People sometimes equate creativity with great ideas or great accomplishments, which is not a full and accurate depiction. Alyssa’s definition of creativity as the “inner advancing and enhancing agent people access to change and add value to themselves and the world” casts creativity as an innate quality in all of us, one that can be honed through practice. The “Big C” notion of creativity—Einstein’s theories, Galileo’s discoveries, DaVinci’s inventions—shouldn’t intimidate people or discourage them from following their own creative pursuits. Just as important is “small c” creativity, the kind we use (or neglect to use) to solve life’s little problems and enhance our day-to-day experiences. The process behind it is a simple one of combining divergent thinking (generating ideas without judgment) and convergent thinking (evaluating and arranging ideas), and all it takes to master it is practice. Research suggests that children tend to lose their natural creative ability as they grow. While 98 percent of children qualify as “highly creative” at age five, the study found, the rate drops to 30 percent for ten-year-olds and 12 percent for 15-year-olds. Creativity is like a muscle in the brain, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. What causes the drop-off? It’s
easy to point to any number of possible factors: schooling driven by standardized testing, a glut of television and video games, social pressures to follow and fit in. The good news is that the decline can be combatted with instruction and practice and support, and that’s exactly the idea behind creativity class. Once a week the students report to the new class, where they don’t have quizzes or tests, or even right or wrong answers. Instead, they discuss the terms and definitions of creativity, as well as develop their own. They problem-solve how to become better problem-solvers. They list their daily dilemmas and then generate ideas for possible fixes together. They ask and try to answer questions such as “How do you get a hippopotamus out of a bath tub?" or "What are all the ways we can use 1,000,000 ping pongs balls?" Alyssa uses exercises like this as a warm-up for inclusive, open-ended thinking. “It can be so hard for people to suspend judgment, to ask ‘what if’ and then really think through how to make an idea workable,” says Alyssa. “Hypercritical thinking is a learned habit, and it gets harder to break as we get older. Getting students to restate their problems in constructive terms such as ‘in what ways might’ or ‘what are all the ways’
THE CREATIVITY PROFESSOR Dr. Cyndi Burnett is the Director of Distance Education Programs at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at Buffalo State and the co-author of the book My Sandwich Is a Spaceship: Creative Thinking for Parents and Young Children. She’s also an EFS parent, as well as a great resource to Elmwood Franklin administration and faculty, having led various presentations and workshops with them throughout the year.
What’s behind the current emergence of creativity as an important area of study? In the mid-20th century, psychologist J. P. Guilford published a call for research into creativity, a topic which previously had been all but neglected in the scientific community. Since then, says Dr. Burnett, numerous academic programs in creative studies have taken off (Buffalo State’s is the oldest), and there are now seven scholarly journals dedicated to the field. Beyond academia, it’s now widely recognized that creative thinking is a critical asset for leaders in all professions. The old stereotype that creativity is merely “being artsy” is losing hold. “It’s not about arts and crafts,” says Dr. Burnett. “It’s about thinking in new and appropriate ways, and public perception of that is finally coming around.”
Are creative people born that way, or must creativity be developed? The answer is yes to both questions—everyone has an innate capacity for creative thinking, but it’s a skill set that must be nurtured and exercised to fully take root. “Creativity won’t develop unless there are teachers or others that help to enhance it,” says Dr. Burnett. “Creativity can be hard work!” Much of the creative process can be made easier,
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however, by helping children acquire certain habits of mind, such as exploring alternatives, embracing challenges, following their curiosities, indulging their imaginations, taking multiple perspectives, and asking questions. “Young kids ask something like 200 questions a day, but as they get older, that number declines dramatically,” she says. By actively encouraging inquisitiveness, we can help to prevent a child’s natural sense of wonder from diminishing.
What kinds of practices can classrooms adopt to foster creativity? “The current public education system was not developed with the enhancement of creative thinking as a priority,” says Dr. Burnett. A high-stakes test-driven environment is not exactly conducive to fostering conditions such as experimentation, exchange, risk-taking, reflection, diversion, and play, which are the wellsprings of creative thought. By including these things as a regular part of classroom activities, teachers can directly support the creative habits of their students. And there’s something else: “The most important thing in a classroom for setting a creative environment is to have trust and openness. Students need to know they can ask questions and share ideas and opinions without being told they’re wrong.”