Creativity in Schools

As educational professionals we are the people who educate and inspire the next generation and generations to come. One of the most difficult questions I recently was asked is, do you believe that schools are creative enough for today’s students? As someone who believes we need to be very creative for our students, it was interesting reflective question. I have spent a lot of time, energy, and funds to incorporate technology into the curriculum, updating curriculum materials, and trying to develop meaningful professional development for our staff, so the question at first was easy but the more I reflected on the question it was not as clear if I have been as successful.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a professional development conference on the changes and direction of education. The keynote speaker for this conference was Milton Chen. For those of you who do not know who Milton Chen is, he was one of the creators of Sesame Street and Senior Fellow/Executive Director Emeritus at the George Lucas Foundation or better known as Edutopia. Dr. Chen is the author of Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in Our Schools. He discusses that the best learning environments are those in which social and emotional learning are the foundation of the curriculum. Obviously, the second piece to his platform is an environment that fosters creativity and the use of technology.

One of the main thoughts and ideas he spoke to is the fact that we need to change our current delivery of education. We need to not allow the school walls to be the boundary of learning. Nor should we as teachers allow ourselves to limit our own creativity to deliver a curriculum with high standards, integrated technology, which caters to students’ creativity. With that said, I believe that technology's usefulness in education has not yet been fully realized as a means to deliver content and improve student performance. You added computers to schools that are still functioning on the old paradigm from the industrial age. Educators must use technology to rewrite how education is delivered and how students can use what they learn creatively in and outside the classroom.

Our children are growing eager to learn and quick to embrace new technology. Outside school technology is fully integrated in their lives, it’s how they listen to music, how they shop, communicate, socially interact, and how they read. As educators we cannot create an environment, the minute they step back into their classrooms, it's like going back in time.

Teachers are also hampered by antiquated rules and policies that do not allow they to create interactive creative classrooms. Educators each have their own strengths, some excel at lecturing, others excel with project based learning, and yet some are better at giving personal attention. Administrators need to create a structure, where teachers work together as a team to provide a better learning environment, and to remove the obsolete rules, procedures and policies that do not allow teachers to create interactive creative rich classrooms.