How To Nurture Students’ Artistic And Creative Skills

Anyone that works in education knows well the challenges and potential barriers that face our young people today.

With a variety of learning styles and individual strengths, it is beneficial to think about how we can facilitate our students’ abilities. With a plethora of emotions and changes on a personal level, some young people can easily become overwhelmed by feelings that can hinder effective learning. This is especially true when it comes to artistic and creative skills. Lack of strategies to deal with emotions, conflict, and lack of confidence can hinder creativity.  So how can professionals and parents be better equipped at providing the support that enables students’ to progress and nurture these all-important capabilities? 

What Are The Options To Nurture Students' Creative Skills?

All education professionals can create a learning environment within the classroom that is a safe space for children to express themselves. This can be done by encouraging questions, praising the student’s creative efforts, modeling creativity, displaying the student’s work, always encouraging good behavior and kind interactions with others. But is there more that can be done? One area that has become popular in recent years is the SEL curriculum. Social, emotional learning or SEL is a practice that enables young people to develop social skills and knowledge to help them develop good relationships, manage their emotions, acquire self-awareness, and achieve their goals. 

How To Do It?

You may be thinking that this is just ‘another thing’ that a teacher has to incorporate into the classroom, but it doesn't have to be that difficult and the rewards can be great. Teachers can seamlessly incorporate methods into their lesson plans. With a variety of kits, you can focus on the skills your students need using lessons tailored to their ages and social-emotional learning levels. By integrating the method into existing learning, creativity will be valued and students can simultaneously absorb these new skills. Teachers are then able to facilitate a student’s learning to enable them to apply what they have learned in everyday life. 

Teachers can nurture creativity in the classroom by including art activities, asking questions, always celebrating expressiveness and imagination. By giving students time and space to engage in such things it will become a habit for them to be positive in self-talk that is reassuring, and helpful, to deal with unwanted emotions that could hinder artistic leanings. 

Decorate The Classroom With Their Artworks

How can teachers use their physical space as a source of inspiration? As explained by some experts,  it’s important to “celebrate and share the creative efforts of your students. Instead of prefab decor, displaying student artwork which gives students an opportunity to be immersed in the creative process and has a voice in how they are represented in the classroom” creating an environment that is open, artistic, and acknowledged will help students keep those artistic juices flowing. 

Be A Role Model

Another very important way to keep artistic expression a priority is to model it. Teachers, carers, and parents who do this can inspire others through their creative expression. Playing music, telling & writing stories, drawing, singing and arts/crafts can all help children keep imaginative pursuits at the forefront of their mind, and it lends itself to a safe space for innovation. Spending time outside also plays an important role. Cutting off for a while from electronic devices can open up the mind and help students clear a space for more imaginative activities.

Power Of Encouragement

As well as practical pursuits, how can we nurture and encourage creative/critical thinking? Certain individuals believed that when we encourage divergent thinking, we help to maintain children’s motivation and passion for in depth-learning. Encouraging children to keep on generating new ideas fosters their creative thinking ability, so it is crucial for good development that we teach children how to question things. Learning that life is not black and white, that sometimes there are several or no answers to things, is crucial to help children grow and progress into rounded out critical thinkers. Open-ended questions are an excellent way to get children thinking in the classroom. Encouraging a variety of opinions and ideas will really help children to dig deep into their psyche and formulate ideas. Using imaginative play keeps young brains focused and moving, a challenge for every teacher in modern times. 

In an ever-moving world, we have to find ways to adapt to change, to flexibly move with the times. We can’t always change the world around us,  but we can work on self-development and try to instill into our young people resilience, creativity, tolerance, and many other skills to help them navigate the turbulent waters of life. Using a variety of approaches educators can succeed in creating very stable and rounded out young people, creative, accomplished, and confident. The world needs that!