Second :: more gaps

// Filed in: Across the Learning Spectrum

And here’s a unique kind of gap - totally different from just taking too big a step between 1+1 and xy+52. It’s a gap in strength and ability.

I’ve been told by numerous parents with kids on the spectrum, is that their kids can have a very black and white nature. They are the kind of kids who, when they ask the time, don’t want to know that it’s 3 o’clock, but that it’s 3:01. Oftentimes, this can be the biggest block to these kids being creative. They can be very literal, so factual and focused on the actual, that, as a parent, you don’t have any idea of how to help them to be creative. Our hope, when Chris set out to write this workbook, wasn’t to present kids with a proper course of study, but to help them actually develop creativity. Creativity is like a muscle, and the more you use it, the more you work it out, the stronger it can become.

This becomes an issue in area of the arts especially. For example, you might sit down with your child, and say, let’s draw something together. They don’t know what to draw (blank page!), and you suggest a tree. They sit down to draw the tree, and they try but can’t, because it doesn’t fit what they expect a tree to look like. So they give up. This gap is to big for them. What is happening here? The creativity muscle isn’t very strong. If they practice drawing trees - start with simple trees, and then add a line here, a little shading there, all by following a clear example, and focusing on only one part at a time, they can step back and see, wow, I drew a tree!

To return to the idea of handing a student a blank piece of paper and saying, go write … the reason that is so intimidating to us is that that creativity muscle isn’t strong enough to do something like that. The gap with our creative muscle strength is too much. Simplifying the process by giving them a focus (“choose what kind of sea monster you would be”), leading them into creativity, that is a muscle they do have, and so they can answer the question and build up a little strength. A Pirate’s Guide can be seen as a training program for our creative muscles. Each step is small, explained, modeled, and then, as the student successfully completes a portion of the exercise, the muscle grows, and they can do harder and harder things.

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Second :: more gaps

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