Lost & Found Creativity

After reading this week's texts, I am feeling very empowered to challenge current writing sytems and push kids to discover their own meanings through their own creativities. I think the main hindrances to this process are adults—teachers, parents, administrators, test developers, etc. I truly believe kids are inherently creative and that that creativity is slowly chipped away in our school system and our society as we push kids to produce and think in more literal, more standard, and more accepted ways.

Chapter 5 of Doran's text certainly made me understand the variations of essay writing in a way that I hadn't really thought about it before. I was taught to write with the familiar five-paragraph essay genre and, although I write more creatively than that now, I hadn't given much thought to the difference between assigning such restrictive writing and letting kids develop their writing through more expressive or discovery-oriented approaches. I appreciated the way Doran was able to show examples of many different approaches to many different styles while remaining true to the idea of the essay as "a write-to-learn assignment" (p. 147) and a committment to "turn students from passive learners in their education to active agents" (p. 144).

Both Doran's text and Gillespie's inspiring example of a multigenre project led me to my link this week, which reflects my belief that adults need to relearn and embrace their own creativity while encouraging children to be true to theirs. Once we are able to let go of our own mental restrictions, I think we will see our students thrive and we will better promote their interest in reading and writing, not to mention retaining our own interest in teaching.


Yeondoo Jung is a South Korean artist focused on photography. His most recent exhibit, "Wonderland," includes work with kindergartners' drawings which he then interprets through photography. His website states that "[c]hildren's fantasies spring from flexible interpretations of adult conventions" (http://www.yeondoojung.com/press.html), which perfectly sums up my contention that teachers must allow for varying interpretations of societal and educational norms in order to truly get our children thinking in imaginative and productive ways.

Furthermore, Jung's ability to tap into the fantasy of children's imagination and find inspiration to create his own project is exactly the type of interaction I would like to encourage in my classroom. I hope to foster projects that prove there is no right or wrong interpretation to any piece of work and I feel Jung's project exemplifies this perfectly.