The culture of cute in the classroom | The Cornerstone
I run up against this all the time; teachers that I work with complaining that the web page I’m helping them set up does not have enough ‘cute’ themes. I thought that it was just me, being a male AND a Science teacher in the past, not valuing the cute as much as other teachers. I try to explain to these folks that in my mind, that their web site, document or whatever should be more about the content and less about the fonts, images and clip-art used.
I’m so glad to see that there are others out there who believe that content should trump cuteness. Don’t get me wrong… In my time as a teacher I was the Newspaper and Yearbook advisor for several years, and I strived and pushed my students to create a good looking product. I’ve even spent my fair share of time fussing and tweaking handouts and worksheets to make sure they look good to my eye, but that’s where it ended. I certainly did not spend time redoing my classroom and materials year after year to follow a theme – I was too busy trying to get my lessons and projects to challenge my students to think deeply and to solve problems in a creative fashion. This is much harder than looking for cute clip art, but in my mind a much better use of the limited time available.
But again, I’m just a male Science teacher at heart…
What are your thoughts? Is time spent ‘Cute-ifying’ time well spent?