Creativity: Lightning or Pearl?

After returning from a week of painting in the mountains of Virginia I have been slowly re-revving my engine for the education world. While fishing for a topic for this weeks blog I found something to bridge the gap between my worlds.

I found an article from the New York Times on the reality of creativity. I am especially interested in creativity these days as it relates to education. Not only in what teachers do but what kids are taught to do. The article described the falsehood of the Eureka Moment. It described the Eureka moment as really a long fought process of small insight, small fact, small step in a process similar to creating a pearl. “The aha moments grow out of hours of thought and study,” said Jim Marggraff inventor of the Leap Pad Fly pen.

I have found this especially true in the classroom. I have no idea how many times I have told my instructional assistant, "I'm going to figure this one out by tomorrow." By putting down a problem and continuing to turn it over like a rock tumbler I have been able to find a solution. But this has happened easier and more frequently as I have gained experience. When I was faced with a student this year who continued to bother other students during our rest time, I came up with an idea at 4:00 a.m. I told E.the next morning "I am going to call your mother after rest time, what I say to her is up to you." This took the choice of the consequence away from him and myself and focused us on the content of our interactions. It really helped but this is just one decision in the hundreds I a make every day as a teacher. The process is also similar to making art. I have been able to make progress each year on my painting retreat because I continue to think about my painting even while I don't have much time to paint.

I especially find this accretion metaphor valuable in thinking about my education writing. I usually start a paper for my doctoral classes and then think about for 2-3 days, generating and revising ideas, talking to others in the field, and trying to communicate it to my wife. This last one is the real turning point. I know that when I can communicate what I am thinking to someone outside of education I am on the right track. But, all of this takes time just as over time, the process has become easier.

This leaves me with some questions:
How does creativity operate in schools? Is it with a Lightning or a Pearl metaphor that we are using? How can schools become a place where creativity is considered a practice as a opposed to a talent?

Image credits:
painting: "Sunday Morning" sold to to fellow Nimrod artist
lightning: http://nobullets.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/lightning.jpg
pearl: http://www.blackpearls.com.au/images/black-pearl-anatomy.jpg

it doesn't matter how rich your kid is

Kids who go to preschool make gains, no matter their SES. You gotta love it if you are a preschool teacher.
Another, (yes another) preschool study covered in USA Today found that preschool benefits all students.
This is another log on the fire for expanding preschool services to all students.
Steve Barnett, the godfather or preschool research and the head honcho at NIEER said,

"It's the whole city, it's all of the kids, it's done through the public schools and it seems to produce pretty big effects for all of the kids,"

Now when we combine this with economic research on the costs and benefits of preschool we find we got good deal on our hands.
According to Dr. Timothy Bartik of the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research (2006), while investments in luring businesses can create large financial gains for a state in the short term these benefits are likely to plateau after several years. However, after an initial short-term increase in jobs by creating preschool classrooms, a time release earnings boom begins to tick when a state invests in universal preschool. Bartik also suggested that the return to the state may be less than the return to the nation because 2/3 of state program participants are likely to leave the state in the 12 years that it would take to realize the return on investment. But this benefit to the nation, in terms of higher income and less stress on social services also suggests a stronger federal role in funding preschool initiatives.

How about a preschool Title in NCLB?

When will it happen? Watch me turn blue while I hold my breath ...............................

photo credit: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=981

Summer (Ed Reform) Blockbusters

In the past I have written about riding the waves of reform. I've discovered one of the ways to do that in this space is to respond to those big reports that seem to arrive on an almost weekly if not monthly basis like blockbuster movies. But my doctoral studies have gotten in the way of my timely commentary even as my research papers I was writing for class is what is busting blocks on the reform front.
Here is the first of two.

Broader, Bolder-- This report has some very big names from the industry attached includingsome of my favorites like: Linda Darling-Hammond, John L. Goodlad, T. Berry Brazelton, James Comer, David Grissmer, (frick and frack) Deborah Meier Diane Ravitch, and Sharon Kagan. It is like a Robert Altman movie, everybody who is anybody has signed this thing.
I guess that might be the scariest thing about this statement, it is endorsed by the establishment. My esteemed TLN colleague, Renee Moore, brought some issues with the statement to the TLN breakfast table a couple days ago. She said, "On the surface, most of what the statement calls for is laudable and logical. But as I read it more closely, a few statements began to trouble me." She goes on to say:

For example: "Education policy in this nation has typically been crafted around the expectation that schools alone can offset the full impact of low socioeconomic status in learning." Oh, really? The children of the poor have been the primary concern of educational policymakers? And what is the evidence (or better yet, the results) of that concern?

The report's major claim is that we need to acklnowledge that schools, as they are currently structured, can't solve all of the social ills of America. It mentions that we need to start paying attention to what kids are doing outside of schools.

Many of the big names associated with this report were/are part of the Democracy At Risk report that came out recently. I thought that report rocked so I am more inclined to read Broader, Bolder with more interest.

The best part of the report, and another area Renee found issue with, was the pushing of Early Childhood education. I have been researching this approach to the achievement gap and find all of the reasons for investing in early learning sound on many fronts. (More on this later...) I do have to outright disagree with Renee on this statement in her post though...

I won't take time to go into it here, but the real history of the Head Start program, which began in rural Mississippi, is what I was thinking of when I read the statement's call for "increased investment in developmentally appropriate and high-quality early childhood, pre-school, and kindergarten education." That kind of noble talk has been heard before, and it translated into the worst kind of paternalistic racist usurpation's of parental rights and community-based cultural practices. It was well-intentioned educational policy during the desegregation of the schools that led to the dismissal of thousands of Black school administrators and highly effective teachers. Those same policies led to a dismantling of the cultural ties between communities (in our case Black communities) and our schools. These mostly unintended consequences were, nevertheless, debilitating. Collateral damage from poorly developed and implemented public education policy....Hmm...where have we seen that recently?

Personally, I am very proud of my work with Head Start and its history. As with any large scale reform there are bound to be misuses and unintended consequences, especially in places where segregation was still fought in in 1965. Richmond didn't desegregate until 1978. But, the strong African-American women who hired me, were the same women who started the Head Start program in Richmond in 1965. They have given me a respect for the program and it's place in history. They made sure when I was hired (as a white male substitute teacher) that I understood what Head Start is really about. They made sure that I understood that I was going to be a part of something bigger than myself, or Richmond, or Virginia. It is a social program meant to lift families up. And it has done that for 43 years.

The real history of Head Start is that of a National program created to serve at-risk children from across the country. It is not the story of Head Start in Mississippi.

photo credit: YWCA of Chicago http://www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=euLRI7OZH&b=177351

What does creativity mean to a flat world?

Much of the political discourse surrounding education these days is based on the economic perspective of the business world that believes we need to prepare world class employees. Most of the jobs that I hope my students will pursue have not been created yet. I see the effects of technology and a “flatter” world as increasing the need for people skills that enable communication. I also see teaching students to be creative in their approach to their lives as not only an economic benefit to America but also as a benefit to humanity. Teaching with and to both sides of the brain, as described by Daniel Pink, (2006) in A Whole New Mind, are the keys to preparing kids for the future.

Left Brain	Right Brain
Function	Design
Argument	Story
Focus	Symphony
Logic	Empathy
Seriousness	Play
Accumulation	Meaning

Students who have explored and developed abilities using both sides of the brain will have the skills necessary to be successful in a future that is essentially unknown. In my classroom students design, tell stories, are empathetic, play and make meaning. They also problem solve, discuss, concentrate, use logic, and learn when to be serious. Creativity and collaboration is central to the skill sets students will need in the 21^st century. I foster these in my classroom by developing activities that require collaboration and that have group products as outcomes.