The Science of Creativity | Alyssa Dominique Nucaro | TEDxMemphis

Traditionally, schools use very concrete pedagogies and approaches to teaching children, but we see this more than ever in low-income communities due to their classification as high-need areas. Teachers are pressured to have their students meet certain achievement scores that directly affect their value as an effective educator. This pressure to achieve has taken art, poetry, creative writing, and exploration out of curriculum, which creates less equitable experiences that hinder students in these areas. What makes data valid? A number? Or an actual experience allowed to be expressed in a way other than words? Alyssa Dominique Nucaro believes that educators need to shift the way they think about how students accumulate knowledge as a first step to changing the education system. Alyssa Dominique Nucaro is a ten-year public school educator in Memphis, TN. She is a proud PhD candidate at the University of Memphis and a 2019 recipient of the New Memphis Educator of Excellence Award. Outside of her time in education, she is an author, researcher, and poet. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx

[@lindajohnson4204]

I hear about going against the norm, but I think about the school supplies at a Walmart, about 20 years ago. The erasers, the pencil boxes, the spiral notebooks and binders, the backpacks and insulated lunch bags: everywhere, unicorns. Dragons. Wizard's hats, brooms and magic wands. Unicorns, and more unicorns, and more unicorns. Purple, lavender, blending upward into pink, covered with glitter. Lavender unicorns, with hot pink horn, mane and tail, flecked with glitter, in multiple embodiments across the universe of sales. When you talk about the standard, typical colors, I think of purple and pink. A devolution of Barbie pink, purple and aqua, actually, just like about fifteen years of girl's and women's clothing, everywhere. Gel pens and glittered jellies accessories, yet still the Lisa Frank golden retriever, here and there (no more).
Now there is even more penalty for thinking outside this box. Thinking the same way is demanded, upon penalty of cancellation, or worse, because you really are not "sustainable" to people who don't question their hatred of you. I got thrown out of a Facebook writing group, once, because a young woman decided to turn me into a "Karen", although I wasn't haughtily turning people in for infractions, etc, just disagreeing with them. So she went after me, Karen-style, until I could be gotten rid of. I believe that the casual ebonics of my neighborhood of 20+ years, showed up in a reply, and that was probably used against me; I never heard what it was. She was doing the Karen things, which is exactly what cancel culture is, but I had to _be_ the Karen, although I was doing the real work of tolerance: actually tolerating people who disagreed with me.
When you say that you must create, unbounded by the expected, for me, that includes not paying tribute to the unicorns which guard every gate, nor the gatekeepers who swear by them, and swear at those who won't dance to their tune. "Sithering" threats from witches are commonplace, on-line, and they won't endure the least bit of questioning of the demonic. A man I used to eat lunch with, when I told him, gently, that I did not believe in his space alien paradigm, said that if I questioned it again, he would tear me apart with his bare hands.
So that's the great advance of tolerance and diversity: the diverse are who we say they are. And tolerance is conformity to us, being that we were powerful enough to redefine _in-tolerance_ as "the belief in moral absolutes".
I think there are still uses for stories, by those who dare to question the rule of fantasy in our lives. People still live in a real world, and they sometimes take their eyes off of the phone, long enough to struggle to understand it, and to make sense of the strange treatment they get from people. It's still a thing, and so writing about the real world, as it is, could be useful to its victims. People who "dare" to be all about fantasy, will still be able to do their thing, but please don't bother to say that you're boldly going where no (hu)man has gone before! The gazillions of glittered, pastel unicorns, everywhere you look, will call you on that!

[@dillon8642]

Amazing speech !❤️ hoping any creatives that are facing a mental block see this

[@Crushher32]

Literally 1st among 30 million subs.