On June 18th I sent to see a wonderful group of kids story tell through dance, lights and music. Zoonation Youth Company told a story about a world that was divided, the wall had been built by an AI Robot that dreamed of having real feelings. On one side was the Captain that controlled his half of the world through oppression and on the other side was controlled by a Queen Bee that gave Starburst to her group and drugged them to keep them in control. In the middle were two brothers who loved each other very much and did not want to join either side. At some point the older brother gets coerced into joining the Captain. The little brother gets coerced by the Queen Bee. I won’t say more to not give spoilers. I was most impressed by the way they told their story. The narrator was “Snow”, the AI Robot, a girl that danced to the rhythm of the music. If I had to choose a question it would be something like: How can we teach children about the polarisation happening in the world and make them aware that there are other possibilities? I was inspired at all the ways we can get our message across. A beautiful intervention.
“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” George Lois, American Art director, designer and author.
The author proposes a series of games to put in practice your creativity.
Types of Games
Games are divided into categories:
Convergent. Requires you to combine elements of more than one idea or thing. It’s like putting a puzzle together. You have many pieces and you need to figure out how they can work together.
Divergent. Taking things apart so you can look at their individual parts. The challenge of breaking dow something into smaller parts to tackle each phase of the process.
Lateral. Logical thinking process that must follow steps in order. When you solve math you are using lateral thinking.
Aesthetic. To focus on how an object or idea looks. It is when you look closely at how each part of something appears, or by imagining what would happen if things looked different.
Emergent. Daydream. Idleness. This way of thinking is when you are idle, walking, sleeping,, daydreaming. Usually these lead to AHA moments.
Specific Games- some samples
Convergent.People Watch. Challenge- Go to a public place, like a shopping center, a library and quickly write a short story for some different people you see walking about. Combine different traits and actions of your “characters” into one compelling story. Research done by NYU have determined that you’re more inclined to think creatively when you imagine yourself removed from a problem or situation. The act of people watching is one way to do it.
Divergent. List 100 Alternative uses. Challenge. Come up with a list of at least 100 alternative uses for a book. A doorstop, a hat, an umbrella. This allows you to think of the object in an entirely new light, simply because you’ll have to strain your brain to come up with a number of original ideas.
Lateral. Think Big to Small. Challenge. Pick something in your life that is simple on its face. Make a list of everything that makes that thing what it is. List all the smaller parts, then the smaller parts that make up those smaller parts. See how microscopic you can get with the details. There are an infinite number of things that influence and impact any larger thing right down to atoms and smaller molecules.
Aesthetic. Draw your face upside down. Challenge. Find a mirror and something to draw with then spend 10 minutes drawing a detailed portrait of your face upside down. Note the areas of struggle to draw most and why the change in perspective makes them so difficult to draw. Viewing familiar things from a new perspective (like being upside down) is an effective way to help you notice all the details you usually take for granted.
Emergent. Stretch out. Challenge. Take 5 minutes to really stretch out. You can do this by standing up or sitting down – simply move your body to loosen your muscles and connecting fibers. Then spend another 10 minutes sitting and relaxing while the benefits of al that stretching start to take shape.
The author says that by completing each activity you will have a better foundation for seeing the world with a more creative light.
Christensen, T. (2015). The Creativity Challenge. Simon and Schuster.
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.
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.”
