The Creative Classroom Experience

Paperback   or   Kindle

Welcome to the Creative Classroom Experience

 “The current curriculum”…is a theme I have heard for years in all levels of schools: elementary right up to international university. So as I understand, “curriculum” consists of the ideas and concepts that a group of individuals thinks is relevant for learning. I agree. However, I have a different word that I like to use—which is the reason for this book. That word is “education,” which doesn’t mean a prescribed set of ideas that someone (or many people) think is the correct mandated set of lessons. Education has several meanings: “The wealth of knowledge acquired by an individual after studying particular subject matters or experiencing life lessons that provide an understanding of something.”

I agree again. So after 20 years of working in the field of teaching, I have met many teachers—and only a handful of educators. In MY view (and I’m biased on this), an educator EXPANDS the level of learning of students. It’s not just “absorb this and prepare for the next standardized test.” I like to extrapolate and juxtapose ideas as I teach. (Hint: to extrapolate means to think beyond boundaries. “Thinking out of the box” is one way to say it. I think on parallel tangents—and also dimensionally. Not just physically dimensional, but beyond that realm. I also like to juxtapose: to place ideas side-by-side and compare, contrast, analyze, and look for similarities and differences—and how they are one-and-the-same. I also like them because they have the letter ‘x’ in them, and that’s not too often found in vocabulary.)

 So I’ve been an educator who extrapolates—and juxtaposes. I’ve taken my students’ minds to higher levels on cross-curriculum and multiple subject matter. That’s what an educator should do—as I see it. I’ve had that satisfaction on both the East Coast and West Coast of the U.S. as well as a state in the Deep South—and also at a major university of finance and economics in China. Welcome to a creative educational way of “thinking outside of the box” for a different way of learning. And please leave standardized testing for the companies who milk the education system for data at the expense of students and teachers.