Creativity Part I

In The World is Flat, many of the themes of which are also present in 2 Million Minutes, Thomas Friedman (in Chapter 7, for those of you who have the book) talks about Georgia Tech's music program, which has been expanded specifically in response to the challenges of globalization--because if Americans are to have any competitive edge, it may be in our ability to think and respond creatively, and to be able to think across disciplines. The quasi-mythical well-roundedness of Americans may need to become less mythical, in other words.

But this ties in with discussions I've had with Shawn, and that Dick has mentioned a few places in this blog, about what we can do to foster creativity and creative thinking in our classes and at our school. And I promised in an earlier post that I would share my thoughts on the issue.

So here they are. I will post them in a couple of segments, to keep individual posts from being too long.

No one who knows me will be surprised to hear me say that I think the #1 most important thing to focus on is our school culture. By and large, there are a lot of good things to say about our school culture. We take academics seriously--though we have a growing influx of students who perhaps do not. We also know how to have fun--though we have a growing influx of students who perhaps think it is more important to be "cool." These attitudes are always going to be present to at least a degree as long as we are dealing with teenagers. But it was inevitable that they would increase when we moved here across the street to a more "normal" campus. It was even more inevitable that these attitudes typical of a more "normal" school would increase the moment we started increasing the presence of "normal" high school things like football and cheerleading.

But to paraphrase my own interview in the Saxon Day issue of the Charterian, "normal" is average, ordinary..."normal" means being the same as everyone else, and therefore when people say to us as individuals, or as a school, "You should be more normal," what they are really saying is, "You should be more like everyone else," or really, "You should be less yourself." I can scarcely imagine worse advice. We can, and must, combat these attitudes at every opportunity, with every tool at our disposal. Especially when one looks at what goes on in "normal" high schools!

In the next posts, I will describe in more detail six things that I think are necessary for the flourishing of creative thought on our campus. But I present them in brief form below.

1. Foster a culture that encourages people (students and teachers) to be themselves.
2. Foster a culture that encourages productive risk-taking.
3. Foster a classroom culture that actively promotes "rigorous creativity."
4. Expand/enhance teacher opportunities for creative thought and expression.
5. Expand existing, or create new creatively oriented curricular and extracurricular options.
6. Foster a culture that encourages student buy-in as early as possible.


More to come in Part II