This …
There some important words in that tweet that have everything to do with learning: love, no grade, creative.
All teachers would like more of this kind of thing, I’m sure: kids going the extra mile, adding flourishes to their learning.
How do we get kids to approach their learning like this? Well, I don’t think we get it by asking for it. Think about the kids in this tweet. They’ve seen a possibility the teacher didn’t see. They acted on it. They could because (and this is important, and awesome) the ‘cultural undertow’1 of the class meant they felt confident enough to make real what they saw in their imaginations.
To make space for love and creativity - for imagination - to come into the room, grades can’t be the only thing that’s valued. There must be metaphorical blank boxes for kids to step into and ‘colour’. When kids colour those boxes by acting on their imaginations, they don’t just learn to do something extra (like make a sea monster), they also learn to back themselves and that passion and joy have a place in the ordinary.
How valuable is that!
Guy Claxton talks a lot about the importance of this. For instance:
“Whether you have adventurous or timid learners, dependent or independent ones, reflects the mood music – the cultural undertow – of the classroom, and we now know pretty clearly what the elements are that steer students in one way or the other.”
You can find the article here