Creativity emerges, despite myself!

My research continues to challenge and broaden my definition of "creativity." According to an article in Newsweek in July, "creativity is production of something original and useful..." I'm trying to be more open and accepting of my students' work, even if it isn't immediately apparently "correct." Take, for example, one of my student's depiction of "living and non-living" things as we had discussed in science. Most students chose to draw pictures of people, animals or plants for the living and fruit off the vine for non-living (as we had discussed earlier). But then I went to see Karl's work and rather than reprimanding him for just drawing something off topic, as I was tempted to do, I asked him to describe his picture. He went into great detail to tell me what was living in his picture (a human [living] digging a tunnel in the dirt under some living grass. The details were amazing. His non-living picture was of a 'camel-car', which, as he said "some people might think it's living, but it's not. It's pretend!"

So...I think I was successful yesterday. Rather than do my gut-reaction of stopping him in the midst of his work, I took the time to listen...thus encouraging his creativity.
Hopefully this will continue to be a new way of teaching for me!