Teaching FOR Creativity: Pretty cool preliminary data

Teaching FOR Creativity: The preliminary data…

So far, I've been writing about things that I've been trying in my classroom to encourage creative thinking and have posted some examples of lessons, book reviews and other rambling ideas that I have on the topic. One thing I haven't done yet is show some of the preliminary data I've been collecting.  

Here is the data, in visual form from last (2nd) marking period. It shows the average amount of responses from 150 students on three separate testing dates over a nine week marking period.  As I get new students every nine weeks, I am focusing on adding assessment for an additional component of creativity. Next marking periods data chart will also show assessment for elaboration.

Fluency: The number of ideas students can come up with in a defined amount of time.  For this marking period, students were given 3 minutes to come up with a list of ideas of things you could do with the following objects on these dates: 11/1 a dollar bill, 12/1 a fork and on 1/13 a sheet of computer paper. The average of 150 students results are shown in blue.

For this test, I'm just looking for the number of ideas that the student can come up with. Creative or not, all ideas count!

Flexibility/Originality: The number of original ideas or ideas that show flexible thinking when thinking about what they could do with an object.  In example, a flexible response for a use for a fork could be "using forks to link/weave together to make a screen door".  An inflexible or unoriginal response might be "to eat with" or "to stab something with". The average of 150 students results are shown in red.

For this test, I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing all of the students fluency lists and made a master "common response list" of typical object use ideas.  All ideas that showed flexible or original thinking made the cut to count for the students "flexibility/originality" score.  

What I'm noticing: While it's great that both fluency and flexibility/originality numbers rise as the marking period goes on, it is interesting to notice some of the particulars. Most obvious is the rate of change from the first test date to the second test date.  While the amount of original/flexible ideas dramatically rises, the overall fluency numbers rise just a little.  My theory is that as students learn how to come up with more creative /flexible thinking, their internal veto system sets in and they start to cut out the less original ideas and accept only the more creative ideas that seem worthy to put to paper.  By the end of the marking period, they finally "get" that "all ideas are good ideas" and know that the more ideas they generate, creative or not, the better.  

This marking period, in addition to collecting data on fluency and flexibility/originality, I'm also collecting data on elaboration. I am collecting data in two ways for this skill. The first is through asking the students to complete a simple drawing such as a circle or "S" shape and the other method is through seeing how many twists and turns a student can add to a story starter (elaborating on a story).  These results will be available in a few weeks when the last batch of data is collected.

I love action research!  I am always looking for people to collaborate with and hope that this blog reaches more people with this interest!  I would love learning about other ways to collect data. Please comment and pass along! Thanks!

The Benefits of Fuzzy Goals

Fuzzy goals

I’m home again on what is now our 12^th or 13^th snow day this year.  At this rate, we will be making up snow days well into the end of June. I’m ok with it as I have plenty to keep me busy, including preparing for some upcoming presentations on the creativity curriculum I am documenting through this blog.

I stumbled upon a great book in my monthly Amazon book browsing (aka binge purchasing) called “Gamestorming: A playbook for Innovators,Rulebreakers, and Changemakers” by Dave Grey Sunni Brown and James Mancanufo.  It is a book written for business people looking to create change and inspire innovation in their organizations. In the introduction, the authors write about something called “fuzzy goals” that I would like to share and offer the suggestion to think about how it relates to education and in particular in teaching creative and critical thinking.

“Like Columbus, in order to move forward toward an uncertain future, you need to set a course. But how do you set a course when the destination is unknown? This is where it becomes necessary to imagine a world; a future world that is different from our own. Somehow we need to imagine a world that we can’t really fully conceive yet-a world that we can only see dimly through a fog.

In knowledge work we need our goals to be fuzzy. “ p. 5

I think what is happening with this creativity curriculum that is different from what a traditional art teacher might teach, is that the goals are not as precise, the way I ask my students to approach the challenges cannot be designed fully in advance, nor can they be fully predicted.

In education, we have this expectation of a “secure chain of cause and effect”, We use SMART goals. We lay out very detailed plans of how learning objectives will be achieved and map every detail out to the nth degree. However,  real true creative growth and innovation happens when a chain is not followed, but rather there is a framework for exploration, experimentation, and trial and error.  The same is true for retention of information. When I think about the bits of knowledge that have been exposed to over the course of my own school experience, those opportunities to connect the learning in a meaningful way through exploration, experimentation, and trial and error are the only ones that really stuck. 

Our purpose of education is not for kids to memorize and cram in information only to forget later after the project is complete or a test has been taken. We should provide spaces for them to create their own path and make connections that will last. (This thought came to me after participating in a conversation with some other teachers about how happy we should be about our standardized testing coming in the spring next year, rather than the fall, so that they information will be fresh and thus kids will score better.  And I wondered to myself, “Why are we even bothering to teach at all if we know and expect our kids to forget the information later?”)

 

In the real world and in life, the path to the goal is not clear, and the goal may in fact change.

In business, this is sometimes referred to as “sideways management”. 

A fuzzy goal is one that motivates the general direction of the work, without blinding the creator(s) to opportunities along the journey.

So, how does this happen?

According to Gamestorming:

“What’s the optimum level of fuzziness? To define a fuzzy goal you need a certain amount of ESP: fuzzy goals are Emotional, Sensory, and Progressive.

Emotional:  Fuzzy goals must be aligned with (students) passions and energy for their project. It’s this passion and energy that gives creative projects their momentum; therefore, fuzzy goals must have a compelling emotional component.

Sensory:  The more tangible you can make a goal, the easier it is to share with others. Sketches and crude physical models help to bring form to ideas that might otherwise be too vague to grasp. You may be able to visualize an effect of the goal, such as (the viewers experience).

Progressive:  Fuzzy goals are not static; they change over time. This is because, when you begin to move toward a fuzzy goal, you don’t know what you don’t know. The process of moving toward the goal is also a learning process, sometimes called successive approximation. As the (student) learns, the goals may change, so it’s important to stop every once in awhile and look around. Fuzzy goals may be adjusted and sometimes completely changed based on what you learn as you go.

(Students) need to navigate ambigious, uncertain, and often complex information spaces. What is unknown usually far outweighs what is known. In many ways it’s a journey in the fog, where case studies haven’t been written yet, and there are no examples of where it’s been done successfully before. Voyages of discovery involve greater risks and more failures along the way than other endeavors. But the rewards are worth it.” p.8

Changing my job description

 

Ask any art teacher why they think their class is important and I'd bet most of them would mention among other things that their class teaches students to be more creative.  But let’s look at our practices critically. 

As an art teacher, do you actually teach kids how to be more creative? Is painting a color wheel a creative act? Is painting a copy of a famous artwork creative? What if it's a monochromatic self portrait? Is making a coil pot a creative act? Our are students more creative after having done these exercises? How much of your curriculum do you devote to skill based lessons? How much do you devote to critical thinking and creative ideation?

If you know my history as an art teacher, and I'm guessing if you are reading this, you do, you know I've gone through some changes in the way I teach.  I entered the profession in the usual way. I went to college and learned how to get good grades by by mimicing whatever style of art work my college teachers  made.  I was trained in DBAE (Discipline Based Art Education) and was well versed in all things a good art teacher should know about how to construct a solid lesson.  I know how to make a lesson that could rival the content knowledge of any other subject area in school. It should be rigorous with Art Production, Art History, Art Criticism and Aesthetics.  Lessons also are encouraged to be multi-disciplinary in nature, have a reading and writing component and include a "multi-cultural" angle.  

Whew!  But I could do it with the best of them.  If there was a "right way" to do something, I was going to do it!  Looking back at some of the things I had my students do (with all of the best intentions) I make myself cringe.  My elementary students made very beautiful copies of Van Gogh's Starry Night in oil pastels, high school students made spectacular large scale fingerprint portrait of themselves ala Chuck Close and my middle schoolers made fantastic color wheel versions of famous paintings. And at the end of the marking period, semester or school year, I would have a decent handful of these masterpieces tossed into the trashcan by their creator without care as they walked out the door.

When I applied for a Masters in Art Education Degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), I was searching for something more. Frustrated with the numbers of students in my classes who only thought art was "Just OK", I wanted to learn what I could do as the teacher to affect the level of engagement for my middle school students. Part of my studies included conducting classroom research. I sought out to compare the levels of student engagement when students are challenged with a traditional, DBAE style, closed art problem with representational constraints Vs a more ill defined art problem without representational constraints.  Problem 1: "Create a triptych of yourself with a realistic self portrait in the center panel, the left panel a drawing of a road with symbols that represent those events that have led you to where you are today and on the right panel, a road with symbols of what you predict will become your future." Vs. Problem 2: "Create a self portrait in a container form. On the outside, use those shapes, textures and colors that represent how you think others view you, and on the inside, use those shapes, textures and colors that express how you really are."

Without surprise, the more open art problem that did not require representational realism from my middle school kids elicited a higher engagement response.  It was during this study that I became familiar with the work of Dr. Sandra Kay, an art educator with an extensive background in gifted education. She is one of the coauthors of a book called "Creating Meaning through Art: Teacher as Choice Maker". In it she discusses something called an "Elegant Problem".  An elegant problem is one that  invites fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration in it's responses.  I also became familiar with the work of Sydney Walker and the "Big Idea". Big ideas are large and complex and can sustain an artists work over large swaths of time.  I began thinking about how I could give my students the opportunity to think and behave as "real" artists do.  I began to examine my own practice and explore teaching students about the art world through the development of elegant problems and big ideas.  Instead of coil pots, my students began making plates that represented dreamscapes. Paintings of still life objects soon became paintings that revealed their biggest pet peeves.  Things were getting better, my students were making art that held meaning for them. They were beginning to behave like artists.

Could there be anything more?  Are my kids really engaged? YES!!!  They are loving it! Way less art is making it to the trash can.  They are behaving like artists, (but are they thinking that way?).  Do they view themselves as creative?  So, I asked them.  There were still a handful that struggled with the "big idea". What did I do about it?  To be honest, like I think most good teachers do, I rescued them.  In all of my good intentions, I "helped" them brainstorm for ideas.  I set the problems up so that they could think about them in certain ways.  I provided brainstorming worksheets and had them search for ideas out of freewriting exercises.  Most of my students could fly with the ill defined prompt with these aides, they would create very cool independent looking things and would begin to see themselves as real artists, but there were about 4 -5 in each hour that needed me to hold their hand through the ideation process. Sometimes the projects of neighboring students would end up looking eerily similar.  I chalked it up to possible developmental delays, but I knew it deep down, I was not teaching them "how to think".  These were the future adults who would someday say "I'm not creative", "I wish I could come up with ideas like that".  Now what?

I did some more reading and scavenging.  How do you teach creativity?  What can I do as an art teacher to help my kids reach their full creative potential? 

Things didn’t really start to change for me until I begun to think of myself as a “creativity teacher that uses art as a vehicle to get kids thinking differently” rather than “an art teacher”.  

A creativity teacher teaches for creativity first, that means that a creativity teacher will be looking for different things when they are developing their units.  It is not unlike my earlier work with "elegant problems". But this time, I will be searching for fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration in my students responses first, all other elements of a problem's outcome are secondary(instead of equal).   Creativity is something that ALL students will need, regardless of what they choose to be when they grow up.  I finally admit to myself that most of my students will not grow up to be artists, but they will all have a need to be able to think and behave creatively.

 Imagine if all the subjects in school were taught with an emphasis on creativity first and subject secondary?  For advocacy’s sake, speak to the benefits of creative problem solving and critical thinking for your students. But first, examine your actual practice, are you teaching the kids how to be more creative or are you teaching them how to follow directions, or make art that looks like ______? Or in the style of ____? Or to demonstrate the skill of ___? Or to show that they understand the definition of a vocabulary word?” There is a difference between being “an art teacher” and a “creativity teacher”.  Which do you want to be? What do you think is more important for kids? Can you be both?  Let's talk!!

I'm creative, are you?

There, I've said it.  It's even online, so it must be true.  

The truth is, one of the driving factors of why I even started this class is related to that statement.    As soon as I tell someone I'm an art teacher, I will often hear apologies or regret emanate from their lips. 

"Oh, I wish I were creative!" 

"I can't do any of that crafty stuff!" 

"I'm just one step above finger painting!" 

"I can't even draw a straight line!" 

And I think to myself,  how sad. These are completely competent adults who have let themselves believe that they are unable to access a very vital part of their brain. There are all types of creative thinking. Some people are good with paint, or words, or numbers or figuring out how to keep an old engine running.

"Creativity and innovative thinking are essential life skills that can be developed." 

This is the first Enduring Understanding, (EU),  in the next generation of National Visual Arts Education Standards (to be completed and released Spring, 2014).

This is pretty exciting stuff, "essential life skills".  Everyone is creative, and I can prove it to you if you promise to let go of the stereotype that you have to be able to draw realistically in order to be creative.

Two summers ago, I attended an International Creativity Camp called MindCamp in Orillia, Ontario.  It was the first conference that I had ever gone to that wasn't for educators.  It was for creative professionals.  It had never occurred to me before then that people actually get paid to help other adults access their creative abilities.  I guess when you are the classroom for so long, you tend to get educator tunnel vision.  I attended many sessions on creative problem solving, design thinking and even took a class where I got to mess around on a ukelele.  It was great.  I hope I get the chance again sometime soon.  I picked up some pretty great definitions of creativity although I regret now that I cannot credit the sessions I got them from directly. Here's the summary:

Everyone is creative. Some seem more creative than others.  This is why.

Highly creative people make up stuff at least twice, once for themselves and than once again to put out into the world.

imagination: To conceive of something which is not  (think of a pink giraffe... can you? ok, you have an imagination)

creativity:   To put an imaginative thought out into the world (draw that giraffe badly or write a poem about it, or sew a stuffy one or tell a joke about a pink giraffe, do something with the thought and you have created something!)  Not so tough, right?

innovative:  To put an imaginative thought out into the world that is of use to someone else This is a little more advanced, but you can do it. ( put your crummy giraffe drawing on a t shirt, develop pink hair dye for giraffes, use the giraffe logo as your trademark during breast cancer awareness month).

We all have imaginative ideas, highly creative people just have more practice throwing their ideas out there and have learned how to quiet their inner critic. 

Disclaimer: “Creative Endeavors” is an experiment in helping people recognize their own creative potential. Everybody goes to middle school. I’m catching them here before they grow up. I’m on a mission to change the world, one kid at a time!

Beginning the adventure

Hi, My name is September Buys.  I am a teacher in Greenville, Michigan. This is the very first post on my blog about a little experiment I'm conducting called "Creative Endeavors".  I've been meaning to set this up for some time now and now I've finally done it! I hope that people will share and comment on this project. Collaboration is vital to the success of this work.

The idea for the class started two springs ago. I was introduced to a book called "The Global Achievement Gap: Why even our best schools don't teach the new survival skills our children need - and what we can do about it" by Tony Wagner.

In it, he wrote about the seven skills schools need to be giving our kids in order to compete in our new creative economy.  I had heard our superintendent had given a copy of this very book to all of our building administrators. I began to think big (as I too often do, despite the self induced stress I cause when I do that) and I put together a little presentation to show the heads of our school.    I was proposing that we look at all of the research out there that is supporting these same ideas and make radical changes.  I was offering to serve as a "creativity coach" for the teachers in our district and help them learn how to teach creative problem solving skills. Here's a copy of my creative coach proposal.

Like a lot of my ideas, it was just too ambitious.  I received my figurative "pat on the head" and I returned to my art classroom.  It was about the same time that an "encore" or elective opening became available in our middle school. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I physically ran (ok, maybe quickly walked) down to my principal's office when she sent out an email asking for "suggestions on offerings for different kinds of classes".

I teach in a fairly large rural school district. When I started here in 2001, there were two art teaching positions for our 900+ 6th - 8th grade students.  Michigan, like many states, has had some economic struggles over the past decade and one of our art positions had been cut as a result.  As the only art teacher for some time, I found it frustrating that there were so many kids that wanted to have an art experience, but just couldn't fit it in their schedule.  I offered as much as I could, after school gifted programs, weekly art club meetings, private lessons, workshops for special populations (art therapy for the emotionally impaired, team teaching workshops for the cognitively impaired) during my lunch or planning time . But there was only one of me and over 900 of them.  What's an art teacher to do?

But now, there was an opening.  I knew asking for another art teacher wouldn't be enough.  My principal wanted "different" classes so that kids would have more options.  So, I thought, what if I focused on teaching creativity?  That can't be so hard, right?  I could use all of my research on creative education and experience teaching art to help me.  I could focus on idea development over skill development.  We could fill the position with a new art teacher to cover art history, art careers  and observational drawing. The proposal worked.

Welcome to my adventure.