Storytelling
Yesterday Today Tomorrow…What’s Your Story?
We learn words in isolation when learning a language, with a goal of being able to put them together. Storytelling is common to all cultures. In order to tell a story well, it has to have structure, and specifically a sequence, an order of events. If the story happened already, put it into the past test. If the story happens every day, it’s routine, it can be in the present. Of course in telling what will happen in the future, then tell the story in the future tense.
First, Next, After that, Then, Finally.
First, I started teaching at WoC online. Next, I became curious about this place far off on the other side of the world from me. After that, I decided I wanted to visit Nosy be. Then I bought a ticket. Finally, I came here to teach I person for a short time.
Mind Mapping
Week in Review w/ Mind Map
Mind Mapping at the Chalkboard
Pausing to recapture what we have learned in the last week is a powerful exercise. A summary of work is a look back on achievement. A look back matters. Not only do we get a sense of just how much we’ve learned (a lot!), we also get to realign it into a way that provides a cohesive representation of the work.
When students draw mind maps, they are having to create meaning on paper, or a chalkboard. Thank you student teacher today! Writing and drawing for learning requires the student to think independently. If the goal for education is to develop a capacity for processing information, original thought and fluency, then drawing for learning is a pathway for developing knowledge.
A mind map is a divergent tool for capturing information visually. Mind maps reflect nature, like branches and roots of a tree. Mind maps also reflect how we actually think, by making connections, or associative learning.
Staying Together
WoC students collaborate at the chalkboard.
Large classrooms are a challenge. The standard student to teacher ratio is 15:1. That means for every fifteen students, there should be one teacher. In reality, this ratio applies in private schools. The student teacher ratio is important because students need support when learning. Are the students understanding? Are they writing the notes correctly? How can we teachers know the answers to these questions?
Teachers test. What kind of testing? Spot checking is especially highly useful in a large classroom. When we check each other’s regularly, every few minutes, we can be more sure that everyone is participating, everyone is learning. In this way, we can stay together.
The reality of our classroom environment is that we have a much higher student to teacher ratio. We are also in a hybrid environment, where some are live in the classroom with the teacher, and some are in another classroom only receiving instruction online.
Teaching to such a large group has its challenges. How to engage all students? How to ensure everyone understands and is completing the task? How can we know students at the back of the room can hear and see the large TV monitor broadcasting the zoom call?
The answer to all of these questions is simple. We cannot be sure. One teacher cannot be responsive to so many students at one time for an extended period of time.
This is why we need to use different tactics. Tactics that have been explicitly put forth as teaching tactics for the 21st century:
WoC students collaborate for learning.
Collaboration. After each new section of work, students exchange copy books to check each other’s work. See a mistake, fix it and explain the correction to the student.
Communication. Draw for learning. This makes learning immediate, concrete and permanent. There are lots of ways to communicate. Communicating with one’s self can mean writing. When we write, we have to think about what we are writing. Sharing information with another for feedback/correction is another form of communication.
For learning to be effective in any environment, and especially in a large multi-classroom online environment, the learning must be multidimensional and interwoven through many activities. Active learning over passive learning is truly the only way for one teacher to engage 100 students at a time.
Supervisors and student teachers matter too. Student teachers at the chalkboard capture what is being taught so that students have another place to look for information.
Live action classes are highly engaging and dynamic. With a goal to learn and become fluent in English, we must operationalize all forms of learning if we are to move beyond broken English with a rich learning experience for all.
Repetition
E-cademy Notes
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
REPETITION
It takes time to learn a new language. It takes energy. It takes a lot of effort. Fortunately, there are structures and patterns that help us to learn information.
A conjugation table is a structure for learning how subject pronouns and verbs fit together. In a conjugation table there are subject pronouns and verbs. Subject pronouns are pronouns that replace nouns. Nouns are either people, places or things.
Conjugation tables allow us to see patterns of verb conjugation.
When learning conjugation, we draw together, check each other’s work and then practice out loud by saying the conjugation table together. And then, when we feel comfortable, we can cover our eyes and say it again outloud. When we do this, we can see the words inside our mind. This type of exercise is a drill. Drills also help us to learn more deeply and allow language to become automatic.
Conjugation Tables
Assistant Teacher today Luciana.
Creativity Through English
Hybrid teaching ESL to a hundred people in different countries is a tall order. It’s ambiguous and complex for sure. What a classic opportunity to teach for Creativity. Teaching for Creativity means using creative processes while teaching. Aligning creative process with content, in this case ESL, enables a framework through which to bring new language and concepts across. This blog is specifically geared for my lovely students and supervisors in Madagascar and Pakistan. It is of course for everyone as well.
Ecademy Notes Monday, 30/9/24
NOUNS, COMMON AND PROPER/PRONOUNS
Do you know what a cloud is? No? What if I draw a picture for you? You will know immediately. Drawing for learning is direct, permanent and allows for deeper learning. Words are words are words. With pictures, we understand more because we learn mostly through our eyes. This is why we draw for learning in class.
We already agreed to work together. We work together to help each other succeed. We help each other because by explaining things we understand more deeply. When we work in class we also trade copy books to check each other’s work and to teach each other.
We also have a student teacher at the chalkboard. The student teacher draws what the teacher is teaching on the computer. This provides another way for students to see the work. It also allows a student to teach.
Everyone is responsible for learning, teaching, and helping because everyone is learning English. Everyone is engaged and contributes to learning. High student engagement ensures deeper learning.
People learn differently. People learn by moving, feeling, listening, writing, drawing, talking, explaining, asking questions, watching, trying, and having a teacher. The classroom must have a lot of different learning opportunities for students. This creates a rich learning environment. Rich learning environments help students to be successful.
E-cademy Notes Friday 27/9/24
WHY
Why study English? Why are we here at school? It’s useful to know why to do anything. Otherwise, why would you do it?
Five Whys and a How is a tool for understanding something deeply. When we understand deeply we are more committed. Learning English will take time and effort everyday. It is hard to learn a new language. And with practice it is absolutely possible.
As an example of the exercise as it relates to class:
1.Why study English? Because it is the international language of business.
2.Why is English the international language of business? Because more people speak English as a second language than as a first language.
3.Why do more people speak English as a second language than a first? Because we need to communicate.
4.Why do we need to communicate? Because we need to be able to talk to each other.
5. Why do we need to talk to each other? To live and function in this world.
How can we live and function in this world? By learning a language spoken by most people in the world.
This exercise is important for understanding why. Knowing why you are studying English is motivating. Motivation is energy that makes us want to want to do something.
English is a life skill. Let’s do this.
E-cademy Notes Thursday 26/9/24
WHO
Who are the people in these classrooms? In class yesterday, someone asked a very important question. “What does empathy mean?” Empathy is to understand and share the feelings of another.
Empathy is important because when we understand each other more we connect as humans and have better relationships. Understanding customer needs in hospitality is key to providing quality service. Understanding student needs and each other as learners is equally important. It is important because we can work better together when we understand each other a bit more.
There are four components to an empathy map 1. Say, 2. Do (actions), 3. Feel, 4. Think.
And we also want to know the pain points, where people lose energy as well as where people gain energy. We lose energy by not understanding, feeling lost, feeling behind. We gain energy by feeling competent and by knowing that we can do it!
An empathy map is a way to draw a visual representation of what someone says, does, how they think and feel about something. Empathy maps in class are about Learning English. In general, empathy maps help us to understand each other more. This is especially useful when working with customers, as in the hospitality industry.
E-cademy Notes Wednesday 25/9/24
HOW
How we learn. We learn in many ways. In this class we learn in three ways. The three ways are listed here.
Collaboration. We collaborate. We work together. We learn by working together as much as possible. We help each other. We ask each other. We teach each other. We learn together.
Communication. We communicate. We communicate in many ways. Body language is the primary form of communication. We learn by moving and actions. Body language is very helpful for online learning. We also communicate through speaking and writing.
Thinking. We think naturally by making connections. Our brains are like the branches of a tree.
Tree branches grow in different directions. When we think, our brain goes in a lot of different directions too.
New words, new languages and new thoughts come from making new connections. We learn by making connections naturally. A natural learning tool is a mind map.
Mind maps help us to see what we are learning in a way that is natural to how we learn! Mind maps help us to remember what we are learning. We will draw mind maps in class together.
In class with Tanya, we learn by collaborating for communication and thinking to become fluent in English together.
It starts with a word.
This is how I teach now. I start with one single word. Not just any word, but a word that has action to it.
As I head into my fourth year of teaching online here’s what I’ve learned.
Teach naturally. We teach babies one word at a time. This is natural. Our brains are weblike. We learn through association. Teaching for a resonance to connect neural dots its natural. Humans need a break from screens. We need to be human, that means we need to laugh, talk to each other, try, fail, try again, make new connections. This is all natural. Teach naturally, in line with how we naturally learn and interact as humans.
21st century education stands on three legs: collaboration, communication and creative process. This creative process piece is what the institutions are critically missing. To determine the answer, the right way, the only possibility misses the point entirely. Education is learning naturally. For everyone to become an original thinker requires a process for achieving skills that deliberately allow originality to emerge. Some are gifted. For the rest of us, skills matter for all domains, including how to process information.
High student talk time online is tough. And still it can happen. The turn and talks might not come easily in every culture. And still, when students feed back their learning, new understanding emerges and a reformulation for original thinking can occur.
Fun while learning is crucial. Let’s laugh.
And now let’s bring on Season Four.
Tanya teaches online in Madagascar and Pakistan.
Handmap WoC Class 2024
Handmap WoC class 2024
Notes from Creativity Class
Drawing for learning matters
I do not know my community of students. They are new to me. I am new to them. We come from opposite sides of the world. In what ways might I provide content that is visually interesting and stimulating for students?
Put another way, what is the value of me sharing my visual world for their meaning making?
toward a collaborative approach
“Draw whatever you want,” was the instruction. One thing I do know about the student community, maybe even the communities in this part of the African world, is that people really love arts. That was enough to go on and take a risk.
With chalkboard, good quality chalk (my choice) and imagination, the students got right to work. I had no idea what would come.
As if the students knew exactly what to do, out came an explosion of imagery into another world.
The results: a stunningly bold, colorful, playful, collection of folk art. What little did I know...
-What might be the student’s world?
-In what ways could I learn from students?
-How could art making deepen learning?
and develop creativity
Also,
Not one person asked, “Is this good?”
Not one person said, “I’m not a very good artist.”
Not one person said, “I’m not very creative.”
Wow.
Wow because comments like these come up all the time among stateside students. Ten year old kids made exactly these comments to me, that’s how I know.
Drawings made by 18-25 year olds, an age group that might feel more intimated in the West did not flinch when given an open cavas. They were ready, hungry even.
Great art, great lesson on all sides -
First, a window though which to gain insight from my audience? That’s useful.
Second, a rich slide pack to use as content for learning? Novel indeed.
Third, student artwork used for classroom learning? How inclusive.
We all do our best work when the environment is open and encourages the community, whether student, employees or family members are encouraged to do what they can and want to do well.
These picture are bold, beautiful, visually interesting and absolutely something to stimulate English language learning.
Let’s face it, there’s enough white washed content used for learning. What if we invite local color, literally, from the community we want to engage and go for a rich, dynamic lesson and yes, collaborative education.
Learning is a multidirectional street.
Im chalking this one up to teaching creatively.
Fun while learning. Yep. Thanks students.
This blog documents an educational pilot in Madagascar at Wings of Change on teaching for Creativity.
Wings of Change is a vocational hospitality school and hotel social enterprise with the twin mission of lifting youth out of poverty through education and impacting the wider community.
More at Wings of Change
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Cocoa by Nousca
Vanilla by Niola
A chameleon by Romeo
Coconut tree by Helena
Big bananas by Ismael
Composting and Dancing for a Stronger Community
Baby Steps to Sustainability
We met Paulette one Saturday morning during our weekly village clean ups. When we asked if she’d consider separating her sweeps, - leaves and natural waste to one side and plastics to another, a translated answer came across. “She says she doesn’t care.”
I’m going to take a wild guess and imagine that people in a fishing village in one of the poorest countries in the world do not know much about the chemical mix of plastic waste. There is no garbage collection, no information about waste.
I asked students how long they’ve been throwing trash on the ground. “Depuis toujours,” since forever. No doubt, they are young and have only experienced all waste as equal, to be swept away for burning.
Never Waste a Teachable Moment
“Maybe this lady could use some help,” I say. From English to French to Magasy and back again, a dialoge begins. What are plastics, how are they a problem?
Make Things Better Now
Vegetal waste can be used for gardening. It’s quite incredible that villagers buy tomatoes by the dozens and stack them up for sale along the village streets. Everyone is seemingly unaware tomatoes could be grown at no cost.
What if we grew our own tomatoes?
That creative question is how the new compositing program was born at Wings of Change. Right here on campus we have a vision for a garden and growing our own vegetables. Thanks to a power outage, students were able to break away from class and get the brown team set (branches and leaves). The green team, vegetable peelings followed in preparation for a compost program.
Update on composting to follow.
Tsara Nosy Be
As grace would have it, Paulette is a singer and somewhat of a rombo teacher, a traditional form clapping music in Madagascar. Paulette’s visit to campus was a great success and inspiration to keep going.
Nothing like collaborative learning and a bit of real world problem solving. Movement in the direction of intention is how visions become realities. With our own garden, we will be able to teach others.
Misotra
Thank you Paulette, for staying open to what we had to say about separating garbage. And thank you for the rombo and dancing.
Tanya is a facilitator for creative processes in problem solving and educator. This blog captures Tanya’s experience as a visiting instructor in Nosy Be.
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Ambatozavavy resident Paulette
Composting initiative at Wings of Change
Wings of Change is a vocational hospitality school and hotel social enterprise with a dual mission of transformation through education and impacting the community.
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Clean up Nosy Be - A Wings of Change Initiative Bolstered by Tour Guides
People Power over Plastics #CleanupNosyBe
Complexity defines the 21st century.
Take garbage, for example. Plastics are literally choking the planet, washing up on islands everywhere. Nosy Be is no exception; this tropical island is as beautiful as it is littered. Well, not quite.
Holiday resorts have waste management systems of different sorts while local villages have none.
What it’s like to live amidst exposed garbage ?
As I write this blog overlooking the seemingly pristine Mozambique Channel, wafts of burning plastic amix into the hot gusts of wind, begging an obvious question:
How might plastics in the atmosphere affect thick skinned fruits, like the millions of mangos about to ripen?
What about tomatoes? A recent Turkish study of micro plastics in commonly eaten fruits identified tomatoes’ samples having the highest average amount of micro plastics.
Every village market in Nosy Be sells tomatoes. Every village burns garbage…hmm
It’s overtime to ask hard questions about plastics everywhere, on the ground, in the atmosphere and probably within us.
The culprits: diapers, broken class, batteries, soap packets and lots and lots of bubble gum and sweets wrappers. To make it worse, or maybe even better in making people aware, a pop up dental visit helps “sensibiliser les gens,” to use the local term on.
High consumption of processed sugars, especially between the ages of 6-12 largely determine long term oral and general health. The addiction to processed sweets starting at a young age is stark; bubble gum and candy wrappers are among the most prominent bits of waste during weekly clean ups.
More to follow in oral hygiene.
In short, indigenous and modern lifestyles are on a crash course in a race toward destroying the natural world and us along with it.
It's all interconnected and relates to poverty. With so much natural fruit, why buy sweets? As a status symbol, to feel rich, to have something to do? It’s mind boggling. This question is worth a root cause analysis, not only for the village clean up, but also for the health of the community.
Together is Better
Wings of Change and the Ambatozavavy Tour Guide Association kick off a new partnership to #cleanupNosyBe.
What began as a pre-covid initiative by the village tour guide association of Ambatozavavy has been re-ignited by the Wings of Change e-cademy students. Now together, the community is en force to get real with cleaning up Ambatozavavy.
The environment, the community is at stake. We do have a choice in all this. The human capacity to imagine something different is within us all. People power, grit and some new thinking will make sustainable life possible.
In what ways could you contribute?
Connect. Take Action. Share your story.
Join us @ Wings of Change
Follow us on instagram @wingsofchange_madagascar
#cleanupnosybe #sauvonslaplanete
Facebook
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#CleanupNosyBe a Wings of Change Initiative
Weekly Clean Up in Ambatozavavy, Nosy Be
Millions of Mangos
Wings of Change and Ambatozavavy Village Tour Guides
Tanya is an advocate and facilitator for creative processes in problem solving and 21st century education.
Specifically, Tanya’s work is in support of UNSDG #4 Quality Education, a priority for Sub Saharan Africa and UNSDG #11 Sustainable Cities and Communities.
Tanya has been an instructor for Wings of Change since their opening in 2019. She is currently teaching on site in Nosy Be where she’s also working with the community for change toward sustainability for doctoral research on creative leadership. This blog is a reflection of Tanya’s experience while in Nosy Be.
An edited version of this blog appears on www.wingsofchange.co
Wings of Change is vocational hospitality school and hotel a social enterprise with a dual mission of transformation through education and community impact.
More than 200 Wings alumni work professionally in hotels around Nosy Be.
The #CleanupNosyBe initiative is an awareness and clean up campaign for sustainability.
In return for their education, Wings of Change students become stewards for their community in learning and teaching English as well as basic points on sustainability such as separating garbage, composting and most recently oral care.
Through education and determination, we can break the cycle of poverty.
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Draw for Learning
Visual literacy.
If seeing is believing then how might seeing learning help?
Quite a lot actually. Consider 80% of sensory impressions are visual. We can take in some 10 million pieces of information in per second. So why write every thing?
Mind mapping is simply capturing information in a way that replicates nature to include how we think and perceive things, through association and by making connections.
Replace written learning with the five-branch flow of a mind map for visual clarity, ease and speed for comprehension. Whether teaching, learning or reviewing, Mind Maps conveniently also provide the Creative Thinking Skill of highlighting the essence of a topic.
In fact, Mind Maps put the information conveniently into hand. With the big idea in the palm, the five branches are easily numerated on the fingers. Great, right ?
Start with something familiar to students, like fish. If you live in a fishing village this makes sense. If fish is not top of mind, pick something else, fun and relatable before moving toward class lessons, whatever they are.
Mind Maps were made popular by psychologist Tony Buzan, though they date back centuries.
Mind Maps are playful and open-ended while following a clear structure, making them a perfect creative thinking tool for processing information.
Thought leaders around the world identify creativity as a crucial 21st century skill.
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Mind Map
Mind Maps as Hand Maps
Start Mind Maps with Familiar Topics - Like Fish
Mind Maps for Lessons
Tanya is currently in Madagascar at Wings of Change, a vocational hospital school and hotel social enterprise in the fishing village of Ambatozavavy.
www.wingsofchange.co
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Open to Novelty
We must have light.
Day light, moonlight, phone light, candle lights, spotlights and the like. The lights that naturally occur and that we need change over the course of the day, and night. During a 24 hour period different light-types hand off to each other in a simple, seemlessly quiet collaboration making life possible.
And then there’s guiding lights. At different times for different purposes people come into our lives to teach, to guide and to collaborate to make it true: We must have light.
There’s a we-ness to life. Day becomes night, proving that a certain harmony of elements make it possible to live. When in balance, nature works wonders.
Collaboration is a 21st century skill. Really though, it’s an appeal for us humans to do what nature does, and that is find a way to work in harmony.
If we do not work together, we simply cannot work through all this complexity in the world.
Example: It will take all of us working together, if we are to live sustainably on planet Earth. Climate is clearly out of balance.
Not understanding, lack of clarity and ambiguity are a 21st century norm. Trust-building exercises teach that it’s ok if we are blinded. That’s why together is better, especially now. We need each other, as professionals, as humans.
Blind trust either works in our favor or it does not. It depends on the quality of the team. Will others help, step up, provide some guidance?
If we defer judgment, tolerate the ambiguities and lean into each other, there’s a much better chance of working together and having a better quality of life experience.
Blind trust - it’s not so much the blind leading the blind, where either no one takes action, or someone randomly takes an action. Actually, that might be part of the problem today. Rather, a blind trust, the kind that highlights confidence in each other, is what creates the opportunity for collaboration to occur.
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Just like every person, every light has a special purpose.
Tanya facilitates creative process for problem solving. She’s currently at Wings of Change, a vocational hospitality school and hotel the remote tropical island of Nosy Be, Madagascar.
Wings has the dual mission of lifting students out of poverty through education and impacting the community.
Since opening in 2021, two hundred students have graduated from the program with an 84% success rate of professional employment.
Clean up Nosy Be is a community project in problem and solution finding to plastics and waste in the environment. #sauvonslasplanete, #cleanupnb
www.wingsofchange.co
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Teaching for Creativity
Tolerate Ambiguity.
It’s the first rule for developing creativity.
It’s also great for working in third world countries. And of course complex situations…which is just about everything.
Unclear situations are the norm. That'‘s why tolerating ambiguity is a 21st century skill.
Maybe there is too much information, maybe there’s not enough. Either way, tackling the unclear situation can be done. This is when creative processes come in.
Real world problem solving as an experiencial lesson gets to the heart of what tolerating ambiguity feels like, both as an individual and as a group.
Here’s what we learned from a g. When participants don’t understand, they stall. There is a tendency to do the same (wrong) task over an over. After all, they figured something out to move the challenge forward.
As a facilitator for the group, nudges matter. A tiny bit of help unlocked the exercise.
We laughed. We learned. Process matters.
The cutting of the Gordian Knot is an Ancient Greek legend associated with Alexander the Great. Rather than struggle untying an impossibly complicated knot, the challenge was resolved by simply slicing through it. What a novel and and useful solution. And a perfect example of creativity.
Gordion Knot
Tanya teaches for Creativity to develop a more honed 21st century skillset. Tanya is teaching both in person and remotely in Nosy Be, Madagascar to students at Wings of Change, a vocational hospitality school and hotel with the twin purpose of lifting young adults out of poverty and impacting the community.
#cleanupNB is an initiative to remove and transform garbage into something useable, beginning with the village of Ambatozavavy in Nosy Be.
Creativity Through English deliberately combines Creative Thinking Skills with English as a foreign language.
Tanya has been teaching for Wings of Change since 2021.
Journal of Teaching for Creativity - Remote Version
Here we go!
Its that time of the year when school kicks off anew.
Remote education has tripled since the pandemic. How to bring 21st century skills and especially creativity into remote education is the focus of this blog.
Why creativity ? Why indeed. Let’s start with that.
Creativity.
Three words are bundled in this one word.
To create, a verb; creative, an adjective; and creativity, a noun. Hmm. Ok, that’s ambiguous. Tolerate for just a minute or two longer.
Pro tip- Tolerating ambiguity is one of the golden rules for being more creative.
Creativity is our highest order thinking skill. That means having a capacity to do something with information. Learning information, taking ‘it’ in, whatever the subject is, is of course important. And that’s where the internet is an extremely powerful tool. Everything is online, right?! Maybe.
Yes, and how to filter, evaluate, synthesize and make something of the information, a new understanding, an innovation?
That’s the create, creative, creativity part(s).
Creativity is the number one ‘soft skill’ in demand. In fact, creativity has been recognized as the most important leadership skill since at least 2010. Soft skills are about how we humans interact. Some human interactions might be soft, and easy. Yay. Really though, human interactions, on any scale, at home or globally can be pretty tough. Challenges abound. Rigidity is everywhere. It’s life. Oof.
“To live is to have problems. To solve problems is to grow intellectually.” -J.P. Guilford, founding creativity scholar.
So how is it that our highest order thinking skill, creativity, which also happens to be highly in demand, is probably the most missing skill from education? That’s my hypothesis, and I’m not exactly alone on this.
Like with everything, it’s complicated. Creativity is a 21st century skill. How does creativity show up in education?
This blog explores that question.
Teaching for Creativity is about deliberately bringing Creative Thinking Skills alongside content for learning. That’s what I’ll also be reporting on in this blog.
So here we go. Starting point for the year, for every class, for becoming more creative.
Begin each lesson with a warm up. Warm ups separate from what came before. They loosen the class up and get students ready for learning. The Brain Dance is a researched series of functional movement patterns. These may seem silly, especially to older students. That’s ok.
Silly is good. Teachers can be human. When students are laughing they’re feeling more comfortable. Playful, kinesthetic learning is a great combination for imagination, for movement and for direct learning.
Basic movement patterns are real; they emerge as we grow. As we continue to grow, we typically move less, and less naturally. Bring functional movement patterns into class for wellness, language learning and some laughs.
Great teachers inspire, and by that I mean, when students start contributing to class, it’s because they feel inspired and safe to do so. When students are doing they are being creative for learning.
A simple movement activity at the top of class is activating. Just like warming up for sports, warming up for learning makes sense.
Customize words to the actions of the Brain Dance. We practice prepositions for the actions -over, beside, next to, between, etc. Students from summer classes are now seasoned and teaching the newbies. And just like that, we learn from each other, without even realizing it.
And, just like in a traditional class, having a class assistant works wonders. I might be remote, however the students are together. What if a student assistant elaborates processes on the teacher’s behalf? That’s ok. Also, if there is a need for translation for clarification, I welcome it, especially for logistics.
Originality is creativity. Student artwork adds to a sense of connection, with a new common understanding among us. Drawing for learning is good stuff.
Oh, and if moving around the room or going outside is a constraint, then move from the chair. It’s all good. Being creative means doing anything and everything to make something work. Teachers are creative by nature. There are lots of constraints. And the lessons must go on.
So onto video making this week, or at least stills of the Brain Dance for a wider audience. Ooh, accountability! Collaborating on a video is builds classroom community. Making use of technology is also a 21st century skill. Bingo.
And we’re off to a new school season.
This journal captures Tanya’s experience in part for her doctoral research adding creativity into remote education.
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The Brain Dance
Breathe
Tactile
Core Distal
Head Tail
Body Sides
Thank you Anne Green Gilbert for sharing the Brain Dance with the world, more at www.creativedance.org
Artwork by Sayah.
Tanya Knudsen teaches remotely to students at Wings of Change, a vocational hospitality school and hotel in Madagascar with the twin purpose of lifting young adults out of poverty and impacting the community.
Creativity Through English deliberately combines Creative Thinking Skills with English as a foreign language.
Tanya has been teaching for Wings of Change since 2021. She was an in-person guest teacher this summer. Yep!
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Class Notes on Creative Thinking Skills
Develop for delivery.
Transforming ideas into solutions. It’s a process.
Transformation so cool. Like when a chameleon changes color to attract a mate. How amazing is that? Seriously. Change in nature is, well, natural. Duh.
What if we accepted change more naturally? And because change is natural, it is important. In fact, change defines the cycles of life. Nothing is static. We are all in motion.
Solutions emerge by allowing for ideas open up a bit. We play with them, almost like toys. Get curious about an idea to explore it.
Incomplete thoughts are like an incomplete paint job. It just doesn’t feel complete. And because its incomplete, you could finish it in any number of ways. That’s creative process.
Ideas have be evaluated in order to have the opportunity to become solutions.
And remember, ideas don’t have feelings. It’s ok to toss them out if they don’t fit!
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Class Notes on Creative Thinking Skills
What’s in an idea? Too soon to tell.
The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.
And that’s the point.
Ideation, and particularly brainstorming is well known for generating a lot of ideas. We often think of ideas as lightbulbs, right?! Why is that? Not sure. It has something to do with a sense becoming suddenly alive with something, a thought, a fleeting, random, incomplete concept that flies across consciousness.
So here’s a question: how many different kinds of lights are there? Really, think about it for a second.
There’s quite a few different lights out there, actually!
Ideation is simply about drumming up lots and lots (and we do mean lots) of ideas.
Often this is an out-loud activity, but it doesn’t have to be. Ideas can be written too!
WoC students practice brain writing to generate ideas.
Ideas are so useful. And they are incomplete. Random thoughts, in all their glorious wild and crazy forms at this point are welcome. That’s what generating ideas is all about.
It’s important during ideation not to judge. Oh no - don’t do that. That would be like saying you don’t like liquorish before you’ve tried it. Another (creative) question, in that situation would be more like, “What might be all the other flavors that could be made that might delight the palate?!”
Class Notes of Creative Thinking Skills
Formulating Challenges
How to get from here to there?
A map is an obvious answer.
What if there is no map? No Google Maps? No Wifi?
What if there is no obvious answer? Ugh.
How to achieve a goal, wish or challenge is a challenge in and of itself. This is why spending time on discovering what is in-between the current state and the desired future state is important.
There is a gap between now and the future desired state. What might be all the things in the way, as obstacles or as unforeseen challenges?
What must be overcome to achieve the goal?
A strategic gap analysis identifies critical issues that must be addressed in order to achieve the goal. This is what formulating challenges is all about and the real problems start to emerge.
One way to become fluent in English is to listen to music. Seems like a great idea. It’s fun. And free. Music is readily available online. And yet, as full time students, there is not much time to listen to music, let alone study it in detail as a process for building fluency.
In fact, time is a barrier to learning English through music. Spending time on learning English through music is a roadblock to learning hospitality skills.
The creative process is fluid. Stopping, restarting and iteration is all a part of the creative process.
Back to the proverbial drawing board…
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How to get from here to there? What’s standing in the way?
What’s in the way of the vision?
Hospitality Skills at Wings of Change
Class Notes on Creative Thinking Skills
Exploring the Vision
Identifying Goals, Wishes and Challenges
If we are to start at the beginning of the creative process, this is the time to vision, to imagine and to dream about hopes and desires for a future ideal state.
Imagining what is desirable activates a mindset focused on possibility. Many, if not all of the things we have now began as an imagined thought. Imagine that!!
Through Visionary Thinking
Imagine a magazine or newspaper front cover a year from now with your vision. What would it say?
Let’s say becoming fluent in English is the headline. Seems pretty reasonable, if not a stretch for an ESL cohort. For now anyway.
And this is why visions matter.
Act Toward the Direction of Intention
With a vision in mind, a destination is set. It may be far out in the distance. It may seem lofty or even far-fetched. That’s fine. That is what visions are: big hairy audacious goals or BHAGs.
Unconstrained free thinking in order to expand horizons beyond what might be normally considered…yep, that’s where visions have the headspace to emerge.
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Exploring the Vision
Visionary BHAG
Statement starters for visionary thinking:
“It would be great if…”
“Wouldn’t it be great if…”
To explore negative images of the future:
“It would be awful if…”
Notes on Creativity Through English
The Executive Step: Where to Start
Knowing where to start in working through a challenge is a skill unto itself. It also marks the very first step in Creative Problem Solving, a process that makes use of different thinking skills for solving complex problems.
Gathering information preceeds how to proceed.
And gathering matters because data, lots of options, has value when it comes to decision making.
How to make a face from nature? This is an unclear challenge. A gathering of data or plant material provides a variety of possible options. Select what makes sense. What would makes good eyes? What could be hair and so on. The standouts get selected for the face form. The rest goes back to nature.
One defintion of creativity is novelty that is useful. A truly natural face is different and very unexpected as an English class project. This creative exercise is also novel and useful in communicating principals of creative process.
Ta-da! What a beautiful and direct reflection of Creative Problem Solving in action.
So step one guys, gather data, then decide.
This first meta step, thinking about thinking, is where the Creative Problem Solving Process begins.
The face was for fun, to learn this executive step. Now let’s get on to the real challenge…
Spoiler alert: creative thinking is organized thinking.
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Wings of Change living picture “where”
Gathering data and decision making.
Wings of Change is a Vocational Hospitality Shool and Hotel Social Enterprise. These notes are from Creativity in English with instructor
Tanya Knudsen
Notes on Creativity Through English
Wings of Change students warm up
Warm Up Matters!
We know about the importance for warming up when it comes to sports. Loosening up, separating from what happend before, getting ready for what's to come helps us to prepare for the task mentally and physically. Just as atheletes stretch for before a physical work out or game, limbering up the mind for mental work is equally important when in comes to preparing for learning or working on projects.
Jump starting a session raises the group’s energy and helps the class to achieve better results faster. Here’s what else warm up do for us, especially when it is comes to problem solving:
practice tools and techniques
learn or review rules
become more comfortable working as a team
establish an environment that encourages fun and exploration
To be more creative, warm ups are intentionally silly and center on common, neutral topics. This is because an imaginative mindset is actually useful for ‘serious’ problem solving. Counterintuitive? Maybe. Consider this: the capacity for organized thinking is key in working through complexity. Since imaginative thinking is unlimited, it only makes sense to limber up the mind for possiblities to emerge.
Warm up and get silly. Then you are ready for work.
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Notes on Creativity Through English
Learning Through The Body
Wings of Change students learn kinesthetically with living pictures
Learning a language is tough. When sounds, inflections and structures are unfamilar they are simply hard to remember. Ultimately, the capacity for recall is what opens the door to fluency. When fluency, the automatic, subconscious ability to draw on vocabulary in order to communicate coherently, is the goal then how to master another language is the clearly the challenge.
Well, there’s good old fashioned rote learning. Yawn. And it works for certain things. Sheer repetition can be great for verb conjugation, vocabulary building and absorbing chunks of knowledge.
To teach a child what a cup is, we can easily show them a cup and now they know. That’s easy, right. This is TPR teahing, or Total Physical Response, teaching in a way that is overt, obvious, and makes a clear connection to the concept being taught.
For Abstract Concepts
But what if the task is to teach an abstract concept such as tolerating ambiguity, or staying open, or being curious?
Abstract concepts are challenging to teach in any language. Translating from the target language to the native language tends to establish a habit of translation. If fluency in the target language is the goal, then surely translation eventually becomes a barrier to thinking and building an expansive vocabulary in the target language.
How to get to that ‘a-ha’ of understanding can be learned through the body, or kinesthetically. Physical movement for learning is fun, requires teamwork, and develops an ability to tolerate ambiguity (how do we do this?) while learning complex concepts.
With Living Pictures = A-ha
Physically making living pictures, tableaux vivants, requires deeper thinking while also being silly and engaging the whole body for learning. Living pictures also visually document the lesson. How fab is that?
If seeing is believing, then seeing or perceiving complexity though the kinesthetic learning exercises of living pictures help to clarify what complex problem solving actually looks like.
And who doesn’t want to make an artful human picture?
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Tanya Knudsen is Creativity Consultant and teaches Creativity Through English at Wings of Change, a vocational hospitaliy school and hotel social enterprise in Nosy Be, Madagascar.