is directed to something else. Period. And so what happens is that as teachers we enter a competition of stimuli. Now, I think we need a fresh, original approach to get these students to focus on and pay attention to the environment they’re in. Without creativity it would be clearly impossible to achieve this task. So, one very simple idea would be to ask the students to think about three things they know today (about the world, not necessarily about English), that they didn’t know last week. Or try this: pair them off, give them a little dictation (a short joke would do), ask the students to write down what you say using the SAME pen on one piece of paper. This will often result in laughter: the main idea is to get the students concentrated on the new stimulus (English) and forget the old (e.g. the Facebook update they received before class).
And you, what do you do to get your students pay attention at the beginning of class? Get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.
Levitin D. (2014) The Organized Mind. NY: Dutton.
E-mail: chazpugliese@gmail.com
More on the C Group at: http://thecreativitygroup.weebly.com/
If you want to join the C Group contact Chris Lima: chrislima90@yahoo.co.uk
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.
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