Valuing creativity - you are what you constantly think about

Every little act of creativity counts. Every small creative task feeds and nurtures the inner child, regardless of our age. In walking around our kura this past week, and in talking with students and staff, I am (as is so often true) struck by the delightful range of creative tasks that engage students daily.

Don't get me wrong: not every minute of every lesson can be filled with creativity, certainly not in the traditional arts and crafts sense. However there is so much creativity at the heart of teacher practice for so many students. I think that one of the appeals of the teaching profession that I have always felt, but rarely if ever verbalised, is its fundamentally creative and relational nature.

Some of the acts of creativity I see are traditional, things I recall doing as a young student, like print making with linocuts, or making 'things' from a piece of wood. Some creative acts are primeval in nature; human beings have always (it seems) drawn, painted, danced, acted out, made music. 

Some acts are far more modern in nature. Designing electronic documents, creating virtual worlds in virtual reality or Minecraft.

There's traditional painting ...

A group of our Pacifica students, while preparing for their Tama Mai Saute performance this Saturday., prepared T Shirts especially for the performance. In this case they were supported by South Libraries makerspace.

And some of it is less visual but just as important, like the creative writing that takes place.

It's not that such acts of creativity don't exist in other kura. Of course they do. But with an explicit pedagogy (learn, create, share) that centres itself on creativity I think we are more likely to see a wider range of direct acts of teaching, of explicit choice by teachers, that is the result of deliberate and intentional choices and plans by teachers. The explicit pedagogy supports and sustains creativity for students and teachers. This is, I 'reckon',  one of the significant benefits of being a part of the Manaiakalani kaupapa. If we weren't a part of that we would quite possibly lose sight of the need to develop creativity. The message would get lost in the 'noise' that smothers the education landscape in Aotearoa. Heaven forbid we become prey to the neo-liberal right that would have us all learning maths and science and nothing else. In that case we would not learn those things well either. hat's not an argument for ignoring the sciences and maths either. Everything in balance.

It was interesting but not surprising to notice as I walked through our spaces over several days that the level of student focus and engagement was quite intense. I'm not suggesting that every single student was 100% engaged for 100% of the time. As an adult, try doing that and see how long you can sustain the effort. What I do mean is that students were focussed, active, and happy, in their mahi. They were experimenting, executing, critiquing, practising, and from what I saw often experiencing the joy of creating. That sounds very much like some of the essential characteristics of a 'creative community'. It was a joy to behold.

As they say, you get what you focus on, you 'become' what you constantly think about. Here is a nice link to an article in Forbes on how our thoughts become our reality.

I suspect that one of the characteristics of leadership which is intent on developing and sustaining creativity is that the leader talks the talk, constantly, like that proverbial 'broken record'.

'Guilty as charged'!!!

'He puna auaha, a centre of creative excellence'? We're trying.