How Do You Teach Creativity?

EPISODE SUMMARY

Working with students on creative projects is challenging. What exactly is creativity and how do you teach it? What role does structure and deadlines play in the creative process? How do we guide students in collaborating together on creative work? What’s the importance of self-assessment and peer assessments? How subjective or objective should our assessment as teachers be?

EPISODE NOTES

A conversation on Facebook with my friend Jake led me to ponder the nature of teaching kids how to do creative work. Jake Ritter is a broadcast journalism teacher and John Mulvany is an artist and art teacher of 26 years.

In this episode we chat about:

what the schools of thought when it comes to teaching creativity are
what the most challenging aspects of teaching creativity are
how to help kids who just don’t know where to start
how to structure creative assignments
the balance between teaching skills and opening up opportunities to be creative
how to balance giving students creative freedom and wanting to give them guidance
how to structure collaborative creative projects
meeting deadlines vs. feeling creatively satisfied
how to structure self and peer assessments
how to assess a creative project as teachers

Plus you’ll hear audio from both Jake’s and John’s classroom in how they support their students.

The original video I posted on Facebook that sparked this conversation was titled ‘5 Biggest Mistakes I’ve Made As A Teacher‘ and you can watch that HERE.

Just for fun, here is the final product for ‘The Bachelor’ piece the students did.

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