I’m back! Again. Interesting how time I need to spend writing and teaching about creativity sometimes keeps me from, well, writing and teaching about creativity. I’ve been busy putting the finishing touches on the 6th edition of Creativity in the Classroom and writing for another project on creativity and talent development. So I’ve had a … Continue reading
All creativity involves some risk. We know that. Any time we try something new, there is risk of failure, of ridicule, or getting ourselves in over our heads. And yet, if we want to make creative choices, we persist. How do we decide when to risk? One factor is our creative self-efficacy, that is, how … Continue reading
I will admit I’ve frequently railed against using business models to design and evaluate schools. There are so many ways schools and businesses are different that attempting to translate one to the other risks assuming children are some kind of consistent raw material that can be transformed into a uniform product. I can see teachers … Continue reading
It is sad, but perhaps not unexpected, that since I recently wrote about discouraged educators, I’ve spent a lot of time coaching a young teacher friend. She’s trying to find her way through an interaction with an administrator that has her questioning whether she belongs in public education at all. The specifics don’t matter because … Continue reading
I hope it’s just me, but I’ve talked to a lot of discouraged educators lately, and it is just September. Why discouraged? Sometimes new laws or policies make an already demanding job even harder. Sometimes schedules are crazy or ceilings drip or test prep eats up far too much time. Sometimes folks feel blamed for … Continue reading
They say that medical students spend much of their early training examining themselves for symptoms of every disease they study, no matter how obscure. The more they think about something, the more they find evidence of it in their lives. I’m finding something similar (although less frightening) happening to me this semester as I’ve taken … Continue reading
It seems questioning is in the air. Years ago, when I talked about helping students ask questions I was often met with “And when do you think we have time to do that?” stares. And given our educational climate, there were good reasons. But times shift. I’m told that my naturally curly hair is going … Continue reading
One of my favorite tools for helping students move from absorbers to questioners comes from Deborah Meier. She cites five Habits of Mind underlying Boston’s Mission Hill School, each of which can be framed as a question. Here, from Meier’s 2009 article “Democracy at Risk” are the five questions that she believes can define a … Continue reading
Questions. We ask them when we need directions. We ask them when we don’t understand. Sometimes we ask questions in outrage, other times we ask them in curiosity and wonder. Sometimes questions are rhetorical, other times they are urgent. If we want to help students be questioners, we need to help them understand the types … Continue reading
Questions are in the air, it seems. One of the most talked-about books this year is Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question. September’s issue of Educational Leadership focuses on questioning for learning. It seems a good time to think about the role questions play in creativity—and learning. Questions, it almost goes without saying, lie at … Continue reading
