Facts have been key in education. Flexibility and problem solving have been assigned to
Creativity.
Is it painting or sculpting? Simply using your imagination to create something new.
It includes works of artists but also analytical types like CEOs or data analysts.
We are all born to be creative. As we grow, many of us stop acting out our creativity. Creativity is a muscle, we just need to put it back to work.
Creativity is becoming a highly desired quality. Creativity is for the artsy type. LIE. Traditional work environment often is limited by creativity. Creativity is smothered by rationality. Paul Mc Cartney was recommended to not pursue a music career.
Anti creativity mindset is changing. Companies have discovered the importance. Most important leadership skill to innovate in the future.
Discover your own creativity.
Develop the courage to explore your creativity. Confront your fear of being creative.
Strategies:
Give up the notion that you cannot be creative. We can all be creative. Adapt a growth mindset. Create a roadmap on how to get there. Identify human needs and find a different solution. This is now called Design Thinking.
Allow yourself to fail. Don’t give up. Mistakes are a gift. Everyone fails. Creative geniuses fail more than usual but they build resilience. “A failure is only a failure if nothing was learned from it.” Tomas Edison.
New Experiences will help you get there quicker. They allow us to see the world in a different light. Think like a traveler. See mundane things with new eyes. Ask why at every opportunity. Show curiosity.
Work with people that share your passions. Collaboration. Innovation is the product of teamwork. Be part of a team. Find your own team. Talk to others about your ideas.
Do something with your mindset. Just do it. Just try. Go for it. Don’t think about it. Change from I should to I will. Better to try than to not do.
Creativity makes you happier. At work and in your personal life.
These are highlights and annotations from:
Kelley, T., & Kelley, D. (2015). Creative Confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within us all. W. Collins.
The truth is, human beings are all improvisers by nature. Everybody, unless performing a scripted play, makes up his life as he goes along. We are all improvisation.Improvisation is a metaphor, a path, and a system. The world of improv is a portal into mindfulness and magic.
Improv provides a workout that helps to shake loose rigid patterns of thinking and doing. For many of us, age produces a tendency to rely on known patterns. AS we grow it becomes harder to take risks. We rely on what we know to be secure. It becomes more natural to say NO. We criticize and complain. We are all artist, we just need to show up and get started.
Improvisation helps us connect with others, to lighten up and look around, it offers an alternative to control. It offers us a chance to do things differently.
We plan, make lists, worry, theorize, choose safety. We seem to have lost the knack to look at things differently every day, with fresh eyes or doing anything out of our comfort zone.
Taking an improvised step always leads you somewhere.
Notice where you are going.
Principles of Improv:
Say YES. Humans long to connect.Yes glues us together. Yes, the juices rolling. Yes might get us into trouble, but trouble is not bad when we are in it together. To say Yes is to make a leap of faith, to risk oneself in a new and often scary relationship. Exercise 1: Choose a person close to you: and for one week agree with all of her ideas. Find something right about everything they say. Look for every opportunity to offer support. Give him the spotlight. Notice the results. Exercise 2: For one day say yes to everything. Set your own preferences aside. Notice the results. See how often it may not be convenient or easy to do. Obviously use common sense!! Exercise 3: Group Game – INVENTING PROVERBS. One word at a time and at the end of sentence put your hands together in prayer and say YES, YES, YES. Exercise 4: Cultivate Yes Phrases: you bet, you are right, I’m with you, Good idea, etc.
Don’t PREPARE. Change the habit of getting ready for life in favor of getting on with it now. Excessive planning impedes our ability to see what is actually in front of us. Let go of your ego’s involvement in the process.When we give up the struggle to show off our talent, a natural wisdom can emerge. Exercise: Spend a day without a plan. Instead of following your ordinary routine, open your eyes and move with curiosity and attention. Don’t look at your To Do list. When you notice your mind is planning, make a conscious shift of attention to the present moment. Notice everything that is going on now. Look at everything as if you were going to describe it to the police. Exercise 2: Imagine a box beautifully wrapped in front of you. Take a moment to “see” the box. Touch the box, what color is the box, how does the box feel? Open the box, what is inside? Notice a detail about the gift and examine it. Thank the giver. Trust your imagination – there is always something in the box.
Remember: Fear is not a problem; allowing yourself to be consumed by it is.
JUST SHOW UP. Stop talking, Start walking – L.M. Heroux Procrastination, laziness, fears – it’s easy to find a reason for not going. Remember Time lost is never found again. Exercise 1: Create a ritual. Identify a habit you wish you had. (going for a walk, exercising, paying bills). Think of what will make this habit easy or more attractive to do. Set a time to do a preparatory ritual each day. Focus on doing it faithfully. Exercise 2: Make a list of 5 places that are your “hot spot” places where important things happen in your life. Go there right now. Exercise 3: Change the location of a familiar activity. Move a meeting elsewhere, meet at a new place with your friends, take your lung to a new place. Move your reading time to a park. Tips: motivation is not a prerequisite for showing up. Use rituals to get going. Change Location.
START ANYWHERE. This rule is liberating. Once a project is under way it does not matter where you started. Start from the middle, the end or the beginning. Exercise 1: Identify a project that you need to get done. Follow your first thought and begin the job. Do the very first thing that comes to your mind. When you choose your first though you focus on making your first thought a good thought instead of searching the the good thought to start, Exercise 2: Instead of writing your notes in precise language, try writing questions to yourself. Then answer the question. This is useful when speaking in public. Write down questions than answer them. Exercise 3: Start a monologue. Ask yourself a question and create a monologue. Prompts: If there were four more hours in the day how would you spend them? Talk about something beautiful you saw recently.
BE AVERAGE. Close enough is perfect. Dare to be Dull- Ketih Johnstone. Be nothing special- David K Reynolds, Cultivate the ordinary mind – zen saying. Changing expectations can take the pressure off and may even cheer you up. Step 1 is giving up on perfection. Step 2 is stop trying to come up with something different. This can actually block the creative process. “The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”. Marcel Proust. Try thinking inside the box, just look more carefully. Exercise 1: Look for a gift for a loved one and consider an ordinary gift of everyday use. A towel, a pillow, a pen, a clock,a blanket. Keep a list of useful everyday objects.
PAY ATTENTION. The detail of each day takes place right in front of us. How much are we missing? Exercise 1: Keep reading until I instruct you to: Close your eyes. Once your eyes are shut, describe in as much detail as you can the immediate environment. Don’t cheat by glancing now or studying the room beforehand. With your eyes closed point at specific objects in the room. Describe colors, shapes and the layout of the space. Include as many details as you can remember. When you finish remembering, open your eyes, see what you got right, what obvious items did you overlook? What surprised you? It is important to take time to reflect. Close your eyes again, try to remember three new things you noticed the second time you opened them. Exercise 2: Try to attend to one thing at a time. Choose an ordinary activity like brushing your teeth: pay attention only to what you are doing while doing this activity. Avoid multitasking. Look at the steps you take, what comes first, second and third. Reflect on the task and the objects involved in the task, who made them, where did they come from. Reflect on the order you do things. Reflect on how it feels. If you wander off, bring it back to what you are doing. Exercise 3: In a familiar environment like your living room or your office or your walk to work, try to notice something new. A noise, an object that changed places. When you notice it try to examine it carefully. Repeat this exercise throughout your day. Exercise 4: Listen completely. Once a day devote your attention to someone who is speaking to you. Focus completely on what is being said. Try to repeat what the other person said. Exercise 5: Become an anthropologist. Notice what people are wearing, what type of noses they have, how they wear their hair. Discern their manner or their mood. Learn something new every day about those closest to you.
FACE THE FACTS
These are notes and key highlights from the book.
Patricia Ryan Madson. Improv Wisdom : Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up. New York, Bell Tower, Cop, 2005.
Director of teaching and learning American School of Madrid 2015 – present
April Stout is responsible for teaching and learning practices from k-12 at the American School of Madrid. She is responsible of making sure the school is practicing the most relevant and research based education. Her goal is to align ASM’s practices.
How has education changed over the years? As a teacher you must stay current on what’s going on in education and while thinking there’s always the best that we know works with kids and just gets packaged in a new way there’s also a lot of different things that we need to be up on because the world is changing. Education should change with the world, that’s my job, to keep us research based and in a forward motion.
What does your day look like? I work with consultants and design professionals learning and researching what I feel teachers need and what they don’t know yet they need. It is my responsibility to make sure that people are learning from each other, coaching teachers and making sure most importantly that our teams are strong. The cornerstone of creativity and Innovation for me is not the individual person as a loan creator and a loan innovator, it is that individual person working alongside the teams and usually nested teams. I work on 20 different teams in a month. The most important part of innovation and creativity is it’s done in concert and with feedback, with multiply ideas from others
What do you think is the biggest challenge as a teacher? I worked for an NGO called the New Teacher Center and our job was to work all over the United States to train new teachers, particularly those working in the toughest areas. Our goal was to get teachers to be good fast. Teaching is one of the only professions where they expect you to come in, recently graduated, and be a veteran on day one. You really need to, and it’s nearly impossible to do so.
Young inexperienced teachers are sent in with 6 weeks to two years training that includes no practicality. They’re supposed to know what to do with 38-40 Xth graders who have reading gaps and all kinds of difficulties. For these people to stay in the profession is not enough to keep someone in their workplace, they have to have a passion for it and part of that is showing them the agency they have over creativity, innovation and growth. When you get people in the profession who see learning and growth as their core skill you develop incredible educators.
And this is when you succeed. Creativity and Innovation is knowing how to learn so that you generate your own learning. You don’t necessarily always need this expert because you know how to learn from the world and from other people.
What are you creating at ASM? I’ll tell you what I’m most excited about, as far as the changes. I’ve tried to change things and part of creativity and innovation is that I take risks, sometimes those risks don’t work out and sometimes something I really believe in fails. I’m willing to learn from those failures and teach others how to learn and sometimes let it go and know that it isn’t the right time and it can always come back on the table later. There’s a lot of things I would like to do that I haven’t, but the biggest change is the level of access to professional learning for teachers. I think that every professional on this site, whether or not they will tell you, has access to both an expert person in the field, awesome colleagues to collaborate with, professional books and people who can support them. When I came here eight years ago that was not in place, basically we shut down ASM and we started over. ASM was part of MAIS (Middle Association of International Schools), which in my opinion was atrocious. I felt we were back in 1990.
How was MAIS different from what you were implementing? What do you use to make it different? MAIS was lectures and conferences. Teachers were being taught at. Not to say conferences aren’t great but in order for learning and creativity to stick it has to be job embedded. There has to be a relation to the students and be easy to apply tomorrow or else teachers are not able to introduce it into their day to day. I think one of the key aspects of professional learning is to seek tangible aspects teachers walk away with. Something that will affect their students immediately.
Another technique we use includes watching each other teach, and watching other people teach our kids. This is purely observational, and after we discuss what we thought was good and what could be better and we deconstruct the class together. We just did a Japanese lesson study that brought structures for collaboration that are beyond sitting in a room in a meeting and are actually experiential.
How do you measure your success? My objective is always for the teachers to take one single thing away. For instance, we went to a workshop yesterday where we used poetry written by other students. Initially teachers don’t see a connection to their classes but by the end of the workshop through reflection we are able to find a connection together.
We also expect the learnings to be woven into teachers setting goals for themselves in the beginning of the year that aren’t just supervisory, but are learning. This has to be included into the system of supervising and it has to include action research and inquiry as an actual goal. No one who writes a statement like: I’m gonna do X Y or Z is passionate about that, but if we could switch to doing action research and starting to see it as part of our professional growth as far as supervising professional goals I think the teachers could then anchor some of what they were learning and try things out.
I see teachers trying things out all the time that they learn in very small ways, but oftentimes those small ways aren’t seen as actually applying because they want to do exactly like the workshop.
How do you help teachers have continuity? Conversations, coaching, asking teachers about having them identify one thing they’re going to take away, then following up. Encouraging that to be part of meetings.
We are going to do a learning day for the first time in June. We’re gonna do a big share of things that we have learned.
Continuously sharing with other people
Articulating for ourselves
Working in teams, collaborating.
Getting more access to strategy and coaching is a big goal. I think that people need their colleagues and other people to come and talk to them about what they’re doing and see how it’s going in the classroom.
Who do you get resistance from? I get resistance every time I walk out of my office. I know that resistance isn’t actually resistance, there’s an emotion of fear to change behind it. It comes across as: get away from me ,don’t ask me one more thing. But that’s not really what it is, it’s just an emotion and it’s a reaction so I don’t really worry much about resistance. I don’t let it stop me. It most often shows up in complaining and gossip, it shows up in human Dynamics. There is a sense of this is being done to me, instead of this is being done for me. Eventually they realise: I could do something different or I could have agency and I would like to be part of the solution. I deal with resistance with compassion while still holding firm. I try to get people to imagine a possibility other than what they are thinking and doing right now. They think it will not work in their classroom, my kids will never change. I ask them, do you think it will help with one child? Let’s try and go from there.
Who have you been inspired by, your mentors? My biggest Mentor is Elena Aguilar. She runs an organization called Bright Morning in Oakland California. I’ve also worked with Diane Sweeney I’ve worked with Jim Knight.
I’ve been so lucky to work with many people. I am a cherry picker, I will never follow one person, I don’t ever fall for one religion, I will never follow one program. I like to take it and pick and then create something that’s very bespoke for the people and myself or the situation. I think that’s also part of creativity, reflecting, processing and applying what you’re learning in different configurations to a context that is unique. I have to have a toolkit that I use flexibly.
You have implemented many things at ASM, what would you say have been the most effective? You can implement change on a human level and it goes from the Big Wide thing like how our students are learning according to all different measures of standardized tests and data. But I think hearing people’s stories and having conversations with them and actually pulling out patterns and trends around focus groups and things is what has been most helpful to them.
Every conversation I have with a teacher I have a log ,and I keep patterns in terms of what people are saying to me. I know I am succeeding the less a teacher needs me, the less I am pulled into meetings, when a team starts functioning more and needing me less and less.
I think the thing that has worked the best is the work that I’ve done to train teams to function how to learn together. Also the work I’ve done around emotional intelligence with the teacher leaders, team Dynamics, boundaries and about effective conflict resolution.
I have a rubric for professional learning and a rubric that I use for myself and I self-reflect and ask two or three teammates who were closest with me to give me feedback.
How do you see the future of education? I see the focus being high level towards how to navigate life and towards helping adults who work with high schoolers to navigate this ever changing world. There’s some skills that are future proof skills: Habit, Grit, Resilience, Relatedness, Self-efficacy, Motivation, Goal setting and Trust.
It’s the most comprehensive and best articulated list of the type of skills that we should be teaching kids. I think we have to teach what’s worth learning and we have to honor contents, role and education and we have to move away from straight up teaching content into teaching these skills.
I think we have some learning gaps across the world and if we know what skills we’re teaching kids we can fill those because, for instance walking is a skill and crawling is a skill within walking and it is not the absence of walking it’s the step to walking. This is why I think we need to be able to go skill-based so that we can be helping kids with all different types of content and we can test some differently and the skills that are so multi really academic and skills that are social emotional like collaboration and perseverance and what about your opinion on terms of
How do you replace the visual arts after 5th grade? Where are kids learning problem solving, collaboration, creativity, innovation? I mean the Arts are essential. Anything humans ever left behind is art, that’s all we have left.
I would love to redo our CAS Program to be a truly service learning project because I think that’s where you start creativity. Then you can solve problems from all different lenses and also in looking at the social sciences in discipline collaboration and units.
Could you share a list or of people that have inspired you?
Masters in International Education Art Teacher for 27 years Current position: Lower School Art teacher at the American school of Madrid
Work from 5th graders ceramics Self Portrait class
How has education changed in your 27 years of teaching?
Education has become more about documenting student results. I’m talking generally. I’m not talking about teaching arts specifically but I see that in schools the emphasis is much more about keeping records. All that happens needs to be documented and children’s scores are constantly being documented and tracked and compared. I feel the biggest change is that it has become very much about documentation. In art class, it means that we are being asked to grade as if it were a subject like math or Reading so we’re being asked to break it down into standards and score it. Essentially score creativity, score a creative endeavor . This is not as alarming as it sounds. For example if you’re assigning a portrait you know to say, well has the child included the features has the child made an attempt to include detail
What change have you seen in children when they’re evaluated like that versus not being evaluated at all.
Children have always been evaluated in art but now the evaluation is broken down into categories and steps and I I don’t know if it’s a result of this, but over years I have seen that kids are less imaginative, they are less free with their expression and it takes them a while to get past all the first things that occur to them. We have always encouraged them to go past first ideas and to get to something that’s a bit deeper and more meaningful to them. It may be because of this type of evaluation, but screens have had a big impact on kids’ creativity and learning. They have a lower tolerance for frustration in trying to do something with their hands.
Interestingly I do projects with kids that are computer-based with Procreate or Paint and curiously, kids are not used to saving stuff because they use Google. They’re just not used to certain things that we kind of take for granted.
I do think screens have quite a lot to do with it with their sort of lower tolerance using their hands and getting frustrated and persevering when something doesn’t come out right the first time. In Lower School kids are not tuned into their grades, especially the art grades. I don’t see kids being that hampered by awareness of grades, that starts in middle and gets accentuated in high school.
Would you say that children’s creativity or imagination decreases over time?
Yeah, that’s developmental. That’s just the way children develop when they’re much younger. When they’re three and four a line can represent a subway station with you know thousands of people standing on the platform. They’re so conceptual about that age and then as they get older they become more aware of their environment, they’re much more self-critical.
This is just developmental, it has nothing to do with art, it’s just the way kids are. They become more self-conscious.
First, it’s just all about me and the world and then they become aware that they’re not the only ones in the world, there’s all these other people that are competing for the same kind of attention. And then children who feel their fine motor skills are less developed they’re going to be even more self critical of their skills. I feel like it’s happening sooner, I feel like by second grade kids are already saying: oh I can’t, I can’t draw, I’m not good at drawing whereas maybe years ago it was third grade before they started this type of thinking.
How would you say in your experience that creativity, imagination etc is perceived by parents?
I think it depends, I definitely experience parents who seem very aware of a child’s potential and are eager to have it developed and fostered and encouraged. I’ve also seen parents who are critical of their kids’ work. For example, fine motor skills develop up through middle school. You know that’s not a given that by a certain age kids can even do good handwriting. I’ve seen parents who’ve been critical of their kids work, I try to counter because I don’t see it that way. I don’t equate fine motor skills and the ability to draw something realistically with creativity or at all in fact sometimes they’re diametrically opposed.
Do you feel you teach creativity?
I aspire to create an environment where kids are encouraged to be creative and where they feel safe to take risks.
How would you define creativity?
I guess listening to yourself and trying to draw out what’s inside you and let it take form.
Are teachers at ASM in subjects like math or science incorporating creativity into their classes?
I think so because I think they teach different ways to do things. I do think that it is definitely valued. You know that there’s more than one way to solve a math problem. I mean you can use manipulatives or you can use pie graphs, there’s many many ways of doing it and I feel like they do a pretty good job of that, so I would say yes I think it is valued and included in lower school.
Do you feel in Lower school teachers are teaching problem solving?
I definitely think it’s needed. In Lower School there’s so much data collection and teachers feel quite pressured to produce that data that the time that it takes to implement problem solving or creativity…… because it takes time to be to be creative and it also takes getting bored and that’s something – I know I’m not directly answering your question- but I think that there’s a general fear of downtime. Kids are scheduled down to the last minute and that does not allow for just wandering of the mind and I don’t think there can be much creativity if that’s the case. For example, at ASM they’ve just adopted this new play, it’s called outdoor playing learning and they built this fabulous playground and kids are really encouraged to play with pretty much whatever they want and disconnect. But then they only give kids 30 minutes to play. I’m not sure how much creativity can really take place in half an hour.
So I do think I think it’s valued, I think that there’s still this juncture between the philosophy and the practice.
Creativity 30 years ago was understood as you pick up a canvas and some paints. There are many different ways of being creative, you can be a creative mechanic or whatever, but I do think that maybe practice hasn’t caught up.
How do you feel about the Arts stopping after fifth grade?
Music is mandatory at ASM, but art is not. I guess to oblige a student to do something they don’t want to do is something I don’t agree with.
What if it was a class where the key aspects were problem solving, figuring out what roads I can take, and also learning to not be afraid to make mistakes?
In Lower School the way they teach is based a lot on imagination, play and creativity but as the kids grow it kind of stops, it’s more rigorous. It’s a bit because they have to comply with so many things, so it is hard to get this in.
Do you see creativity in teacher development courses?
They send teachers and encourage them to include problem solving, imagination, and innovation in their teaching. There are things about TD is that is incredibly inspiring, you get these droplets of ideas and but then what’s lacking is the time to actually implement it and we do have these workshops where often some kind of game or some kind of thinking on your feet activity is Incorporated but it’s more of an Icebreaker, let’s get things started before we have to sit down and do the real work.
I think there’s a definite stigma around that sort of freer, more open-ended, let’s see what happens, kind of activity because it’s a counterpoint to the real work: like the hard work which academics would say would be useful for you. A
After those workshops what would you say would be useful for you to help you be able to implement those ideas, besides time?
Primarily it’s TIME. Teachers don’t have time to implement these innovations, classes are too short, and the grading system is time consuming. Also a more adaptable space, where several things could be going on at once.
Time and designed spaces seem to be a frequent answer to the topic of implementing innovation. If this is happening in schools, imagine in the workplace where all that matters is productivity. This will continue until we realise that taking this time will not only result in more and improved results but in happier people.
“A common misconception is that creativity cannot be cultivated, and that instead some lucky people have an innate sense of creativity. But this assumption is wrong.” (Currie Le Cuff, 2023)
Back in 1963 George Land created a “creativity test” for Nasa that measured your imaginative thinking, the higher you scored the higher you were considered a “creative genius”. He tested 1600 4-5 years and every five years he re-tested them, until they became adults. The 4-5 year olds demonstrated 98% of creativity level while adults came down to 2%. As we grow older we lose our creativity, unless we work on it.
(TEDx Talks)
According to Land our brain has two different kinds of thinking: divergent where imagination generates new possibilities and convergent where testing, decisions and judgements occur.
Divergent vs Convergent thinking.
In our school system we learn to do both kinds of thinking at the same time, this means that while we are creating we are also judging and pulling the brakes. “Neurons are fighting each other and we are diminishing the power of the brain.” (Le Brand 2011)
Our teachers, peers, adults and our own mind send us messages of doubt and criticism.
But why is creativity so important? Why now?
The obvious answer we are all currently talking about is artificial intelligence. There are machines that can write for us, draw for us, design for us and much more. The way we can differentiate ourselves from machines is through our imagination. Secondly, depression rates are higher than ever. “In 2020 the leading rate of death by 5-34 year olds was self harm” (Flinders, 2022). Creativity is linked to happiness. “Studies show that creativity leads to well being as well as wellbeing leads you to being more creative.” (Tan et al.)
What is creativity?
According the the Oxford Dictionary: Creativity: the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness. Imagination: the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses. Innovation: make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas or products.
I use all three definitions since creativity is many times linked to the arts while imagination and innovation are not.
So who needs to “learn” to be creative? We are labeled from the moment we enter the school system – sometimes before. Creativity is associated with certain fields and if you don’t participate in those fields you are considered not creative. We are taught that STEM and the arts are two completely different worlds. We are told that you are not creative if you lean towards the sciences, when creativity truly applies in all fields. People that are labeled as not creative might not get the benefits. Our stakeholders are all the non- creatives of the world. Every human being that was “labeled” as not creative and that is not getting the benefits of innovation, imagination and creativity.
Can creativity be learned? Creativity is said to be a muscle, we need to use it to keep it active. Ever since I was little I was labeled “creative”. My parents and teachers encouraged me to draw, paint, perform. I developed my creative “muscle” through classes, activities and even friendships.
In a recent study from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence published in the Empirical Studies in the Arts shows that children successfully learn creativity skills in a program focusing on emotions and emotional intelligence skills, this is also true in adults. (Ivcevic Pringle Ph.D.)
I have benefited from the advantages of learning to be imaginative. The change I want to see is for non creatives to benefit from expanding their creativity. I want to see creativity, imagination and innovation taught in every school for every person. I want creativity to not be linked to only the arts, and for people to understand its importance in our future world.
Works Cited
Aulive. “Free Online Creativity Test – TestMyCreativity.” Testmycreativity.com, 2019, www.testmycreativity.com/.
Big Wind Blows Game – Group Games, Team Games, Ice Breakers. www.group-games.com/ice-breakers/big-wind-blows-game.html. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.
Borchardt, Sue. “Unlearning to Learn – Year End LILA Summit 2014.” Vimeo, 6 June 2014, vimeo.com/97547671. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.
Cunff, Anne-Laure Le. “Combinational Creativity: The Myth of Originality.” Ness Labs, 16 Oct. 2019, nesslabs.com/combinational-creativity.
—. “The Science of Curiosity: Why We Keep Asking “Why.”” Ness Labs, 24 July 2019, nesslabs.com/science-of-curiosity.
Ivcevic Pringle Ph.D., Zorana. “Creativity Can Be Taught.” Psychology Today, 9 June 2020, www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/creativity-the-art-and-science/202006/creativity-can-be-taught.
pmdtemp. “Flex Your Creativity Muscle – PMD Group.” PMD Group – Credit Union Marketing and Advertising, 1 Sept. 2015, www.pmdgrp.com/flex-your-creativity-muscle/. Accessed 16 Apr. 2023.
Tan, Cher-Yi, et al. “Being Creative Makes You Happier: The Positive Effect of Creativity on Subjective Well-Being.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 18, no. 14, 6 July 2021, p. 7244, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147244. Accessed 16 Apr. 2023.
TEDx Talks. “TEDxTucson George Land the Failure of Success.” YouTube, 16 Feb. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfKMq-rYtnc.
“The Link between Creativity and Happiness (How Does It Work?).” Tracking Happiness, 2 Aug. 2021, www.trackinghappiness.com/link-between-creativity-and-happiness/.
“Universidad de Las Hespérides.” Universidad de Las Hespérides, hesperides.edu.es. Accessed 27 Mar. 2023.
Directora de Diseno de Experiencia Educativa en la Universidad de Hespérides. (Design Director in educational Experience) Director de Formacion Continua/Ongoing learning for faculty at UFM
Karen Maeyens has worked for the past 8 years at the Universidad de Francisco Marroquin as a teacher of teachers. UFM describes its mission as “to teach and disseminate the ethical, legal, and overall economic principles of a society of free and responsible persons.” Karen moved to Guatemala 10 years ago to work there. Until recently she has been in charge of teacher training. She introduced new methodologies for teachers to improve their teaching into a more proactive and immersed way of teaching. Introducing a wide array of techniques. Design workshops, team based learning, Socratic Dialogues as well as improvisation, among other things. Today she works in Universidad de Hesperides, a new Digital University based in Canary Island. There she is helping the university and the teachers develop the curriculum using “Backward Design”. Backward Design is where you design the course backwards. You choose the learning objectives first and work yourself backwards to content design that will lead you to those objectives. She is helping train teachers to use the above mentioned methodologies and new ones in the new digital university.
Karen has three ways of implementing this training.
1. She invites experts in different fields to conduct her workshops,
2. She develops workshops herself in specific areas,
3. She has her teachers share experiences and conduct their own workshops.
Suggestions of references she suggested:
March Church from Project Zero at Harvard university. Mark Church has been studying how to change Thinking routines. How to Learn to unlearn (https://vimeo.com/97547671). He states “are the questions we are asking opening windows or closing doors?”
Making thinking visible, students verbalize: I see, I think, I wonder.
Visual Thinking – making thinking visible
The Doodle Revolution – Sunni Brown
Visual Doing – Willemien Brand
Visual Thinking – Willemien Brand
The back of the Napkin – solving problems and selling ideas with pictures
Design for how people learn – Julie Dirksen
The Brain that changes itself – Norman Doidge
Brain Rules – John Medina
Made to Stick – Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Originals – How non-conformists move the world – Adam Grant
Unleash your creative monster – Andy jones
Impro – Keith Johnstone
The Creative Contrarian – Roger Von Oech
Creativity Inc.- Ed Catmull
The benefits of her workshops are numerous. Teachers are invited voluntarily to assist, teachers come from different backgrounds and different fields. She is constantly checking on how to improve them through constant feedback and involves the students’ feedback into the workshops.
Some tips and challenges she has encountered while doing the workshops:
Open with an ice breaker or Stoke (how they are called in Stanford U), this lightens up the mood, it helps people to be more open to learning.
Mistakes are gifts
What they do in your time is under your control
Give them time to work
Have them make a verbal commitment to applying the resources
Creates a community of teachers
Change requires time
Humans resist change
Make it voluntary
Workshops create communities, you are not alone in your challenges. They create vulnerability.
Support them after
Have them share how they see a particular “game” being applied to their class or business
Her biggest struggle is the level of creativity in the teachers. When asked she said what I would find most valuable is a method where I can push teachers to work the creativity muscle.
Some teachers are keen to learn but others resist it. She states that she believes everyone has creativity, just not everyone has developed that part of the brain. “We need to give them tools to awaken their creativity, people are scared to make mistakes, scared that they are being judged therefore do not take creative risks.”
There is a before and and after to my visit to the Brixton Library. A place that I had passed by before and had not given it a second thought. I grew up in Venezuela, a place where luxuries such as public libraries are scarce and the ones that existed have been ransacked by the current government. The visit was enriched by the people we met that work there. Neill, Amanda and Aviva among others. We spent three hours there. I came in thinking that libraries would be a thing of the past, since most books would soon be digital and came out with knowledge of the significance of what a library really is.
If we look up the definition of Library it says: a building or room containing collections of books, periodicals, and sometimes films and recorded music for use or borrowing by the public or the members of an institution.
This definition needs to be redefined. Let me tell you what I learned on my visit and what definition I would give after my visit.
As you walk in there are two cutouts of black heroes, so visitors can put their faces in them and take photos as the heroes they are. To the right there is this beautiful room that serves as an art gallery. Every month they have a different exhibit, they try to theme it with important topics happening that month. (i.e. Black history month, Women’s day, etc) They had Hew Locke in this month talking about his creative process. Every week they have over 100 children under 5 for reading groups. You can get a library card from the moment you are born. Over a million people visit the library every year. They have physical books, audiobooks, databases, computers, unlimited internet. They have English conversation classes. They also have a VIP (Visual impairment project), which also get together for reading groups another day of the week. They have a club for the deaf. On Tuesday you can come with your guide dog. They have IT equipment that can scan a text and read it out loud, they also have Ipads so you can read the newspapers and magazine articles. They also help the prison and their library with books that prisoners want. They provide sim cards for people with need, they have period products. They help prepare people for interviews, they provide clothes for job interviews. They help people navigate through the system, how to get housing, the freedom pass, how to fill out the passport requirements, and many other things to help. They help bridge the gap for people that have no internet access and are not good with technology. The pandemic has made almost everything electronic which seems like a great thing for some, but this has taken a toll on people that have no access nor knowledge on how to use it. The library has become a space where they can go to get help.
Our visit to the library
If I had to redefine the word library today I would say: A community building, safe space for all. A sanctuary for all human beings, a place where you can find kindness. Thank you to Neill, Amanda, Aviva and especially our tutor Diana for opening my eyes to all the wonderful things happening in the Brixton Library.
Magdalena Abakanowicz at The Tate Modern. How will our workspace look like?
Humans are dreamers. I believe humans are good by nature, we dream, we hope. When thinking of the future we imagine utopian settings. We imagine a world that is connected to nature, we imagine inclusivity, we imagine flexibility, we imagine a world with technology as a tool that will allow us to have more freedom. Humans have been able to achieve amazing things throughout history.
I had many conversations with students from different ages, backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultures. Almost everyone I spoke to had utopian dreams of how the future will look like.
Cheyenne imagined a physical space that was more connected to nature. Nicole imagined a space that was non – existent, where everyone could create their own hours and their own space, collaborating when necessary but working individually when not. Diego speculated an inclusive workplace, where gender and race was always considered. When I speculate, I think of a place where you are not an “architect” or a “graphic designer” or an “engineer”, but a place where you can roam into many professions and they can all collide. I see the future of work where we are all entrepreneurs and freelancers, we control our time, and we choose how much time we want or don’t want to work. You are responsible for your own wellbeing, your own time. We would not need governments to “protect us” or companies to have “friendly policies” for their employees.
It’s important to also be realistic and consider the challenges that come with making these dreams a reality. We must recognize that not everyone has the privilege to dream and that there are many obstacles that stand in the way of progress. It is essential that we work towards creating a world where everyone has the opportunity to dream, and where we can use our creativity and innovation to build a better future for all. While some people dream of a future with no schedules that can pursue multiple professions, others might want job security of getting a pay check every month. It is important to remember that all perspectives are valid and that there is no one size-fits-all solution.
Voyage to the edge of imagination at the Science Museum. How Movies have inspired the future.
I asked my daughter (16), who wants to be a musical theatre performer, how she visualizes the future of work, “I hope it is exactly as it is now.” She went to see ABBA the voyage this week, at one point in the show the microphone tumbles, for a minute she thought it would fall and then realized it was not real. What is going to happen to performers if they can’t perform anymore?
Poster from Abba the Voyage. Show with holograms.
I hope we learn to utilize technology as a tool and not something that controls us. It is something we should all strive to do, while also being mindful of the limitations and challenges that we face.
How can household, caregiving and romantic responsibilities between men and women become more balanced in future generations?
Women have been key to raising children and maintaining the family unit over time. Even keeping alive the romanticism in the marriage. Either by choice or by social pressure. It has been expected of them. Men have taken a role of leadership in business, politics, even the arts, in just about every craft.
The increasing role of women in professional life has not been matched by an increasing involvement by men in the home. Therefore many women have ended up with a “double burden” or have had to sacrifice part of their professional life.
Why is progress so slow in the family unit?
In a survey of 160 people, 140 women and 20 men, I discovered women contribute to 50% of the family income, but continue to do 70% of the household, administrative and upbringing chores. In this group only 28% wanted a change and surprisingly 72% didn’t want to rock the boat.
Sheryl Sandberg in her book “Lean in” confirms this is representative of a larger audience. “If we want to see a shift in the workplace we need to make a change at home.” (Sandberg, 2013)
What did I do?
I asked 4 couples to make a To Do list of weekly family responsibilities , women responded with over 20 items, men all had 4 or less.
Created a survey as mentioned above. Responses from 11 women that filled the survey were of new found awareness.” I had not realised all I did “,”This survey is making me reevaluate”, “I think I need to renegotiate”. Someone even called me to tell me she had gone on a date with her husband for the first time in a few years, inspired by the romantic questions in the Survey.
Next steps that could be taken.
This is a topic that wants to be avoided, it makes couples uncomfortable, it creates tension. We need to work on it through positive strategies instead of pointing fingers. I feel that collaboration and teamwork is what seems to be lacking at home. This is the first thing I feel is necessary to tackle.
Make couples aware. Through surveys, exercises, communication.
Educate through workshops for couples with role playing/games.
Create a card game for the family that could be color coded- one color per category. Every member of the family can pick a weekly card and do the activity from the card. Every week you choose a different color.
Understand that men and women do things differently and no way is better than the other. (How you change the diaper is not better than how your spouse does it)
Expect more, ask for more, don’t expect it to be like your parents or grandparents.
We still have a lot of stride to cover, but we can definitely tackle it from a positive perspective. We cannot change the past, but with tools and education we can try to change the future.
Research
Caroline Criado Perez. Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. S.L., Harry N Abrams, 2020.
Germano, Maggie. “Women Are Working More than Ever, but They Still Take on Most Household Responsibilities.” Forbes, www.forbes.com/sites/maggiegermano/2019/03/27/women-are-working-more-than-ever-but-they-still-take-on-most-household-responsibilities/?sh=5a3592752e9e. Accessed 16 Feb. 2023.
Meers, Sharon, and Joanna Strober. Getting to 50/50. Simon and Schuster, 10 Sept. 2013.
Perel, Esther. Mating in Captivity : Reconciling the Erotic + the Domestic. New York, Harpercollins, 2006.
