"Gather. Store. Recombine." Teaching Students Creativity | #30DBB - Day 7

This is day 7 of "The 30 Day Blog Binge." Learn more

We know we should teach our students to be creative, but how do we do it? Creativity sometimes seems like this odd, elusive thing that only the most brilliant of artists possess. Even the idea of "teaching creativity" seems counterintuitive: isn't it something we either have or we don't?

But creativity is something that can be learned and nurtured, and the best place to start is with the most basic formula for being creative: "Gather. Store. Recombine."

I first found the idea of "Gather. Store. Recombine" in the writings of a Disney Imagineer on how they come up with new ideas for shows, stories, rides, and experiences in Disney's theme parks. It's further used on the E82 blog in a series of posts called "A History of Imagination." But whether or not creative people are using these three words as they write about their process, the structure of creativity stays essentially the same.

The idea behind it is very simple. People that we consider to be creative, the ones who create unique and novel things, engage in three simple actions: gather as many ideas as possible across different domains of knowledge, store them for future use, then recombine them into something new and unique. When looked at through this lens, instead of sitting and waiting for an ephemeral "Eureka!" moment to hit, creativity is simply a discipline of thought and action.

This is the goal of the STEM/STEAM movement, where schools work to pull down the walls that separate their isolated course offerings to create a coherent whole. Within this whole, ideas from any discipline can be used in another. Want to use advanced mathematics and the laws of physics to create a player piano with marbles and aluminum? Do it! Curious how a stop-motion animation of the development of platypus adaptations would look rendered in a neo-Cubist style? Go for it! In recombining previously disconnected ideas, we discover new ways of looking at the world. In our new way of looking, we discover even more connections, leading us to more unique and elegant solutions. Creativity breeds creativity.

It's our responsibility, then, to teach students the habits of thought that lead to creativity. So how do we do that? Here are a few suggestions for helping students unlock their creative potential.

1. Gather.
   Encourage students to read widely. Don't limit students to what you think they should read. Expose students to a multitude of expository texts, especially at the elementary grade levels where fiction can be dominant. Show students real-life examples of engineers, scientists and artists coming together from different disciplines to solve otherwise unsolvable problems. Explain how NASA is combining origami and rocket science to get solar arrays into space. Reinforce the importance of always being curious by beginning each school day with a "Wonder" from a site like Wonderopolis. Emphasize to students that ideas to solve anything can come from anywhere.


2. Store.
   Help students develop a strategy to organize information and ideas by giving them options. Scrapbooks? Journals? Google Keep? Diigo? The way in which ideas and information are stored will have an impact on the connections students can make. Do they store it visually, with overlapping domains in the same place, where it's more likely for inspiration to hit as they see a brand new connection? Use a site like Padlet for students to collect a diversity of ideas they think might help them solve a problem they're facing so they can more easily see relationships between ideas. Encourage students that however they choose to store information, they need to periodically go through it again. As they find new information and ideas, it will start to change how they view what they've gathered before.


3. Recombine.
   Ask: "Is there a way to use _______ in a way it's never been used before? Can you take _______ apart and use the parts for something different? What if a young child looked at _________? How many different uses do you think they could come up with for it?" Encourage students to "embrace something absurd" as they put things back together. Make a point of asking how ideas in another class they're taking might solve the problem they face in yours. Especially ask them when you don't know the answer. Always keep in mind that recombining takes boldness to suggest something new and unique, so make sure your classroom is a safe place for students to take those kind of creative risks.

Of course, creativity will never be boiled down to a formula. But as we strive to give students a framework for solving the problems they'll face in the future, I'm convinced that "Gather. Store. Recombine." is one of the best structures there is to start nurturing those creative habits now.

#30DBB

Teachers: We Are Not Center of the Universe

As I work on wrapping up my master's degree, I have a class this semester that lasts for three hours, on a weeknight, and it gets out at 10:00 p.m. This is unfortunate.

On the bright side, this course gives me plenty of time to think and reflect (and write this post), because I'm able to sit in the back and only tune in when my professor moves to the next slide in his PowerPoint. Being allowed to sit through this extraordinary learning opportunity (#snark), I find myself thinking back on my time in the classroom. And I'm not all that pleased with what I see.

When I taught, too many days I just stood and delivered (in a non-Jaime Escalante kind of way), thinking that my students were engaged with what I was saying simply because I was saying it. I had an over inflated sense of how important I was in my own classroom.

I thought I was the center of the universe.

In retrospect, I'm lucky my students learned anything at all. They were compliant, fighting through the haze like the one I'm in right now. It's the fogginess that sets in when you know the authority in control of your situation is in love with the sound of their own voice. And once you figure out that the person who's talking isn't stopping, there's not much of a reason to stay mentally present.

Moving backwards on my own personal timeline is impossible, so I can't do anything about the past. But I can take a look at the people I coach now and consider the way I work with them.

Basically, I need to shut up more.

I am the center of my own universe, not anyone else's. Learning, regardless of your age, is only as important to you as it has relevance to your life. And since I can't possibly know what's relevant to every person I'm training, the only way I can find that out is to be quiet and listen, then try to connect.

People have to engage with ideas and figure out what it means in their situation. That's because most of us are only interested in knowledge as it relates to us and our world. The research tells us that adults approach professional development with a problem-solving mentality: if you can't show them how it meets a need, they won't engage with it, and they haven't learned. They've sat.

They've done what I'm doing right now in this class.

So I'm training a group of administrators in the morning, and I hope I can remember this eyes-glazing-over, motivation-sapping feeling I have right now if I start to talk too much. I think it'll keep me in check.

Because if I really want people to learn, I have to teach with the understanding that everyone thinks that the planets orbit around them. The question is simply this: am I willing to give up being the center of my universe to try and understand theirs for a bit? If so, this teaching thing just might work out for me.