One example I can think of that relates to being creative is a recent tutoring session I had with my younger cousin. As noted in the text, creativity is looking at things in a new way, a lot of times to solve problems. As I was helping my cousin with his math homework, I was having trouble trying to get him to understand the material and how I was presenting it. Instead of enforcing the only way I knew how to do the type of math he was learning (absolute values) I took a different approach. I came up with the idea that related to something he completely understood and liked. I decided to compare absolute values to football. I instructed my cousin to think of the absolute value as a football field and how far away the number was from the “touchdown”. After doing a few examples, my cousin completely understood the process and was able to do the problems on his own! I thought this was creative because I took a less “academic” approach to doing math. I believe it's extremely hard to try to get young students to like any subject in school (especially math!) so teachers need to be especially creative to cater to the different needs of all types of students.
I really enjoyed your post, and your creative thinking when it came to teaching your cousin math. I work with kids, and I have to find new ways everyday to help twenty different kids with different learning styles comprehend the material. Sometimes the most frustrating thing can be explaining the same math problem or science question over and over again, but once you figure out ways to incorporate different ideas and analogies to assist it can be a breeze. I find math can be the hardest to explain even if you are good at the topic, but I love to do as you said which is to find real life things the kids like to put the math concept into perspective. For example I love to use makeup and such for the ladies, and I always do as you did which is to fall back on sports for the boys. Great use of your creativity and great post!
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