Winter Staff Development Day: Fostering Creativity and Innovation

 

"We all start out as innovators, and we lose that somewhere along the way,” Bing’s associate director Beth Wise quoted a speaker she heard at a Learning & the Brain conference on creativity in February. These words set the tone for Bing Nursery School’s winter staff development day, where Bing educators focused on the challenge of fostering creativity and innovation in the minds of both children and teachers. This full day of presentations and discussions took place on February 20, 2018.

 

The day began with a presentation from Kyung Hee Kim, author of The Creativity Challenge: How We Can Recapture American Innovation and a professor and researcher from The College of William and Mary. Her presentation focused on her passion and area of expertise—creativity and innovation. She began by explaining the problem: While creativity and innovation are at the forefront of American growth, the United States has become a nation that relies on test scores to determine a child’s future. She believes that “education should empower children to reach their maximum potential in the area of their own curiosity and interests.” When there is more focus on memorizing information in order to improve test scores, children’s passions, strengths and creative potential fall victim.

 

Our job as parents and teachers is to help children develop their strengths by focusing on individual curiosity. This is one reason why unstructured time with open-ended materials is so critical to the philosophy at Bing. Kim’s research suggests that all the common characteristics that big name innovators possess can be taught or cultivated, and that a creative attitude needs to be encouraged more than academic excellence. To do this, Kim encourages parents to focus on the unique strengths of children.

 

Kim realized that there was a creativity crisis after studying over 200,000 test scores from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. She gathered scores from American and Canadian children and adults tested between 1966 and 2008. Her analysis found that creativity scores of Americans rose from 1966 until 1990, but began to significantly decline after 1990, even though IQ scores continued to rise. Creativity is declining, and Kim recognizes that something must be done. She created the CATs method (climates, attitudes and thinking skills) to help parents and caregivers nurture creative attitudes in children.

 

Kim spent the majority of her talk discussing her CATs method. The “climates” in CATs are similar to an environment, but refer to both the physical and psychological surroundings. The “attitudes” are the practical attitudes that are nurtured by the climates. The “thinking skills” describe the actual creative process that is enabled by attitudes. They include “inbox thinking,” “outbox thinking” and “newbox thinking”: Inbox thinking is the traditional way of using a reservoir of knowledge to solve a problem, outbox thinking is divergent and unique ideas, and newbox thinking combines the expertise from the inbox and the novelty from the outbox to create innovation. With the climates and attitudes in place, one can work through the thinking skills to become a true innovator.

 

Kim’s discussion of climates gave Bing teachers new insight into how a nursery school environment can influence children’s creativity. Kim’s climates can be likened to an orchard: Just like plants, creativity needs “diverse soil, bright sun, fierce storms and free space” to grow.

 

The diverse soil climate suggests that children need “diverse resources and experiences” to flourish. It encourages resourcefulness, so children can learn to pull from the people around them to create their own viewpoints. There are five attitudes that accompany the soil climate: open-mindedness, bicultural, mentorship, complexity-seeking and resourcefulness.

 

The second climate is the sun climate. Just as sun attracts plants to grow in a certain direction, the sun climate encourages children to be inspired and curious. There are six attitudes that fit into the sun climate: optimism, big-picture thinking, curiosity, spontaneity/impulsivity, playfulness and energy.

 

Third is the fierce storm climate. This climate provides children with challenges and high expectations. “The storm climate provides both positive and negative feedback to instill self-discipline and self-efficacy in individuals.” The attitudes that accompany this climate are: independence, self-discipline, diligence, self-efficacy, resilience, risk-taking, persistence and accepting uncertainty.

 

The fourth climate is the free space climate. In this climate children are “given the freedom to be alone and unique.” Just as all plants grow slightly differently, even in similar contexts, the attitudes in this climate encourage a child to be truly themselves amidst their surroundings. The attitudes are: emotion, compassion, self-reflection, autonomy, daydreaming, nonconforming, gender-bias-free and defiance.

 

Kim’s presentation left us with new tools and motivation to foster a child’s most critical skills in discovering their own interests, passions and developing strengths.

 

Following Kim’s inspirational presentation, teachers Sadie Parrinello and Frannie McCarthy shared innovative ways to represent children’s interests and experiences through documentation with photographs and videos. They reminded us how reflecting on a child’s play, art, movement and conversations can help us recognize how we can enhance their experiences. As teachers, we can extend learning when we more fully understand how children experience the world around them.

 

These ideas, together with Kim’s, further inspired our teachers to help children grow their creative potential, so they can feel as important and as valued as we know they are.

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Kyung Hee Kim’s CATs method for nurturing children’s creativity proposes that certain environments or “climates” encourage particular attitudes to flourish. The climates and their associated attitudes:

• Open-mindedness: Children can develop this from early and diverse experiences and conversations.
• Bicultural: Children can become more bicultural by embracing a new culture—learning from people and practices within that culture—while still maintaining their own identity.
• Mentorship: This requires a child to be teachable. When children are given experts to learn with and from, they can develop a mentored attitude.
• Complexity-seeking: Children can develop this attitude by working through increasingly complex day-to-day problems and acknowledging conflicting ideas.
• Resourcefulness: Children can develop resourcefulness through having access to a wide variety of resources and through learning how to effectively use resources to accomplish goals. This trait can be modeled in day-to-day situations.

• Optimism: This trait begins with having healthy attachment and trust for a diverse group of children and adults so that they can “confidently expand their world.”
• Big-picture thinking: Giving children access to new ideas and cultural activities and talking to them about their experiences can help them recognize that the world is bigger than just their own ideas.
• Curiosity: Allowing children to pursue their many questions can help them develop an insatiable desire to discover. Although it may become redundant, curiosity is better nurtured than shut down.
• Spontaneity/impulsivity: This trait can be characterized by an individual’s tendency to act on their ideas immediately. “It starts with open-mindedness and curiosity, and leads to playful approaches to experiences.”
• Playfulness: Helping children recognize the lighter side to everyday challenges and situations can help them develop this skill.
• Energy: Although sometimes overwhelming, this is a sign of inner motivation and enthusiasm and can be nurtured through recognition of their excitement and passion.

• Independence: Allowing children to do things and think of ideas on their own can nurture this behavior.
• Self-discipline: For children to be self-disciplined, they need understandable limits and expectations and the freedom to make decisions within these boundaries.
• Diligence: When children are self-disciplined, they develop the skills to be diligent.
• Self-efficacy: Giving children feedback so that they can perform well on specific tasks can help them achieve confidence.
• Resilience: This comes from recovering after challenging situations. Helping children figure out their goals, work toward them and achieve them can provide experiences they need to be resilient.
• Risk-taking: When children are confident and optimistic, they take risks. Allowing children to do scary or challenging things and work through possible outcomes can help them be risk-takers.
• Persistence: When children progress toward their goals, they develop the skill of persistence.
• Accepting uncertaint: If children are given the chance to perform a task when they’re unsure of the outcome, they become more accepting of uncertainty.

• Emotion: This can be nurtured through recognition and conversation about an individual’s feelings and the feelings of others around them.
• Compassion: This begins with understanding that others are experiencing different emotions and problems. Reflecting with children about the feelings of others can help them develop compassion.
• Self-reflection: Children need alone time to reflect on their own and others’ experiences; this is often facilitated through connecting with nature.
• Autonomy: Allowing children to set their own goals and enjoy the process of achieving them can help them develop this skill.
• Daydreaming: This is just as it sounds: Giving children the freedom to daydream about unrealistic thoughts will help nurture their creative minds and problem-solving abilities.
• Nonconforming: When children are confident, they can feel comfortable as an outsider. Encouraging children’s unique qualities and passions can help them achieve this.
• Gender-bias-free: This skill requires children to see the strengths of individuals, so that they can pursue whatever they want regardless of their gender.
• Defiance: Although this trait is often viewed negatively, defiant children “courageously reject” existing norms. Allowing children to give reasons to defy certain rules, hierarchies and norms can help them achieve what people working within those restrictions can’t.