What should it mean to be creative in our classrooms?

If you have read more than one of my previous blog posts, first, thank you.  Second, you may have noticed that my focus has been to break down each of the four “Cs” in a way that might help us connect it to our classrooms.  This blog will be about creativity, which I believe is the most misunderstood of all the 4Cs.  So often I hear the word “creativity” used to describe students and adults who engage in artistic endeavors.  Of course, this is one definition.  But it is so limited.  In an effort to better understand the confusion, I went to look at a few of the definitions for creativity:

• Google’s pop-up definition:  
• the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.
• Dictionary.com definition:
• the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination
• Webster’s Dictionary definition:
• the ability to make new things or think of new ideas

Oh, Google, I love you.  But in your effort to be helpful, your additional information in the definition created a limitation and a distraction from one of the most important components.  Notice in the other two definitions, highlighted is the idea of creating new ideas or new things and absent is the highlight of artwork.

EdLeader21, drawing from the P21 definition, includes the following basic domains for creativity:  Think Creatively, Work Creatively with Others, Demonstrate Courage to Explore, and Implement Innovations.  Further guidance shows even more emphasis on the connection between creativity and critical thinking.  

• Takes an original, unique, and imaginative approach to idea generation; offers ideas that are broad in their diversity.
• Sorts, arranges, categorizes, and prioritizes ideas in ways that turn options into creatively productive outcomes.
• Uses convergent thinking skills and/or design thinking strategies as appropriate to develop creative ideas into tangible solutions or contributions.

A few years ago I converted my classroom to a project-based classroom.  As a quick recap, in a project-based classroom students are presented with a problem and are asked to create a solution.  Through the process, information is discovered by the students or content is presented by the teacher as needed.  I believed this was a much more authentic style of teaching and learning.  However, my students did not appreciate it in the beginning.  I heard the statement, “I don’t understand.  Just tell me what you want me to do,” on a nearly daily basis.  I believed I was freeing them to do what they wanted.  I didn’t have a template for the “right” answer and my logic was that there were now 100 different solutions to the problem presented.  This should be easier and/or more fun.

This was not how my students saw this.  Because I hadn’t spent enough time helping them develop their ability to engage in creative thought, they felt lost and reverted back to the comfort of seeking the one right answer.  This video by Fable Vision is a great illustration of the difference between following directions and engaging in creative thought.

In our classrooms, we need to start by giving our students permission to explore new ideas.  Yes, there is a destination, or learning target, in mind.  However, there are so many pathways to that learning target.  But we cannot stop there.  We must also intentionally develop the skill of creativity in our students.  But how?

Let’s start with our feedback and formative assessment strategies.  If we continually engage in a conversation with our students as they work through problems and solutions, we will slowly remove the idea that there is one right answer.  Instead of a single opportunity to stamp a student product with a final grade, build in a feedback loop of present, reflect, and adjust.  By the end of the process, the grading process is a much more manageable task because you already know exactly what each student created and what they were thinking along the way.

As teachers and school leaders, this clarification of the creativity component of the 4Cs starts with us.  We must strive to understand, model, and focus on the creative thought of our own process.  Then we can model and focus on the creative thought of our students.

Listening for Understanding v. Listening to Respond

Are we teaching our children how to listen for understanding?  I fear that, if they are learning by our society’s example, we are teaching them only how to listen to respond.  And that is doing a major disservice to our next generation.

I get a lot of grief about my love for protocols.  I’m looking at you, Bismarck friends.  But I believe they can give structure to human interactions so that we can minimize instinctual reactions and engage in more meaningful and reflective dialog.  The Communication Model shows us that effective communication has both a sender and a receiver.  It also shows us that for communication to be complete, the receiver must decode the message.  

In many instances, our natural reaction to information we don’t fully understand or is in opposition to our status quo is to verbally refute it.  Protocols can give us a construct where participants are required to reflect individually on the information before forming a verbal or written reply.  When we know ahead of time that we will have time to formulate a response, we don’t need to spend our effort multi-tasking our listening.  We can listen to understand and then think to respond.

In my post on presentations in the classroom, I focused heavily on evaluating the communication sender.  My primary goal was evaluating what they had learned and how they had learned it.  However, I stated that my second goal was to help other students cover any gaps in their own learning/understanding.  If that goal was to be achieved, I should have also evaluated that achievement.  Unfortunately for my students, I didn’t learn about many of my favorite protocols until I was no longer teaching in a regular classroom.  In not providing a protocol for this, I completely cut off the second part of the communication model.  There was no context for decoding the message and providing feedback to the sender.  I wasn’t even teaching listening to respond, let alone listening for understanding.

One of my favorite protocols is the 3-2-1 Protocol.  In it, the listeners are given time (2-5 minutes depending on the length of the presentation) to write 3 things they learned, 2 things they found interesting or “ah-has”, and 1 thing they still have a question about.  Students can then share out in small groups or whole class items from their list.  This list can also be turned in as a formative assessment of their listening.

The thing I like best is that this protocol lends a voice to those students who do not feel comfortable “blurting” or do not process as quickly as other students.  It is not a race to articulate your opinion.  Rather, the focus is on thoughtful reflection. As a bonus, this can focus the small or whole group discussion on what they heard during a presentation or demonstration.  This can be a great check for understanding and gives us the opportunity to clear up misunderstandings.

This is my "Protocol Badge"
given to me by my Bismarck friends.
Like I said, I get a lot of grief
over my <3 of them.  

There are many sources for protocols, but my favorite is the National School Reform Faculty website.  You can find hundreds of resources on protocols online.  The best one is one you feel comfortable implementing and will help achieve your goal.

Communicate What You Know - AND - How You Learned It

I often get asked the question, “What technology tool can I use to make presentations more interesting?  My students are bored with (insert common tech here, i.e. Slides, PowerPoint, Prezi, etc.).”

Yes, there are many online tools out there to help us create presentations.  However, I believe that the students aren’t bored because of the tool.  They are bored because all of the presentations give the same EXACT information they discovered on their own and put into their own presentation.  They are literally hearing the same information 5-20 different times.  Honestly, I’d be bored, too.  

And I was.  As I teacher, I used standard presentations in a lot of my group assignments.  I tasked my students with a learning objective and then, tagged on to the end of the assignment, they were asked to present what they learned.  Often this included a rubric where they were given what should be included in the presentation and even (ugh) the number of slides required.  Consequently I saw, essentially, the same presentation over and over.  And then I wondered why I wasn’t getting “better” presentations.

In my classroom, I had 3 objectives for the presentation:

1. Discover what the students learned in the project.
2. Ensure all students were exposed to each other’s learning to cover any gaps in their own project.
3. Develop student communication skills.

These are OK objectives and seemed to justify why presentations were included in most of my projects.  I usually achieved Objective 1, but I will admit that I could have done as good a job discovering that by reading their submitted project.  I thought I was achieving Objective 2, but as the boredom or disinterest set in, this benefit diminished.  And then there is Objective 3.  It seemed that, presentation after presentation, the students were not improving.  Just more of the same.

It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to watch presentations as a third party that the lightbulb went on.  I kept asking myself these new questions:

1. What if we didn’t save presentations for the end?  
2. What if we devoted an equal amount of class time (for me this was 2-3 class periods) to preparing presentations but sprinkled it throughout the project?  
3. What if the focus of the presentation wasn’t on the end result, but rather on the decision making parts of the project?  

OHHHH!  Every student or group goes through a different process in a project.  From the way they assign tasks to the decision to include/exclude information, they are all different.  It is in this process that learning happens.  It is also in this process that reflection can happen and deepen that learning.  I felt elated to discover a way to help students evaluate which assumptions or decisions led to their final conclusion.

The objectives for the presentation can still be the same.  However, we have a much better shot at actually achieving those objectives when the students are interested, the presentations are varied, and the focus is on their own process rather than on the outcome.  As a bonus, it doesn’t matter which tool we use.  The interesting part of the presentation isn’t the visual aid.  The interesting part is the presenter and his/her story.  And isn’t that where the focus should be, anyway?

Collaborate Like a Boss - Building Your PLN

I am the first to admit, I don’t have all the answers.  I have not experienced enough, seen enough, or done enough to know what and how to do all the “things” I want to do.  Because of this, I rely on a network of people to help me.  I take ideas, resources, and materials from other educators and education professionals.  

I feel enabled to use and edit work from my network because I am also willing to give back to the collective so that others can benefit.  It’s truly one of the most beautiful things about our digital age in education.  If I use something you created, you still have access to it.  You can still use it, but so can I.  Work can be replicated, improved, changed, and increased, all without losing access.  Gone are the days of file cabinets full of our best work.  In the “old days,” when you left a position or changed school districts, you either took your work and passion projects with you and left the new person with nothing, or you left it behind requiring you to start over.  

I was so fortunate to work with a group of passionate, visionary, and driven professionals.  They were steps away from me and I could turn to them in the moment and have instant collaboration.  This is the type of collaboration that we often teach in our classrooms.  Turn and talk, pair-share, elbow partners.  These are all instances of synchronous collaboration.  Work grows organically out of these types of discussions as one person often becomes the scribe of the ideas.

I have had the opportunity to replant myself in a new place, both geographically and professionally.  I no longer have physical access to my previous co-workers, but it does not mean this collaboration group has to end.  Because they shared in the idea of giving and taking, I was able to take copies of all our work product with me to my new position.  It wasn’t starting from scratch, but they were not left without that work either.  

My group has now entered into asynchronous collaboration.  Collaboration that happens without face-to-face time.  I work on projects and offer it back to the collective.  The other collaborators do the same.  I must clarify, this is not divided group work.  The work is not segmented, where the members of the group only contribute to their assigned section.  This must be the next level of collaboration that we promote to our students.

When I was in the classroom, students would often complain to me that they group work was breaking down because one or more members were not showing up to assigned group work sessions due to work or family conflicts.  I know now that I had done little to help them understand how and why they should engage in asynchronous collaboration.  I also know now that I was unprepared to help them with this because I had not engaged in it successfully myself.  As education professionals, it is difficult for us to teach these skills to our students unless we are proficient ourselves.

The acronym I included in the blog title was “PLN”.  What does that stand for?  It stands for a “Professional Learning Network.”  It is one of the best things educators can do for personal professional development.  MindShift has a great article on getting started with your PLN.  #learnbps and #innovateSPS are two fantastic Twitter hashtags for schools that are sharing innovative practices.

So please, find a safe space where you feel empowered to find and use resources that meet your educational needs.  Create your Twitter account, form a “virtual study group” at your school, join a Schoology discussion forum, start a blog.  Just do something to get yourself out there.  Your network will grow and you, too, can use and contribute.

Follow me on Twitter

Collaboration - More than "Playing Nice"

Much like my post on Critical Thinking, collaboration is one of those words buzzing around education circles. Its meaning, its definition, and its impact on learning is as varied as the number of classrooms trying to embed it. However, unlike critical thinking, many of us believe we understand what collaboration is and what it looks like. 

When I work with a group of people who start discussing collaboration, I often hear that we already do group work in school. I also hear conversations about effectiveness of that group work being judged by how many conflicts arise and whether the task is accomplished. I absolutely agree that this is a beginning conversation on collaboration, but it cannot be the end. In his book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum gave these first three points:

1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.

I believe this is a pretty concise definition of cooperation. Cooperation is a first step on the way to collaboration. But remember, the root of collaboration is to “Co-Labor.” To work together. To accomplish more together than we could on our own. 

Austin Kleon’s book, Show Your Work, says, “What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.”

For our students to create great work, we need to give them the opportunity to interact, to share, to experience, and to disagree with a wide variety of people, places, and ideas. We need to design these opportunities to collaborate beyond just getting along. Facilitating discussions, asking questions, and demanding that the sum of the work is greater than the contributions of the individual is our imperative as education professionals.

Sometimes cooperation-on-the-way-to-collaboration is a fantastic teacher tool that gets students to a learning objective faster. My kids recently discovered the wonderful world of Osmo. I was so excited to see them working together to solve a problem. It warmed my mother/teacher heart.

However, this is play. This is cooperation. They’ve been proficient at parallel play and cooperative play for a very long time. They worked together without fighting and solved a problem. Could they have solved this problem on their own? Absolutely. But they solved it faster by working together.

In school, this is where we get to turn fun into real learning. What do we do with that added time we get from successful cooperation? We get to deepen the learning! Ask those kiddos why they made the decisions they made and spark a conversation between them. Have them try to find a new solution to a problem they already solved and watch them build on their previous knowledge.

Why Ask Why?

If you have little kids or you teach little kids, you have answered tens of millions “Why?” questions.  Often I get frustrated around the 4th or 5th question.  But let me tell you, these little ones are geniuses and we should learn from them.

Image from the book "Darth Vader and Son"
More information is available here:
https://g.co/kgs/Q2XVBw

Little kids are programmed to explore and understand the world around them.  If something doesn’t make sense, they need to ask, “Why do we do it this way?”  And then they need to continue to ask that question until the answer connects with something else they know.  It’s brilliant.  So why do we stop doing this as we get older?  Adults are the simple answer.  At some point we convey to children that asking that “Why?” question frustrates those around you.  And we could not be doing a greater disservice to our next generation.

This tiny question leads to greater understanding of the world around us.  It makes connections from the unknown to the known, it challenges the status quo, it explore possibilities, and it forces us to evaluate preconceived understandings and biases.  That’s a lot of power for one little word.

It’s that last part that I like to focus on in education.  Challenging preconceived understandings and biases can open up a world of understanding for students.  Webster's Dictionary defines Metacognition in three ways:

1. higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes, especially when engaged in learning.
2. thinking about one's own mental processes
3. awareness and understanding one's thinking and cognitive processes;thinking about thinking

When we encourage our students to ask “Why?” as it applies to their own thinking, the connection between academic knowledge, world understanding, and internal motivation goes deeper.   Elliot Aronson’s work on Cognitive Dissonance theorizes, “Creating and resolving cognitive dissonance can have a powerful impact on students' motivation for learning.”

Designing lessons and learning opportunities with this in mind is crucial for our next generation of students.  I know that in my classroom I was often tempted to cut the reflection part of a lesson because of time or in the interest of covering more material.  I was doing a major disservice to my students.  Simply “covering” material does not help to deepen understanding.  Committing time to reflection, and not just at the end of the lesson or unit, is the most important component of your lesson plan.  Ask your students, “Why did you do it this way?”  And then ask them, “Why?” again.  And maybe again.  And then watch their thinking deepen.

I have two little ones at home.  Instead of reading all the articles out there about how to stop kids from asking a million questions, I’m going to embrace the ones that talk about loving this stage.  I tend to agree that it is not that kids lose interest in the world around them or that their intrinsic motivation dies out naturally.  I think that the adults in their world discourage them from exploration.  Let’s work together to stop that cycle.

The 4C's: Critical Thinking

If you have been reading published articles on education and the workforce, you might have noticed a common thread.  Everyone seems to agree that our students need to develop critical thinking skills and strategies.  Schools are promoting critical thinking and are trying to find ways to teach it, but the workforce says that the employees they are hiring do not demonstrate the ability to think critically.  So where is the gap?  I believe that one of the biggest challenges is in defining it.  We, the larger community, haven’t come up with a general consensus of what critical thinking is, what it looks like when we see it, or how to measure it in a way that promotes growth.

Dictionary.com defines it as:

“the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion”

EdLeader21, drawing from the P21 definition, defines it with behaviors:

Critical thinkers:

• Collect, assess and analyze relevant information.
• Reason effectively.
• Use systems thinking.
• Make sound judgments and decisions.
• Identify, define and solve authentic problems and essential questions.
• Reflect critically on learning experiences, processes and solutions.

The Critical Thinking Community uses this definition:  

“Critical thinking is that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it.”

So why are we having such a difficult time wrapping our teaching/learning around this seemingly central and obvious concept?  

I believe it is because of the way we experienced school, both as learners and as teachers, for a majority of our lives.  Our experiences engrained a process where the teacher learns the material, the teacher prepares the material, and the student experiences the materials presented.  The reward for this process, grades, is determined by how well the student repeats back the material they were supposed to have learned.  

Take this example.  Let’s say I needed to go from my house to the grocery store.  I punch the destination into my GPS and I get all the step-by-step directions delivered to me.  On my way I find out that there has been an accident on the main road of the route..  I have a choice to make.  Do I wait on the side of the road until my obstacle is cleared so that I can take the prescribed path?  Or do I turn and try my luck on a different route?  I make a turn and my GPS recalculates and I safely reach my destination.  Now, I might be a couple of minutes later than my original destination time and I didn’t use the fastest route.  According to our traditional school method, I would be docked points for not following the directions.  My answer didn’t match the answer key.

So one classroom strategy might be the Google Maps approach to lesson design.  You could provide the learner 3 different options, all of which take them from their starting point and get them to their destination.  This give the student choice and allows them to see that there is not just one path.  It’s a step in the right direction and gives the teacher some control over learning paths.  We might even take another step and ask the student to reflect on why he or she chose the path they did.  Reflecting on thinking!

But this still misses some key elements from the definitions above.  Students are still, mostly, given a prescribed pathway from beginning to end.  It leaves no room for innovative problem solving, and little room to make decisions along the path.  And it is these decisions, and then reflecting on the outcome of those decisions, that gets to the heart of critical thinking.  

The problem is that this process is messy and it is not linear and it cannot be controlled on a calendar.  So this makes me think that teaching critical thinking skills doesn’t necessarily start in the classroom.  But rather, it starts in our profession.  This problem demands that all of us examine how we design schools, classrooms, curricula, and lessons to identify  how we are allowing our students the chance to think critically.  We must learn for ourselves how to think differently about education.  We must be critical thinkers and ask ourselves why we do things the way we do.  And then we can begin the task of refining the process of growth in this area.