One of the great things about cover teaching, is that you’re always experiencing new classes and new situations. And, because I’m working for a larger language school, I get to see how different branches handle the same situation. I also get exposed to new teaching assistants and other teachers who may not have received the same training as I have. Its a very fertile ground for learning.
It is also a great opportunity to try out new things. Because the children I’m teaching will not have been exposed to many of the activities that I do, its a good opportunity for me to try new ones.
I recently watched a documentary video on a restaurant and chef that was once voted as the best in the world. The cornerstone of what they did was creativity. In fact, after reading about the owner, and listening to many of his interviews, I think he doesn’t really enjoy cooking much, but lives for the creative process instead. His restaurant would only open for six months of the year, and all of the available seats for that ‘season’ would sell out shortly after they opened reservations. During the winter, they’d close the restaurant, and move into a special-purpose kitchen to focus on creating new dishes.
In that documentary, we got a small peek into their creative process. The chefs would constantly experiment with new techniques, tools, and ingredients. Then, they’d document and catalogue all of the different processes and techniques they discovered. All of their discoveries were digitised so they could refer back to them in later years.
I think a similar creative process can be applied in the classroom.
One possible example is that you can take elements of one activity you’re doing, and apply it to another to create something new.
For instance, I recently saw someone adapt musical chairs, such that the children trace a number when they sit down in a chair. It is something I wouldn’t have thought of. And I actually don’t know how well that would work, or what problems I might encounter if I were to try that out. (An obvious immediate consideration would be to not have pencils on the floor where children could stand on them (or to use crayons, instead). My expectation is that the children would love the game, because of the movement and randomness of sitting in new chairs. However, I couldn’t be sure until I’d tried it a few times.
And, as is sometimes the case with really good ideas, they came about by accident. From my own experience, there were cases where a teaching assistant didn’t understand or hear my instructions, and had the children do something else. Some of those mistakes turned out to be a far better way of doing things than I’d planned.
As might be expected, some of the things I’ve tried have worked far better than I could have imagined. For example, on the weekend I (very reluctantly) tried musical chairs with my primary students. When I described what we were to do, I’m pretty sure there were some thoughts of ‘this game is for babies’. Once we started though, they got right into it. Had not another teacher suggested it to me, my own self-censoring would have stopped me from playing that game.
I feel that by using a creative process, I’m learning more and more about how to adapt games and activities in ways that lead to more effective learning for the children, and are also more engaging.
It also makes me reflect upon my classes. I have to question why something worked with one group of students and not another, and think about how I could adapt something to work better.
In my own classes, there are a lot of less interesting games I’ve stopped playing, and many good games I’ve ‘archived’. I could return these games into the mix at any time though. Overall, this process means that my classes keep improving in an upward spiral.
Importantly, engaging in a creative process keeps the classes really interesting for me, the teaching assistants, and also the children. It is very easy with Kindergarten English to do basically the same lesson every week. A lot of new teachers fall into that trap because children can enjoy playing their favourite games over and over.
I would strongly encourage you to try out a new song, a new activity, a new type of craft, and explore what is possible in your classrooms.
