The power of risk taking..

On my very last 'Tumuaki walk through' of learning spaces at Hornby High School, I saw many wonderful things. I saw engagement, focus, fun, laughter, and creativity.

One small interaction in particular has stuck in my memory. A Year 7 & 8 class  (with teacher Patricia) had been reading what you'd describe as a 'sophisticated picture book'. The students were in the process of re-imagining various parts of the story with their own images, and text, creating new metaphors (at least, I hope I have that right, Patricia). The atmosphere was focussed and 'buzzy'.. those in education will know what that looks, sounds, feels, like. It is the sound, the look, the feel, of an effective teacher at work, and it was what I regularly saw all around the kura in those walkthroughs.

I stopped to chat to a young one man who was drawing tentative lines, erasing, drawing, erasing etc. I asked why, and he said that he couldn't 'get it right' (he was copying some parts of the original image from the story book so that he could then re-imagine).

I suggested that in fact he should just draw it as he saw it. I got out my phone, searched a Picasso self portrait, and showed it to him.

(Source: Creative Commons, https://richmondartcenter.org/instructables/picasso-self-portraits-2/)

I said 'Does that look like a photo' and then said maybe that's how Picasso saw himself. I said, just feel free to draw what you see. No-one else can see what you see, so no-one can tell you that you are right or wrong. I also said, and anyway if it doesn't go right, so what? I told him to make as many mistakes as he could because the best way to learn is to make mistakes, but to stop erasing and simply draw. 

I (deliberately) turned away for a minute or two, and then looked back. There he was drawing bold lines, shading, sketching, his hand going nowhere near the eraser. And there was a smile on his face.

I'd encouraged him to take a risk, to stop being fearful of consequences, and just do it. I regret not going back an hour or so later to see what he had produced.

Isn't this the way with so many of us, and our learning and our creativity? How many of us tell ourselves that we can't draw? That we are tone deaf? That we can't do maths? That we can't dance?

That's why we opted early on to state that one of our areas of strategic intent at Hornby High School was to encourage risk taking. What deliberate acts of teaching, what deliberate acts of relationship building, do teachers and schools need to foster in this regard to support greater creativity?

Creativity means different things to different people, at different times, but if we keep it front and centre (as we can when empowered by the Manaiakalani kaupapa, and the 'learn, create, share' pedagogy) learners are the winners, kura are the winners, the world is the winner. This risk taking thing is pretty powerful, eh...