Homemade Apple Cider

Parents and educators must create environments that are safe places to be creative; a place where failing at something is not the death of an idea, but the beginning new ones. I think back to my childhood when my mom would let us “cook” in the kitchen. We wanted to turn our apple cider into sparkling apple cider. At first we tried vinegar and baking soda with the apple cider…. We got lots of bubbles and some horrible tasting apple cider. After much trial and even more error, we figured out that Cream of Tartar made for bubbles when combined with the natural acid in the cider without the awful taste. It was fun, messy and there was never the fear that our failures would be permanent. Children must be held to high standards, but they also need to feel support and growth with their failures. The biggest drag on creativity is the feeling that we will waste our time with or be embarrassed by what we have created. The great artists, musicians, scientists, etc. have all had the ability to be creative and experience success and failure without the fear of the failure becoming final.

The abilities of thinking, reasoning and creating are three of the most important abilities to the human race. We as teachers and educators have the “job” of encouraging our pupils to be creative. Creativity is something that we do not “create” ourselves it is something that we are born with and that creativity can either be enhanced or squashed depending on the paths that we choose or are guided down. Some teachers while trying to encourage creativity in their students squash their own. I have seen many teachers (myself included at times) who just want formulaic solutions or a rubric that fits their dilemma. We must be willing as educators to model creativity in and out of the classroom. Encourage creative responses and solutions, create an environment where creativity is encouraged and rewarded. In the United States our belief in freedom has always fostered creativity, each person is unique and we all have opportunities to improve ourselves. Creativity has led to the success that we have had in the United States. Conformity can be efficient, cheap, and brutal, but creativity will outperform conformity in a head to head long-term competition every time. (Except when one compares Chinese and US test scores). ;P