Part One of this in-depth discussion of “creative” teaching and learning began with some consideration of Sir Ken Robinson’s contentions in his recent book The Element. The conversation quickly turned to the challenges of bringing creativity into the classroom in today’s high stakes testing environment – and then toward introspection.
Do teachers really know how to “teach” creativity? What does that mean? Is it a soft “21st century skill”? A precursor to pedagogical anarchy? A threat to Core Knowledge or “the basics”? The conversation, which took place within the Teacher Leaders Network virtual learning community, continued. . . .
Rick, an accomplished teacher turned teaching consultant, wrote:
Wow, this is a great conversational thread. Thanks for the insight from everyone. I'm really struggling with the perceived tension between creativity in classroom instruction and the need to teach what society thinks students at whatever age we teach need to learn.
I'm not talking about the conflict between creative, meaningful lessons and mundane, test-preparation lessons. It's more a matter of revisiting why we have schools in our society – what are the roles of schools? Is their role to pass along current knowledge and values in order to perpetuate society? This seems utilitarian only, and I need a noble, meaningful cause to fuel my passion for teaching. There has to be more to it then simple survivability or usefulness.
Part of me is right with Marsha and others (see Part 1) who say we need to teach basic information, whether students find it meaningful or creative or not. Students on the journey toward their becoming don't always realize something is meaningful to them unless a wise counselor helps them discover it. So while teaching the specifics of usage, punctuation, and paragraphing in an English class may bore most of our students to desperation, the great teachers among us show students how such knowledge improves their writing and analytical thinking so much they are better communicators, and thereby, how they positively affect the opinions of those around them. Through their improved writing skills these students cause others to act or to be so affected by their words as to transform thinking. Relevance, power, and meaning are achieved.
So where do we draw the line between incorporating students' interests and differences, cultivating non-dogmatic curriculum and instruction, yet teaching what those of us who have lived longer perceive as necessary for a happy life?
Mediating relevance of curriculum and creating the balance between mandates and free expression or exploration is a careful walk for teachers. We're not always perfect at it, but perhaps over multiple attempts and remaining ceaselessly open to students' input into its composition, we approximate the goal. I don't think there is a perfect way to do this in all situations, but embracing the mindset at every turn has to be among the more helpful attitudes we can adopt. For me, this means establishing creativity, relevance, and free exploration as non-negotiable fundamentals of good teaching. It means we stop seeing our classrooms as increasingly diverse populations, and instead, realize the diversity was there all along and we are just now opening our sleepy eyes.
And, of course, we do this all within a 50-minute period, five periods a day, every day, while training students to create formulaic test responses that protect the status quo. A little sarcastic, I know, but the sentiment is the same: My cry for the dismantling then full re-design of today's schools.
John, a National Board Certified teacher and professional painter, replied:
In our discussion of creativity it is important that we acknowledge the normative function of schooling. I am all for starting all over, burning down the house, and beginning again by redefining the purpose and hence the accountability necessary for our schools. However, I think that some of the aspects of schooling that we might change might not be the parts that need to change.
Creativity needs to be brought into our expectations every day, not separated out for use when we’re not “teaching the basics.” There have been numerous researchers who have found that the most effective way to teach at-risk kids is to teach the basics and higher level thinking at the same time. Otherwise kids will not be ready to use either by the time they are adults.
I am sort of like the hammer that sees nails all over the place. I see creativity in many places where others don't.
Creativity sometimes substitutes for the word “expression.” I can see how teachers are fed up with the lack of expression of their humanity in their practice. In many cases it is not why we got into this teaching gig. But, creativity and expression are not the same thing. Creativity is figuring how to get that test answer out of that kid as much as it is helping kids see past that test question.
Creativity is a big word with different meanings for a lot of people, sort of like schooling is different from learning. If all kids had to do was learn then they wouldn't need us. It is the “schooling” that makes teachers necessary. It is also why our creative expression is sometimes compromised for the sake of an accountability tool that does not measure creativity. If the purpose of schooling moved past (but included) the basics standards, we would probably have plenty of time for creativity; in fact, we might be required to teach it three hours a day. Then what would we have to complain about?
The big issue seems to me to be that there is a conflict between what schools need to be about, and what they are held accountable for creating. These expectations are almost polar opposites now, which can cause a great deal of stress for the people responsible for meeting conflicting expectations. We have a hunch about what kids will need in the future, but right now that doesn't matter. Right now what matters is the test. So we, as these teachers of “right now,” have to teach to both sides of the brain at the same time without compromising either. It can be done, in fact it has been done in poor schools for years.
Elizabeth followed up with a teaching definition of creativity:
John said: “I am sort of like the hammer that sees nails all over the place. I see creativity in many places where others don't.” I just wanted to add – I love this! I think I can relate, and I also do not see a problem with weaving creativity into daily instruction.
I think the basic meaning of creativity is misunderstood by many teachers who have "the tests" on their minds. The curriculum conveyor belt takes over, and then creativity becomes a fragmented entity to the point where it feels like "something else to do." Yet it does not have to be. Too often creativity is taught as a separate reality. But why? It certainly isn’t.
The bottom line about what creativity is...is simple. It is when we create something new--come up with new solutions to problems – or think of new questions related to any given topic. (Ken Robinson verifies this bottom line). If we think about creativity in this way, doesn't it relate to all subject areas and grade levels? If creativity is thought about in this bottom-line fashion, is it not easy to integrate this solution-finding approach to teaching as we strive to both engage students in content and prepare them for tests – avoiding the mindless Pez dispenser mode of test prep?
By engaging students and themselves in this creative problem-solving approach, teachers would be teaching and modeling lifelong thinking skills, not just teaching for a test. I think all effective teachers apply creativity, perhaps without full awareness due to the sound of the curriculum conveyor belt – and the tick of the clock.
Mary, a high school English and writing teacher, offered a story:
John, since you are both a teacher and an artist, I thought I'd share my ah-ha moment in learning about creativity from an elementary art teacher in our summer writing institute. She made a clear distinction between the creative teaching act and teaching how to follow directions (which she claims some art
teachers do by assigning the same step by step projects; e.g., the ubiquitous winter snowman out of pre-ordained construction paper shapes, or the drawing exercises in books by Ed Emberley).
She supplied us with lines or shapes and a generalized assignment "create a monster" and we went at it, creating creatures as individual as snowflakes. She gave us just enough tools so that we could all be successful (non-artists all). I found transference from her teaching world to my own world of teaching writing by supplying generalized instructions and letting my students bounce around within those parameters to find and resolve their own self-created problems.
It’s a tenuous balance, I think. You have to give the kids SOME help, in the form of basic tools and an overarching goal and not simply let them go at it willy-nilly. Too few directions leads to frustration or some weird anarchy that misses the goals of the course and produces a kind of anything-goes assignment that has no basis for evaluation.
Maybe this is where the ART in teaching replaces the SCIENCE? Or is this a skill that can be taught to all teachers? Maybe I just answered my own question. If you begin thinking about your evaluation before you assign something to the kids, then you can establish your loose parameters through backward design. They can bounce around inside those parameters, but you’ve provided the floor and walls needed for effective bouncing to occur.
Ken, a high school history teacher, replied:
First, on failing and whether failing has value: There’s a tale I remember vaguely about Thomas Edison. For sake of discussion, let me use the number 100 as I reconstruct the exchange:
"Mr. Edison, you have now tried 100 different things for the filament and failed with each one. What have you learned?"
"I now know 100 things that WON"T work for the filament."
Perhaps the idea of "failure" is wrong. Whether an effort is successful or not, what we should be doing is teaching our students reflective practice, examining not merely their relative success, but the WHY. Call it a lesson in metacognition.
About the false dichotomy between factual and creative: This gets us to the low level of the convergent thinking sought for in multiple choice items, with one correct answer and no credit for a second best, and no opportunity to explain the reasoning used (which might reveal student assumptions or even expose faults in the test question).
Science is often creative, in that it requires divergent thinking, the ability to look at information in a new way. I spent 20-plus years of my life, before I became a teacher, working with computers in various capacities. I knew few people who had my skill in solving computer problems. For one thing, I have well-developed pattern recognition skills, partly as a result of my musical background and training. For another, I am used to scrambling things around to look at them in different ways.
We all use mental frames. It can be important for students to understand how the frames they use can limit their understanding. In examining history, particularly of cultures different than our own, it is quite important to have awareness of how our own thinking process tends to shape what we learn. The one year I taught World History, while we were rearranging the sequence of our required social studies courses, I began with a lesson to illustrate this. I put a number of items on the floor -- I think ten --and asked the students to put them into three groups and explain their groupings.
They all put markers, chalk and pencils together. When I asked why, the answer was that they could be used to write. When I asked, “Suppose you didn't know about writing, how might you regroup?”, the pencil was placed with the scissors, as a possible weapon. And one lesson was learned. I would then ask why they accepted my demand to put the objects into three groups, and we would have an interesting discussion about how we are trained to use our minds and think.
Finally, I am something of a believer in Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. When I work with them, I usually keep myself to his original seven, even as I can see validity to the ideas of (other intelligences he has since identified). Thomas Armstrong once noted that in theory one could teach in any domain using any of the seven intelligences and then assess in another. In theory that meant there were 49 possible combinations of instruction and assessment. Yet more than 90% of what students were asked to do in school, at least at the secondary level, was pure verbal-linguistic, as in “read a book” or “write a report.” And most of the rest was logical-mathematical. How narrowing, how misunderstanding of the diverse ways in which we perceive and interact with the world.
In a closing comment titled “Product, Process, the Arts and Ironclad Assumptions,” Nancy wrote:
What a great discussion. Some random, process-y thoughts:
§ John said: There have been numerous researchers who have found that the most effective way to teach at-risk kids is to teach the basics and higher level thinking at the same time. Otherwise kids will not be ready to use either by the time they are adults. Nancy responds: So true! But much of the education discourse today is framed as "versus" – product versus process, sage/stage versus guide/side, 21st Century Skills versus Core Curriculum. Why are we always competing for ownership of the “right” solution?
§ People often assume that some subjects (art and literature) are "creative" and other subjects (math and science) are based on fixed content. It strikes me that in aiming to teach any subject in a "rigorous" manner, we often achieve rigor mortis instead, and that no subject is inherently creative or not creative. My own subject, music, is frequently taught in secondary grades as if it were basketball – selecting the students who are perceived as best, then setting out, through meticulous drill, to win contests. Zero creativity.
§ People have been using "product" and "process" for so long I'm not sure we know what they mean any more. While what students learn in "process" (discussion, discovery, formative assessment, trial and error, cooperative learning) is valuable, does that negate the need to end up with a quality product? I don't think so. And if you read Laura Reasoner Jones' fabulous TLN commentary in Teacher magazine – where she muses about letting kids "fail" (in other words, not come up with a decent product, although the process was valuable) – lots of people seem to value the product over any wishy-washy process. Plus lots of people who commented in response to Laura’s article (mostly misguided and frequently nasty people) really enjoy the idea of kids failing. Because they deserve it, or something.
§ As I've read through the descriptors of open-ended projects that teachers in our virtual community have assigned (and the exciting results you got, even when students were confused or resistant at first) -- I am thinking the members of the Teacher Leaders Network Forum do this FAR, FAR more often than the average teacher, who values alignment to the parameters of the assignment more than going off on an innovative bender. (That's an assumption on my part.) Our national educational values center around standardization, which allows us to promote competition and identify a "meritocracy" – pretty much the people who make the rules about what's important and what's not. (That's another assumption.) Are my assumptions correct?
John says he's a man with a hammer who sees nails all over the place. I just read another variation on that aphorism: “To a man with a computer, every problem feels like a need for more data.”