Teaching Creativity Takes Patience
I met with the principal and teachers at a local high school to discuss my ideas about applying social-media-based learning to project-based learning.
In the same way I came away from a previous conversation with the word “artifact,” I came away from this conversation with the word “continuum.”
“This all sounds inspiring, but we’re teaching on a continuum here.”
The teachers meant their schedules were full. They are already overwhelmed learning about hardware and software themselves. They don’t have time to add media to their curriculums too. Media has to remain in a media lab setting with an expert unless the teacher knows the technology in advance.
I understand their concerns. I couldn’t have taught The Interactive Courses without a prior education and career in media production.
I also couldn’t have experimented if I taught full-time like they do. Developing the courses while teaching took some personal and financial sacrifice. If I taught a college professor’s full course load, I would’ve defaulted to routine immediately and lasted a year.
Quinnipiac’s Interactive Program gave me the freedom to play openly with curriculum out on the Web. The students liked the courses and QU kept sending me new contracts.
I didn’t realize I created a solution for these teachers. I didn’t know I wanted to solve the problem of how you teach creativity. I didn’t understand a class about writing and the Web would solve both problems.
I simply couldn’t pass up the creative opportunity to play—which eventually taught me that students want that same opportunity.
Once you teach creativity successfully, you shouldn’t have to keep teaching it. It should become a proficiency, like study skills, that students carry with them. But how do you start students on creativity’s unique path? That’s what the Web asks and my courses answer.
I already wrote about my concept of “Draft Thinking.” The Interactive Courses give students media assignments ahead of any corresponding instruction. They have to improvise and struggle creatively with their ideas and executions.
The courses use students’ variations on the assignments to explore good, weak, and creative interpretations through class feedback and discussion. Then students respond to the feedback with further drafts of their work.
The courses also focus on personal interests, further complicating how students should interpret the class feedback and what feedback their classmates and teachers might offer. There are no right answers, only creative renderings, successful or unsuccessful messages, and personal voices, visions, and ventures in development.
Everyone learns how to improvise with different media on the fly. We don’t do this for students yet. I see the evidence in young and old. People think creativity means getting out paintbrushes or cameras or writing a page of make-believe when it’s really about permitting and guiding students’ struggle with the unknown.
The outline I created for this local academy media program takes my courses a step further. It allows students to apply the Draft Thinking techniques they learn in The Interactive Courses within the larger community of their school. Instead of a school newspaper or television station, the high school develops a school Web presence created and vetted by an editorial staff of junior and senior students and faculty.
Rotating production crews of students document their lessons, projects, and classrooms with writing, imagery, and sound. Their output becomes a public representation of the school polished through a professional editing process. They learn to invent and they learn to critique.
Schools and teachers can’t teach creativity; they have to allow it time to develop in each individual.
They don’t think they have the time, but they do, if there are no deadlines. The school doesn’t have to release any media to the public until students’ and teachers’ individual production, communication, and creative skills start to produce good work. It could take more than a semester for some people to find the courage to truly experiment, but the kids would inspire the adults and vice versa.
The courses’ focus on improvisation alongside curriculum provides the framework for people to experiment and grapple with their media decisions. When the community prioritizes the patience that all of its individuals need to grow, everyone learns how to create and edit at their own pace.
In other words, the group implements and develops a creative process and a responsible public voice—on a continuum.
The courses don’t just teach creativity, but responsible use of the Internet. The courses apply to businesses and other organizations in the same way. If everyone from the custodial staff to the administration of any institution takes creative part, everyone gains a voice and an interest.
The big question I took into this meeting was: when are kids ready for real creative freedom?
When is the rebellion inside high school students equal to or greater than their need for reassurance? When is it time to hand over measured amounts of the real world and the weight of responsibility?
The high school teachers surprised me when they said The Interactive Courses shouldn’t be taught to juniors and seniors as I proposed, but incoming freshmen.
The teachers are ready for change.