Teach Creativity by Teaching Creatively
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Ten years ago, in 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most-watched TED Talk of all time, "Are Schools Killing Creativity?" Why has nothing changed in schools, and what can we do about it? If we believe that it is important to help students develop creativity, then we must first of all teach creatively. This includes providing the environment in which students' creativity will be developed. This includes the physical environment and the social/emotional environment as well as the academic environment. |
First, teachers must model, then expect and support creativity!
Neither creativity, nor any of the other "21st century skills" can be developed, much less flourish, in a school setting dominated by lectures, testing, worksheets and rote memorization.
These skills also cannot develop and thrive in a school and classroom situation in which students are controlled by being required to sit in rows and raise their hand for permission to speak or to get out of their seat. In other words - the teacher-centered classroom is the antithesis of an environment which fosters the development of 21st century skills, or even an environment which supports authentic learning.
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The situation which Sir Ken Robinson was addressing in his 2006 TED talk was due largely to the predominance of standardized testing, which originated in the mid-1980s in Texas.
As you can see from this cartoon, standardized testing was well under way by 1991. It has intensified steadily since then, however there is a small, but growing, movement across the nation to reduce standardized testing and its negative impact on students, teachers and parents. We have heard for years that 7,000 students drop out of school every day in the United States. The two main reasons, as stated by the students, are that: |
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1. School is boring, and
2. School is not relevant to their lives.
What has been done to address this issue? Except for a few innovative schools here and there, nothing has been done. In fact, I would venture to say that the situation has deteriorated considerably in the decade since Sir Ken's talk in 2006. The growing impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which was enacted in 2002, followed by Race to the Top (RTTT) in 2009 and then the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) standards released in 2010 have resulted in schools being transformed from centers of learning to test prep and testing centers.
As a result, opportunities for students to develop creativity have virtually been eliminated. In many ways teachers have been placed into a position of having to march through the standards as quickly as possible. I refer to this phenomenon as the Pac-Man Curriculum. Students, like Pac-Man, race through the maze as fast as they can, gobbling up as as many "dots" as they can. In the case of the students, the "dots" are content standards.
There is a paradigm among educators that there is no time for creativity, and when teachers are presented with ideas for how to design and implement more creative strategies, they frequently respond with the statement, "That's nice, but we have to get our kids ready for the test." See Standardized Testing Mania.
The pressures for students to perform on standardized tests co-exist with a growing demand for students to develop "21st century skills". These are commonly referred to as "the 4 Cs" - creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication. My personal preference is the model developed by Tony Wagner, which was published in his 2008 book, The Global Achievement Gap - Why Even Our Best Schools Do Not Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need, and What We Can Do About It. He calls them the 7 Survival Skills for the 21st Century:
Many studies and articles have continued to cite creativity as the number one skill most sought by employers. [ii] That said, preparing students for employment is not the only purpose of education; creativity is a basic need and part of being human. And, as Sir Ken Robinson has told us, creativity is not an option - it is essential.
2. School is not relevant to their lives.
What has been done to address this issue? Except for a few innovative schools here and there, nothing has been done. In fact, I would venture to say that the situation has deteriorated considerably in the decade since Sir Ken's talk in 2006. The growing impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) which was enacted in 2002, followed by Race to the Top (RTTT) in 2009 and then the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) standards released in 2010 have resulted in schools being transformed from centers of learning to test prep and testing centers.
As a result, opportunities for students to develop creativity have virtually been eliminated. In many ways teachers have been placed into a position of having to march through the standards as quickly as possible. I refer to this phenomenon as the Pac-Man Curriculum. Students, like Pac-Man, race through the maze as fast as they can, gobbling up as as many "dots" as they can. In the case of the students, the "dots" are content standards.
There is a paradigm among educators that there is no time for creativity, and when teachers are presented with ideas for how to design and implement more creative strategies, they frequently respond with the statement, "That's nice, but we have to get our kids ready for the test." See Standardized Testing Mania.
The pressures for students to perform on standardized tests co-exist with a growing demand for students to develop "21st century skills". These are commonly referred to as "the 4 Cs" - creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and communication. My personal preference is the model developed by Tony Wagner, which was published in his 2008 book, The Global Achievement Gap - Why Even Our Best Schools Do Not Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need, and What We Can Do About It. He calls them the 7 Survival Skills for the 21st Century:
- Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
- Collaboration Across Networks and Leading by Influence
- Agility and Adaptability
- Initiative and Entrepreneurship
- Effective Oral and Written Communication
- Accessing and Analyzing Information
- Curiosity and Imagination
Many studies and articles have continued to cite creativity as the number one skill most sought by employers. [ii] That said, preparing students for employment is not the only purpose of education; creativity is a basic need and part of being human. And, as Sir Ken Robinson has told us, creativity is not an option - it is essential.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
Polonius in Hamlet
The Paradox
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Demands for higher test scores through drilling the standards and basic skills
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Demands for development of 21st century skills such as creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, collaboration, etc.
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We have two seemingly competing demands - one for higher test scores, which is usually approached by a focus on the standards, basic skills and restrictive curriculum pacing guides - all of which suppress an environment for supporting the development of 21st century skills. The other demand is for the development of 21st century skills.
In reality, these demands are not competing. In actuality, when an environment of creativity and freedom is made available to students, and it includes the offering of a well-designed, high quality learning experience, both test scores and development of 21st century skills rise dramatically. There is ample research to support this claim, including ongoing examples of this type of educational experience taking place every day in schools across the United States.
What makes these two demands seem to be paradoxical are the severe consequences with which schools are being threatened. The demand for higher test scores is dominating the situation due to the very real threats to schools. Consequences have been severe for schools, as well as individual educators. Schools have been closed, or taken over by the state, and have lost desperately needed funding as punishment for not raising test scores.
Individually, educators have experienced reduction in income and even loss of their jobs. It is not difficult to understand that the focus in the classroom has been primarily devoted to test prep, and it is easy to understand why teachers are literally afraid to attempt implementation of learning experiences which are more creative.
Another factor contributing to the dilemma is that teachers just coming out of the university have literally grown up under NCLB, and many of them have never experienced anything other than test prep and testing as "education". If we assume that a "generation" of teachers is every 4 years, the standard time to complete a bachelor's degree, then we have had 4 generations of teachers prepared under the NCLB. The standardized testing climate has been growing in intensity since the mid-1980s - for 30 years! It is particularly challenging, then, for these teachers to even imagine anything like project-based, interdisciplinary curriculum, much less student-driven and student-designed curriculum.
The two demands, higher test scores and 21st century skills seem to be incompatible due to the high stakes for schools. Additionally, the growing number of content standards and their complexity has resulted in district policies which create even more obstacles to implementing a creative environment in the classroom. An ecosystem of "command and control" has emerged.
We have two seemingly competing demands - one for higher test scores, which is usually approached by a focus on the standards, basic skills and restrictive curriculum pacing guides - all of which suppress an environment for supporting the development of 21st century skills. The other demand is for the development of 21st century skills.
In reality, these demands are not competing. In actuality, when an environment of creativity and freedom is made available to students, and it includes the offering of a well-designed, high quality learning experience, both test scores and development of 21st century skills rise dramatically. There is ample research to support this claim, including ongoing examples of this type of educational experience taking place every day in schools across the United States.
What makes these two demands seem to be paradoxical are the severe consequences with which schools are being threatened. The demand for higher test scores is dominating the situation due to the very real threats to schools. Consequences have been severe for schools, as well as individual educators. Schools have been closed, or taken over by the state, and have lost desperately needed funding as punishment for not raising test scores.
Individually, educators have experienced reduction in income and even loss of their jobs. It is not difficult to understand that the focus in the classroom has been primarily devoted to test prep, and it is easy to understand why teachers are literally afraid to attempt implementation of learning experiences which are more creative.
Another factor contributing to the dilemma is that teachers just coming out of the university have literally grown up under NCLB, and many of them have never experienced anything other than test prep and testing as "education". If we assume that a "generation" of teachers is every 4 years, the standard time to complete a bachelor's degree, then we have had 4 generations of teachers prepared under the NCLB. The standardized testing climate has been growing in intensity since the mid-1980s - for 30 years! It is particularly challenging, then, for these teachers to even imagine anything like project-based, interdisciplinary curriculum, much less student-driven and student-designed curriculum.
The two demands, higher test scores and 21st century skills seem to be incompatible due to the high stakes for schools. Additionally, the growing number of content standards and their complexity has resulted in district policies which create even more obstacles to implementing a creative environment in the classroom. An ecosystem of "command and control" has emerged.
Marching Orders
One consequence of the high stakes testing culture has been the practice of creating Curriculum Pacing Guides. These are documents created at the school district level which dictate exactly which content standards and skills teachers must teach during a specified time period. Some are organized by the grading periods of the school year, usually on a quarterly basis or on the six, 6-week grading periods of the school year.
They can go so far as to dictate exactly what teachers will do and even what they will say, word for word, in the classroom on a daily basis. These scripted curricula even require teachers to stay on a mandated schedule, to the minute!
Obviously, these curriculum pacing guides are a major obstacles to creating truly flexible, high level learning opportunities for students. They also prevent teachers from authentically personalizing and differentiating the curriculum in any way. Read about overcoming the obstacles of Curriculum Pacing Guides here.
One consequence of the high stakes testing culture has been the practice of creating Curriculum Pacing Guides. These are documents created at the school district level which dictate exactly which content standards and skills teachers must teach during a specified time period. Some are organized by the grading periods of the school year, usually on a quarterly basis or on the six, 6-week grading periods of the school year.
They can go so far as to dictate exactly what teachers will do and even what they will say, word for word, in the classroom on a daily basis. These scripted curricula even require teachers to stay on a mandated schedule, to the minute!
Obviously, these curriculum pacing guides are a major obstacles to creating truly flexible, high level learning opportunities for students. They also prevent teachers from authentically personalizing and differentiating the curriculum in any way. Read about overcoming the obstacles of Curriculum Pacing Guides here.
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.” -- John Dewey
What is teaching creatively?
We have outlined many of the obstacles to creativity in schools, but what do we mean when we talk about "Teaching Creatively"?
1. Get rid of the Curriculum Pacing Guides - First of all, teaching creatively means getting rid of the Curriculum Pacing Guides! This paradigm, and practice, is one of the most damaging "reforms" to education in the past decades. Go to any school district web site and search for "curriculum". You will find that this district is proudly stating that they provide a "guaranteed and viable curriculum"! This supposedly means that students will have the "opportunity and the time" to learn. However, implementation of this guaranteed and viable curriculum is not implemented to provide students with the authentic opportunity or time to learn. It is implemented as a standards-based, time-based set of marching orders for teachers and students. This fallacious theory and its practice is given to us via ASCD as they support the work of Robert Marzano, who originated this theory. The books published by Marzano are found in nearly every school. They have been a stronghold for over thirty years. If this theory worked, why are schools still struggling as they have been throughout this time period? Wouldn't there be actual evidence of real change and success?
The answer to failing schools is not that it is the fault of the schools, of the teachers, of the impact of poverty or children who are speaking English as a Second Language. This is disproved by the successes of schools that are not following the Marzano method. These are schools that have created an environment and a curriculum that actually works. There are twenty-plus years of research and results to support this claim. A curriculum that works is easily identified by the characteristics, practices and attributes in our first Compass - Critical Attributes of 21st Century Education.
2. Provide effective professional development - Support teachers with authentic professional development. The old standard of providing one to three days per year devoted to professional development doesn't work! The research, again, for twenty-plus years, indicates that the only effective professional development is ongoing and job-embedded.
Almost twenty years into the 21st century, with fifteen years of NCLB, now ESSA, and a horrible system which provides almost zero professional development, it is time to create real change. It is time to realize and accept the fact that "A little dab'll do ya'" may have been a great slogan for Brylcreem, but it does not apply to professional development.
Teachers today need extensive professional development in order to unlearn all the bad habits drilled into them, mostly as a result of standardized testing mania, and they need to learn better ways to design and implement curriculum that works!
3. Design curriculum and instruction based upon the Critical Attributes of 21st Century Education/Curriculum -
1. Get rid of the Curriculum Pacing Guides - First of all, teaching creatively means getting rid of the Curriculum Pacing Guides! This paradigm, and practice, is one of the most damaging "reforms" to education in the past decades. Go to any school district web site and search for "curriculum". You will find that this district is proudly stating that they provide a "guaranteed and viable curriculum"! This supposedly means that students will have the "opportunity and the time" to learn. However, implementation of this guaranteed and viable curriculum is not implemented to provide students with the authentic opportunity or time to learn. It is implemented as a standards-based, time-based set of marching orders for teachers and students. This fallacious theory and its practice is given to us via ASCD as they support the work of Robert Marzano, who originated this theory. The books published by Marzano are found in nearly every school. They have been a stronghold for over thirty years. If this theory worked, why are schools still struggling as they have been throughout this time period? Wouldn't there be actual evidence of real change and success?
The answer to failing schools is not that it is the fault of the schools, of the teachers, of the impact of poverty or children who are speaking English as a Second Language. This is disproved by the successes of schools that are not following the Marzano method. These are schools that have created an environment and a curriculum that actually works. There are twenty-plus years of research and results to support this claim. A curriculum that works is easily identified by the characteristics, practices and attributes in our first Compass - Critical Attributes of 21st Century Education.
2. Provide effective professional development - Support teachers with authentic professional development. The old standard of providing one to three days per year devoted to professional development doesn't work! The research, again, for twenty-plus years, indicates that the only effective professional development is ongoing and job-embedded.
Almost twenty years into the 21st century, with fifteen years of NCLB, now ESSA, and a horrible system which provides almost zero professional development, it is time to create real change. It is time to realize and accept the fact that "A little dab'll do ya'" may have been a great slogan for Brylcreem, but it does not apply to professional development.
Teachers today need extensive professional development in order to unlearn all the bad habits drilled into them, mostly as a result of standardized testing mania, and they need to learn better ways to design and implement curriculum that works!
3. Design curriculum and instruction based upon the Critical Attributes of 21st Century Education/Curriculum -
- Interdisciplinary and Integrated Curriculum - get away from the siloed, fragmented curriculum.
- Global Classrooms - it is past time for your students to be learning in a global, collaborative classrooms environment
- 21st Century Skills - every curricular project plan should include multiple ways to help students authentically develop these critical skills.
- Relevant, Rigorous and Real World - too many teachers, and parents, have low expectations for students. Students are able to perform at much higher levels than most would expect. Set high expectations, then support students in achieving them. The result will be a continual upward spiral of success! Most students are not engaged because what we are asking them to do in the classroom every day is simply irrelevant and boring. There are infinite ways to connect the curriculum to the real world, thereby engaging students - all students - at very high levels. See Anne's article, "If It Isn't Good, It Isn't Done"
- Adapting To and Creating Personal and Social Change - there are a myriad of ways to integrate this into all curricular projects, and in the meantime, be achieving much more than the standards dictate. Service Learning projects are the ultimate in 21st century curriculum!
- Project-based and Research-driven - even the youngest of students, kindergarten, can engage in project-based and research-driven curriculum. As a classroom teacher I had my first graders each write a research paper as part of an interdisciplinary, project-based unit on Animals! It was a huge hit among the students and their proud parents.
- Student-Centered - first of all, this means abandoning the teacher-centered classroom. It means taking seriously the mantra that has been with us for decades, "From sage on the stage to guide on the side." You will find almost no classrooms that are not teacher-centered today. Teachers feel so much pressure, along with the mandated curriculum pacing guides, that they are practically forced to be the sage on the stage. Teachers can learn specific classroom and curriculum planning strategies which will result in students being self-directed, independent and interdependent learners. THEN, teachers will have the time to be the "guide on the side", i.e., facilitator. This also allows for students to have a greater voice in what they are learning, how they are learning it and how they are demonstrating what they've learned (assessment).
- Technologies and Multimedia - Although more school districts are providing access to more technologies, they are not being implemented in a way that supports high level, quality learning experiences. Rather, we have a condition that I refer to as "App Fever'. Too many educators, from superintendents to classroom teachers, are celebrating the “integration of technologies”, i.e., using apps, proclaiming this to make their schools “21st century”. The problem, however, is that in many cases these apps are doing nothing more than replacing a paper and pencil with a more expensive, albeit, more exciting, digital device. See "Will the real 21st century school please stand up?"
So what does a creative curriculum look like and how is it designed?
Please see these articles by Anne Shaw:
- And see this newsletter, Creativity, Innovation and Earth Day with some thematic projects for Earth Day, Earth Hour or just any time for Environmental Studies.
References
Robinson, Sir Ken and Lou Aronica. Creative Schools – The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education, Viking, New York, New York, 2015
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Are you ready to re-imagine and totally transform your campus or district into one that is truly 21st century, but you aren't sure how?
21st Century Schools is ready and willing to support you in that mission! Contact Anne Shaw, Director at 21st Century Schools, to find out how we can help you!
In the meantime, please see our Products and Services!
Are you ready to re-imagine and totally transform your campus or district into one that is truly 21st century, but you aren't sure how?
21st Century Schools is ready and willing to support you in that mission! Contact Anne Shaw, Director at 21st Century Schools, to find out how we can help you!
In the meantime, please see our Products and Services!
