Teachers Change the World with Creative Strengths Spotting

As teachers, how can we change the world most powerfully?

By unlocking the strengths of our students.

Think of Peter H. Reynolds' seventh grade math teacher, who saw him doodling and called him aside after class. Mr. Matson didn't admonish him, but asked if Peter would use his drawing skills to create a comic to illustrate to the class the difficult math concept they were learning. Talk about impact!

This one act validated and encouraged Peter's "sharing through drawing" for life. It was a tiny pebble that started a magnificent, self-perpetuating ripple effect.

Now, his books have sold an estimated 20+ million copies. 13 million people in 178 countries participate annually in Dot Day, and millions around the world have been encouraged to "make their own marks." And this is just ONE of Mr. Matson's students.

But there's a problem.

We face so many demands and have so little time. Kids these days seem harder to manage and behavior problems abound. How can we possibly do for each of our students what Mr. Matson did for his?

Over my two decades in education, first as a teacher and now working with teachers, I've created a simple (and free!) tool to help: the Creative Strengths Spotter. When we begin to see through the lens of creative strengths, it becomes second nature to spot them in students and find ways to harness those strengths.

Spot Your Own Strengths First

Just like they say on airplanes about oxygen masks, it's key to start with your own strengths. To get the complete and full-sized PDF workbook, go to Creative Strengths Spotter. Here in this article I'll give the simple version.

Take a look at the t-shirts below.

Which resonate most strongly with you?
Which would you be proud to wear, because you feel they describe you?

Choose as many as you'd like.

You may have chosen them all, or you may have chosen a handful. Now look back on your t-shirts and pick your top three. Then, pick your top one.

Write it on your whiteboard as a reminder, or on the back of your hand with Sharpie. Notice how you exemplify this strength each day.

How do you currently use it?

In what ways might you use it more?

How might you amplify it in your teaching? 

Seeing and using your own creative strengths is the first step to spotting them in students. When you do, you serve as a role model and students learn from your example. You start your own ripple effect.

A teacher in one of my professional development workshops realized that humor was one of her top strengths. "I use humor all the time in class, but I didn't realize it is a creative strength!" she told the group. Once she saw that humor was a major asset to her teaching and to her students' development, she became even more intentional about using it in her classroom.

Spot Your Students' Strengths

Now, pick t-shirts for your students. Begin with your most difficult, your "problem child." The one with a reputation throughout the school.

"I can't see that kid's strengths!" you might say. "(S)he drives me nuts!"

Good news. Recently I created a new dimension for the strengths spotter. You can look for the things that annoy you; these are an indication of creative strengths that need harnessing. For example, the distracted doodler in Mr. Matson's class was really a kid brimming with imagination. Perhaps Mr. Matson had to see the problem first, before he saw the strength.

So often the problems that students manifest in class result from intense creative strengths lacking avenues for expression. In math, all Peter could do to use his strength was to doodle, but Mr. Matson's brilliance was to give it a valid avenue for use, something connected to the task at hand in the classroom.

On this page of t-shirts, you can see what strength each "problem behavior" might indicate.

Walt Disney (and so many others) had a similar experience as a kid. As you can imagine, he had a keen sense of humor. His middle school principal let him pop into other classrooms to tell jokes. This was a less clever solution than Mr. Matson's, but gave Walt a chance to use his humor during the school day without getting in trouble.

When teachers are able to see through the lens of creative strengths, we begin to identify our students accurately. We begin to identify their possibility. When we're willing to flip our thinking from deficit-based to creative strengths-based mindset, we can actually change the world--one student ripple effect at a time.

About the Author

Kathryn Haydon is an award-winning educator and the founder of Sparkitivity.  She works with teachers to integrate creative process and skill-building into academic curriculum to personalize learning, improve collaboration, and deepen engagement. When you get the Creative Strengths Spotter, you will have access to all her free teacher resources and every-other-Tuesday Spark Report.

CITATIONS

The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, Published 2003 by Candlewick Press

Challenge Assumptions in the Classroom and Launch Creativity

How to Challenge Assumptions in the Classroom and Launch Creativity

Students in a high school history class have just completed their final projects and everyone sits down for presentations. About halfway through, just as everyone’s eyes are starting to droop, one student’s presentation blows everyone else’s out of the water - it’s creative; it’s funny; it’s enthralling. At the end, several students remark, “Well, I didn’t know we could do THAT!”

The thing is, there was no reason for them to think they COULDN’T “do that,” but they had each made the obvious choice when crafting their presentations. They had assumed that there was only one way to present the information.

They had not been introduced to the creativity skill of “challenging assumptions.”

Creativity isn’t one monolithic thing; it is a set of skills, and way of thinking that we can learn and develop. A creative mind learns, among other things, to challenge assumptions. This is a really fun creativity skill to master, and one that can make a huge difference in how we approach life. If we teach students to challenge assumptions, they will be more creative in how they demonstrate knowledge. They will be able to make more interesting connections between concepts, and they will better critical thinkers and problem solvers.

Going Places, written by Paul Reynolds and Peter H. Reynolds, is a story about challenging assumptions. It is based on the animated film Above and Beyond, produced by FableVision for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) to introduce the 4Cs - creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration - the skills P21 defines as necessary for students’ future success in the world.

In the story, a boy receives a kit to make a vehicle. At first, he mistakenly assumes that because his kit is just like everyone else’s, his vehicle should look like everyone else’s. Luckily, with a little inspiration and collaboration with his friend Maya, he is able to challenge his assumptions and create something truly amazing and unique.

Try this fun problem-solving activity with your students to help them learn about challenging assumptions:

Break students into groups and provide each group with a kit. The kits should be a box or tray with 4 cups holding the following materials: scissors, markers, tape, glue, puff balls, strips of paper, 3 toothpicks, and four Popsicle sticks.

The instructions: Using only this kit, make a table at least 1.5 inches tall that can hold the weight of a (specific) moderately heavy book.

In this activity, the most successful groups will probably be the ones that can view the box/tray and/or cups as building materials, not just as containers for materials! (Note that there is still not one right answer for this activity. We must not present ONE SOLUTION as the only correct way. There are many ways to build a table that fits the requirements!)

When presented with one purpose for an item, our brains often see that as its only function. This is called “functional fixedness.” If we can practice recognizing and evaluating our assumptions, we can get better at seeing possibilities all around us instead of just seeing things the way we always have.

The world’s most difficult challenges will not have a simple answer. Instead, they will require an ability to change how we look at things and evaluate whether our long-held assumptions are accurate or are holding us back. We also must be able to engage in collaboration, listen to others’ ideas in an affirmative way, and practice resilience when an idea fails. These are necessary skills for creative problem solving, and worth practicing in the classroom.

If you try this activity, let us know! What did you learn about your students’ thought processes? How easy or difficult was it for them to challenge assumptions? How can you use this knowledge to continue to cultivate creative thinking in your classroom?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sara Smith is an educator, learner, and creativity professional. She holds a Master of Science in creativity from the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY College at Buffalo. Sara is compelled by learning and its intersection with creativity, and her vision is to create and support creative communities that help people to grow and to nurture their passions and strengths.

CITATIONS:

Going Places is published by Simon and Schuster and is available at The Dot Central.

Above and Beyond

Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Functional fixedness

3 Ways to Make Your Classroom More Creative and Why

Creativity is one of the most powerful actions our brains can carry out. Some people think that being creative is something extra, like the seasoning on a meal, but in truth it is the meal. Without creativity, it’s as though you’ve just got raw ingredients (like knowledge, ideas, and know-how); however, when you use creativity to combine those ingredients in a meaningful way, you’ll find that you’ve turned individual components into something substantial, useful, and unique.

That’s why in Bloom’s Taxonomy, “creating” is at the top!

Creating something new and useful is the work of progress. Both the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report list creativity as a vital skill that’s only growing in importance. Both also include complex problem-solving in their lists, which requires creative thinking because known solutions don’t exist for complex problems.

You know we love drawing and painting, but we also know that creativity is much more than that. Creativity is where new inventions, medical breakthroughs, musical masterpieces, scientific discoveries, great novels, philosophical theories, and so much more are born. For kids, the creativity that leads to those amazing things starts as practice in solving everyday problems with a creative mindset, in trying again and a little differently when something doesn’t work, in thinking up lots of ideas before choosing the one to go with, in dreaming up outlandish possibilities, in taking time to wonder about the things around them, in coming up with unusual ways to put things together, in being brave enough to test out their thinking.

We are here to help teachers understand and value these creative skills so they can provide students the opportunity to practice them and become confident creators. Many of these students will go on to change history, but equally important are those who learn to create meaning in their lives and the lives of those around them through their creativity.

Here are three ways to make your classroom more creative today.

1. Respond in an open way. When a student provides a wrong answer, instead of saying, “No” or “Not quite” or even “Try again,” try staying open and saying something like, “Interesting, can you explain your thinking?” or “Walk us through how you got there.” Mistakes can be the most valuable learning tools, but not if the response to them shuts down further thinking. Also try these same phrases for correct answers! Just saying “Yes!” to a correct answer puts an end to the thought process as well.

2. Surprise your students. The science of surprise is fascinating and tells us that surprising moments pique curiosity and create the desire to share with others. Not to mention that playfulness is a creative skill. Students will remember and talk about novel moments in class. So, wear a crown when teaching about monarchies, have the students work UNDER their desks for a while, play rainforest sounds over speakers when studying the rainforest, or have a puppet give a mini-lesson. The limit is only in your imagination.

3. Provide opportunities for divergent (possibility) thinking. This means giving the students time to think of a lot of ideas around something they are working on. Perhaps have them write 5 different ways to open a story or other piece of writing before they choose which one to use, or see if they can come up with 5 different ways to solve the same math question, or give them the answer to a question (igneous rock!) and have THEM come up with possible questions for which that is the answer.

Good luck!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sara Smith is an educator, learner, and creativity professional. She holds a Master of Science in creativity from the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY College at Buffalo. Sara is compelled by learning and its intersection with creativity, and her vision is to create and support creative communities that help people to grow and to nurture their passions and strengths.

CITATIONS:

• Bloom’s Taxonomy

• Partnership for 21st Century Skills

• World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report

• Science of surprise