How smart are you? Really. How smart do you think you are? How do you know? What about your students? How smart are they? How smart to they think they are? Does it matter? Psychologists use a lot of intertwining ideas to describe how we think about ourselves, our abilities, and our capacity for change: … Continue reading
This is Part 2 of my resolutions for a creative new school year. Perhaps, like me, you have more success writing resolutions—at least professional ones—in September. If so, come along and think with me. This year I’m trying to think in broader terms about the types of classroom I want to establish. For more specific … Continue reading
I’ve never been good at traditional New Year’s Resolutions. Somehow, coming on the heels of the most intense time of year—when holiday and end-of-semester craziness merge—by January 1 I’m more inclined to be grateful for survival than set new goals. But September is different. Even when I’m teaching summer term, the end of August brings … Continue reading
This month (perhaps while you were taking a few well-earned days off) the National Public Radio (NPR) series Playing to Learn presented a fascinating look into the relationship between play and learning. At this time of year when so many of us put summer relaxation behind and get back to the “serious business” of teaching, … Continue reading
One of the great challenges of helping students envision creativity in science is teaching science in ways that are more like, well, science. So much of science education is prepackaged in ways that are designed to make the questions clear and the results predictable—conditions actual scientists rarely experience. And besides, where’s the fun in giving … Continue reading
One of the joys (and time-wasting dangers) of the web is that you never know where an interesting link will lead. For me, today’s exploration involved LEGOs. It started when a friend sent a link to 50 States of LEGO, a creation of photographer Jeff Friesen, with LEGO scenes representing (naturally) each of the 50 … Continue reading
The M I Curious series on my local Public Radio station is a cooperative exercise in problem finding. Modeled after the Curious City series at WBEZ in Chicago, M I Curious asks, “What do you wonder?” It invites listeners to submit questions, puts the questions to a vote, and then selects those for investigation. It … Continue reading
How many times have you heard it—or said it, “Practice. Work hard. Just keep trying. All you have to do is work harder. Then you’ll succeed.” But in a recent Washington Post blog post, Alfie Kohn discusses a new meta-analysis that calls into question that traditional wisdom that links practice time and success. A meta-analysis … Continue reading
I’m back from an amazing 40th anniversary trip to Mainland China and Tibet (yes, obviously, we were married as babes!) On one hand, it was a blissful opportunity to leave everything work-related behind, but on the other, it was an immersion in creativity. One of the wonderful things about studying creativity is that it gives … Continue reading
creativiteach 