When most people think about teachers, some of the first skills, characteristics, and qualities that come to mind are probably organization, patience, and dedication. What a lot of people don't realize, however, is that achieving success as a teacher also requires a great deal of creativity, regardless of whether you are teaching young children in a preschool or grown adults in a university.
Every student has his or her own unique way of learning, and a teacher must be creative in order to help each student understand the information being taught. Creative teachers are able to be flexible, understanding, innovative, and aren't intimidated by a challenging student. For those individuals who are interested in teaching but fear that they don't have the creativity to do so, there are creative training sessions available for teachers. All you need is a sense of openness and a willingness to learn new things.
What Creative Training is
Taking a creative training course often doesn't teach you to be creative. Instead, these sessions tend to help you to identify the sense of creativity that you didn't even know you had. Almost everyone is capable of being creative in some way. The problem is that people always associate creativity with the arts. Of course writing, drawing, painting, acting, singing, playing an instrument, or writing music all require a certain amount of creativity, but artistic creativity isn't the only type of creativity. There are many other types. Any job that requires you to be innovative or to think on your toes requires a certain type of creativity as well, and if you are attracted to teaching odds are you have that sense of creativity in you, but you just didn't realize it. A creative training session will help you to identify that in yourself.
Don't be Afraid to Try New Things
Many people are hesitant to take any kind of creative course because they fear that it will be over the top, or require them to do things that are embarrassing. For many people, when they hear the words "creative training class" the first thing that comes to mind is an eccentric drama teacher making them introduce themselves with an improvised rhyming song, or getting them to stand up in front of the class to act out what their spirit animal is. You can rest assured that creative training for teachers is nothing like this! It's nothing bizarre or unnerving. Creative learning often involves learning innovative ways to problem solve. This is usually done through fun team exercises. Remember, these training sessions are generally intended to bring out the innovative, problem solving type of creativity in a person, not the theater arts type of creativity, so you don't have to worry about embarrassing yourself in front of everyone.
Creative Teachers and Their Class
A big part of creative training is learning how to get to the root of a problem. Some teachers struggle to teach challenging children because their usual disciplinary methods or reward systems aren't working. A creativity session might teach you to get to the bottom of why your usual methods aren't working, so that you can find a strategy that does work for that child. A creative teacher will learn innovative ways to motivate their students, and will learn to find teaching techniques for challenging students, rather than trying to force the child to conform to conventional methods.
Being able to tap into that type of creativity will save you a great deal of stress as a teacher, and will earn you the respect of your students and their parents. Teachers who can't think outside the box tend to create stressful, tense, and frustrating environments for their students, whereas creative teachers create an atmosphere of openness, understanding, and excellence. This is why creativity is so important in the classroom.
Being creative is an important part of being a teacher. Teaching is fundamentally about motivating and problem solving, and neither of things can be accomplished without an innovative mind and an investigative outlook, both of which require a great deal of creativity. As a teacher, you shouldn't dread having to take creative training classes. Just remember: your skill and passion for teaching stems from an inherent sense of innovation and creativity, whether you realize it or not. Taking a class to help you bring out your sense of creativity will make your job more enjoyable, and will create a positive, lasting impression on your students.
A story by Lynn Marceaux, a teacher who heartily supports creative training for better teaching.
