Page 22 - FIS World

FIS students use creativity in all subjects.
Supporting Creativity
How Schools Foster a Student’s Inner Artist
Three years ago, I set out to write a dissertation and I decided that if I was going to spend a year re- searching and writing, I wanted to tackle a subject that interested me. I had noticed that creativity was being talked about a lot in professional de- velopment seminars, in social media (Sir Ken Robinson’s famous talk about schools killing creativity) and in books (such as Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind”, and Howard Gardner’s “Five Minds for the Future”) that I had been reading. I also thought that there is a fairly fundamental misunderstand- ing about the nature of creativity that makes it difficult to address this sub- ject at a school leadership level.
Often people assume that because a person is engaging in an artistic endeavour (dance, music, drawing) that they are being creative. As a musi- cian, I learned early on that there are musicians who can memorize, or read charts of very intricate music, but cannot improvise. Conversely, there are those who cannot read music but are adept at musical improvisation. Most musicians fall somewhere between the extremes. Just as every artist is not necessarily creative, areas we normally do not associate with cre- ativity, such as Math and Science, have been shaped by continuous innova- tive, creative thought.
Another assumption that many people hold about a creative learning environment is that rote learning or memorization is somehow antithetical to creativity. Any creative genius has spent a tremendous amount of time learning the basics of their craft (scales, passing, drawing) and has reached a point where they can draw on these skills effortlessly in creative ways. So when Ken Robinson accuses schools of “killing creativity” I take exception to this premise.
At FIS, students have many tradi- tional opportunities to be creative in subjects such as Design Technology, Visual Art, Drama, Dance, and Music. I
20 FIS World February 2015