The Free Classroom Creative Assignment: Leveraging Student Strengths to Enhance Learning
Consider any number of staff awarded the faculty of the year award and you will see one common thing among them. They all provide their students with the opportunity to have some type of autonomy in the learning process and make the learning materials and the learning experience relevant and related not only to student's daily life, but also to the environment, and the community in which they live. They also know that the learning process never ends and thus they learn from their students in the same way that their students learn from them. But most of all they know how to create a climate of trust, respect, and acceptance in a classroom learning environment in which every student is important and all students' ideas count.In other words, those faculty who are successful are doing well because they have a way to empower students in their classroom to do their best based on their own innate and learned talent and skills (Gialamas, Avgerinou, Chapter 8, 2016) Therefore, in order for faculty and academic leaders to provide the accumulated educational experience needed for students in the 21 century, first we need to know our students and ask: who do we have in our classrooms?Do we really know our students?How many faculty really know the students enrolled in their courses? What do they know about these students beyond their names and customary class behaviours? They can predict that Johnny will always sit: in the front row, Marie will usually come late, Omar will always be ready to answer a question, and Marvin will always sit in the back, to name a lew examples. But how many teachers are aware of their students' special talents and, skills? How many can name students of theirs who may be gifted in poetry, graphic design, writing, illustration, video making, playwriting, singing, or programming..to name just: a few skills?Even though talent or skills can vary greatly from one person to another, each one of us naturally has certain abilities, skills, capabilities, or aptitudes, as well as psychological needs for motivation which include autonomy, relatedness, and competence. For students, such talents and needs can be discovered, evoked, and enhanced if the right environment is provided, one that offers the means and the freedom to explore and express what they learn in media of their own choosing. As teachers, we should make an effort to find out at the beginning of the semester if our students have such talents, ones that we might capitalize on in restructuring our learning environment, designing our courses, preparing lesson plans, and teaching our classes.Outstanding faculty often share a common teaching strategy: they provide their students with certain types and degrees of autonomy in the learning process and make learning materials and the learning experience relevant to the students' daily lives and the environments in which they live. In other words, teachers are being successful because they have found ways to empower students to do their best based on their own innate and learned talents and skills. For this purpose, we have developed and used a simple but powerful approach called the Free Classroom Creative Assignment. The approach has been applied to teaching biology, mathematics, and teaching methods to students and teachers, and to art, media, and communication students.Ttoice every semester students are given the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of a particular scientific concept using the medium of their choice thereby encouraging them to use their creative forte. In this Free Classroom Creative Assignment students may create cartoons, songs, poetry, a play, or even perform a dance about topics such as cell division, atoms and molecules, and mitosis, etc.This project is special in that it allows teachers to really discover the essence of their students" artistic personalities [and motivational triggers] The more teachers know about: their students, the more effective they will be in relating to them.