A book for those interested in making real changes in their lives

Earlier this week I was sent a delightful  e-mail by a former pupil, Jolene Stockman, of the school I was principal of.

Jolene had read one of my blogs about the importance of schools developing in every student positive learning identity, enjoyed it, and thought and thought I would be interested in readinga  small book she has published.

Although it is targeted at teenagers it is equally useful for anyone who wants to create a new life for themselves. I would think it very useful for secondary school students who are having problem working out who they want to become.

The book is called Total Blueprint for World Domination - life planning for teens.

It is a delightful read and I have made use of some of Jolene's ideas myself! It is never to late to dream.

Below is a summary from Jolene's book .

(A Kindle books is available from Amazon and for those interested check out Jolene's blog and website.)

Total Blueprint for World Domination - summary  from the first chapter:

Each chapter contains practical act ivies to develop a personal blueprint.

For world domination you need two things: a superhero and a blueprint.

You’ve already sorted the hero (they’re wearing your shoes), and as you work through this book you will create a total blueprint for domination of your world. Oh, and when you hear “world domination,” forget weapons and wars. Think: magical and emotional worlds. Think: your reality. Achieving world domination means empowering yourself to create the world you want.

Scene One: Super You. We’re going to create a personal vision.

This vision will set the foundation for your new world. Plus, you’ll find out why you are the best person to make your dreams come true!

Scene Two: World Domination.

We’re going to dig up the things that get you excited, and find ways to bring them into your life. We’ll define and design exactly where you want to go. And we’ll dream: big, bigger, biggest, and mind-blowing!

Scene Three: Target. We’ll get SMART, and set up your targets

.

You’ll feel the deliciousness of anticipation. Your perfect world is well within your sights!

Scene Four: Aim. This is it!

We’re going to take your dreams, and set up a plan. We will aim for your perfect world. Aim for it, ready to take over!

Scene Five: Learn.

We’ll get to know the coolest person on the planet - you! When you ask for help, the universe opens up. You’ll get ready to create your world, and find out how learning can turn any situation into success!

Scene Six: Expose Yourself.

 You will figure out your challenges, and dig up more of the truth about you. You’ll get even braver, and learn how to handle the three kinds of fear: brain, heart, and kryptonite.

Scene Seven: Get to the Yes. You only have control over one person. But you are not on your own! Recruit your world domination army. Plus - persistence, enthusiasm, desire: we’ll find ways to get to the yes!

Scene Eight: Fire!

As you take over your world, you will start to feel the power that you were born with. Your life is an incredible force. You can change, create, grow, inspire. It’s all up to you! What are your intentions?

Scene Nine: Let Go.

You will let go of your beautiful plans and detailed goals. You will relax, have faith, and know that you are open to the ultimate possibilities.

In the book you’ll find tools and jewels you can use to design (and dominate!) your dream world.

The world needs its ass kicked. You’re going to do it. It starts now!

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Creativity,Personalized Learning

To cultivate creativity -work like an artist!

My brother Graeme and self have a small exhibition in our home town of Waverley.

I have always associated myself with teachers who believe their role is to create the conditions to realize the creativity and talents of all their students. New Zealand has had such innovative teachers for many decades ( the most well known being Elwyn Richardson who developed his creative ideas in the 1950s).

Being a creative teacher is not easy because it goes against traditional approaches where teachers pass on to their students what it it they expect their students to know - usually following advice from those who have long since left the classroom. And as well such traditional teaching focuses on mainly ensuring basic skills are in place.

Today creative teaching is even more difficult as the current government is insistent on imposing national standards against professional advice in literacy and numeracy. At present these are more school standards but it doesn't take much insight to see that such standards ( which have issues with reliability) will soon morph into standardised national testing and league tables.

Read Kelvin Smythe's posting to see through the shallowness of many current 'best practice' approaches being foisted on teachers by contracted advisers and compliant principals.

If we had real educational leadership in our schools, rather than principals who seem happy to comply with imposed political directions, schools would become vital organisations to develop the talents and passions of all students - the kind of citizens we will need if we are to ever to become world leaders again.

The missing ingredient in school  are the conditions to develop the creativity of their teachers and in turn their students. It is not the issue of helping students get ideas from their teachers but more how to create the conditions for ideas to get the students.

Many artists say that ideas come to them from their experiences and what they do is to give form to such ideas in whatever medium they work in, be it sculpture, painting, dance. music, film or literature. And this approach applies to scientific discoveries.

So the question for teachers is how do they put themselves and their students in a frame of mind so they can receive inspiration when it comes to them. Creative artists, and scientists, spend lot of time sketching, experimenting , and playing around with others.

Collaboration with others with interests different from our own seems vital - combining ideas from other fields provides fertile ground for innovative ideas. Seeing patterns between various fields or experiences  is an attribute of creative people.

Creative people don't dismiss ideas because they seem strange - they are not trapped by pre-set intentions, goals or criteria. Some of the most important discoveries in science and art have been as the result of serendipity not planning

Once creative people   are attracted to an idea  they then throw themselves into the challenge as they begin the process of fleshing out their inspiration to give it shape - often ending up where they had no intention of being. And during this period they work long hours becoming single minded about bringing their ideas into tangible form.

Traditional schools are not a very good environment for such learning.

There are three basic practices for teachers to cultivate to develop creativity.

Immerse yourself in the area you are about to explore -  innovation often arises from  working with others. Consider the  conditions  past creative teachers needed? Link up with others - ideas emerge when people enter dialogue.

Secondly tolerate uncertainty. Resist the decision to rush to judgement because many ideas are stalled by premature judgement. Learn to appreciate ideas  that defy current expectations and learn to resist others who prefer to follow the beaten track.

Look for simple patterns as they emerge. As work progresses  take advantage of serendipity and mistakes - once again many scientific ideas have been developed by following up on mistakes.

Once the project is over take time to appreciate what has been achieved. Think about what has been learnt and what ideas flow out of what has been achieved. If the conditions are right new ideas will emerge even before the current ideas has been realised.

In a creative school the curriculum will emerge.

What is important is that both teachers and students develop the  creative mindset and are not distracted by imposed answers . As the New Zealand Curriculum states students should be their 'seekers , users and creators of their own knowledge'.

To achieve such a creative learning environment takes real leadership - it is about creating an environment that  encourages teachers and their students to become engrossed in real learning based on ideas that make sense to them.

Unfortunately too many schools are are too tied to control  habits left over from the last century.

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative Schools,Creativity,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

The Way David Hockney Sees It.

I have just returned from a few short weeks experiencing hospitality in the United Kingdom. Other than the wonderful hospitality I have had a wonderful opportunity to intimately explore the forests,country lanes and fields of Kent. Not to mention a number old country pubs but that another story.

My visit included a couple of days exploring the 'new' Tate, the 'old Tate' and the National  Gallery experiencing, close up, painting I have only ever seen in art books. 

One of my favourite artist is David Hockney one of Britain's greatest living artist. Hockney came into public notice in a Young Contemporaries Exhibition in 1961.

Hockney's skill has been his ability to make fresh pictures many based on real technical skill. While I was in England I picked up on an newspaper interview with Hockney and feel some of his ideas are worth sharing  with educators.

Hockney began his interest in art playing around with drawing exploring a range of media when really young as do most young people. Young people, Hockney says, all want to draw something that's in front of them which he suggests they have a deep desire to depict what they see. Children and artists gain great pleasure making and looking at pictures and this desire to capture images goes as far back as the cave artists.

It is a shame in our literacy orientated schools that all forms of art are not taken seriously as they might except by those teachers who retain a more creative approach to learning.

As with all artists Hockney faced the challenge of developing his own style. In the arts, as in every other human endeavor, it all too easy to fall in line with whatever is the current school of painting. In his early days Abstract Expressionism was all the rage but Hockney developed his own approach. There is a message here for teachers who also can too easily fall in line with current expectations and in the process lose their own individuality.

Photography seems to have put paid to realistic paintings.Hockney set about searching for ways of depicting the world in ways different to the way the camera sees things. His aim was to paint the things that camera couldn't capture. He has called his approach " obsessive naturalism".For a while he used photographs assist him in developing his art but eventually he believes photography has deeply affected the way we see things, making us take for granted the exciting things we see; images are all too easily produced.For example all art movements do the same thing - Impressionist painting made us appreciate the ephemeral play of light in the environment.

Artists see things personally- they are able to paint what cannot be seen. Picasso could paint the human figure in ways beyond any camera.

One of the basic motivations of Hockney is enjoying the act of seeing and in this area his ideas are relevant to those who help young people 'seek, use and create their own knowledge'as the New Zealand Curriculum states. And in this respect every child's art should reflect the personal style of the young artist.

Drawing makes you, Hockney says, 'look and ask questions about what you are seeing all the time. Drawing makes you see things clearer and clearer and clearer still.' The image, he says, passes into your brain , into your memory until it is recreated by your hands ( or through poetry, movement music or dance).

Artists like Hockney ,and young people  gain intense pleasure from looking and creating. Hockney talks about the joy of noticing and believes not everyone get the same satisfaction. Maybe more children would also experience this joy  if schools valued education through looking and creating - it is important to appreciate that such intense experiences lead to enriched vocabularies. Looking he believes is a positive act and has to be done deliberately - too many young children look but do not see.

As Hockney creates each action provides motivation for further actions and models the very way humans think - creating understanding as they go along and not having the finished product all set in the mind. We understand the present by comparing it with the past adding to ideas as we go along. And of course things change with different perspectives and at different times. This is in contrast to photographs which captures an instant in time. Painting, in contrast, can take several hours to complete -changing all the time as the art work evolves. Hockney has experimented with making art through collages of photographs in an attempt to fuse photography and art.

In classrooms children can capture images and ideas through digital photography to assist their memories but back in school these images can be re-interpreted in a range of ways from the real to the imaginary. And as part of the process of creation involve words and other forms of creativity.

Art is a valuable way of interpreting the world and ought to be seen as important as traditional literacy.

Before the word must come the experience.

Too many children have restricted vocabularies which limits their literacy growth - perhaps digging deeply into experiences might provide the very thing such children are lacking?

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative teaching,Creativity,teaching and learning

Education is about developing unique individuals - learning how to live.

A couple of quotes sent to me as comments - worth sharing

Debra's blog page provide these excellent quotes:

Once I read a proverb:

'Life is a school. Why not try taking the curriculum?'

Debra is influenced by the  great writer and thinker, John Gatto Taylor:

 'Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.'

This quote, from an Oliver Sacks book, provided by Alan, is worth a thought:
.
'… some predisposition or potential is built in genetically but requires stimulation, practice, environmental richness and nourishment if it is to develop fully. Natural selection may bring about the initial disposition, but experience and experiential selection are needed to bring our cognitive and perceptual capacities to their full realisation.'

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creativity,teaching and learning

An overwhelming creative experience

Astronauts entering the space shuttle: Zero Gravity theme.


I was invited to visit Opunake Primary School to see the culminating display of their current topic 'Zero Gravity'-  open to parents and the public the last two days of the term.

To make a change from suffering from the  endless wet days we had been having I decided to take up the offer. I knew more or less what to expect as I had visited several other end of term culminating displays. To add to the fun I decided to ask an old friend of mine to come just for the ride which is about 45 minutes from where I live. I didn't tell my friend we were going to visit a school. I didn't think it would be much of an enticement and when we pulled up at the school he said he would be happy to sit in the car until I had completed my visit.

I insisted he accompany me and to say that it was a mind changing experience for my friend would not be far from the truth.

Opunake school is a very special school. However, before the appointment of the current principal Lorraine, things were less than wonderful. Opunake is a decile four school with a forty percent Maori role and, at at the time of Lorraine's appointment, had little parental support and the staff somewhat demoralised.

Although I am a fan of individual creative teachers, believing they hold the power to develop ideas that can change schools, this power is magnified if a school is led by a creative principal

What makes the school special are the educational changes Lorraine has introduced to develop a more positive  inclusive learning community at the school. The changes are based around a collaborative approach to teaching combined with the use of a range of innovative teaching strategies.

At the end of each year students are asked to think about what concern they have and they would like to study.  This idea is based on the writings of American Middle School educator James Beane. Students contribute their ideas and from  their ideas common themes are  decided upon for the next years studies. Interestingly enough the students ideas easily cover normal curriculum requirements.

Once the theme has been decided upon a provocative title is decided upon and then the theme is explored for the term, or longer. Themes I have observed have covered 'Harry Potter' ( mainly maths and science)  'Are You my Mummy' ( Egypt), 'Shackleton', 'Space', 'The local Environment' - I can't remember the exact  more interesting titles.

The current thee was called ' Zero Gravity' - about space exploration.The photo  above does not do the study justice.

The  theme follows along the following process.

The teachers plan an interesting introductory experience to motivate a range of study  questions from the students which become the basis for the study.  For the Egyptian study the teachers put on a shadow play which involved  teachers acting as priests preparing body for the mummification  process. This was authentic enough for a year one student to tell his mum that the teachers cut up a year eight students but that it was OK because the young learner concerned said he had seen the 'victum' later in the library!

Following the introductory experience the  teachers plan activities for students, arranged in family groups, to be involved with.Older students are 'trained' to assist younger children. For the current study eighteen science experiments were planned - providing more physical science than most primary students experience in a year. This involves afternoons for the first week or two.

Literacy and numeracy programmes cover the mornings  no doubt content from current themes is involved.

The 'end on mind' is to prepare exhibits for the end of term display.These displays transform a room ( once two classrooms) into what can be best expressed as a school version of Te Papa. Once the displays are in place it is impossible to recognise the rooms as classrooms.

Following the family grouped experiences teachers, in their individual classrooms and teams, plan out their exhibits for the  display room and undertake  research about the theme. The school uses an inquiry approach across the school and a range of thinking skills but, as important as the process is, the whole point is to develop the end of term display/experience.

Back to our school visit.

Visitors enter the room through a Ground Zero Entrance Gate and are welcomed by an episode of Star Trek to add to the ambiance. Once over a a raised foiled covered entrance way the main room is entered.The entire space floor and ceiling is covered with black plastic.No outside light enters - light come from spotlights,computers and digital projector screens.  Visitors are confronted with large models of spaceships, moon buggies, alien tea parties, science experiments, white coated astronauts and a robot that has moving arms ( powered by students who take turns). Metres of tin foil has been used contrasted with white painted rockets, space shuttles, and moon buggies. And, as you get used to the experience, there are an endless range of childrens' research, art and language to admire.

To add to the excitement students are guiding their appreciative parents around and, while we were there, the local kindergarten was visiting. One can only imagine what they were thinking.

The next day I returned with a retired teacher who was, in my opinion, one of the most creative teachers of his time.I also invited a scientist ( who had been an adviser to the nearby Maui plant) who now writes science features for the local paper.

They too were impressed.

Opunake is a special school.

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Posted in: Creative Schools,Creativity,inquiry learning,Integrated Learning,Leadership,project based learning,teaching and learning

Focussing on developing student's passions

Room environment from from the 70s! When creative teachers were rare but valued.

Here we are in 2011 still trying to solve the problem of failing or reluctant learners. The Minister and her tame officials are busy spreading the word that one in five children are failing - the so called 'achievement tail'. In the process they are giving the impression that our school system is failing and that the obvious answer is to introduce National Standards.

A few things ought to be clarified before New Zealand heads down the same failing solutions as the UK, the USA and Australia. Standards are not a new idea - once all classes were called standards and students sat tests to pass up to the next standard. In the UK, in the early years of the 20th century, teachers were even paid by results. In New Zealand, up until the 1950s, students were held back in the early years to give then extra assistance. The unintended consequences of such 'solutions' was a narrowing of the curriculum ( 'teaching to the tests') and, as well, students did not show any improvements - in fact their attitudes to being held back was less than positive.

And yet this is the solution the Ministry is pushing on to schools.This solution is political and populist answer that ignores deeper problems - that of the effects of poverty that limits the school success of students, the mono cultural bias of education and the limiting view of intelligences.

The debilitating effects of such a traditional approach  came to an end in the decades after World War Two as more democratic  liberating ideas were in the air - reaching its zenith in the 60s. Isolated teachers began to explore more creative ways of teaching based on engaging students in meaningful activities leading to self responsibility. It is now hard to believe that a simplistic transmission approach to teaching  once reached right down to infant classes.  The appropriate metaphor  for a school in those days  is one of a a factory - complete with waste products. One older teacher remembers unscrewing of the desks from the floor and class numbers up to the 60s! Students sat in rows , two to a desk. Knowledge came from the teacher.

The answer to failing students requires fresh thinking. Mass education and standardisation need to be replaced with a more  personalised approach  - one that values the individuality and uniqueness of every student and new roles for both teacher and students as co-learners. Subject centred teaching needs to replaced with learner centred education.

Pioneer creative teachers have been been using such approaches for decades but in recent times their insights have been ignored as a more managerial approach has been imposed on schools by the Ministry. Standardized tests and compliance, leading to a surveillance culture, has been preferred to encouraging creativity and innovation at the school level. This is ironic because New Zealand was once a world leader, at the primary level, in such a holistic and creative education. The Standards agenda  could well be the last straw unless teachers fight back.

The only real answer to the dilemma of failing students is to place the focus of schooling on the development of the gifts and talents - the variety of passions and interests that inspire intensive learning - in all students.

This requires students digging deeply into areas that have attracted their interests using all the  traditional disciplines to learn.This is  in contrast to assessing students against subject areas  - worse still, with the  standards agenda,  limited to literacy and numeracy. A passionate  education  is premised on developing students gifts and talents; it is an education  that values what students bring to their learning; one that values their particular cultures;  and one that values student's prior ideas, questions and theories.

What would happen if teachers spent their energy  helping students find out what attracts their attention no matter how fleeting the interest.With time students will become passionate about certain areas of learning and this could well lead to  them spending their lives pursuing ideas that appeal to them. Achieving dreams and personal goals are what motives successful learners.

It is worth thinking about why so many students lose their sense of wonder and desire to explore -attributes that are innate at birth - the human default way of learning.Consider the number of questions very young children ask and why this vital learning behaviour is lost during the school years.

Sir Ken Robinson, an expert on creativity has spend years speaking around the world about how we as a society beat the joy of learning out of our students and that b the time they reach high school the vast majority of them are standardized in thinking and in the way they seek answer to teacher's questions. His point is that we are destroying the very skills modern business desperately needs. 'Creativity' , he says, is as important as literacy and numearcy'.

Only few students are able to break out of the creativity killing cycle imposed on them by standardized teaching,  just at a time , Sir Ken writes, we as a culture value highly those that are creative and who pursue their passions as their vocations. And it is not only students who  lose their creative abilities - so do teachers who have to comply to uncreative requirements. Both student and teacher passions are left at the doorways of classrooms. For many students they are pursued out of school hours - school has become irrelevant.

New thinking is required . We need both teachers and students with 'new minds for a new millenium' - for what some call the Second Renaissance ' or the 'Age of Creativity'.

It is a simple truth that people of all ages get better at what they are good at and not by having their noses rubbed in what they are not able to do - feature of the current standards.

And the role of a creative teacher is demanding one involving considerable artistry.  Educationalist Jerome Bruner has written that , 'the canny art of the teacher is one of intellectual tempation'. All children are curious -and their curiosity is used by 'canny' teachers, to their advantage, to negotiate learning challenges with their students.

So what we want is not more  standardisation but  an educational transformation.

We already have the 2007 New Zealand to give schools the courage to act. This curriculum asks of schools to develop 'connected , confident life- long learners' able to, 'seek, use and create their own knowledge'. The teachers role is not to push knowledge into students heads but to pull ideas out and to celebrate their student's thinking and creativity The curriculum ask of teacher to develop positive learning identities for all students - not just the literate, numerate or academic important these may be.

There are a range of gifts and talents to develop. We need to give students back the power to learn they were born with and to create our classrooms as learning communities - students who live and act as scientists, artist, mathematicians, researchers, readers, painter, writers ...whatever it is they feel the need to apply their effort wholeheartedly in.

A creative eduction is a personalised approach that gives students more control,choice and responsibility. Teachers, to achieve this, will have to be knowledgeable about the range of curriculum area, or know where to go to get assistance. Unlike in earlier days knowledge is freely available through the Internet  but students will still need to be helped to interrogate and interpret it.

There is plenty of evidence that teachers and students can become creative passionate learners again.

The status quo is failing, the standardized past is not the answer, only a real transformation will solve the problem of failing students.  John Dewey wrote last century that the teachers role was , 'to keep alive the sacred spark of wonder; to fan the flame that already glows.The problem is to protect the spirit of inquiry, to keep it from becoming blase from over-excitement,wooden from routine, fossilised through dogmatic instruction, or dissipated by random exercise upon trivial things.'

Trivial standards or creativity and passion. A choice between the future or the past.

No choice!

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative Schools,Creativity,national standards,Personalized Learning,teaching and learning

Signs of a creative classroom

Deborah French's classroom

One thing seems obvious to me, after several decades visiting primary classrooms, is that real innovation only comes from creative teachers and not from imposed programmes. Unfortunately,  all too often, creative teachers are the last ones to be listened to in this era of school consistency and formulaic 'best practices'. It seem we are moving towards a standardised approach to learning at the very time when we need to value (and protect) our creative teachers and their creative students.

Creativity, of course, is a word  thrown around to describe much of the work students currently do. But true creativity is marked by originality and  idiosyncrasy and all too often is in opposition to what is expected. And creativity is not to be limited to the arts - it applies to all aspects of human activity.

For creativity to survive requires a school culture that values creativity.  Such schools are hard to find in these times of intrusive compliance.This does not mean every teacher doing whatever they like but rather for all teachers to be working within agreed beliefs. To develop a real creative learning culture requires considerable ongoing dialogue about the purpose of  an education for an evolving and creative world. To achieve such an environment is a balancing act for school leadership -the aim is for 'consistent creativity'. A number of important issues might need to be carefully defined and implemented while at the same time leaving plenty of room for teacher initiative and innovation. Creativity often works best within some form of constraint. Total freedom often leads to chaos and disorder;  creativity in any field requires considerable focused discipline.

The trouble is, in all too many schools, creativity is sacrificed to consistency and imposed requirements resulting in the heavy surveillance culture schools feel they need to impose. Schools have become test crazy valuing such testing above the insights of teachers. Testing narrows the learning while  in contrast teacher insight can take into account a number of variables. In this respect 'test crazy'  schools are already well on the way to National Standards - their only argument, it seems, is the worry about school comparisons through 'league tables'.

And associated with these compliance requirements, particularly the emphasis on literacy and numeracy, is a move for schools to reinforce traditional structures and expectations which are antithetical to creativity.

With this in mind it is easy to see a school that lacks creativity and vice versa.

Uncreative schools unconsciously  look back to the past for their direction. Such schools have let their literacy and numeracy programmes become the default curriculum.  A close look at such programmes will show if these two important 'foundation skills'  have become self contained areas taking up most of the available time. In contrast in  a creative school these areas have been 'reframed' and linked to skills required for current  inquiry studies. A further step back to industrial aged thinking is to have these areas streamed off into ability groups and, even worse still, taught by other teachers.

Creative teachers find no trouble in linking their language arts times ( a preferable term to literacy) with the current inquiry study/ies although integrating maths is more problematic.  Teachers need to give thought to the point of much of the maths that is currently taught and consider doing fewer things well. One writer ( Seymour Papert) has said that, 'all science and maths in schools should be applied not pure'. Maths thinking in most schools is determined by thinking from a past era .Thankfully The New Zealand Curriculum (07) has a more enlightened view of maths . With  'new maths minds'  teachers can introduce realistic contexts for their maths. Less maths, in realistic contexts, would be good advice and would result in maths being far more creative.

Standardised less creative classrooms feature 'intentionl teaching' ,  formulaic 'best practices', heavily defined group work in literacy and numeracy, WALTS,  predetermined criteria and learning objectives. None of these in themselves are bad things but taken to extremes they are all creativity killers. Inquiry programmes seem  to be seen as 'add-ons' and feature process more than deep content. And work displayed on the walls and in book all looks the same - even the art work!

So what would you see in a creative classroom ( in my opinion of course)?

Creative  classrooms need to be seen as communities of inquiry  where students  act as scientists and artists ( and historians, poets mathematicians etc) inquiring into whatever has attracted their attention. Students' range of inquiries would be the first thing to be seen when entering the room. Literacy programmes would relate to such studies (and reflect students 'voice') and ,where possible, so would much of the maths.What maths to be seen would feature maths investigations.

Both students and teachers would be continually assessing their progress and be considering making new choices on the basis their reflections. Attitudes , or 'feeling for'  the various learning areas, would be in the forefront of teachers minds not just recording sterile achievement. Assessment would largely be seen in the work of the students compared to  their previous accomplishments. Creative teachers can show evidence for improvement.

Creative teachers take to heart the phrase from the New Zealand Curriculum  that their students  need to be able to, 'seek, use, and create their own knowledge'. Creative teachers value each students' identity and do their best to focus on developing the talents and gifts of all their students along with ensuring that all students retain the innate learning attributes they were born with. Such teachers understand the importance of relationships and work alongside their students to help them  value their lives, thoughts and views through language and the arts. The work on display celebrates the diversity and 'voice'  of all  students and the quality of their thoughts. And the room environments are continuatully changing as a range of inquiries are completed.

Creative classrooms are personalised learning environments - traditional classrooms are still stuck in the standardised 'one size fits all' approach with its genesis in   a ,now faltering industrial, era.

 Everyone sees the point of school in a creative classroom.

A creative classroom is one where helping students develop their own ideas is more important than achieving what a teacher , or outside agency,has determined they should know.

A creative schools is one where leaders have created the conditions for both teachers and students to be creative learners - within those teaching beliefs  that they have come to believe in.

Creative classrooms are far and few  between but they hold the genesis for a creative future.

Creative schools are rare and endangered.

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative Schools,Creative teaching,Creativity,Leadership,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Creative education - the only alternative to current formulaic teaching

My well worn copy of Elwyn Richardson's inspirational book.Every creative teacher should acquire one -available from NZCER $22. Excellent value - it won't show how to do it but it will show you what can be done if you focus on valuing your students 'voice', lives and discoveries, and are prepared to work along side your students rather than 'teaching' them. As Elwyn writes 'they were my teachers as I was theirs, and the basis of our relationship was sincerity, without which, I am convinced , there can be no creative education'.

In my copy of the book I found the below article. I thought it worth sharing and have only slightly adapted it.It was first sent out in the 1970s to local schools by the Art and Craft Branch - in the days when advisers were advisers not Ministry delivery boys!


Thoughts about creative teaching.

Making things is an important and necessary phase of primary education. Further more it is natural for children It arouses and stimulates immediate and enlarging interests. The whole child pours into the effort and surrenders completely to the task. Teachers rarely see this sustained concentration in other areas of the curriculum.

The willing involvement of the learner is only the beginning of what is gained by such intense application. By making things important abilities are developed:

the ability to imagine
to feel
to summon the inventive mind to create
to discover the confidence to overcome obstacles
and to achieve, under helpful guidance, a piece of finished work that gives pleasure to the learner.

The creative process of making things is practice in what is man's chief accomplishment: the prolonged control of mind and body in making something that is considered worthy of his peer group.

The greater variety of materials with which the children have experience, the greater is their confidence of their ability to express ideas.

Children have two languages, the one they use and the more adult vocabulary which they understand but do not normally apply. However, as teachers talk to them about work that absorbs their complete attention, they quickly find the need for using a more mature speech. They may come to this in time but by making things, but with competent and friendly guidance their language growth speeds up. Developing skills in using such words, as they explain or inquire, becomes a necessity. In such a learning environment children move naturally into a swift acceptance of more mature language use.

A maturity of bearing comes to the student through such activities. The things the teacher has to offer have been around all the time but teachers help students really see them and learn to use them. This is the teacher's job but the teachers reward comes not entirely from skills that appear but from the gradual transformation of child-like, and even childish, behaviour into something finer - the control of thoughtless impulses and the quiet persistence that learners achieve as they work towards achieving well conceived goals.

In every school activity there are things to make. For example children involved in a colonial history study might learn about the importance of candles as one of the main sources of light. Out of this appreciation they learn how to make candles, make them, and later try them out in a dark room. In this way they can imaginatively enter, or gain a feeling for, the experience of the settlers they are studying. Their in-depth research might lead them to writing original songs, diaries, making water wheels, windmills and, by so doing, recapture something of the experience of those early settlers.

Children by this means practice some of the 'new' kinds of learning- experience -learning- research learning- sharing learning -learning though imagination - and invention and experimentation.This is creative education.

Such learning not only develop language facility but also results in:

the rapid absorption of mature attitudes
strong absorbing interests
the emergence of self initiated ideas
and a final product which provide learners with the confidence to try new things.

Wherever this kind of creative teaching is found it is evident that the teacher's main contribution is their own enthusiasm as co-learners.

Quality learning is not possible without a creative teacher. Through subtle directing the teacher keeps the whole activity going. Teachers show, through honesty and without flattery, their admiration for high personal achievement. They are patient with the slow learners and do not give approval to work that is shoddy. Quite often teachers withhold assistance to children in difficulty when they sense that the learner is working in the right direction sensing and will eventually achieve success through application and persistence.

The teacher's use of language, their confidence in the worth of students efforts ideas make such teachers a positive influencing personality in the classroom. Such teachers are at work all the time but their pupils may never be aware of it.

The spirit of the article above is what has driven me over the years and it is sad to see such creativity being sidelined by imposed by formulaic 'best practice ' teaching, and a 'Victorian' obsession with literacy and numeracy - an obsession that with imposition of National Standard will all but destroy such creative teachers.

I have faith that creative teachers will continue in these dark reactionary times and that creativity will once again be seen as the only way to the future.

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative teaching,Creativity,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

The good old days of creative teaching

Last week all the key figures involved in what came to be known as the Taranaki Environmental Approach were in town. It was too good a chance to let go by so a party we had. Also invited were others who became involved, or who were involved in creative learner centred education. May be there were similar groups elsewhere in New Zealand but ours was a special group whose influence is still to be seen, if not recognised, today.

In front Howard Wilson and next to him Bill Guild. At rear Robin Clegg, Bruce Hammonds and John Cunningham. The term environmental was used in the sense teachers created student centred learning environments and many of their studies utilised the natural, historical and man made local environment.

Such groups do not emerge without precursors.

After World War two there was a feeling that traditional schooling ought to become more democratic. Even earlier, the first Labour Government under the leadership of Education Minister Peter Fraser had began this change . An important figure at this time was Dr. Clarence Beeby the Director of Education. All sorts of other influences could be sited, non the least, educational philosopher John Dewey who wrote widely in the early 1900s about the need to transform education to be more learner centred. Just before WW2 there was a New Education Conference held in New Zealand where a number of respected world educational thinkers visited and toured New Zealand. One visitor was English Educator Susan Issacs, one of the first people to focus on how young children learn. Also included there were a number of highly respected art educators. According to an educational commentator Jack Shallcrass people lined up in their hundreds to hear these new ideas.

During the 60s new liberal curriculum's were introduced and Dr Beeby established specialist teachers in art , nature study and Physical Education to assist teachers develop new ideas. The art advisers in particular, led by the redoubtable National Art Adviser Gordon Tovey, were seminal in spreading ideas about creative education and in the process building teacher confidence.

In the photo above two members were involved in this first stage were Howard Wilson and Bill Guild. In the sixties the art advisers arranged course in integrated programmes that they both attended along with myself. I was then a nature study specialist ( later to be transformed into a science adviser). Both Howard and Bill agree that it was during this time that the most dramatic changes occurred in education as they pioneered integrated studies. Up until then the day was tightly timetabled and teacher directed. Children were age grouped into standards and many were held back if they were not able to reach the standard. In the UK, in earlier times, teachers pay was linked to the number of students achieving the standard ( 'payment by results').

Three ideas still seem relevant today.

The need for a national conversation/conference about the purpose of education for the new century -and that the democratic purpose of education needs to be freed from populist political ideology.

The need for a wide range of advisory teachers to be appointed to assist teachers ( as against the current governments move to only appoint literacy and numeracy advisers).

The need to value the expertise of creative teachers and schools and, along with this, the need to find ways to share their ideas ( the power of networks using the Internet seems obvious)

The real innovations of the group above were developed in the early 1970s.

Missing from the above photograph are two English teachers Chris and Marion Keeble. Both recently visited New Zealand and Marion had taught in New Plymouth in 1970. In the late 60s Taranaki teachers led by the science advisers ( Don Capon and myself) had introduced student centred science learning ideas from the Junior Nuffield Science Project. English Junior school were highly regarded as models of child centred learning and in 1969 I arranged to spend a year to learn more about the approaches being used.

During this time I met and taught with both Chris and Marion. Both since became respected head teachers. Marion a gifted all round teacher and Chris with real expertise in mathematics. Their work transformed my thinking.

It was the ideas of such teachers that I helped introduce when I returned to New Zealand in 1970. Ideas we 'imported' were: making greater use of student's interests and the immediate environment, introducing studies through displays, slowing the pace of work to achieve quality work ( and to allow time to come alongside students to help them as required), rotational group throughout the day, and placing an emphasis on creating stimulating room environments with well displayed students art, language, mathematical investigations, and study work.

Bill Guild , Robin Clegg, John Cunningham and later Bruce Hinton became integral to the approach and many other teachers joined in to varying degrees. One other important member (also present at the party)was Wayne Morris who, along with myself, developed a range of publications to share the ideas leading to the establishment of our website leading-learning. We also shared books on creative teaching from the UK and the US. As an adviser I was able to act as a liaison person Another important individual was Bill Clarkson.

The other inspirational influence to us all was the book 'In the Early Wold' written by pioneer teacher Elwyn Richardson based on his work in the 1950s. Our group made contact with Elwyn. We believe 'our' approach combined the powerful but individual art and environmental approach of Elwyns with the more craft, focused observational and school wide approach I had seen in England.

The ideas still live on today but they have had to accommodate, in recent years, imposed curriculum,assessment regimes and formulaic 'best practices' approaches to teaching which has resulted in less individual creativity for both students and teachers. A real advance has been a more whole school approach although this has also resulted in limiting the creativity of individual teachers. In the UK creative teaching ( which was patchy in many respects) was replaced by a National Curriculum with defined learning areas arranged in levels, learning objectives and national testing. This technocratic approach was imitated with a similar National Curriculum in New Zealand but without the testing regimes -so far.

In 2007 the 'revised' New Zealand Curriculum provided the inspiration for a new creative era with its vision of 'life long learners' and for students to become 'seekers, users and creators of their own knowledge'. Unfortunately this has now been subverted by the demands of the new conservative government who have looked back to the idea of standards in a narrow range of learning areas. Most schools, as mentioned, seem to have been captured by formulaic teaching and a narrowing of their curricula. Many schools seem oblivious to the dangers of this audit and surveillance ideology unaware there are creative alternatives past and present.

It is again time now for some new creative leadership this time by principals. Creative principals need create the conditions to release the creativity of their teachers and to network with other schools to share their more creative teachers' expertise.

I wait in anticipation.

Thankfully there are signs of networks of creative principals and teachers emerging.

We have all had our turn; but the creative cycle continues. As someone said we need to do the 60s again but this time properly!

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Creative Schools,Creative teaching,Creativity,inquiry learning,Integrated Learning,Personalized Learning,project based learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Towards a creative school.

It is sad to see schools happily 'driving into the future using their rear vision mirrors'. Just as our students are entering a world beyond our comprehension we are busy ensuring they will be able to cope with a past age. There is more than a whiff of Victorian three Rs around our schools as teachers focus on testing children in what are considered the two areas of concern literacy and numeracy. All this conformist formulaic 'one size fits all' teaching is leading us back to the standardisation of Henry Ford who one said, 'you can any colour you like as long as it is black'.

It was great to be asked to talk to teachers and parent of a local school about the purpose of education for the next decades.

There is no doubt that things have taken a turn for the worse since the introduction of the idea of National Standards. Not that I thought that things were that great anyway as, since the 1990s, the agenda for education has been in the hands of centralist technocrats. The introduction of the 2007 'revised' National Curriculum with it's enlightened vision of students as 'seekers, users and creators of their own knowledge' was but a brief burst of fresh air soon to be overwhelmed by populist surveillance political agendas of a new government.

And most principals seem happy to 'go along to get a long' - or worse still can't see any real problem with National Standards. And few principals have been known for creative educational leadership. As it was once said, 'schools are over managed and under led'.

Andy Hargreaves has written that , 'principals are to busy complying with time greedy tasks that exhaust and demoralise them leaving no time for creativity and imagination'.Not that creativity and imagination were ever attributes of most principals I have known and they are not on the criteria for successful principals today. Hargreaves continues, 'teachers are suffering from eroded autonomy, lost creativity, and a constrained ability to exert professional judgement.'

Teachers who really believe in creativity understand that their job is to help students learn for themselves - to keep alive their innate desire to make sense of their experiences and the need to express what they find out in a variety of ways. Creative principals need to create the conditions to allow teacher creativity and to network with other like minded principals.

Creative principals and teachers understand, as the 2007 National Curriculum system says, that 'intellectual curiosity is at the heart of knowing'.

The creative educators role is to be a subtle learning coach .Jerome Bruner says the the true educators task is 'the canny art of intellectual temptation'. Schools seem to have forgotten that nothing is more powerful than the learners' desire to demonstrate their talents and hear their own unique voices in what they do.

By institutionalising learning we have taken something precious from our learners. Their natural curiosity has been replaced by our curriculums. Schools are about teaching but not necessarily about intrinsic learning.

Back to my local school which has as part of its vision for their students to, 'become confident learners with the courage to seek a better world and to aspire to heights beyond the horizon'. Of course it is this desire they were born with!

The school wants to be known for 'its spirit of creativity, adventure and exploration' but they recognise they still have long way to go to achieve this.

They want their teachers to develop a 'curriculum that builds on their ( the students) innate curiosity , and the interests and talents students bring with them'. Now there is a challenge.

And they want their students to 'express their personal voice and to achieve personal excellence'.'Students who are able to reflect on their own learning, who have learnt " how to learn' to aim high, to express their creativity and to have the courage to aspire to heights beyond the horizon'.

Great stuff but first the teachers need to exemplify such vision themselves - and this is not easy in the current conformist environment.

I look forward to assisting the school in its journey towards creativity for both teachers and students.

They have made a start.

There is a lot of unlearning to do!

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Posted in: change,Creative Schools,Creative teaching,Creativity,Leadership,Ministry NZCurric,national standards,teaching and learning

Something old but still worth thinking about! And read John Edward's poem as well

Late in January there is going to be a major conference - 'The Inspired Impact Conference; Developing the whole child'. It is about challenging traditional curriculum delivery methods to prepare a place for creativity in classrooms. The conference has at its aim 'to delve deeply into learning and creativity'.

All I can say it is about time.

Creativity has been at risk the past decades as literacy and numeracy imperatives have all but eaten up all the school day. And with the National Standards it can only get worse. There is more compliance and formulaic 'best practice' conformity in our schools than creativity. All too often when you visit classrooms you see clone like art work.

Teachers need to have the courage to ensure all children develop all their talents and become the 'confident life long learners' ( or inquirers) that the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum asks of them. All children have the right to be 'seekers, users and creators of the own knowledge'.

Red flower

Once upon a time there was a little boy who studied at a big school.

One morning the teacher said "Today we’re going to draw."

"Good" thought the little boy.

He liked to draw lions, tigers, chickens, trains and boats.

He got his color-pencils and started drawing.

"Wait!! Don’t start yet." said the teacher.

She waited until all the students were ready and then said ...

"We’re going to draw flowers."

The little boy started drawing beautiful flowers with his pink, orange and blue pencils.

"Wait" said the teacher. "I’ll show you how to do it."

And the flower she drew was red with a green stem.

"Ok" said the teacher "now you can do it."

The little boy looked at the flower the teacher had drawn , looked at his own flowers and liked his best. He couldn't say that so he turned the sheet of paper over and drew a flower just like the one the teacher had drawn - red with a green stem.

Another day the students were having class outside and the teacher said ...

"Today we are going to play with clay."

"Great" the boy thought.

He liked to play with clay.

He could make things like elephants, mice, cars and trucks.

He started to take some clay in his hands and make a big ball.

Then the teacher said ... "Wait ! Don’t start yet."

She waited until all the students were ready.

"Now" she said "we’re going to make a plate."

"Good" thought the little boy.

He liked to make plates of different sizes and shapes.

The teacher said ... "Wait !! I’ll show you how to do it."

It was a soup-plate.

"Ok" she said "now you can start."

The little boy looked at the plate the teacher had made, looked at his own plate and liked his best. He couldn’t say it so he got his plate, made it into a big ball and started it again.

He made a soup-plate just like the one the teacher had made.

And since early in his life he learned not to do things by himself but to wait for a model.

And then the little boy went to another school.

This one was even bigger than the other one.

One day the new teacher said ... "Today we’re going to draw."

"Good" thought the little boy.

He waited to see what the teacher would draw.

The teacher didn’t draw anything.

She only walked around the room.

Then the teacher approached the little boy and asked "Don’t you like to draw?"

"Yes" he said "but what are we going to draw?"

"I don’t know" said the teacher "draw whatever you want."

"How can I do it?" he asked.

"Any way you want." said the teacher.
"But what colors should I use?" he asked.

"You choose. If everybody makes the same drawing with the same colors how can I know which drawing is yours?" she said.

"I don’t know" answered the boy.

And he draw a red flower with a green stem.

Many times we want our children, friends, relatives, people we love, to do things the way we believe is the correct one.

Are we right?

Other times we sit and wait until someone tells us what to do.

Is that right?

If you have time read the poem, 'What did you steal from your children today?' written by John Edwards one of the Inspired Impact Keynote speakers.

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Posted in: Creative teaching,Creativity,national standards,teaching and learning

An inquiry based classroom

'How is your inquiry programme going?' seems to be a common question asked by principals these days.

Behind such a question seems the idea that inquiry is another programme to include in the school day along with literacy and numeracy.

Two things are wrong with this.

Firstly inquiry isn't a programme to simply be added to the daily programme rather it is a disposition ( their 'default' way of learning) that children are born with until it is 'flipped' by life experiences and by schooling.

Secondly the teachers I have admired over the years see inquiry as the basis for all learning - literacy and numeracy included. Today many teachers ( and schools) have allowed literacy and numeracy to all but 'gobble up' the entire school day. National Standards will further dissipate this missing inquiry dimension.


As the school year is drawing to a close I made the effort to make one last visit to a very creative teacher in local school to gather up a few photos.I almost arrived too late as the teacher, Deborah, was dismantling parts of her room. None the less I was able to take more photos in her room than many schools I have visited this year.

My visit reinforced three interrelated ideas that will hopefully become the alternative educational agenda for the new decade. An agenda to confront the 'big brother' top down National Standards demands of the Ministry of Education; a Ministry that has lost any educational integrity with its flip flops since the appointment of the new conservative government.

The first idea is to return to teachers the leadership role they deserve as idea developers ( not 'deliverers); the second is to to see the principals role as the creator of the conditions, the culture,and the agreed expectations for teachers to develop such ideas. The principal main role is to develop with all involved an agreed direction for the school - to define a vision and teaching beliefs for all to be accountable to.

This concept of 'parallel leadership', when combined with networking with other schools to share teacher strengths, makes the third idea. All combined the present a democratic educational agenda able to hold top down dictatorial mandates at bay.

For Deborah, the teacher I visited, there was no confusion over inquiry learning.It is just something she does. The room was full of interesting things for the class to 'inquire' into. She is a great example of what educationalist Jerome Bruner calls a teacher with the 'canny art of intellectual temptation'.

There were skeletons hanging around arising out of a study called 'Inside Out'. I just missed seeing a full size medical skeleton! Iam not sure where it came from but a body suit that children took turns to wear was popular - it had body parts velcroed for children to remove. This 'rich topic' had sparked (or 'generated') several lines of inquiry into a range of Learning Areas.I missed children exploring fish guts and the excitement of a fish eye, when cut into, squirting fluid across the room! This brings up the issue of planning. Inquiry learning is often going with the flow until study questions, or lines of inquiry, are defined. Predetermined planning and inquiry are contradictions - teacher artistry is required.

Bean plants climbed up the window wall with data being collected about rates of measurement and estimation of possible growth. Another maths display featured data about themselves. I was shown photos on the computer of the results of a study of mould that had 'emerged' and which developed into a major, if smelly, ( inquiry) study. The best inquiry classroom feature lots of 'emergent inquiries.

In the school foyer I saw clay animals that the children had created - the results of their 'inquiry' into clay . I was shown a 'wonder display' where children were encouraged to post things they were wondering about ( or 'inquiring') about . The wails were cover with art, language and science work - in particular an impressive spring display featuring - the centre piece being daffodils. There was also display based on parachute experiments following a school wide theme on transport( a helicopter had landed in the school grounds). I was also shown the results of studies arising out of a dead bird being brought to school -which encouraged a number of dead bird arriving at school.

I asked Deborah about her literacy programme and she replied that much of it related to developing ideas that contributed to the class inquiries. As for maths it was integrated where possible or there were mini math inquiry topics and she said the children also liked using text books as well.Variety, as ever, is the spice of life. The important thing, we agreed, is that children should see maths as another area to inquire into and get a 'feeling for'. Inquiry is about turning children on to learning - to ensure they become 'seekers, users,and creators of their own knowledge ' as it says in the New Zealand Curriculum. In other word 'life long learners' - or inquirers.

I am the first to admit that not all teachers are able to imitate Deborah's style but all teacher can move along a continuum toward a total inquiry based classroom. Other teacher might like more order and this is fine. Boundaries are important -even if only to break them.

Elwyn Richardson, New Zealand's pioneer creative inquiry based teacher ( he worked in the 1950s) classroom was once described as 'a community of scientists and artists' busy exploring their internal worlds and their immediate environment. Deborah continues this philosophy - integrating an electronic whiteboard and computers.

Teachers who plan one, or even two, enquiry studies a term have not really understood the concept of inquiry as a disposition. Such classrooms result in thin inquiry at best as literacy and numeracy still rule supreme. Not so with such teachers as Deborah. All the above inquiries are the result of one terms work!

Every school has 'stand out' teachers with skills to celebrate and share.

Such teachers are the real experts not the out of town consultants with PowerPoint's with step by step inquiry models to follow. We don't want our classrooms to be full of inquiry processes' and no real content which all too often seem to be the case. Nor do we want to become testers and educational accountants destroying the inquiry dispositions in our students , and ourselves, in the process.

If principals saw teacher as the key to real educational change, and if they saw their role as developing cultures to encourage such teachers, and if they were to network with other local schools we would have the beginning of a real educational transformation.

It is all about inspiring each other to become 'seekers, users and creators of our own knowledge'; for us all to be 'inquirers'.

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Posted in: Creative teaching,Creativity,inquiry learning,Integrated Learning,Leadership,Personalized Learning,project based learning,teaching and learning

Do not put trust in the Ministry of Mis-education

My greatest inspiration for the ideas I share can be linked back to the wonderful work done by Elwyn Richardson in his small rural Northland school in the 1950s. If any reader does not have a copy of his book 'In The Early World' they ought to get hold of a copy from the NZCER.

Elwyn established his classroom as a true community of scientists and artists who , for their curriculum, explored their own personal worlds and their rich local environment. This was very experimental work and he was given protection from inspectorial grading ( the equivalent of today's ERO) to develop his creative philosophy. At the same time, and in the same area, a group of Maori schools worked with the Art Advisers to develop similar ideas.

At the heart of these small experiments was the belief in the creativity of children and teachers given the appropriate conditions. In Elwyn's case it showed the importance of classroom teachers as leaders. A man before his time.

Later throughout New Zealand other groups of teachers (helped by art advisers) continued developing similar ideas.I worked with a small group in Taranaki who became teacher leaders. Just before Tomorrow's Schools there were in Taranaki whole schools working along similar lines and, best of all, these schools were sharing ideas between each other.Then came the confusing curriculums ,an obsession with accountability and assessment, and competition between schools. Today most schools are still trapped by this nonsense.

Since Tomorrows Schools teachers insights have been all but ignored being replaced by a technocratic belief in imposed curriculum's ( with endless levels and learning objectives all impossible to assess), in the principals as leaders, and more recently standardised testing and teaching. We have moved well away from valuing the creativity and collective wisdom of classroom teachers and now, sadly, most teachers only know about all this formulaic best practice imposed teaching approaches.

Creativity is all but lost!

Now we have the politicians ( with Ministry support) National Standards to distort teaching even further and who knows what will mutate out of these imported ideas when they are in place. The Ministry has lost touch with the reality of classroom teachers. Most have never experienced it.

Teachers need to make a stand and get behind those few who still believe in the transformational power of creative classroom teachers. We need to value as leaders those teachers who help individual children develop their talents and gifts and their innate desire to learn and make sense of the experiences. Teachers who help their students express what they feel and know in whatever way suits them.

Time to toss out all the so called experts living in their ivory towers with their fat salaries.The Ministry is full of highly qualified people who have little real experience of classroom teaching or inspirational leadership. And many come to their jobs from an academic secondary environment which is as far away from creativity as you can get.

Personally have given up on them all and this included their contracted 'delivers' of Ministry curriculum and compliance targets. And it will get worse with the introduction of hordes of literacy and maths advisers - the ultimate boring restricted individuals.

New leadership must come from creative classroom teachers supported by principals ( or lead teachers). Any good schools vitality comes from creative classroom teachers. Who would want to talk to principals with their concern with surveillance and gathering of evidence of targeted learning goals?

It is time to go back to what learning ought to be about- developing every learner as a 'confident life long learner'.This is their 'default' approach to life until 'flipped' by less than wonderful home experiences and misguided schooling. We need to to ensure all students become 'seekers, users,and creators of their own knowledge' as stated in the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum.

We need to identify remaining creative teachers in our areas who have survived with little support and help them recover their battered integrity and then to share their ideas.

A new creative era is dawning and classroom teachers are the only ones able to take the lead so as to develop a new consciousness of unlimited possibility in their students. Principals can't do this. School leaders need to create the conditions for such people to thrive and to link them up with other schools and, in the process, share and celebrate teacher strengths. Like Elwyn they are the real experts.

Teachers as leaders were gaining strength in the 70s and 80s but the music died with Tomorrows Schools. As the Bee Gees sang 'When the feeling gone you can't go on, it's a tragedy'.

Education is developing a 'feeling for' learning not achievement on standardised tests.
Time to fight back.

If you haven't read Kelvin Smythe's latest read it now. We need to listen to voices such as Kelvin's - and we ought to be skeptical of any thing coming from the Ministry.

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Posted in: Creative teaching,Creativity,Leadership,Personalized Learning,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Let's have some real creativity!

Too many teachers and principals have become sidetracked by data collection and compliance requirements - some even believe in them. All this has created a surveillance risk averse culture, all about conformity, compromise and being controlled and is nothing to do with creativity. Too many principals have become unwittingly part of the problem.

Lets be honest, there never was that much creativity in our schools. They have aways been more conservative than innovative and this includes many so called child-centred primary teachers. Creativity is seen when students and teacher diversity is appreciated, experiential learning valued, and where students complete powerful personal 'products' following up their own ideas in: in depth research, poetic writing, the creative arts - including these days information technology. The 'default mode' for most primary teachers is literacy and numeracy first and others areas in the time remaining. Over the years I have worked with some truly creative teachers ( and far fewer principals ) and it their ideas I share. Nothing of any real creativity has come from recent 'delivery' orientated contracted advisers yet, in past days, such advisers were the key to creative thinking. Must be time for me to go!

Sir Ken Robinson is to give a keynote at a conference in Palmerston North late next January. He should be inspirational. As I am also to give a keynote I will be present to hear him. But I am betting that, after all is said, little will be done. The ground is just not right for creativity to catch on - hopefully I am wrong. Maybe Sir Ken will be the catalyst we need to escape current formulaic teaching?

True creativity involves an element of tension as it is always not clear as to what will be finally achieved. Decisions and choices have to made along the way , often without full understanding, which grows and evolves in the process. This is in contrast with the current, so called scientific management model which insists on predetermined goals, intentions and 'what are (we) learning today'( WALT). True science is about being comfortable about the unknown and is an area involving creativity - being both open and skeptical.

Sir Ken Robinson has written that we have a problem as worrying as the ecological strip mining of our environmental resources. There is, he writes, a crisis of the mind - we are strip mining children's brains in our focus on delivering literacy and numeracy. In this obsessive process teachers are unaware of the talents not being looked for. As a result too many students simply end up by enduring school and too many never find out what they are good at - even the so called successful achievers; few end up loving learning. The future depends on encouraging and developing the talents of all children. Until we do we will aways have an 'achievement tail'; kids who see no point in school without a home culture to support them to persist.

Most people, according to creativity expert Robert Fritz, can't cope with creativity because they want quick answers and don't like living in the realm of not knowing, the very essence of science and creativity. Such people, he says, are intolerant of these moments of confusion not appreciating that it is such confusions that are the best learning moments of all. In such times creative people (artists or scientists) discover original ideas and where people go beyond usual ways of solving problems; when Fritz says, 'creativity gets into gear'.

Fritz writes that we are frightened of discrepancies and our instincts are to solve problems and end the tension of not knowing. Creativity accepts not knowing , happy to try out unusual ideas even if they 'feel' uncomfortable. Being creative means accepting such 'feelings'

Fritz writes that many creative people are happy to leave the problem for a while, to sleep on the problem, and, as a result, new ideas often emerge. Creativity needs time. Leaving the problem unresolved provides the tension for ideas to be generated.

This perception of creativity is different from what teachers often call creativity where children are encouraged to 'be creative' and to accept whatever is given. Fritz's definition is deeper and slower not just fun and messing around. Fritz is about focusing the mind on the problem not just freeing the mind and picking from the best ideas to solve the problem on the spot. True creative people think deeply about the problem they are trying to solve without rushing in to solving it. This Fritz writes is problem solving but it is not necessarily creative.

The mind is a sucker for quick answers and theories even if little real understanding is gained. Fritz quotes Sherlock Holmes who, when asked by his poor hapless Watson, if he suspected anyone, said, "Yes. Myself.Of coming to an answer prematurely".

So let's have more creativity ( unknowability) and less data collection and premature superficial thinking. And let's help our students develop their talents - in whatever area that attracts them.

This is what marks out the few creative teachers I like ( mostly liked) to work with. Too many teachers ( and most principals) are just too busy trying to solve imposed compliance problems to understand let alone risk creativity.

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative teaching,Creativity,Personalized Learning,Talent Development,teaching and learning

'How to be an Explorer of the World'

Now for something really different!!!

If anybody out there is creative, or would like to be ( after all we were all born creative until schools got hold of us) this is the book for you or your students. Actually if anybody out there is a scientist, or would like to be, ( after all we were all born to be scientists until schools got hold of us) this is the book for you, or your students.Or if you would just like to see more, notice more or make life more interesting this is the book for you ( because this is what we were born to do).

To me this book supplies what is missing in our increasingly focused literacy and numeracy classrooms. Any half creative teacher would find it packed full of great ideas and not a learning objective, WALT or success criteria in sight.


How to be an Explorer of the World by Keri Smith.
ISBN 978-0-399-53460-7 ( us $14 95)

Now and again along comes a book that surprises. How to be an Explorer is one of them.

The book even comes with a warning.

'To whoever has just picked up this book if you find you are unable to use your imagination, you should put this book back immediately.It is not for you. In this book you will be repeatedly asked to...suspend your disbelief, complete tasks that make you feel a bit strange, look at the world in ways that make you think differently, conduct experiments on a regular basis, and see the inanimate objects as alive.'

This 200 page 'book' is full of interesting ideas to use with your class - or just for yourself.

The book is all about observing, collecting, analyzing , comparing and noticing patterns.

Kids love collecting - everything, the author writes, is interesting. People who collect things do similar work to the work of ethnographers who document the particular culture through field research.

The book is packed full of wonderful practical ( and simple) ideas to help the readers document and observe their world - and to take notes and to record what is seen.

This is the essence of education and amazingly it encompass literacy and numeracy but only as part of exploring. This is as it should be. Only schools distract learners from their real world.

The book is full of prompts as assignments to help you become an explorer. And you can start from where you are currently sitting and then spread out to wherever you go. Your curriculum is whatever you notice -whatever emerges. This is something creative teacher have aways known but now almost impossible in our soulless, measurable, accountable, and increasingly formulaic and standardized system of education.

Everyones house is full of collections of objects to start with. Start by looking at them closely and why they appeal to you. The book then takes you into exploring their immediate environment through the senses (another lost art in out literacy focused schools).

Random experiences are there to be savoured and every experience is personal and unrepeatable - this is true personalised learning. Teacher could take the class on a daily weekly walk ( just a few minutes) to notice what is their to be noticed or to see something in particular. And from his oral language will lead to writing and reading - and in that order. Before the word comes the experience.

The book is all about the genesis of the creative and scientific process - or about taking advantage of what all children were born with until 'flipped' by often abstract school experiences.

A class using this book would become a museum of children's collections an art gallery of their expression, and a scientists lab of their experiments.

There are just so many great things in this book to enhance children's perception. Digital cameras would be invaluable along with drawing skills that slow thinking down enough to really see things to wonder about. As Jules Verne says 'look with all your eyes' and, I would add, with all your senses and with your imagination - something young children have in spades. 'Sometimes a tree can tell you more than can be read in a book', writes Carl Jung.

This is non-linear learning, the opposite to much of traditional schooling. It is, as Paul Klee wrote long ago, ' taking your mind for a walk' -actually he said 'taking a line' but it much the same thing. You never know where you will end up. Possibly the most important lesson in this highly unpredictable life we all lead. There is an activity included in the book called 'how to wander aimlessly'.

And the book contain all sorts of ideas to transform everyday experiences through art and the imagination.

The book comes complete with lots of ways to record fieldwork and to document what has been observed and noticed.

But remember this book comes with a warning! If you mind had been habituated by teaching maybe this book is not for you - or maybe it is just the book to learn to see like a child explorer again.


It is simply a fun book -all written by hand!

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Posted in: Action Plans and Lessons,Creative teaching,Creativity,Early Education,Personalized Learning,teaching and learning