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One Thing That Will Change The Way You Look at Creativity 

11/21/2013

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Andrew and I tell the story of our collaboration frequently.  We did the Flipped Learning Network's opening webinar a few weeks ago, and we presented at the Global Education Convention about our journey together and what it has done in our classroom and to our practice.

I never feel like we can truly capture how much has changed as a result of committing to work together.  The easy answer is "everything" but even that doesn't feel like enough.  In truth, meeting Andrew was like taking collaboration crack - he and I started creating and never looked back, to the point now where not one aspect of my life is untouched by the influence of our collaboration.

And yet, it is only recently that I've begun to see the way in which my view of creativity has been shaped by our collaboration.

I never thought of myself as an artistic or creative person.  I do know how to play several instruments, and I can sew, knit, and crochet, but the nerve damage in my hands has made the fine motor skills required for art nearly impossible for me.  You see, my definition of "artistic" was "can draw well" and because I couldn't, and had little "innate talent" (really, a desire to work as hard as I would need to in order to improve) I decided I just wasn't a creative person.

What I missed in my narrow definition was that creativity isn't about drawing.  It's about thinking differently.  It's about bringing new things into the world for the purpose of making people's lives better.  That's what I learned in my first few years teaching, and became for me the point of my professional journey: helping students see differently, and create in them a desire to continue learning because of the content and skills developed in my class.

When I met Andrew, I exaggerated my video editing capabilities.  I knew I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but hadn't had the need to before that point.  He brought the impetus, so I learned how to edit videos.  And eventually, I started to see video editing as a creative endeavour as much as visual art is.  All art is about telling a story, not about lines or shapes on a page.

The story we were telling was not just one of classroom transformation.  It was one of personal transformation.  I now see the ways in which I'm tremendously creative, almost to the point that I feel ridiculous for ever thinking that I wasn't.

Seeing that shift, I began to see the role of creativity in my classroom differently too.  I used to have art projects as part of the curriculum, but I phased them out because rigor.  I used to have students do elaborate projects that were often beautiful and artistic, but I stopped because standards.  I used to try and make creativity the bedrock of the student experience in my class, despite my narrow definition, but I stopped because confidence.

Genius Hour cemented in my mind how much has shifted because of the influence Andrew has had on my practice.  Actually, that's not quite accurate.  Yes, it was Andrew's entrance that marked the beginning of the change, but really, it's all about what we've built collaboratively.  It wasn't Andrew or me acting in isolation - all the good ideas and creativity and innovation come as products of our time spent in collaboration.  None of it exists without all of it.

My students almost all did their project on something to do with creativity.  I heard them discussing what it means to be creative, and it mirrors my own (much better) understanding: being creative is seeing possibilities where others see only limitations.  It is being willing to be different, even when that's the harder choice.  It is taking risks and daring greatly, even when it pushes us so close to the edge that we fall off a few times.  They all understand that.

And that's the real beauty from Genius Hour: only a few students wrote down facts or specific details about the content of what we learned.  Instead, they made abstract renderings of those ideas.  The common themes were about divergent thinking, growth mindset, factory-models of education being crushed by a new way of learning, how puppets are a pedagogical tool, and even why flipped learning gives them more control over what they learn, how they learn it, and how to demonstrate their learning.

Our students are experiencing something profoundly transformative: that collaboration drives creativity, and you have to practice taking risks to be able to truly learn.  

I now know how to use Adobe After Effects - professional level graphics software as well as basic video editing programs because the collaborative relationship Andrew and I forged compelled me to truly learn, even when it took failure after failure to produce success.  In a very real way, I am now able to be much more creative because there was a space made and a spark of inspiration lit by the relationship Andrew and I have.  And my creativity fuels the learning environment in which my students catch the spark to light their own creative furnaces.

That's what collaboration can do: light fires that had been extinguished.  Foster creativity and critical thinking.  Provide the space and motivation to learn something deeply.  That's why Andrew and I will continue to tell our story.  We believe that ALL teachers should have the same opportunity we did to be transformed.  We believe that our students deserve that.

And we believe that our collaboration will continue to produce more creativity as more teachers start the journey we've undertaken together.  I hope we can continue to point the way to the road less travelled, where while there are thorns and rocks and unsure footing, there is also great beauty and joy and when you've walked far enough, you get to see something that never before existed.  Something that wouldn't be in the world, but for you finding it together.  It is that collaboration that will make you more creative, and will in turn give your students more opportunities to be creative as well.

Collaboration will change your view of creativity forever, just as it has mine.

This collaborative road will be more difficult.  Sometimes, it will be so difficult that you struggle to remember why you started walking in the first place, but if you have found a partner who makes your classroom better, it will be worth every moment of difficulty.  

We - all of us - are #bettertogether.
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Genius Hour: Building Community & Becoming Creators

5/30/2012

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For the last year and a half, we've used the Blank White Page project for students to have 20% time to work on something they really love and are interested in learning.

When I heard about Genius Hour, I saw a difference from BWP/20% time.  I may have this wrong, but it seems to me that Genius Hour is a single class period spent creating something within the context given by the teacher.

Andrew and I are generally anti-test, but we did want there to be some kind of summative assessment from this semester, so we thought that Genius Hour could help us make that more awesome.  We asked students to create something that represented what they had learned: skills, content, concepts, or even something they had learned about themselves as a result of being in this course.  They could use anything I provided: lots of art supplies, puppet-making equipment, green-screens, video camera, iPads, laptops, and even puppets.  Or they could bring in their own materials.

They had a 45 minute period, less the time it took to get started and to share at the end.  Not an ideal amount of time (since the actual time spent on creating was about 35 minutes) but it was a good introduction to Genius Hour.  I asked them all to take about five minutes to plan and explain their plan to someone (or solicit collaborators) so that they didn't just throw themselves into a poorly-thought-out project.  

What I saw was that they took the time seriously and for the most part, committed to a topic and project pretty quickly.  Many of them got better ideas while they talked to one another, and some teamed up.  Then they started working.

Here's what didn't happen:
  • No one asked, "How will this be graded?" 
  • No one complained about the task
  • No one said "I didn't learn anything"
  • No one couldn't figure out something concrete to do
  • No one refused to work
  • No one was afraid to try something, even if it might fail


I did have one student turn in his work and say, "I know it's not good enough. Do you think it's good enough?"  

I asked, "What were the instructions?"

"To make something to show what I've learned."

"Did you do that?"

"Yes."

"Then do you think it's good enough?"

"Yes."

"Awesome."

This is a kid who wanders around the room when he's bored, and struggles to stay on task.  But when he started his work time, he went into a corner of the room, turned up his music, and worked straight through for 35 minutes.  I have never seen him that focused and attentive to anything.

That's what I noticed over and over - they have learned to trust me and our class community enough to dare greatly and take risks.  I had a student use plastic knives for an hourglass.  I had a student make beautiful little drawn figures and use more of those knives to make them into little puppets.  I had lots of students make videos - one about stopping bullies, several about what real education means and how creativity plays a part, and even an auto-tuned song (made on my iPad with the Songify app) used as a background for a puppet music video.  There are tons of art projects, and a few pop-up books.  There is a clay sculpture of a student sitting in a cage, and next to it is written, "Welcome to Hell" with hell crossed out and "School" written above it.

As we near the end of the trimester (tomorrow, actually) and start planning for what comes next, I hope to add more of these days into the curriculum.  Yes, it was a day we could have used for the other work and projects we have going on.  Yes, it was messy (literally and figuratively) and chaotic.  

But telling students that you value their creativity so much that you are giving them an entire class period to be creative does more than just demonstrate what they can produce.  It builds community and gives students the message that their ideas and talents and selves are accepted, no matter what.

Genius Hour was definitely worth the time.  And we - my students, Andrew and I - can't wait until the next one.

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    A completely incomplete record of three years spent flipping my high school English classes with my cross-country collaborative partner, Andrew Thomasson. But after a decade in high school, I made the switch to a new gig: flipping English and History for 6th graders in Tiburon, CA.

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