Creativity is the magical human act of doing something that might not work (Seth Godin)

Photo by Alice Dietrich on Unsplash

In these turbulent times of working from home during lockdown, Seth Godin's words take on a fresh resonance for me.

He says that Creativity and Leadership are related (yes, upper case):

Management isn’t. Management uses power and authority to get people to do tasks you know can be done. Management is needed, but management is insufficient.

Leadership is voluntary. It’s voluntary to lead and it’s voluntary to follow. If you’re insisting, then you’re managing…

And creativity is the magical human act of doing something that might not work. If you know it’s going to work–then it’s management.

I love the challenge in those ideas and the element of risk in creativity.

An expression I often use in challenging situations when we are short of solutions is to say to my team: Hey! We're teachers! We're creative people! We can lick this!

Good things can come from that kind of stance.

You look down, hearing the sound of the faces in the crowd (Pink Floyd)

Heavy hitters chewing over what epistemology means.

Okay - back to understanding what a meddler-in-the-middle does.

I'm about to make a series of seemingly random points and observations (it's how my brain works) but there are links and common themes, trust me.

First things first: it appears that the original article used to introduce the meddler idea is worth returning to - Erica McWilliam's Teaching for creativity: from sage to guide to meddler.

The first time I read it was in quick preparation for our digital conference and I found the article dense and difficult to grasp.

So, back to the future we go...

Good thing too, as it turns out, as I'd missed the link to creativity first time I read it; she argues the value of meddling-in-the-middle 'in order to build students' creative capacity'.

To me, talking of creativity is akin to talking about quality. Blimin' difficult and fraught with misunderstandings and differences of opinion.

Being creative, according to Erica, is having 'a propensity for epistemological agility rather than...for artistry'.

By the looks of it, Epistemology is a concept that every philosopher worthy of a Monty Python sketch, has had a go at defining over the years.

At its widest application, it means 'understanding' and more narrowly - 'having the ability to distinguish between justified belief and opinion'.  

Epistemology addresses some really heady questions, such  as: 

• What makes justified beliefs justified?
• What does it mean to say that we know something?"
• Fundamentally - "How do we know that we know?

Erica defines creativity/ epistemological agility as 'the capacity to work productively across knowledge domains'.

Erica then applies this definition to employment in the global environment. That is - creatives contribute by theorizing, they see the big picture, experiment  and collaborate with others. Thereby innovating. Thereby saving the planet.

Erica claims that it is much more important for teachers to model how to be 'usefully ignorant' and to assist students, rather being all-knowing (even if we could be, we can't anymore - the technology genie is well and truly out of the bottle).

The meddler-in-the-middle, then, is a builder of creative capacity.

I get that.

I also like the way this model positions teachers and students as mutually involved in 'assembling and/or dis-assembling knowledge' together.

It's a learning partnership, which as Erica points out, has powerful implications for assessment and beyond!

Next post: Part 2 - the second half of this article which discusses teaching Shakespeare as an example of how to be a meddler.

Imagine all the people living for today (John Lennon)

Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

Imagination is the root of creativity.

Creativity is putting your imagination to work. It is applied imagination.

Innovation is putting new ideas into practice.

Sir Ken Robinson

Everyone deserves a chance to walk with everyone else (Family of the Year)

According to Sir Ken Robinson, great teachers fulfil three essential purposes for students:

• Inspiration (inspire students with their passion)
• Confidence (helping students acquire skills and knowledge)
• Creativity (enabling students to experiment, inquire, ask questions, be curious) 

Simple huh!

Happily, there are many great teachers out there. We have all had them! 

Me? Sure thing... and I have learnt from the best. 

Warwick Gibbs at Mount Albert Grammar gave me that confidence in 1974 while I was recovering from illness (details coming on Wozza's Place).

His passion for languages and his interest in my progress was instrumental in helping me become a teacher.

Roger Horrocks, Wystan Curnow, Margo/Clay and others at Auckland University followed up and brought a new world to view.

Roger Moses, Colin Prentice, John Clarke, Jackie Barron along with current colleagues, like Amy, Greg and Toni, continue to inspire me, give me confidence to experiment and enable me to be better.

And so it goes.

You win some, lose some, all the same to me (RIP Lemmy - Motorhead)

We're just about at the new year. 

2016 is poised, ready to pounce! What better way to end the old year than with these five items.

1 What students say they want!
In the old days students had zero say - these days - we're at least interested in what they say they want - so read this!

2 LISTEN!
It's a forgotten skill. Listen to this message, please!

3 Creativity in ignorance
I like this idea - there is creativity in ignorance.

4 Typeface
This is a pretty cool site - lets you see various typefaces - I'm big on wysiwyg.

5 Awesome reader
Love this too - suggests other books that you might like! Anything that promotes reading is alreight by me.

Hey there Mr. Blue, we're so pleased to be with you (Electric Light Orchestra)

I read a pretty sad blogpost recently themed around the idea that exams are killing student creativity (http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2015/feb/07/secret-teacher-exams-students-thinking).

That's not the case with our New Zealand system of Internal Achievement Standards and External exams.

Students can generally pick and choose subjects/ courses that are heavily weighted one way or the other, depending on their strengths.

Our girls certainly love (and excel in) the Internal standards - they gain Exellence passes through their creativity and skill in English classes and, more and more, we're exploring how they can tap into their curiosity and creativity.

The blogpost from The Guardian (world's best newspaper - fact!) bemoaned the lack of thinking being encouraged in the UK system (I've taught A level English in a sixth form college so I sympathise to a degree) with this:

“Will this help us in the exam?”It is no wonder this is all students care about because this is all they are conditioned to care about. Every student has Ucas predicted grades, internal predicted grades, minimum expected grades, personal expected grades, AS grades, and A2 grades. It cannot be said enough that we should teach students to think, not just to learn the syllabus. All they want is to follow the rulebook and pass exams.

NCEA - love it or don't - it does allow our students to think and be creative if teachers can think and...um...be creative!

I've given my Level 3 class the freedom to work on either a connections unit, and/or a critical text unit, and/or a close viewing assignment. They choose the themes, the texts, the delivery system. 

They are engaged in thinking and planning some breathtakingly fantastically creative things. Sky is the limit and it's blue and wonderful!

What if the water and wishes appear? (Bob Mould)

I've spent a lot of the last week thinking about our senior English courses for next year.

It became time to finally move from the theoretical to the practical and actually design the courses with my colleagues.

We ended up introducing a potential student inquiry/thematic aspect to the year's programme (and deliberately separated internal NCEA standards and external standards so that all the internally assessed work is done early in the first half of the year).

I like our aim for these courses: 

This course aims to cater to student diversity, creativity, collaboration, and to foster and reward student curiosity. A student driven inquiry in Terms 1 and 2 may be used to include the internal standards.  

With that in mind I have now turned my attention to creating a framework to help students engage their creativity and curiosity. I found this cool diagram via Twitter:

It's that first column- posing real questions, that I'll be working on next week at school using, as a starting point, a powerpoint that a colleague is designing to help students understand the possibilities on offer. 

My excitement and own creative juices are flowing!