Monthly Archives: August 2015

T4D – Teach for Delight!

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While reading Tom and David Kelley’s book – Creative Confidence – I came upon Design for Delight. D4D (Design for Delight) is the brainchild of Intuit’s Kaaren Hansen. D4D involves “evoking positive emotion by going beyond customer expectations in delivering ease and benefit so people buy more and tell others about the experience.” (p. 176)

As I read, I immediately thought – OH!!! T4D! How fabulous would that be?

T4D

T4D … Teach for DELIGHT!

It’s an interesting twist isn’t it? Not teach for meaning. Not teach for skills. Not teach for understanding. Not teach for learning.Teach for delight!!! Cool, creative and fabulous, right?!?!!!

Now, before our educator heads explode, let me reiterate – for something to be truly creative it must be useful and appropriate. Meaning, understanding and skills are essential parts of teaching and learning. Therefore, they remain an integral part of my vision of T4D. So, let’s revisit. T4D is cool, creative and fabulous, right?!!!

Think about it. What if our focus, as educators, was delight? What if our goal and intention was for all constituents to experience delight in the learning/teaching journey.  Wouldn’t that be amazing?

Delighted students would engage, think and learn more deeply. They would discover the pleasure and satisfaction of learning, questioning, experimenting and even struggling. Hopefully they would seek to know and understand far beyond our classrooms. Delighted parents, might partner, more fully, in their children’s learning. And we, delighted educators, could, breathe, smile, and engage in the process of learning and teaching with increased fervor and purpose.

AND WE WOULD ALL BE DELIGHTED!!!

Yes, I know, I’m yelling, lol. I’m yelling because T4D  is a concept I’d like everyone to hear and embrace!

T4D. Increase the joy, and deep learning. Teach for Delight!

Resources:

Creative Confidence: Unleashing The Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelley and David Kelley, 2013, Crown Business Publishing

Reflections on Making Room for Creativity in Math

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math blog

Tons of things happened when I made room for creativity in math. My students and I:

  • thought
  • shared our thinking
  • struggled with moments of confusion, not knowing, and even small failures
  • laughed at ourselves, and laughed with each other
  • challenged one another’s thinking, explanations, illustrations, words, and math
  • encouraged one another to keep at it and not give up
  • were creative – in our ideas for the math story, in our illustrations, and in our explanations
  • transferred our math knowledge to our real life, and our real life to our math work and thought
  • persuaded others regarding our thoughts and conclusions
  • worked to understand each other’s point of view
  • did a lot of math
  • drew some great illustrations
  • enjoyed seeing our ideas in print

But, what surprised me the most was the depth of understanding this exercise afforded me!

My girls all have a basic understanding of addition and subtraction, and they all employ various strategies to solve simple number sentences. Some have a greater comfort than others manipulating numbers, and actively seek the opportunity to share their adding/subtracting prowess. While I was excited to experience the thought and creativity of all my girls, I was particularly interested in what these girls would do with the challenge. I imagined their math skills would allow them to revel in the thinking, and come up with great, inventive ideas. I never imagined what happened for a few of them.

They could not complete the task!They came up with many number sentences and easily solved them. But, they struggled to find a way to connect their number sentences to real life. They seemed perplexed as to why anyone would do that, and honestly, seemed to feel a bit betrayed by me for asking them to do so! We worked through it together, and they were able to, joyfully, produce work that made sense to them and their friends.

It was fascinating! This wide open exercise that combined life, art, math, writing, thinking and communicating, allowed my girls to show – in a new and insightful way – what they did, and did not, understand. It was an amazing assessment opportunity – of their learning, and my teaching!