It looks like you have tour coming up. Can you give us some details about what your carnival will
look like? Will there be opportunities for kids and teachers to play along?
We’ll be taking the carnival across the country this fall hitting a minimum of four
cities. The event is massive with over 100k square feet of content. We split the
experience into multiple days and kick off with a special student preview day where
teachers and students can visit as a field trip.
We talk a lot about building a Creative Mindset at EducationCloset and how important it is to let
go and let kids take risks. What are some specific thing that teachers can do to help inspire our
students to invent and innovate through STEAM?
A 20th century approach to learning was to learn to read, so that students could
then read to learn. We believe the evolution of this is to learn to create so you can
create to learn. Failure is part of the creation and invention process and should be
celebrated. Sometimes, more can be learned from taking a risk and failing than
from succeeding. Teachers should feel comfortable not knowing the answer and
working with the students to find it.
Risk taking and a willingness to embrace productive failure is crucially important--and equally important for educators as it is to encourage in students. While this
can difficult in the world of testing and curriculum requirements, it is an important
element for STEAM stickiness. If teachers are not afraid little messy, to iterate on
what they have created, and offer transparency about their process, colleagues and
students will be similarly inspired.
** As told to editor Susan Riley on March 16, 2016
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