The Puzzle: Blog

April is Poetry Month. But we like to think of it more generally as Creativity Month. In addition to celebrating the art of poetry — and its contributions to our lives and society — we think about the importance of all the visual, performing, and literary arts and how we need to value them in school. And to value them, we need to ensure that we are supporting, nurturing, and encouraging our students’ creativity across all grade levels.

After losing some of the focus on creativity in schools in the 1990s, it’s great to see schools rededicate themselves to creativity in the early years of this century. We attribute some of the resurgence to the publication of Daniel Pink’s “A Whole New Mind” at the close of the 20th century when he made it clear that the 21st century would belong to the creative types. This was followed by the works of Sir Ken Robinson — including “The Creative School” (2015) and “Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative” (2017). The later book is based in part on his wildly popular 2006 TED Talk, “Do Schools Kill Creativity” (a whopping 57 million views and counting). Essentially, Robinson is asking us to honor the creativity of young children in school and work to restore it in older children. In short, he wants us to:

• Understand the importance of actively promoting creativity and innovation.
• Discover why creativity stagnates somewhere between childhood and adulthood.
• Learn how to re-awaken dormant creativity to help us achieve more.

In “Creative Schools,” Robinson argues specifically for an end to our 20th-century educational system that had its roots in manufacturing and proposes a personalized, organic approach that draws on today’s technological and cultural resources to engage all students in their intellectual and creative capacities. He argues for developing their love of learning as a way to lead students to fulfilling lives and to collectively face the challenges of the 21st century.

The research on learning and the brain has made it increasingly clear that creativity is important for all learning at all ages and that it needs to be nurtured in schools. Here, we want to point our readers toward some related resources that have caught our eye lately.

Creativity and Connecting Across Differences

The NPR program “The Hidden Brain” recently ran an episode on “Creative Differences: The Benefits of Reaching Out to People Unlike Ourselves.” This program explores the work of Columbia Business School professor Adam Galinsky, who has found that people who have deep relationships with someone from another country become more creative and score higher on routine creativity tests.

“There’s something about deeply understanding and learning about another culture that’s transformative,” Adam tells NPR.

This principle of learning from people unlike ourselves is a strong argument for greater, well-nurtured diversity in schools — and for encouraging students to get out of their comfort zones now and then. It’s also an argument for a globally focused curriculum and connections across national boundaries.

Drawing and Memory

An Edutopia article by Youki Terada, “The Science of Drawing and Memory,” makes the claim that if you want students to remember something, you should ask them to draw it. Terada’s article is based on a 2018 study that makes a clear link between drawing and memory.

“Why is drawing such a powerful memory tool?” Terada writes. “Unlike listening to a lecture or viewing an image — activities in which students passively absorb information — drawing is active. It forces students to grapple with what they’re learning and reconstruct it in a way that makes sense to them.”

The takeaway: “Encourage students to draw. Doing so is a powerful tool to boost student learning because it improves recall by challenging students to explore an idea in different ways.”

Keep a “Da Vinci” Notebook

In “Creative Teaching and Teaching Creatively: How to Foster Creativity in the Classroom,” second-grade teacher Lauren Cassani Davis and her co-teacher describe their efforts at making their classes more creative. In particular, they asked students to keep what they describe as a “Da Vinci” notebook in which, as Davis puts it, “they can try creative exercises and explore personal passions.” Within a week, she says, “the results were astounding.” Allowed to think divergently and freely, following sparks of interest and curiosity, students asked fascinating questions and explored topics of deep interest to them — including:

• How does your brain work?
• Why do we have music?
• Why do things have to die?
• Why did Beethoven write “Ode to Joy” if he was so grumpy?

In these and a million other questions, Davis says, lies the joy of learning, the value of curiosity, and a clearer sense of self in relation to the world. “Many experts in psychology and education argue that creativity skills are psychological skills needed for success in school and in the future workforce,” she adds. “As such, schools have a duty to teach them and value them.”

At the end of the article, Davis offers 12 steps educators can take to encourage creativity in the classroom. Equally important, she offers steps teachers can take to increase their own creativity.

Are You Wired to Create?

In their 2015 book, “Wired to Create,” journalist Carolyn Gregoire and psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman connect the latest findings in psychology and neuroscience to the work and lives of some of our most creativity thinkers. The book shines a light on the practices and habits that promote creative thinking.

“This book is unusual and perhaps unique not only in explaining what creativity is,” writes Robert J. Sternberg, psychologist and author of “Successful Intelligence,” “but also in showing scientifically how people can unlock and develop their creative talents.”

Rethinking How We Teach Poetry

We can’t leave the month of April without one more nod to poetry.

Billy Collins’s humorous and painful poem, “An Introduction to Poetry” is a sly reminder of what we should and shouldn’t do with poetry in schools.

In contrast, the New York Times offers “22 Ways to Teach and Learn About Poetry with the New York Times.” In all, this is a highly creative approach to engaging with poetry — by ourselves or with our students. The suggestions include everything from finding and sharing favorite poems, to creating black-out poems with the pages of the Times, to taking part in poetry slams, to learning why Afghan women risk death to write poetry.

Let us know, what do you or your school do to nurture creativity? Share in the comments!

Back to Blog

Leave a Comment

Submit

0 Comments

There are no comments on this blog entry.