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CREATIVITY FOR CHANGE IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION

Becoming an active member: The 5 C’s.  Alan Maley

7/21/2015

5 Comments

 
I think everyone would agree that there is not much point in belonging to the C Group unless we make an active contribution to it.  So I thought it might be helpful to offer a few suggestions of ways we can do this.


1. Connect

By this I mean connect with the notion of creativity.  We can do this by reading articles, books, watching You Tube videos and checking websites which discuss or promote creative ideas.  And going to talks and conferences where creativity is foregrounded. This helps us become more aware and better informed about the subject.  We can only speak with authority if we are well-informed.


2. Collect

Create files where you can store material relevant to creativity.  These might include files of striking quotations, of texts (stories, poems, etc,) to be used in future classes, pictures, video and video clips, activities you plan to try out, lists of books/articles you plan to read, etc.

In this way you will build an information bank which is relatively easy to add new material to as you meet it.


3. Contribute

You can make a contribution by: ~ writing reviews of new books for teachers’ magazines and journals.  If you have never written for publication before, reviews are a good place to start.  Editors are always on the lookout for reviewers.

~ write an article about a creative idea you have tried for a teachers’ magazine, or for Twitter or Facebook.

~ look out for opportunities to contribute to publications (The recent British Council book on Creativity in the English Language Classroom is a good example).

~ write for the C group blog, and make sure you check it out regularly.

~ write a short article for the C Group special slot in HLT Mag.

~write something for The Teacher Trainer journal at www.tttjournal.co.uk The Editor, Tessa Woodward, would be happy to help you.

~ write some teaching materials to be used in your classes (and perhaps your colleagues’ classes too)

~ participate actively in conferences (and online webinars) by running workshops or giving talks.

~ organise a small conference or workshop in your locality.


~ offer to help the C group in an organising capacity.  For example, by taking responsibility for a specific area of its work, or by volunteering to help out with C Group events.


4. Co-operate


Look for opportunities to work with colleagues.  Unity is strength.  Working in isolation can be a lonely business, so look for like-minded colleagues online or in your locality.  You can organise informal discussion groups, reading circles, carry out some classroom experiments, write materials cooperatively, etc.


4. Communicate

Never miss an opportunity to publicise the C group and its work.  An obvious way of doing this is always to include a slide on your PPT presentations which highlights the C group and its web address.

Share what you have found out – books or articles you have read which might be of interest to others, materials you have come across - useful websites, videos, etc.  

Keep the group informed of events you think might be of interest.  These might be conferences, webinars, special training courses, etc.

Share information about the C Group and what it does with people outside the teaching world: administrators. Ministry officials, publishers’ representatives, exam boards…and parents.  You don’t need to be an evangelist – just talking about what we aim to do is enough.





As you can see, most of these suggestions are no big deal.  Anyone can do them. Being an active C group member does not mean you have to carry the whole world on your shoulders, or achieve epoch-making discoveries.  But it does mean being constantly alert to opportunities to further the aims of the group as set out in the Manifesto (see the website to remind yourself what these are) – and acting upon them.

Good luck!

Alan Maley

5 Comments

Make of the pebble what you will - Andrew Wright

7/16/2015

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The pace of modern life hardly gives us time to really look at things.  We tend to use a kind of visual shorthand - 'That's a stone', 'That's a flower' without really looking.  The short prose reflection below and the poem remind us of just how extraordinary 'ordinary' things can be when we take the trouble to really look at them...  And thank goodness for that!


Alan Maley







Make of the pebble what you will 



Andrew Wright 


He picked up a pebble from the many pebbles on the beach.  He weighed it in his hand.


‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘A pebble,’ I told him.

‘Your mind makes of this pebble what it will,’ he said.  ‘What you see here and call a pebble is many more things.  It’s a fragment of a much bigger rock but it is complete in itself.  It was part of a big rock a million years ago and the big rock, ten million years before, was part of a stratum of rock and sixty million years before that it was a boiling mass of molten rock.  Fifty million years later the stratum lay exposed to the ice and was broken up and tumbled down a valley side and into a stream and, in winter torrents, the rock was broken again and tumbled down the stream into the river and into the sea.   It has been rounded smooth by the river and the constant tides and waves of the sea, in another million years, if we put it back and nobody else takes it out, then it will have been ground away into sand.  And once it is sand you might walk on it or its grains of rock might be taken up by a crab and built into its shell.

To a baby crab it is to be hidden under. To a whale it is too small to be seen and is of no interest.  We can put it in a saucepan full of milk and the milk will not boil over.  We can throw it at a dog which is attacking us.  We can draw a picture on a white rock with it or we can take it home and use it as a paperweight.  Or we can hold it and look at it and imagine a thousand stories. .

 It has so many stories to tell and so many stories to wait for!

(My mind was set off along this path by Tahir Shah’s book, ‘In Arabian Nights’.)




FLOWER


Motikala Subba Dewan



I see them every day
Something forces me to notice them
A quick glance in a hurry
An automatic gesture!


On a single stem
Small flowers blooming of the same family
In two different colours - yellow and red
What a combination!


With the first kiss of morning sun
Water drops from the petals
Sparkling brilliantly
Mesmerizing!


Facing the world bravely
Raising their sticky heads
Amidst prickly thorns
Indomitable! 


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