How do you teach creativity? This is a question teachers in the arts ask themselves every day.
Art teachers constantly look for ways to help students expand their creativity.
“Ms. Sartanowicz gives you the tools you need but then she gives you the freedom to be creative yourself,” Thea Hobson, a student in Drawing I, Painting I and Drawing and Painting II said. “She doesn’t grade us on our creativity, but she doesn’t just grade us on our shading. She wants us to do the assignments in our own way.”
Visual arts are not the only means of expressing originality and creativity: Dance teacher Kathleen Exar also gives students freedom to create their own dance styles.
“I’ve begun to realize how many things can be taught through creative endeavors. It’s not just how to build a vase or project your voice,” Exar said. “There are things you go through in improvisation and in choreography and performing that unites you with your class and puts you through an experience that makes you stronger.”
According to Exar, student and teacher choreography are fused together in performances for students of higher-level dance classes, giving these students the chance to show their creativity to a larger audience.
Exar uses a variety of exercises to develop creativity in dance and to make students feel comfortable moving in new directions with their dances and their bodies. One such exercise involves students moving across a room, trying unique ways of moving, rather than simply walking or leaping.
“You need to think about how the music makes you feel, or you need to visualize images in your head as you listen to the music,” Exar said.
Movement is not the only way creativity is taught through dance. Exar has her students keep a journal documenting their feelings while dancing or choreographing. Students also have the chance to share their opinions with peers.
“I think everybody doubts themselves or what they’ve put out there or their ability to be creative,” Exar said.
It is important to the dancers’ creative development to receive encouragement from others in order to boost their confidence, according to both Exar and performing arts teacher Mark Vanderzee.
“My focus is the skills, but by [teaching] the skills, I help people get more confident, therefore unlocking creativity,” Vanderzee said.
Vanderzee believes that everyone has creativity in them and that that his role as a teacher is to help it surface, turning it into a finished product that the student can take pride in.
“There are ways that everyone can express creativity, and I just fancy myself as the gatekeeper in two regards: In terms of unlocking ways to express that creativity that already exists, and I just hope to get students more comfortable with being able to express their creativity,” Vanderzee said.
In his Backstage Power Tools and Special Effects class, Vanderzee thinks that everyone has the skills necessary to produce incredible art. He helps students come to terms with their skills.
“I say in class, ‘Did you ever play with Legos when you were a kid? Well, see, you’re a set designer!’ or ‘At Halloween, did you ever put a flashlight under your chin to scare someone? You’re a lighting designer!’”
A student’s success in being creative comes from the skills used to produce high-quality art, but much more of it comes from the students’ will and belief that they can produce good work. It is the role of the teacher to provide that encouragement, according to Vanderzee.
“It’s all creative problem solving,” Vanderzee said. “It’s helping make connections that yes, they’ve done this before, and it’s creating a classroom environment that is conducive to playing and being willing to explore those things again.”
Sophia Rintell can be contacted at [email protected]
