Don't Be Creative

Take a look at this pic­ture. If I asked you to sort them into piles, how would you do it? OK, now do it again a dif­fer­ent way. No prob­lem, right? Again. Took a lit­tle longer for you to think of a way to sort them this time, didn’t it?

I’ve done this with kids and adults of var­i­ous ages. The first few times we sort, it’s sim­ple and straight­for­ward. The next few times it starts to get more chal­leng­ing. Even­tu­ally there are peo­ple sit­ting there think­ing, “There is no other way to sort these!”

When peo­ple have got­ten to this point, I’ve said some­thing along the lines of, “You have to stretch your think­ing. Be cre­ative!” This would often just result in frus­tra­tion for both of us.

Now I know why. Accord­ing to this arti­cle in Newsweek, telling some­one to “be cre­ative” can actu­ally have the oppo­site effect, clos­ing off their think­ing and mak­ing it more rigid.

So how can we help our stu­dents become more cre­ative? Try some of these strategies:

• Plant the seed. Instead of a vague “be cre­ative,” tell some­one, “give me an idea that only you could come up with.” Accord­ing to Marc Runco of the Uni­ver­sity of Geor­gia, this sim­ple switch in direc­tions can dou­ble the student’s cre­ative output.
• Make it messy. Cre­ativ­ity is squashed when stu­dents feel like they are look­ing for one right answer. Give stu­dents prob­lems that have mul­ti­ple solu­tions. Even bet­ter, give them prob­lems with no clear solu­tion. Muck­ing around in the prob­lem solv­ing process can free up cre­ative thinking.
• Never accept the first answer. Even if a stu­dent gives you the response you were expect­ing, say “Can any­one think of another answer?” or “Is there another way to do that?” It sets an expec­ta­tion that one answer, even if it works, isn’t the end of the process but just the beginning.
• Teach cre­ativ­ity tech­niques. We often think of cre­ativ­ity as some sort of ethe­real aura that some peo­ple have and some peo­ple don’t. In fact cre­ativ­ity is a skill and a process. It takes work and it can be taught. Tech­niques like SCAMPER can give kids a con­crete han­dle on some­thing that can seem abstract and complicated.
• Reverse the roles. Instead of giv­ing an assign­ment to stu­dents, ask them to tell you what they would do if they were the teacher. “What would you ask the class to do to show they under­stood this unit?” Share the best ideas with the class and let them pick their assignment.
• Get out. Chang­ing the per­spec­tive can change stu­dents’ think­ing. Hold a class in the cafe­te­ria, or the audi­to­rium, or the foot­ball sta­dium. Or in a liv­ing room, on the side­walk, or in an amuse­ment park. Rearrange your class­room or your schedule.

And before you think, “That’s not pos­si­ble in my school,” take a minute and come up with a way to make it hap­pen that only you could think of. Or ask your stu­dents to fig­ure it out. You might be sur­prised at what they think of.

So what did I miss? What are your sure­fire meth­ods for get­ting your stu­dents to think and work creatively?