The Leperchaun Catcher

One of my students shared her Google Draw creation with me this morning. She created The Leprechaun Catcher. With her permission, I showed the class what she made in order to talk about and model how to provide constructive feedback. What happened next was a delight for me and an eye opening experience for them.

As I spoke to them about providing constructive feedback, one of the students made a comment about the likelihood that something like this would ever work, let alone be made. Another student responded by saying that people probably made the same comments about Google Glass but it exists and that they got to try them out and think about all the positive things it could be used for. Another student commented about self-driving cars and that they exist.

This led to a great discussion about creativity, imagination, risk taking, making mistakes, and how normal it is to fail and then try again. One of the students connected this discussion to my mantra about the importance of failure - that great learning can come from the challenges we encounter when we work towards finding solutions to problems we are faced with.

This discussion seemed to reach my students and I believe it is because they had a great example in front of them that came from their peer and not from me. It's almost like the Leprechaun Catcher gives them permission to take their thoughts and ideas to another level, one that allows them to move forward with what they envision their future to look like. 

They Leprechaun Catcher seems like a silly idea at first, but no more sillier than wearing a computer on your head that is now known as Google Glass. They got the point and now I am looking forward to the wonderful ideas they have for their future.

Have you had a similar experience? What do you do to foster/support the creative flow in your students? I would love to hear your thoughts about my experience today.