This past week, I’ve been voraciously reading “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” so I could see the movie this weekend.  I won’t bore you with any great details, other than to say it’s about a woman who, due to life circumstances, stops creating.  At one point in the story, a former mentor, after listening to her complain about everything under the sun, tells her to get back to work, and that if she doesn’t create, she’ll become a menace to society.

Do you ever wonder who those people are?  Do you ever wonder what those people were like as children?  It got me to thinking about my kids at school, as these things are apt to do, especially those kids I have who don’t quite fit the mold of what we as educators expect from children.  They’re the ones who think and behave differently, who see things differently, who have a different sense of humor than most kids.  They’re the ones who question authority, the ones who never take anything at face value and always want to know “why”.  These are the kids who will, if taught to harness this energy and creativity correctly, will take over the world.

As educators, we know that the world is looking for innovators, those who think “outside the box”, and yet, are we really providing the environment for those students to flourish?  We expect our artists to stay within the lines we create, our musicians to stop humming and singing in the hallways, our dancers to stop skipping and dancing with the singers.  Don’t check out the crickets in the puddle at recess because you might get wet, and don’t use the playground for anything more than what the manufacturer and the rules tell you you can do.  Children are born to create, but the second they try, we stop them in the name of safety or behaving responsibly.  Look, I’m all for quiet hallways, but it hurts my heart when I feel I have to stop a quiet child from skipping down the hallway to class.  It’s like I just took the joy out of his or her day.

Are these the kids disrupting our classrooms with their “inappropriate behavior”?  Are these the kids screaming for an opportunity to do something different, to just have the chance to create something without being told what to do or what to expect?  And what would happen if we created an environment for those kids to just go for it?  Not saying it wouldn’t be difficult, but if we’re supposed to be building relationships with our students and we find out they need more creative outlets, shouldn’t we as teachers be working to provide them?

You would think that in music class, this would be easy, but alas, even we in the arts are taught our craft with great discipline, often trapped in the same types of boxes as other subjects, afraid ourselves of stepping outside the confines of what we know.  I think what it’s going to take is for teachers to admit that they don’t know EVERYTHING, and join their students in their creative journeys, perhaps setting perimeters, but then enjoying whatever the results are with their students.  It’s scary stuff.

So, what I’m asking is, are those little “menaces” in our classrooms the ones who most need to create?  And what would happen to our classrooms if we actually allowed them to, stepping out of our comfort zones so that THEY can think outside the box.  Maybe we, as the adults, are inadvertently creating the menaces in the first place.