[heymijo]

I'd have thought that my advisor was crushing my creativity and ingenuity

Thanks for sharing this story.

I think a lot of about potential impacts like this on students/learners. My goals when teaching are to nurture agency, autonomy, and a positive disposition towards what is being learned in addition to a student learning the content or practices/skills.

People often misconstrue this as wanting to make learning "fun" for students. For me it begins with inversion, look at how to crush a student's spirit, agency, and disposition towards a topic. Don't do that.

Then find ways to put them in situations where they can struggle productively, be creative, show ingenuity, and see the fruits of doing so. Sometimes students aren't aware of their own ingenuity, creativity, or their own productive struggle so that gives me an opportunity to go meta with them and help them see it.

[philoclea]

Yes, I love this! I try to convince my students to work on something they find interesting, even to take risks in doing so. My experience is that they tend to do better work when the topic reflects their own curiosity, obsessions.

Unfortunately the educational system I work in prioritizes conformity. I don't blame them for having a hard time taking a risk.

[heymijo]

Unfortunately the educational system I work in prioritizes conformity.

I feel that in my bones.

If you see this I'd be curious to hear more about your education experience. Drop me a line at heymijo.hn at google mail if you'd like to continue the discussion :)