Productive Limitations Versus Unnecessary Structure: 5 Ways to Avoid Stifling Student Creativity
This is the second post in a series about transferring Pixar’s guiding principles for managing a creative environment into the classroom. In the last post, I looked at ways we can foster a creative environment. This post focuses on the ways we can avoid unintentionally stifling student creativity.
At the beginning of the year, we all decorate our Writer’s Notebooks and our DayBooks which I used for assigned and reflective writing. I slapped a handout inside the front cover of the Writer’s Notebook with 50 or so writing ideas, told students this notebook was theirs. Complete freedom. That I’d never dictate what they write about. Inside the back cover was a rubric outlining what was expected from the assignment. Basically, it needed to be dated and contain half to three-quarters of a page of writing. Presto. Writer’s Notebook homework taken care of for the year.
Sure, I’d model how I wrote in my notebook. And when we got around to it, we’d have Writer’s Notebook Museum days where students could share entry highlights. But here I was professing the importance of living a writing life, convinced that students would be so grateful for the freedom. I ended up reading a lot of half-pages about family vacations. One sentence per event written extra large. I’d write encouraging notes, “Sounds like you had a great time exploring. I’d love to hear more about how you dug the sandcastle. Whose idea was it? Did anything go wrong…” Etc. Etc. Rarely did a student actually use the suggestions.
1. The Beast and the Baby
We have two opposing forces in the classroom. We can’t send students into high-stakes testing unprepared. This creates an urgency to expose them to a great deal of material in a short amount of time. Secondly, every learner needs something different. Significant growth might not always follow the map. Catmull refers to this dichotomy as the need to protect the baby and feed the beast. We have to acknowledge that something will always “win.” A sunny day wins out over the rain but if it doesn’t rain, nothing grows. The idea of “balance” isn’t going to make anyone slap their foreheads and exclaim, “Why didn’t I think of that?” But I did find the following ideas about how we evaluate balance helpful.
2. Accept that without meaning to, we inevitably stifle student creativity.
The first post highlighted the need for an environment that confronts the unknown, trusts we’ll figure it out together, and enables a protracted struggle. There’s always something we’re doing to throw a wrench in our own good intentions. If nothing else, embracing this mindset gives us the best chance to discover when we’ve left a wrench lying around.
To use another metaphor, Catmull looks at problems that inhibit creativity as oak trees. The longer a problem’s existed, the more acorns it has produced, the more sapling that will grow. Maybe we don’t see the tree as a problem. Maybe it’s is our favorite spot to read. Then we notice there’s something wrong with a sapling and we pull it out, still not solving the problem. Other times, we recognize what was once was a beautiful tree is now threatening to fall on the house. Chopping it down might look like the solution but while the saplings around it don’t pose an immediate threat, eventually they’ll grow.
My writer’s notebook homework was my favorite oak tree. I saw so many students flourish through the freedom that I wasn’t paying attention to the kids just filling half a page, the bare minimum, with drivel. I thought I was feeding the fluency beast by setting a length guideline and protecting the baby by assuring freedom. In the next section, I’ll talk about how I recognized that my favorite tree was, in fact, rotten.
3. Learning to See
“Lest we be like the cat who sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again- and that is well; but also she will never sit on a cold one anymore.” - Mark Twain
Here’s an idea that crops up all over. How do we perceive objectively? Let’s say we set the alarm ten minutes later than we usually do. Everything works out, we get to work on time. The logical conclusion is that we can sleep a little longer. We didn’t have the slightest idea about the car accident on the freeway a minute behind us. Or, let’s say the accident made us late. When we get to work, do we tell people we’re late because of an accident or that we slept in a few extra minutes?
- Hindsight is not 20/20
- Things that happen have an unfair advantage over the things that didn’t
- The smaller events often go unnoticed
Lakes aren’t blue. When you look at one through a pinhole, they’re brown and green. When the non-trained artist draws a person, the eyes and the mouth tend to be way out of proportion. Because these features are the communication centers, when we try to represent the face, instead of seeing what’s really there.
- How can we think clearly about the brown and green when our mental model tells us the lake is blue?
- Our minds recognize patterns to help us evaluate, reason, and anticipate. How do we prevent those models from distorting new information that might not fit the pattern?
- The more caught up we are in our own interpretations, the more inflexible we become, the less able we are to deal with the problems at hand.
I didn’t see the writer’s notebook problem until I began creating a classroom website. As I searched through other teacher sites, I kept finding long lists of recommended links. A student who wanted to practice math facts would first have to find the right sites. Once there, it would take them several other menus with distracting adds before they even found the game. If it’s not a great one, what are the chances that kid is going to go through the whole process until they find the right game? If I needed a bolt to fix my bicycle, how helpful is it to drop me off at the junk yard?
When my students want fact practice, they find the picture of the calculator that says “Math,” the picture of the stopwatch, and the symbol of the operation. There, they’ll find screenshots of a few games that I’ve played and liked. Math fact scores went way up. Writer’s notebook entries went unaffected. My writing homework was perpetuating the same problem that seemed so blatant in the form of a website.
4: Protecting What We Know
New ideas are often poorly defined or incomplete. The opposite of established methods that have worked well which we naturally want to protect. Pixar’s process of retooling scripts during production was a costly way of ensuring the best possible story. That meant animation teams were often scrapping work. In an effort to reduce production costs, Pixar tried locking in the script before sending it to production. Locking the script to lower movie costs was ideal but their guiding desire to tell quality stories above all else enabled them the flexibility to revise when necessary. Trying out the new production method without rigidity helped them become more efficient without sacrificing quality.
Protecting student independent choice is the ideal guiding my writing homework. That doesn’t mean I can’t adapt what worked on the website. This year, I’ll give students weekly menus with suggested activities. Only assigning a half page of writing three times a week worked for many students. Adapting the process isn’t synonymous with abandoning principle.
5: Trusting
In the last post I talked about playing with the idea of unlimited homework passes. If my lessons are planned well and I’m meeting individual student needs, I believe they’ll choose to do their homework. I’m trusting both myself and my students. Taking the risk of pretty much declaring that homework is optional is scary. I’ve always been particularly sensitive to policies that seem to target the few who might take advantage. I’ll be honest with the class about why I’m trying out the passes. And I’ll trust that we’ll all learn together
- Unpredictable crisis will pop up
- Clarity emerges from struggle
- Exerting control to fight off wasted time appears to be less costly than failure.
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