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.