A few materials such as yarn and scraps of paper and cloth can provide the media for recording limitless ideas from the imaginations of students. With a little encouragement and a few suggestions of actions, emotions, exaggerations and activities students will produce a vast array of amusing characters. (Author)

Describes student performances based on interpretations of concrete poetry. (DD)

Existing analyses of creative behavior are overly product-focused. The contribution of creativity to more complex results (i.e., results requiring successful application of other skills) should be explored, as this may enrich understanding of creativity. Examples of such contributions include creative negotiations, the purchase of a small…

Inventing games is an activity-based strategy for teaching children to (1) make decisions; (2) learn academic skills; (3) formulate organizational skills; (4) practice social skills; (5) develop rule-making knowledge; and (6) express their creativity. (DG)

Notes that woodworking can be a valuable learning tool for young children because it has both creative and structured sides. Recommends materials for a classroom toolbox, noting the importance of real woodworking tools as opposed to those made just for children. Suggests that teachers work directly with students for safety and to help guide them…

Describes a Voluntary Arts Network program involving the Globe Theatre in London that is focused on realizing the cultural and creative potential of lifelong learning by involving adult volunteers in drama projects. (SK)

In this paper I emphasise the continuing importance of painting as a critical art practice. Contemporary art has always, naturally, reflected the development and exploration of new technologies and our current postmodern era is no different. However, despite our obsession with, and increasing reliance on, computer and filmbased technologies, it is…

Rhythm tap is sweeping the nation as an outlet for self-expression. Also known as "jazz tap" or "percussive tap," this art form's dominant focus is musicality, improvisation, simple-to-complex rhythms, and new styles. It reaches beyond technique and serves as an outlet for self-expression, independence, and spontaneity. Rhythm tap incorporates an…

Teaching has often been thought of as a creative performance. Although comparisons with performance were originally intended to emphasize teacher creativity, they have become associated instead with contemporary reform efforts toward scripted instruction that deny the creativity of teachers. Scripted instruction is opposed to constructivist,…

An essential element in successful psychotherapy involves helping clients become more creative in their approach to their problems. While Otto Rank, one of the pioneers of psychoanalysis, loosely alluded to this as a fitting goal, it was the inventor of psychodrama, Jacob L. Moreno, MD (1889-1974), who made this an explicit objective of the…

All teaching artists have taken unexpected detours that lead to miracles. They have all created magical experiences in which people are too engaged to notice the incredible amount they are learning. As a TA, one searches for "serious play"--purposeful fun that stimulates exhilarating work and genuine learning. But how does it happen? How do TAs…

A leading TA and writer speaks to the human importance of art making in schools, prisons, and beyond. This article attempts to demonstrate that, as human beings and as artists, we should speak up for nourishing the art-making instinct at its core, and not only for placing this gift in the service of other laudable goals.

This article presents a dialogue with Monte Joffee. Joffee has been an active leader in the small school and charter school movements in New York City for over 20 years. He is a cofounder of The Renaissance Charter School in New York City and served as its founding principal (1993-2007). In this dialogue, Joffee articulates the ways in which…

Students and teachers inevitably enter classrooms with differing expectations and experiences; those differences provide opportunities for both conflict and growth. This article examines this phenomenon in an undergraduate teacher education course on reading instruction at the middle-school level, presents case studies of students' improvisations…

This article features several educators whose classroom, school, and district-wide projects offered this year's most inventive and successful examples of bringing technology-based learning to K-12 students. A middle school teacher used grant money to fund a weekly student news broadcast. A technology director created video booths to reveal to…