Look on the Brighter Side
By Peter W. Cookson, Jr.

As a new teacher, how can you develop your students' creative intelligence and provide activities that enable students to discover their innate abilities? Ironically, there are educators who do not seem to be interested in developing the unfulfilled potential of children. These educators create schools and classrooms where conformity and conventional thinking is enforced.

You can do your students no better service than to recognize what the author Alfie Kohn calls, "the brighter side of human nature." Your students are constantly bombarded with images of violence and negativity; creating a classroom where the brighter side of human nature can shine is a prerequisite for the development of creative intelligence. Here are some tips to keep in mind this year.

Make sure your classroom is a home for your students and reflects their many hopes and aspirations. After visiting many schools, I'm convinced that classrooms that are alive with student work, music, art and play are far more effective than classrooms that focus on the teacher's desk.

An effective classroom is one where every child has the opportunity to discover his or her own talents. It's important to set up rules of behavior in a classroom that provide for a mini-civil society and where bullying and sarcasm are treated as violations of the group's beliefs. I like to work one-on-one with students who demonstrate anti-social behaviors. I've found that if you scratch the surface of a bully you find an extremely vulnerable young person.

Treat each one of your students as an individual learner by providing multiple learning opportunities. Creative intelligence is like a river that overflows its banks. Some children learn to read for concepts by secluding themselves, other students learn to read for concepts through group discussion. What is key is that each student receive recognition for his or her achievements. That kind of reinforcement acts as a catalyst to the imagination and sparks the energy required for creative thinking.

As a first year teacher, you can build a community of learners that prizes individual achievement, treats each person with respect and is open to unconventional thinking. To create this type of classroom is an enormous public service in today's educational environment.

Peter W. Cookson, Jr. is the founder of TCinnovations and the Dean of the Graduate School of Education of Lewis & Clark College. He is also founder of the Center for Educational Outreach & Innovation at Teachers College.

November/December 2004, Vol.35, No.3