Monday, February 5, 2007

Lacks Creativity




Buddy Boy is presently full time in a Communications Classroom. He shares this classroom with a few other students, who all get at least some inclusion in regular classrooms. It's only been about 6 weeks since he was spending half of his time in this class and half of his time in a school for emotionally disturbed children (he is autistic, and NOT emotionally disturbed).

Well he just brought home his first report card for this year. Three things stuck out. First, half of the report card was missing. There was no reporting for half of the subjects. Second, he got marks for a class he didn't attend (Music). And finally, in Art he was marked as "lacking creativity".

Well that one just chapped my backside.

My son may not be as compliant as they would like. He may butt in to tell the teacher what he knows about a subject. And he may spend recess outside walking the fence looking for worms or spider eggs. But one thing he's got in spades is creativity.


This is something that Buddy Boy was building this afternoon, and is typical of some of the stuff he builds, although he often builds stuff that is much more complex, with levers that he fashions that interact with and move other things in his creations. I asked him what this was. His response? "It's the entrance to my hideout".



"Once you get past the towers, you get to the gate".






"Then, when you push the code in-don't tell anyone the secret code, Dad..." (demonstrates tapping a series of blocks in a specific order while making a beeping sound)






"...the gate slides this way and you can get in to the hideout".












Perhaps this isn't their cookie cutter idea of creativity. But I'll take Buddy Boy's creativity over their's, any day of the week.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Neurotypicals seem to suffer from lack of flexibility and lateral thinking - the teacher seems to have a very fixed idea of the meaning of 'creativity'!