A little obsession and our creativity

 We all have our obsessions, eh. Well, we do, don't we? Like Van Gogh, who liked to splotch a bit of oil paint around, and who seemed singularly obsessed with his ear for some reason. Or Michelangelo who had this thing about painting church ceilings. Or... ... nope, that would be an endless list, so trying to write it would be hopeless. We all have our obsessions. One of mine currently is writing free verse poetry, like this:

I am however also more than a little bit interested in creativity, what drives it, how we get more of it, what stops it.. that's another endless list. Of particular interest to me (I've avoided suggesting I'm obsessed with it, but maybe I am?) is what leadership for creativity looks like in schools. I recently discovered this 2019 article "Why You Should Work Less and Spend More Time on Hobbies", by Gaetano DiNardi, (Harvard Business Review, February 07, 2019).

Here is the HBR summary in case you find yourself in the TLDR camp:

"As professionals around the world feel increasingly pressed for time, they’re giving up on things that matter to them. A recent HBR article noted that in surveys, most people “could name several activities, such as pursuing a hobby, that they’d like to have time for.” This is more significant than it may sound, because it isn’t just individuals who are missing out. When people don’t have time for hobbies, businesses pay a price. Hobbies can make employees substantially better at their jobs for three reasons: they reawaken your creativity, give you a fresh perspective, and bolster your confidence."

There is, it seems, a case for supporting teacher creativity as one of the deliberate and intentional strategies that leaders might pursue if they want greater creativity to be a part of the normal mahi, the organisational culture, of our schools. I particularly liked this quote from the article:

"A creative hobby pulls you out of all that. Whether you’re a musician, artist, writer, or cook, you often start with a blank canvas in your mind. You simply think: What will I create that will evoke the emotion I’m going for?

"It’s no surprise that by giving yourself this mental space, and focusing on feelings, you can reawaken your creativity. Neuroscientists have found that rational thought and emotions involve different parts of the brain. For the floodgates of creativity to open, both must be in play."

I do note that the HBR article doesn't appear to be based on quality research, and there's many a bad decision been taken in education because it seemed like a good idea, based on common sense, at the time. However it is an intuitively appealing idea, and it's one I am keen to nudge along at Te Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka Hornby High School. Unleashing the creative powers of teachers has an enormous intuitive appeal, because (in my opinion) many many teachers are fundamentally highly creative people. I 'reckon' that many teachers love trying to come up with new ways of causing learning, for example. 

There is a warning and a contradiction there of course. On the one hand, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, do what we know works, follow the evidence. I think that we have got to where we have today with reading and maths in schools as a result of that. The contradiction, the 'on the other hand', is that improvement comes from taking risks, trying new things, seeing if they work. Our incredibly efficacious Manaiakalani kaupapa wouldn't be benefiting tamariki in 120 schools in Aotearoa if no-one had been prepared to try something new, and this is a kaupapa now well backed by a large body of robust research and achievement data, but that's another story.

But anyway, I currently believe that supporting the creativity of teachers is a good thing, and a potentially powerful way of growing creativity amongst our young people. The question is how. What deliberate acts can I undertake that will support that creativity? I wrote recently about my motivation to publish pieces of poetry, about role modelling creativity and risk taking, about normalising those behaviours in the hope that my colleagues (the wonderful bunch that they are)  will do the same with their own 'creative bents'. I'm working on that, trying to 'hatch some plans' that might help. We do see this most commonly already in the creative arts, with our drama, music, and visual arts teachers, and also our English and technology teachers. They are not afraid to put up examples of their work. They just need to be encouraged to do it a little more often, for both colleagues and students to see. Now how about our maths and science teachers, our social science teachers, our health and PE and language teachers? 

If we are serious about the 'create' component of our 'Learn Create Share' pedagogy, then as individual teachers we also need to be serious about our own creativity, We need to nurture it, to not be afraid of it, to invest in it, to invest in ourselves.

As the writer of the HBR article says, "It’s no surprise that by giving yourself this mental space, and focusing on feelings, you can reawaken your creativity."

Let's give ourselves the mental space.

As something of a footnote however: I think that as long as we continue to adhere to the short term pursuit of money and profit as an end goal in life, as long as we continue to worship wealth as the marker of success, as long as we tolerate a society that allows huge disparities in wealth, we will fail spectacularly to uncover and benefit from the creative potential that we all harbour. I often wonder how many more Sir Angus Taits, or Neil Finns, Denis Glovers or Ritchie McCaws, we would find in life if we were able to guarantee sufficient income for every adult such that they could pursue their passions? I am a 'Universal Basic Income' fan... but that's another story too.

World Poetry Day and creativity: Postscript - planting seeds

You never quite know, eh. When you scatter seeds you never quite know where they might land, nor what might sprout from them. To persist with the simile, as leaders and teachers we could be likened to gardeners. Our role is to plant seeds, to cultivate the soil, to create the conditions to grow strong roots and plants, to grow and sustain creative self actualising individuals and communities. 

The postscript to my previous two posts on World Poetry Day is that our student leaders took the idea, and created an inter-kāhui poetry competition, to create a poe-tree inn each kāhui, the 'leaves' on each 'poe-tree' to contain a poem written by a member of our kura community.

The results are outstanding, not only in terms of the volume of writing, but also the quality of the poetry that was submitted by students.

You get the idea .......

When you plant seeds, like the seed of creativity, of the acceptability of taking risks, and of possible failure, then you liberate minds.  It's interesting, isn't it, that when you value creativity, so do others, when you are prepared to take risks, and when you are accepting of the failures that others might experience, they become more willing to try to be creative, more open to the possibility of failure. Indeed, failures along the way are to be celebrated. There are sadly those with what I think is a fixed mindset, a mindset that is inherently negative when failure occurs. That mindset closes off the possibility of learning from past failures, and so the possibility of creating even more interesting and exciting possibilities for the future.

Our pedagogy 'Learn Create Share', and our work within the Manaiakalani kaupapa, is enhanced, it leverages ever greater benefit for our learners, if we sustain a growth mindset for both our colleagues and our students.

Over this past few weeks it's not the poetry itself that has mattered (although it does), it is the growth in creativity, the realisation of what can be achieved, especially in the minds of our amazing students, the possibility that perhaps just that few more students have recognised what their capabilities are, and so might have enhanced their growth mindset. Or maybe just a few moments joy at having genuinely created something, because for most of us our acts of creativity simply create a sense of joy. 

Because if anything matters in enhancing creativity, I am increasingly thinking it is a growth mindset.