Practical Access Podcast

S:2 E:9: Creativity

May 25, 2020 Season 2 Episode 9
Practical Access Podcast
S:2 E:9: Creativity
Show Notes Transcript

Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker, UCF Faculty members, talk about how to ensure your students or children use their creativity. They share practical ideas to build a students' creative skills by instilling both voice and choice to find their passion. Remember questions can be shared on Twitter @accesspractical.  Follow us on itunes or iheart podcasts. 

Lisa Dieker:

Hi, welcome to practical access. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Rebecca Hines:

And tonight Lisa, we're going to be thinking about talking about creativity, which we left off with last time. And it's an interesting thing, because honestly, I don't think either one of us are really that creative. So I can't wait to let you start with creativity, what it means in education, special education, what can we do to promote it?

Lisa Dieker:

Well, so first of all, I am going to push back on that statement, I actually hold a couple patents, I think I'm fairly creative. Maybe, maybe not okay, but anyway, we'll go there later. So we'll start will not make it all about us to start with, but I do want to go down that rabbit hole later and talk about my elementary report card, it'll be a good laugh for everybody. But anyway, I

Rebecca Hines:

that I have anything more exciting after you've scolded me. But, you know, truth be told, of course, we're both creative in our own ways.

Lisa Dieker:

You're extremely creative lady.

Rebecca Hines:

But it's funny, because, you know, a lot of people think of creativity, as you know, they equate it really with artistic ability, sometimes, when I don't have that sort of referring to, but I think we, you know, we limit our thinking about what creativity really is. And we limit it to, you know, art or music and some of these traditional, traditionally creative fields. So you mentioned the idea of being creative, in in putting new things together to apply for a patent. Certainly, you know, we both have a lot of experience of doing things like that, person as to say word with a the next person with a B, the next person was C. So all of these kinds of things just starts with divergent thinking. I think When I think of creativity, it's how do we encourage people to think divergently? When in schools, we've constantly been telling them that there's just one way to do everything, and this is how it's done.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah. And you know, it's funny, I think of when I think of creativity, come back to my own experience, you can only imagine the trauma I still receive of having that see on my elementary report card. And yes, my friend, Dr. Hines, it was an art. And it was justified, I think she was generous. Still, today, that's not my skill set. Yet I highly value art and I value and I think that's, goes with that. If I believe I'm something, then probably I can go into a direction that maybe I'm not the best singer. But if I sing with with great competence on stage, people, listen, I may not be the funniest person, but if I stand on stage with competence, so I think it's both that mindset, thinking about the different intelligence, and really building that creative thinking that that really

Rebecca Hines:

I think I think that we diminish that with kids of all abilities. Really. Today in schools, I don't, I don't know why. And, of course, it's not all of us. And it's not every class. And it's not every teacher, I do think that we've come to think of things that are that have a creative bent, as you know, being those extra things or you know, we don't have time to do something fun,

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and I know going back to what we've talked about in past podcasts, but it's kind of you and I go to is his choice boards, and project based learning. I mean, there's no way you can't create your own thinking, when you open up the options and say, You know what, here's nine choices. And, and again, I would be thinking about which one of those are you the weakest in as a

Rebecca Hines:

you know, you may share that idea of choice. And we always talk about choice. And I think, you know, if we wanted to frame that in some some really traditional way. Now, traditional thinking in education, I really bring that back to the whole Universal Design for Learning piece of, you know, what we're doing in our classroom. Because the other side of creativity, for me express it. I, I would say one one other thought about the creativity pieces, if if you are looking to promote creativity, every question could easily have you know, a creator space, you know, we talk a lot about you know, makerspaces, etc. But we should definitely have creator spaces in our classroom where kids could go and create and Tinker. So whether we make it technology based or art based or

Lisa Dieker:

Well, and I'm gonna I'm gonna wrap this up with this. We do love our teachers, okay, we may not be, you may not have had great grades, but we do we love our teachers, PE, music, we think you are the backbone of actually building academic skills and my go to as always, you know, when you make that maker space, consult the speech therapist, the PT, the OT, the PE teacher, the music,