Fostering Creativity in Education: Moving Beyond the Box (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Think outside of the box. This is what we tell our students, but newsflash, most kids have no idea what this phrase means or how to go about, you know, thinking outside the box. As a children's book author, this surprises me, but it shouldn't, not really. After all, the schools are the ones that constantly hand kids a piece of paper, the equivalent of a flattened box, and tell them to stay, stay, stay within the confines of that box and pick from the provided answers, is it A or B or maybe C? And kids become conditioned quite quickly to think only within that given set of parameters, never drawing on their own creative sensibilities. But so what? Why is creativity important, essential even? That's easy, jet packs and flying cars. At its core, education is about preparing students for the future. The problem with this is that no one knows what the future will bring. 40 years ago, I was promised a jet pack and a flying car, and I'm still waiting. Then again, I have the world's information at my fingertips and a thousand songs in my pocket, so I can't complain, but what this shows is that the future is completely and totally and utterly unpredictable. Additionally, many real-world challenges are much more open-ended, and the one correct answer approach to problem-solving simply will not yield innovative answers. Since we cannot predict the future, nor predict the problems we'll face, flexibility becomes the key to success. We can prepare for the future by remaining flexible and open, an openness that defines creativity. Creativity very simply put, is the ability to make new things or think of new and original ideas. And as important as it is to understand what creativity is, just as importantly, we need to understand what it is not. First, creativity is not a select talent held only by a few. It is a method of operating, an ability that each and every one of us has and can tap into. Second, creativity and the arts are not one in the same. Drawing, painting, writing, music, dance, theater, these artistic pursuits are indeed also creative pursuits, but so too is inventing Post-it Notes or the polio vaccine. Now, if schools kill creativity, as the compelling Sir Ken Robinson famously stated in his TED talk a few years back, what can be done about it? What can we do about it? Quite simply, what we do is we work with what we have, injecting creativity into the current educational structure. Towards that end, I'm going to suggest some creativity prompts that can be used in any classroom and are easy, fun, fast, and free. By beginning each day or class period with a quick exercise in creativity, just five minutes or less, it helps to foster and encourage for kids what thinking outside the box actually looks like. So here's prompt number one. Object, what could it be? The concept is very simple. Select a 3D object and ask, what else could this be? Or what could this be used for? Or what could this be turned into? A tennis shoe might become a plant holder, a drinking straw might become a fishing pole, a teacher's desk might become flipped upside down and transformed into a boat. Or try this one. Object plus doodling equals something new. Take a small 3D object and incorporate it into a two-dimensional doodle, or if you're artistically inclined, a more elaborate drawing. For a non-artist such as myself, my creations would be fairly simple. An uncooked spaghetti noodle, for example, would be broken into a few pieces and arranged to make, say, hey, a flying trapeze, drawing in a little stick figure to convey action and give context to the new object. Another idea, not so much an activity as it is a simple change-up of routine. Creativity at its core is about finding a new perspective. Nothing drives this point home easier with kids than physical movement, physical repositioning. Why, why do students need to sit at a desk all day? Let them choose to sit under the desk, or sit on top of the desk, or hang upside down from their chair. Maybe they would prefer to stand, be open to new possibilities. One of my favorite prompts for writing assignments involves this creative twist. The student must write on anything other than paper. See what they come up with. Will they write on the back of birch bark, on toilet paper, on their friend's arm? How might that change the content of their writing? Or lastly, try this exercise that's often used in creativity workshops. Give students a sheet of paper with 30 circles on it, or try my modified version, mixing circles with squares, and then ask the students to turn those shapes into something. I've found mixing circles with squares helps kids especially keep their free association momentum going. And yes, there will be basketballs, and baseballs, and books galore, but sooner or later those shapes will morph into snowmen, or robots, or the coolest whatchamacallit thingamajig you've ever seen. Now with these types of creativity prompts, kids rarely judge themselves on the look or the quality of their creations, unlike, say, in an art lesson, where they immediately recognize that their horse does not quite look like their neighbor's horse, or if they're like me, maybe doesn't look like a horse at all. But with these types of creativity exercises, kids understand that it's all about the ideas, and their ability to remain flexible and to come up with these creative ideas and express these ideas will make all the difference in the world. Perhaps someday they'll save lives with innovative medical advancements, or invent something revolutionary like the iPod, or maybe, finally, I'll get my jetpack. And so to foster that creativity, I suggest we stop telling students to think outside of the box, and instead, we start asking them questions, questions like, what else could this box be? Thank you.