Creativity Part II

Here are the first three of my six ideas about fostering creativity.

1. Foster a culture that encourages people to be themselves.

I don't have any clinical evidence to back this up, just observation and a little common sense--but I think one of the most difficult and limiting things a person can experience is the pressure to be something he or she is not. This sort of pressure stifles everything--personality, thought, expression, and creativity. Therefore, in my opinion, the first thing we need to do is to foster a culture that encourages students--and teachers, for that matter--to be themselves. I am convinced that a whole lot of creativity is suppressed (all over the world, not just here) because people are too afraid to be who they really are...or could be.

If I'm afraid to be me--to say what I might be thinking or imagining, because of what other people might think; and if the people around me are also afraid to be themselves; then think of how we might be limiting ourselves. Think about the possibilities that can never be, simply because we are all too timid to reach out and say, "Hey, what about this?"

In order for creativity to flourish, we have to have a culture that embraces the uniqueness of individuals, because that, to me, is really the wellspring of creativity. To me, in essence, creativity is an expression of individuality; even a sort of non-conformity; a sort of willingness to think, "Well everyone else does that...but what about this?" Which is not to say that all creative people are non-conformists, nor that all non-conformists are creative; nor do I mean to imply that all conformity is negative, which is obviously not true. Conforming with rules and laws is obviously desirable (and the right thing to do). But certainly, those creative geniuses of our world are definitely not the people who did things the way everyone else had done them before; and this is what I mean by non-conformity. Mozart, Picasso, and Einstein (yes, he was a creative genius) weren't afraid to stand up and be themselves, and do things the way they thought they should.



2. Foster a culture that encourages productive risk-taking.

We as a school--as teachers, as administrators, and as students--should be willing to stick our necks out and take some risks; because creativity requires risks. It requires being willing to try something, and to fail, and to pick up and try again.

My high school Honors English Lit teacher once gave us an assignment to write an interpretation of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and he told us to be creative, and to write it as anything but an essay. Those were the extent of his instructions: write an interpretation, be creative, no essays. I don't remember the details of what I wrote, but I remember that as I re-read the poem, the metaphors and imagery began feeding my imagination, and that I essentially wrote a new poem using the same themes but with completely different imagery and metaphors, which stood as my interpretation of what the poem was about. I remember being really quite pleased with what I had done, and excited by the opportunity to write something other than an essay (not that essays aren't important).

So I was looking forward to the day when the teacher handed the papers back, curious to see what he thought of what I had done. The day came...and he told the class that he had simply thrown all the papers in the trash, because that was where they had belonged. I was mad--not that he hadn't liked it, because it was one of those papers that I had liked so much that, although I was curious about it, I didn't care what he thought. I was mad that he threw it out because I'd written it by hand and I didn't have another copy.

Fortunately for me, that teacher's decidedly ill-conceived actions had no chance of stifling my creativity, because I am driven to express it if not one way, then in others. But how many of my peers may have decided then and there that they would never stick their necks out again, I don't know. Perhaps most of them were simply so unaccustomed to thinking creatively that they had felt utterly lost with the assignment to begin with; and this experience only confirmed their negative feelings toward creativity.

Now, I know that nobody at this school would do something like that teacher did, but I do think that it is experiences like this that teach people to be afraid to be creative; or give them justification to think that they are not creative. Creativity entails risk; and risk is often uncomfortable. Knowing that, we should do whatever we can to make it easier for our students and ourselves to feel comfortable taking those risks. They, and we, need to know that even if something doesn't work the way we hoped, that it will be OK, and we can pick up and move on.

That being said, taking risks just for the sake of taking risks, or being "edgy," is not what creativity is about. If we're going to take a risk, it should be for the sake of potentially gaining a legitimate reward. Risk-taking for any other reason is not productive.


3. Foster a classroom culture that actively promotes "rigorous creativity."

As much as I am a creative person, I am also somewhat of a cynic. And therefore in the past, when I have heard "education people" talking about creativity or creative thinking, and bandying about psychology terms that I was fairly sure they were misapplying and talking about research that I was fairly sure was nothing of the sort, I would dismiss what they said without a second thought.

Because what it always came off as was, "School is too hard for some kids. They're just never going to learn what you want them to learn. But if you give them 'creative' projects that access their 'affective domain,' why then, 'research' shows that will help them learn all they are capable of, and plus make them feel warm and fuzzy." And that's what it always felt like: total fluff.

At Charter, we're not about fluff. We're the opposite of fluff. And creativity is not fluff. What we're talking about is what I think of as "rigorous creativity."

Here's how I define it.

"Rigorous creativity," first of all, has a definite purpose. You don't engage in it just to indulge creative feelings; you engage in it because it's the best approach to whatever you're doing.

Second, it is intellectual, not emotional. It's about thinking, not feeling. It's about solving problems, not reflecting on them.

Third, it is refinable. It is not, in other words, a talent you have to be born with; it is a skill you can learn and improve. Certainly, some people may be more naturally gifted than others, but anyone can get better at it, and everyone should.

Finally, since it is purpose-oriented, it has measurable outcomes which should be judged not on subjective merit, but on objective criteria based on the accomplishment of the purpose.

Now obviously, you could apply these ideas to a specific assignment (create a piece of artwork that depicts: the central themes of Moby Dick...the causes of the Civil War...the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle...). But when I say we should foster a classroom culture that actively promotes "rigorous creativity," I really mean all the time. You don't have to give a whole bunch of (probably rather lame) assignments like my parenthetical examples above.

Because rigorous creativity is, in essence, a way of thinking. A calculus student who has learned how to think in a rigorously creative way (and understands derivatives) will immediately grasp why the velocity function is the derivative of the position function. Moreover, before being taught it, he or she will understand that acceleration is the derivative of velocity; and that the derivative will tell you about the rate of change of any related variables you might consider. Think of how much better off this student will be than one who is stuck at, "well, I know that to take a derivative, I bring this number down, then subtract one."

I admit that getting certain students to even try to do this will always be an uphill battle. But I think, as a start, that we can foster this rigorously creative culture in our classrooms by practicing it ourselves, and modeling it in our instruction.


More to come in Part III