World Poetry Day, growing creativity (2): Leadership and creativity

This whole poetry thing has had me thinking about something that I find hugely interesting: leading for creativity. How do we 'lead for creativity'? What works? A HUGE question, and not one to be answered in a brief blog post, but it's had me reflecting on our Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School experience, and what I think I might have learned. 

Warning: this post contains plenty of 'reckons', plenty of speculation and opinion based solely upon personal experience and observation.

At the start of most years, in the good old fashioned 'Principal's state of the nation address' to staff, I always talk about creativity. Each year I reveal a little more of myself. I ask staff what creativity looks like for them personally, and how it might reflect in their practice for the coming year. I'm a bit of a 'broken record'  in that regard.

Late last year I discovered my own 'poetic voice' (despite not doing too well in the poetry section of a creative writing paper at Massey Uni a few years ago), inspired by the possibly less than reputable American poet Charles Bukowski. I discovered free verse poetry, and find it liberating. In the past 6 months I have written over 80 pieces ... they just 'come to me' at odd times, inspired by strong emotion. Finding a tear in your eye as you watch a small child covered in wounds lying in a hospital bed in the Ukraine does interesting things to the brain, I find.

I have taken to posting the occasional poem for staff, and have thought about why I'm doing that. Is it ego? Is it a 'look at me' thing? I hope not; it's much more important than any of that. 

When we re-imagined out vision as 'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence', we supported that with a strategic intent to support greater risk taking amongst our students. Our student Board rep at the time was strong in his advocacy in this regard, telling us loud and clear that HHS students were often unwilling to take risks. If we are to ask our students to take risks, we have to model that behaviour ourselves, and my own acts of posting poetry are just that. It is incredibly nerve wracking to post your work in front of your peers. You lay your soul bare before them, open to criticism. I want my colleagues to be prepared to do the same.

As a leader, for me it is a matter of 'If I'm going to ask you to do that, then I have to be prepared to do it myself, so here it is, this is what it looks like'. I am NOT expecting my colleagues to become poets. I am hopeful that they will model risk taking and creativity for our rangatahi, supporting and encouraging them to do the same.

There is a deeper issue here. How do you grow a creative organisation if the leader(s) do not believe it is important? Duh.., simple!! You don't!!!! A possibly related question is 'does leader creativity matter'?

To me, the first question is anathema. I led our re-imaging because I believe that creativity is central to our humanity, central to what will continue to separate us out from artificial intelligence, central to our capacity to be truly human, to be fulfilled, and I am completely convinced by and committed to the belief that creativity supports well-being and achievement.

At the risk of doing their significant body of work a disservice, I would like to quote from 'Replanting creativity during post normal times' (October 2920) ©Professor Peter O’Connor Director, Centre for Arts and Social Transformation Professor Michael Anderson, Associate Professors Kelly Freebody and Paul Ginns, The University of Sydney October 2020:

Beyond increasing recognition of the role of creativity in a successful, globalised citizenry, there are many direct and indirect benefits of developing creative skills in and with students. Upitis (2014) discusses how 

"Fostering creativity in students helps them to develop resilience, resourcefulness, and confidence—preparing them to address life’s challenges. Creativity also carries its own intrinsic value. Developing creative sensibilities and habits enhances quality of life for teachers and students." (p. 2).

The team also documents the economic gains to be had from enhanced creativity across the population, but that is a story for another day.

I reckon that if we are to enhance creativity in schools, we need to put into positions of leadership those who understand the importance of creativity, those who are committed to its value and its development. We need less ego and more moral purpose, less focus on testing and more focus on inspiration. 

I had originally wondered if leader creativity is important. Not sure, it may or may not be, but certainly an unwavering commitment to creativity and its intrinsic and extrinsic value to our rangatahi and our society are essential, I reckon.

I would like to link this back to our Manaiakalani kaupapa. Our kaupapa bases all that we do around the pedagogy 'Learn Create Share'. Creativity sits in the middle, essential to liberating our learners, to harnessing their talent, to growing their self belief, and to driving up achievement. It does just that, Nationally we know that we accelerate writing progress by twice national averages. 

The pedagogy unites kura and teachers in a coherent consistent evidence based practice that works. Surely you couldn't ask for more than that?

World Poetry Day, growing creativity (1)

 It was World Poetry Day last Monday. I had floated several ideas around about how we might celebrate, how we might leverage off the day for the benefit of our learners. I'd suggested a poetry 'smack down' featuring the 'new to the scene' wannabe 'Sutdog' taking on the well established 'Mr A' in a verbal duel on the outdoor stage, or posting huge printed versions of poems all around the campus to .. well, a few ideas ran riot. 

We were less ambitious than that in the finish. We published some poetry on our digital notice boards, and our wonderful prefects created a 'poe-tree' in each kāhui, with students writing poems on 'leaves' that will be used to assemble the trees.  The response form our students has been awesome. What I didn't pick up on was the natural energy that also took over, with quite a few staff getting our learners to do some poetry writing.

I've seen some wonderful work as a result. THE most outstanding amongst a lot of very cool pieces was this written by Alazae in Year 10.

This is truly outstanding. I called him out of class to congratulate him, and called his caregiver while he was sitting next to me to tell her about this wonderful work. Alazae is, in the words of his wānanga advisor Whāea Chris (one of our English teaching team), a natural lyricist. I love the poem not only for what it is, but also because in writing this Alazae breaks (actually smashes) some awful systemic stereotypes in our schooling system.

And there was this, from Rheanne in Year 9:

Cherry Blossom,

Elegant, Graceful

Floating, Falling, Fluttering

Flourishing in Beauty

Fleeting Nature of Life

- Rheanne (Year 9)

This is a 'cinquin', a poetic form I've never heard of. Beautiful!!!

Apart from expressing my excitement at what I have seen this week, what's my point?

When you have a unifying vision of what we want to be, when you chose a 'big hairy audacious goal ' (as globally renowned educator Ewan McGregor says), when you are ambitious enough to dream big, it is amazing what you get. This is what it takes to capture the imagination, the energy, the drive, of a team of people.

Our Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School vision is: 

'he puna auaha a centre of creative excellence'

This is one hell of a 'big hairy audacious goal' (a BHAG). It is an aspiration, a desired future state that we may never achievement in its completeness. That's not the point. It is as I have said before our guiding star in the heavens. It is to us what those stars were to those brave brave Polynesian navigators who set off across a vast ocean not knowing what lay ahead, but firm in their faith that if they followed those stars there were new things to be discovered. Their courage, their perseverance, paid off for them, and this poetry writing is an example of our own courage and persistence paying off for us.

It is also the advantage of having a coherent and consistent pedagogy with creativity at its centre, in 'Learn Create Share', and The Manaiakalani Programme kaupapa. 

Professor Peter O'Connor and his team at Auckland University have long promoted the benefits of creativity in learning and wellbeing for all. The gains in confidence as learners, the gains in literacy, in inspiration, in self belief, may not be readily measured in tests, but I'm damned sure Alazae was 10cm taller as he walked back into class yesterday.

What's in a photo?

In a previous life I had an interest in pictorial archives (well, I still do, but back then it was a professional interest, too). I was fascinated by the challenge of looking into photos of the past, trying to discern the layers of life that were often hidden under our very noses.

Last week I took this photo in our staffroom. It was one small part of a session in which our 'hurumanu' leaders were working with small groups of staff supporting their mahi with our learners. This is one such photo, and it has quite a number of layers of meaning and activity. As is so often the case when looking at photos, the layers are not obvious at first glance. 

The Hurumanu leader (Sarah) is leading the team through the use of a picture book. The book ('The house that Jack built', by Gavin Bishop) told a traditional story, but with a Māori lens, with Māori characters. Sarah's professional lens was one of critical literacy, of digging down into the story: who was present in the story and who was not? Whose voices are we hearing, and whose were missing? What was the obvious message? What was the less obvious message?

The re-telling of the story with a Māori lens also captured the work that we have accessed with the support of Dr Aaron Wilson of the University of Auckland, that of the need for text to be both a window and a mirror for the reader. Windows allow readers to see into the lives of others. Mirrors allow the reader to see themselves in the story, something so important for learners from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Readers need to be able to 'see themselves' in the texts if the texts are to retain relevance, and to impact most powerfully on the learner.

Both of these issues are brought to the forefront for us because of our engagement with The Manaiakalani Programme. This mahi shares what our collective research and data has revealed as 'High Leverage Practices', things we can do in our kura that make the greatest difference. We most probably wouldn't have been doing these things had we not been part of this transformational mahi.

The photo captures what I have said for a long time. Often we don't need external people to tell us how to do things (sometimes we do, of course), we have the expertise within our kura, we know how to solve many of the challenges that exist within our education system. We just have to have a body politic that trusts us to do that, and school leadership that keeps its eye on the ball, focussing on those challenges and, more importantly, the solutions.

Two of the people in the picture are interns/trainees from the Graduate School of Education. It says everything about the quality of the interns, and the values that they gather from NZGSE, that they remain with us well after 3pm, engaging alongside us in our own learning journeys, adding our knowledge and expertise to their own kete. That is not often the case with teachers in training from elsewhere.

The text was chosen deliberately to offer something for everyone, from those with a reading age of seven, to Year 10 and 11 students looking for deeper meaning. The text is being used in our 'hurumanu', that's our compound word for our junior cross curriculum work, in this case English and social studies working together. And as if that weren't enough, it is a piece of work that sits inside the new New Zealand Histories curriculum. Tūmeke!!

So there are indeed many layers of content and meaning from this one photo. It is easy for staff, when they have their heads 'down below the parapet' (if you'll forgive the military metaphor) to lose sight of the skills that they have, and the amazing mahi that they are doing. We see this right across our Uru Mānuka kāhui ako, and across the Manaiakalani network of Aotearoa - amazing staff, always looking to increase their skill set, driven by their moral imperative to do the best by our learners.

Tino pai tō mahi, e hoa mā