I want my students to be creative.  I want them to rediscover their
creativity. 

Children are natural creators.  They recognize the immensity of their world, how
little they actually know about it and they want to understand it.  They also have the luxury of time to really
ponder the missing elements. They often fill in those gaps of their
understanding with fantasy.  We all can
remember a time when a young child gave us the most wonderful and fun explanation
for something they did not understand. 

By the time those children have grown some and arrived at
our school, those gaps are gradually closing. A causality of this closure is
their imaginations. They have been taught how to look for answers.  But this can limit their ability or even
their desire to look for the unknown.  I
think we need to work together to do something about this. Many of us are
currently making strong efforts to help inspire our students’ inventiveness but
we need to do more.

This year, there is one new factor that has made my class more
difficult for me.  It is the new schedule.  I think the schedule needs to do many things
for many different reason.  It has many
benefits.  But there is a price.  The shorter passing periods are
insufficient.  My girls struggle to let
go of the previous class and bring their mind to the challenges I am offering.
I can see that they want to get into deeper and they are frustrated that they
cannot.  Recently, I have had some
consecutive meetings on various topics. 
It was a challenge to move from one style to another, from one topic to
another – and I wasn’t working getting a good grade for it!

Let’s design a new building and new curriculum to challenge and
inspire.  Let’s design a new schedule to make
the best use of these resources.