Begin Blogging!

So it begins. A blog. A blog about creativity, and classrooms, and what goes into creating a culture of creativity in the classroom.

Visible thinking strategies, Project Zero, Google+ Communities, these are some of my interests that I am taking into my classroom this year.

I want to create classrooms full of creative thinkers. I want to do less work and have my students do more work. I want students to be able to find their creative “flow”, and understand what that means. I want you to feel the energy that a classroom full of creative thinkers creates when you walk into my art room everyday. This blog will document some of the ways I’m doing that this year, and what worked and what didn't work.

I've spent the summer exploring:

Creativity, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google+ Communities, Google+, Visible Thinking Strategies, Artful Thinking, Project Zero….

It was an eye-opening and exhausting summer, I found it very difficult to stop and focus, every idea I had seemed to be followed by 6 new ideas and places to research.

I’m incorporating as much of this summer’s research into my classes without making my students completely nuts by using a flavor of the day approach to learning. Linking all these explorations together to provide for growth and understanding is my goal, and I'm a “connector”, so I love the challenge of making a wide range of successful strategies mesh into a coherent curriculum.

About Classroom Conversation Clips.

I'm an art teacher. We talk in my classroom. A lot. A real lot. And I listen to my students, though they don't always realize I hear everything they say (and probably would prefer I did not at times)! This is a section of my blog where I intend to post quirky comments, meaningful revelations and other snippets of conversations that don't seem to fit in my regular posts. Enjoy, and I hope some of them make you laugh. Laughter is common in my classroom, we work really hard, but we also have a lot of fun in Ms. Lange’s art room!

Welcome, and please post constructive criticism! I want this blog to help me document my progress as a teacher implementing these strategies this year, so any suggestions are always welcome and appreciated!