Influence

In any given day, 1001 and one blog ideas might cross my mind. Take apple pie for example. It's an excellent topic. Pie is even better. There's pecan pie, penutbutter pie, chocolate pie, strawberry pie, tuna pie, key lime pie, pumpkin pie , and (insert your pie ideas here.)

However, this post is not about pie.  It's about creativity. I am currently teaching first graders for my afterschool classes. The kids are eight years old in Korean age, wich means they are six or seven in American age. This is because when a child is born they are one year old and then they officially turn two on january first. So a kid born in November will be two in January. This is no improtant, just interesting.

One of my students is very creative. When he isn't playing and destracting the student next to him, he goes elewhere in his head. When he is elsewhere he gets out of his chair, talks to himself and plays with himself.  The only way to get him back on task, is to walk up to him -- calling name doesn't work when he is in elsewhere.

My solution has been to put him at a pull out desk beside the teachers' desk.  While the other kids open their books and pay attention, he plays with his pencil. While I'm teaching and being entertaining, he is out of his chair, playing near the white board.  I don't know how he has learned anything, but he knows more than other students.

He, in fact, is a good student, very polight, always says thank you when I help him. He's just creative. He's just elsewhere. His mother is unhappy that I put him beside the techers' desk, but I'm not doing it to stop his elsewhere thinking. In fact, I don't think he's ready to be in a first grade English class. I think he's both very smart and probably a November baby. His play is natutuarlly diminishing, though I suspect, while he will learn not to get out of his seat, it will take years to punish the elsewhere thinking out of him. In the meantime, I'm not going to be the one to do it.

I moved him and instead of telling him he is bad, I continue with the rest of the class. He is small and when is playing by the white board which is behind the big desk, he is not so distracting to the students. Instead of shouting at him to sit down across the room, I can quietly reseat him while continuing to teach or even after I have the seveteen other students are on task.

My writer self understands elsehwere thinkers. Long before I put pen to paper, I wrote stories in my head. Perhaps I am simply seeing a little of myself in the boy. I can remember the teacher who first took a little f the creativity out of me and I remember the woman who tried to snuff it out. But I also remember teachers who enocurage different thinking, and I loved their class. Strangely enough, the teachers who encouraged different thinking were alwaos the "weird" teachers, the ones who were creative in their classes. They were teachers who didn't shy away from turning education into a performance. The creative teachers held a shared love of students and students had a love for them. The stomper-outers, instead, seemed to hold to the old saying that children should be seen and not heard.

Thinking back to all the years you spent in being educated, what teachers did you love? What traits did they share? What teachers did you hate? What traits did they share. And how much did the teachers attitude toward you, effect your feelsing for the subject?