Laura K Spencer, Ed.D.

Tag: Creativity

Lucid Curiosity
I have a tendency to share articles, podcasts, books, movies, and anything else I consume with those around me. I have friends who tell me they keep folders in their email account full of my shares so they can hold on to them for later. And so I figured, why not share them with everyone. My goal, if I can keep it up, is a bi-weekly post with links to what has inspired thoughts from me. I figured the posts should have their own identity from the rest of my blog posts, so what to call it? And then, in a moment of lucidity, I thought…YEP. That’s it. Lucidity. So here we go…

Curiosity has not killed this cat! (Photo by Bing Han on Unsplash)

Curiosity.

Interestingly enough, although most companies say they value inquisitive minds, employees tend to feel stifled and conform to status quo instead of branching out with new ideas. In fact, a study found that curiosity drops 20% within six months on the job. Is it because the questions stop and the work production requirements increased? Maybe. But curiosity matters, and it has a huge positive impact on the workplace.

There’s also an assumption that the creative jobs, the ones that hire curious minds, all require Bachelor degrees. Not true. Although blue collar jobs have declined, skilled-service good jobs are on the rise. The key is not so much in WHAT you learn, but more in the SKILLSETs developed while learning.

So how do you encourage creative, curious minds? Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba, says you do NOT do it by being the top student at school. As he explained to his son, “being in the middle is fine, so long as your grades aren’t too bad. Only this kind of person [a middle-of-the-road student] has enough free time to learn other skills.” What other skills? Ma shared at the World Economic Forum that students need to learn that which machines cannot, such as teamwork, independent thinking, and caring for others.

He’s not the only one to share this thinking. Minouche Shafik, Director of the London School of Economics, spoke at the World Economic Forum of the importance of “the soft skills, creative skills. Research skills, the ability to find information, synthesise it, make something of it.” Fabiola Gianotti, a particle physicist and the Director General of CERN, expanded on Shafik’s ideas: “We need to break the cultural silos. Too often people put science and the humanities, or science and the arts, in different silos. They are the highest expression of the curiosity and creativity of humanity.”

So how do we ensure that we not just say we value curiosity and creativity, but actually practice what we preach? The latest Leadership + Design newsletter shared a few helpful tips:
- Get out into the world outside of school and see how work is being done, why and by whom.
- Move towards less compliancy and more possibility
- Don’t just add, subtract
Feeling curious now? This playlist created for CreativeMornings by DJ Jim Q may just put you in the mood to go explore.

And hey, if this post made you smile, or think deeply for a moment, or just scratch your head and go HMM… then share it with a friend. Or two. And subscribe to keep the posts coming!
September 21, 2018
I Have Fallen in Love with Cad Monkeys, Dinosaur Babies, and T-Shaped People!

Well, not literally! But I did thoroughly enjoy the book Cad Monkeys. Dinosaur Babies, and T-Shaped People: Inside the World of Design Thinking and How it Can Spark Creativity and Innovation by Warren Berger (That title is quite a mouthful!!). If you don’t believe me, consider the fact that I used up almost all of my super cute Target bin book tabs in this one book!

I truly don’t even know where to start to describe all I learned from Berger. His deep dive into the world of design, and designers, read like a novel – fascinating characters, interesting plot developments, and a universal theme to do the right thing.

You know what? I’m just going to share some of my tabbed inspirations and see where it goes:

* It can be difficult to step back and look at one’s life with a fresh eye, but this is part of what design can teach us: how to view things sideways, how to reframe, rearrange, experiment, refine, and – maybe most important of all – how to ask “the stupid questions” that challenge assumptions about the way things have been done in the past.

* Jumping the fence…attempting to make the leap from the realm of known achievability (what we know is possible) to the much larger surrounding space (what we don’t know how to do yet).

* Everything a business does matters; that every action communicates a message to the world and also has consequences on some level.

* Jim Hackett, CEO of Steelcase: “There is an over celebration of getting things done” and not enough patience for “thinking as part of doing.”

* Dean Kamen: “We have to do whatever it takes to get ideas out there into the world. Otherwise, you’re just doing science fair projects.”

* Mark Noonan: “Instead of just asking a question, you have to take ownership of it.”

* Bruce Mau: Process enables experimentation. “It’s like a safety net.” People tend to feel more comfortable experimenting with new ideas and venturing onto unfamiliar turf when they carry with them an established method of working and solving problems. It means that even if they don’t quite know what they’re doing, they always know what to do.”

This book is like the Lorax, in that it speaks for design. And even though it’s about design, these quotes also speak to the heart of education. They speak to the work we must do to ensure student learning experiences are relevant to the world they inhabit today, and the future world problems they will be inheriting.

I leave them here, then, without my commentary so that they can speak to you as well. Tell me, what do you hear?

May 9, 2018
Bashing into Walls to Change the World
In the book Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam Grant writes, “When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins: Rules and systems were created by people. And that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them.”

He explains that people blame the absence of creativity for the lack of originality in the world. (Be honest: Have you said recently, “Why can’t they come up with a new movie idea instead of just refashioning old ones?” I have…)

Grant surmises that people think society would be better off if only we could come up with some more novel ideas. “But in reality,” Grant explains, “the biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation—it’s idea selection…It’s widely assumed that there’s a tradeoff between quantity and quality—if you want to do better work, you have to do less of it—but this turns out to be false. In fact, when it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality.” And when focusing solely on quality, “many people fail to achieve originality because they generate a few ideas and then obsess about refining them to perfection.”

This reminded me of a Steve Jobs interview in which Jobs stated:

“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Creativity, originality, change… they all require stepping outside the societal norms and limitations placed on us. They require taking risks; ideating and iterating many, many, many times; and understanding that the capacity for creativity is in all of us, but maybe, just maybe, creativity requires work and a commitment to let all those ideas flow! Lots and lots of them. And of course, bashing into walls and living life outside the neat little world!

So how do we provide the conditions for students to bash into the walls (okay, maybe not literally!)?How do we encourage the mass generation of ideas instead of obsessively refining the few? How do we provoke students to question, or even change, rules and systems? In other words, how do we bash into the walls of a traditional, high-stakes educational system and empower students to become change agents (like the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students are trying to do!)?

Educational systems, structures, and beliefs create enormous pressure on students to “get it right” (as determined by people no smarter than us) the first time. One assessment to measure if you learned the chapter content. One essay to determine if you met the writing standard benchmarks. One grade for each assignment. One SAT exam. Each of these with its own set of rules and systems to prove conformity to societal expectation.

When students go against those rules and systems (again, as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students are), adults get agitated and seek to put them back in their place. And yet, when students become adults and seek out jobs, the workforce bemoans their lack of originality and creative problem solving skills.

Our role as teachers and administrators should be, then, to bash into the traditional walls to provide students opportunities to:
- Think and act like a designer
- Solve real world problems
- Connect with industry experts to experience the world of work from people living it, and not from a textbook
- Use play as a way to learn
- Learn from and with students, and not just teach to them
- Experience personalized learning that embraces strengths, passions, and ideas
What walls are you bashing into? How about your students? I’d love to hear about your classroom or school experiences.

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March 21, 2018