It’s been awhile since I have ventured back into searches for “creativity in education” with blogging on the philosophy and practice of creative learning and creative teaching, two of the most essential needs (and deficiencies) in public school education.
After being inspired by the likes of Sir Ken Robinson (especially from his TedTalks), Ronald A. Beghetto and James C. Kaufman, Curtis Bonk, Eric Booth, Susan M. Brookhart, Susan Engel, Daniel Pink, Robert J. Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams, Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, Roger von Oechand, Peter Webster, and many others, I periodically try to fulfill my ongoing mission of spreading the importance of fostering creativity in education, and finding research (and hands-on) material on the related subjects of innovation, inventiveness, curiosity, flexibility, adaptability, critical thinking, artistry, and self-expression.
Here is the latest installment of newly found resources for your perusal.
Creativity at Work
Linda Naiman, the founder of Creativity at Work, an international consortium of creativity and innovation experts, design thinkers, and arts-based learning practitioners, offers “trainings and workshops to help leaders and their teams develop the creativity, innovation and leadership capabilities required to adapt to change, stay competitive, improve business performance, and make a positive difference in the world. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, educational institutions and government organizations.”
From a Creativity at Work blog, Seven Habits of Highly Creative People, the following points are outlined in homage to Stephen Covey (Oct 24, 1932 – July 16, 2012):
- Prepare the ground
- Plant seeds for creativity
- Live in the question
- Feed your brain
- Experiment and explore
- Replenish your creative stock
- Play like a child: the secret to liberating your creativity
The Creativity Crisis
I don’t know how I missed this… Bo Bronson and Ashley Merryman wrote an education article, The Creativity Crisis, for Newsweek, posted on their website on July 10, 2010. Selected excerpts:
Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective” and ‘an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.”
Today, Schwarzrock is independently wealthy—he founded and sold three medical-products companies and was a partner in three more. His innovations in health care have been wide ranging, from a portable respiratory oxygen device to skin-absorbing anti-inflammatories to insights into how bacteria become antibiotic-resistant. His latest project could bring down the cost of spine-surgery implants 50 percent. “As a child, I never had an identity as a ‘creative person,’ ” Schwarzrock recalls. “But now that I know, it helps explain a lot of what I felt and went through.”
Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike. Fortunately, the science can help: we know the steps to lead that elusive muse right to our doors.
— Newsweek: Bo Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Not to be outdone by Newsweek, TIME published a compilation The Science of Creativity – a series of articles divided into four large chapters:
- The Creative Animal
- The Creative Mind
- Creativity in Action
- Creativity at Any Age
The essays, penned by a myriad of authors, are eclectic and intriguing, many of which have appeared in past issues of TIME magazine:
Introduction: Striving for the New- This Is Your Brain on Creativity
- Learning from Leonardo
- Under the Hood
- Are Neurotics More Creative?
- A Fine Madness
- The Power of Sleep
- Inside the Creative Space
- Seven Secrets to Unleashing Creativity
- Pushing Your Envelope
- Does Screen Time Stunt Kids’ Creativity?
- You’re Never Too Old
- When Schools Get Creative
- How Parents Can Excite and Inspire
- Eureka Moments
- The Last Word
Creativity is one of the most human of qualities. But what is creativity, and what makes us creative? The Science of Creativity takes a look at both the science and the art of this world-changing trait—how we define it, how we measure it and what encourages it. With insights from the editors of TIME, this new Special Edition features thought-provoking articles on the meaning of creativity, its part in human history and its role in our future.
— Amazon review of TIME special edition
Creativity in Orchestra
A recent NAfME article was written specifically for orchestral players and their music directors. Even after more than 43 years of conducting orchestras, I would have to admit that helping my instrumentalists to become more creative musicians has always been a challenge. In the Music Educators Journal, Volume 105, Number 3, March 2019, “Integrating Creative Practices into the Orchestra Classroom,” author Leon Park seeks to explore the realm of the “less traditional” in rationale, goals, and techniques to build the capacity of his students’ imagination, innovation, and creativity.
My primary objective as a high school orchestra educator is to help students develop and refine their perpetual and technical acuities as orchestra musicians – from understanding and applying proper instrument-playing technique in functional music theory as they relate to repertoire to reading and translating music notation with accuracy and confidence to interpreting musical compositions with an understanding of the composer’s intent and a sensitive sensitivity toward performing in an expressive manner.
The daily regime of helping my students of achieve these objectives is an extraordinarily enriching yet time-consuming endeavor. As such, I find that opportunities to engage students in experiences that reach beyond the purview of traditional orchestra musicianship – such as improvisation, songwriting, remixing, soundscape in, recording, and looping – are rare.
— Leo Park
After providing a list of hardware, devices, web apps, software, and iOS apps, Park proposes a series of exercises and other creative practices:
Drone Improvisation- Circle Stringing
- Soundscapes
- Melodizing over Chords
- Recontextualization
- Songwriting
He also shares a video playlist of creative approaches, primarily string players engaging in creative music-making.
If you currently teach instrumental music, I recommend you read this piece. (You must be a member of the National Association of Music Education for access to its periodical Music Educators Journal.)
Creativity should be at the heart of all the affective areas of the curriculum. Its context is imagination, origination, and invention; but it goes beyond that to include interpretation and personalized imitation. Characteristically it calls upon preference and decision to a greater extent than other modes of thought. It is especially important as “a way of coming to know” through independent, innovative responses to ideas into means of expression.
— John Paynter in Sound and Structure
Educational Commission of the States
In a more recent release of EdNote (July 2018), How School Leaders Can Inspire Daily Creativity makes a good case that, “As building-level leaders, school principals play a key role in ensuring every student has access to high-quality and equitable arts learning as part of a well-rounded education,” citing numerous supportive sources:
- Arts Education Partnership (AEP) in partnership with the National Association of Elementary School Principals: What School Leaders Can Do to Increase Arts Education
- Educational Commission of the States (ECS): School Leadership: A Primer for State Policymakers
- ECS and AEP: ESSA: Mapping Opportunities for the Arts
- ECS: 2017 State Policy Review: School and District Leadership
The article concluded with the following salient statements:
From identifying the arts in a school’s budget to supporting student performances and gallery displays, principals can engage parents and the school community in the school’s educational goals.
While our [administrators’] daily routines may feel less inspired than other activities, it is through innovative ideas and acts of self-expression that shape everyday life as we know it. The arts can provide students with these same opportunities, setting them up for success in school, work and life.
— EdNote: Cassandra Quille
The Conversation
Check out What Creativity Really Is – and Why Schools Need It by Liane Gabora from The Conversation.
Associate Professor of Psychology and Creative Studies, University of British Columbia, Gabora explores “the creative process” in studies from the Interdisciplinary Creativity Research Group.
She examines sorting out these apparently antipodal/opposing concepts:
inventors vs. imitators- creators vs. conformers
- innovation vs. over-stimulation
- devaluation of creative personality attributes such as risk taking, impulsivity and independence vs. focus on the reproduction of knowledge and obedience at school
She shares three insightful suggestions on cultivating creativity in the classroom:
- “Focus less on the reproduction of information and more on critical thinking and problem solving.”
- “Curate activities that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries…”
- “Pose questions and challenges, and follow up with opportunities for solitude and reflection.”
Additional Links
A couple more “finds” for your reading pleasure:
- TeachThought: Three Steps to Promote Creativity in Education
- Foundation for Economic Education: How Schooling Crushes Creativity
- The American Scientific Affiliation: Creative Thinking Skills for Education and Life
- Psychologies: The Positive Benefits of Creativity
Hopefully, readers/followers of this website will send in their own “gems” on creativity. Please feel free to comment and share your own references… so we can collaborate on and re-energize this dialogue.
If you have not had the opportunity to read my past blog-posts on creativity, please take a moment and examine these:
- Creativity in education – Are we ready for a new paradigm shift?
- Creative teaching and teaching creativity – PART I – How creative are you?
- Creative teaching and teaching creativity – PART II – Definitions & rationale
- Creative teaching and teaching creativity – PART III – Creative techniques
- Arts advocacy
- 52 creative tips to “supercharge” the school musical
- Creativity in schools revisited
- More creativity resources
- If I were a school superintendent
- Lessons in creativity
- More lessons in creativity
- Lessons in creativity III
- ESSA, PDE, and lessons in creativity IV
- What is the National Creativity Network?
- Lessons in Creativity (Part V)
- “Creativity Thinking” in Music Education
Now go out there and… teach, learn, and be creative!
PKF
© 2019 Paul K. Fox
Photo credits in order from Pixabay.com:
In the category of “things I wishes someone would have told me before I was hired to be a school music educator,” the inspirational book, My Many Hats: Juggling the Diverse Demands of a Music Teacher by Richard Weymuth, is a recommended “first stop” and easy “quick-read.” Published by Heritage Music Press (2005), the 130-page paperback serves as an excellent summary of the attributes (or “hats”) of a “master music teacher.” Based on the photos in his work (great “props”), I would have loved to have seen Weymuth’s conference presentations in person as he donned each hat symbolizing the necessary skill-set for a successful educator.
Next, I would like to direct pre-service and new music teachers to Case Studies in Music Education by Frank Abrahams and Paul D. Head. This would be an invaluable aid to “facilitate dialogue, problem posing, and problem solving” from college students (in methods classes?) and “rookie” teachers to veteran educators.
His chapters are organized into six tips:
The first thing I want you to do (and you don’t even have to be a member of NAfME yet, although you should be!) is to take at least a half-hour, scroll down, and read through numerous NAfME “Music in a Minuet” blog-posts, bookmarking any you want to return to at a later date. Go to 
now would be the perfect time to explore supplemental resources and get a “head-start” on additional pre-service training for next fall. These tips are especially valuable to anyone entering his/her senior or final year as a music education major, finely honing in and marketing your skills as a professional in order to be prepared for finding and succeeding at your first job.
Mix and mingle to improve your networking opportunities
Understanding specific educational jargon and the latest approaches, applications, and technologies in the profession (e.g. Backwards Design, The Common Core, Whole Child Initiatives, Multiple Intelligences, Depth of Knowledge and Higher Order of Thinking Skills, Formative, Summative, Diagnostic, and Authentic Assessment, etc. – Do you know the meaning of these terms?)
You need to ask yourself the question, “What are my greatest weaknesses in music education?” Or, to put it another way, “What school assignments would I feel the least confident to teach? After earning your state’s all-essential credential, your certificate will likely be general and only say “music Pre-K to Grade 12.” Administrators will expect you can “do it all” – introducing jazz improvisation at the middle school, accompany on the piano or guitar all of the songs in the grades 1-6 music textbook series, directing the marching band at the high school or the musical at the middle school, starting an elementary string program, etc.
Since music teachers are all “fiduciaries” (do you know the meaning of the word?) and legally responsible for our “charges,” wouldn’t it be a good idea to review our state’s regulations and code of conduct, and hear about the challenges and pitfalls of ethical decision-making before we jump in and get “over our heads,” so-to-speak?
ask your cooperating teacher (or his/her supervisor’s) permission. Some school districts have “do not photo” rosters. (However, in my district, only a few elementary students were “on the list” and most defaulted to a “permissible” status unless the parent opted out. The principal’s secretary had a record of all exceptions.) It is also suggested that you focus your camera mostly on YOU and not the students, from the back of the classroom or rehearsal facility (possibly from afar), so that the student faces are not clearly discernible. To respect their privacy, in the recorded excerpts, do not use any segment announcing the names of your students.
According to the above study by Peter Webster, Scholar-in-Residence at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California in Los Angeles, “good music teaching” involves the practice and observation of three types of musical behaviors:
Peter Webster’s definition of “creativity in music” is succinct: “the engagement of the mind in the active, structured process of thinking in sound for the purpose of producing some product that is new for the creator.” Furthermore, this is a thought process and “we are challenged, as educators, to better understand how the mind works in such matters — hence the term creative thinking.” (Webster, 1987)
A heighten interest in the young child and invented music notation and their discussion of it as a window to understanding the child’s knowledge (Barrett, Gromko, MacGregor)
Related to this are the issues of teacher control: when do we step in to change something or suggest a new path.
The Common Core
Behavior management, disciplinary procedures (especially preventive practices) and posting class or ensemble rules
However, in the methods classes that come later (perhaps in the second through fourth year?), the basics of “how-to teach” will come. Of course, as you sit in a class teaching you to “cross the break” on a clarinet or play a scale on the flute with good tone, you must also absorb (and remember) the finite steps required in the lesson to pass on this knowledge and skill, not just honk or squeak a few times to master the proficiency exam for yourself.
Of course, these are “trick questions.” The answer should be “I want to teach music,” or even better, “I want to teach children.” In most of the school districts across the country (with a few exceptions in the Midwest and places that accept teaching specialty certification by grade level or subject area), you are licensed to teach music in grades Pre-K to 12. At no point in any conversation with a potential administrator (or colleague who may become a member of the screening committee for a music opening) do you want to be “pigeon-holed,” or give the impression “I can only teach_____.”
Accompany, direct/teach the drama, and choreograph the middle school musical.
Ego and arrogance has no place in the teaching profession. Where did I hear this saying? “The more you think you know, the less you actually know.” Joining a mentoring program or finding a formal or informal veteran teacher “buddy” will go far to insuring your professional success and dodging those first-year teacher “pot holes” (dumb but common blunders) and “rookie blues.”
Retired music teachers are another excellent resource. For example, if you live or work in Pennsylvania, many post-employed PMEA members have placed their name and contact information on the Retiree Resource Registry to serve as willing, capable, and informal consultants for pre-service, novice, or other members recently transferred into a non-major specialty “outside their comfort zone.”
Please feel free to comment on this blog-post. What are your thoughts?
Before long, you will shed the label and function of a “college student” (although still remaining a life-long learner… and never stop the quest for new knowledge and self-improvement!). The focus will shift from YOU to YOUR STUDENTS. The prerequisites for a career in education are unique and do not resemble the same challenges as success in business, manufacturing, retail, service industry, or becoming an entrepreneur, blue-collar worker, or even a composer or professional musician. The sooner you realize these are world’s apart, the better, and now is the time to finish your major and life-changing transformation to… a professional music educator.
Updates self with “constant education” and retooling
Cooperation
National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification proposes these principles:
Here’s another query. What five groups of people are both “professionals” and “fiduciaries…” and have a legal responsibility to serve the best interests of their “clients?” The answer is… doctors/nurses, lawyers, counselors (both mental health and investment), the clergy, and… teachers. 
Although teachers seem to be the only one of these who DO NOT have formal pre- or in-service ethics training, and our “charges” represent a “captive audience,” our duty is clear: to act as a fiduciary for our students’ best interest, and to create and maintain a safe environment for them at all times.
What do you believe about teaching?
Take time to peruse these and others. Most of these sites also offer excellent examples of personal branding and marketing of the prospective job hunters’ experiences, skills, and achievements… material for our next blog on this topic.
It can’t get any better than this! Probably the most comprehensive one-stop vault of articles and “friends of NRN” sources for further study, the NCN provides an extensive collection of creativity tools: news stories (still current as of the week of April 7, 2017), quotes, webinars, blog-posts, past competitions like the USA Creative Business Cup, and a Board of Directors from across North America including many “giants in the field” like one of my heroes Sir Ken Robinson (California), along with George Tzougros (Wisconsin), Margaret Collins (North Carolina), Steve Dahlberg (Connecticut), Carrie Fitzsimmons (Massachusetts), Peter Gamwell (Ottawa, Canada), Jean Hendrickson (Oklahoma), Wendy Liscow (New Jersey), Susan McCalmont (Oklahoma), Robert Morrison, Scott Noppe Brandon, David O’Fallon (Minnesota), Andrew Ranson, Susan Sclafani (Washington D.C.), and Haley Simons (Alberta, Canada).
According to their website, 
Spark local, regional, state and provincial, and national movements to create environments—in homes, schools, workplaces, communities and public offices—where every person is inspired to grow creatively.
Two years ago, I wrote a three-part series on the critical need, rationale of, and techniques for developing skills in teaching creativity as well as teaching more creatively. I based my compilations on the February 2013 issue “Creativity Now!” of the ASCD Educational Leadership magazine, and passed on the research and insight of creativity experts, self-expression advocates, and/or self-proclaimed ”right-brain” educational gurus 
The continued fixation on “error-free” convergent thinking, a priority of the one-answer-only mentality, baffles me. 1+1+1 does not always equal three. I can give you at least two alternative answers: 11 or 1 (the sum in a binary system for the former and the result of drawing the Roman numeral “I” with one vertical line and two horizontal lines for the latter). This is an example of divergent thinking (“process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions”), and sits at the top of the charts for higher order of thinking skills (HOTS) and depth of knowledge (DOK). Use of divergent thinking is much more valued in higher education circles, future employment, and especially research and development in a host of careers from medicine to engineering to technology innovation to consumer markets… probably the foundation of future success in our whole economy.
My next blog on the subject of creativity in education will explore additional resources, including new websites and books on the subjects of innovation, ingenuity, originality, and self-expression released over the last several years.
paulfox.blog 