creativity?

Creativity is a crucial element in my life. It is as much my antidote to boredom and monotonicity, as it is my expression of vitality and presence. I cannot imagine teaching, or more generally, human relations, to survive without it. However, I had to realize that, even though this statement may hold true, what creativity means for the specific person or group of people is not self-evident. 

With children I tend to experience that creativity means handicraft, involving drawing, coloring, cutting, gluing, assembling, and so on, which must bring a tangible result -- a piece of art to take home.

For academic people, may they be students or professors, it is much more verbal production that is the safe manifestation of creativity. Debating challenging topics or writing dialogues and short essays functions as the canvas for them to express their intellectual power and creativity.

 

The toughest cookie, as far as creativity is concerned, seems to be the business environment. Accepting that it is a far too broad category, I still feel like grouping office jobs together, because, no matter what the specific topic and field is, they are quite standard in their expectation, and in the implications, of sticking the employees to their chairs for 8 hours. In such circumstances, the language teacher needs to be cautious with too much of creativity imposed on workers who, outside of the classes, are required much more to bear and conduct monotonous tasks. With business English students, what seemed to work is the variation of activities, each involving just a little bit of creativity, so to keep them within their comfort zones but to bring some color into the office black-and-white.

It also happened that someone just couldn't tolerate any extent of creativity. He refused to engage in pair assignments, situational tasks, or discussions involving personal opinion, let alone in the creation of his visual resume. I must say, I was struggling with him for a month until I managed to reconcile the group's needs, my expectations, and the dynamics of the class with his comfort zone. I don't intend to imply that he was wrong; he was just the exception, in that group. And it's a piercing dilemma how to "leave no man behind" but to satisfy the needs of the majority.