For better or worse, in the United States and most countries for that matter, when students turn a certain age, they begin their schooling career. Most of these students will be with others their age their entire primary and secondary journey, yet there is a good chance they will be at a different skill level than others.

Getting Students Ready for the First Day

An example would be two children who turn six years of age entering kindergarten simultaneously. One of these children can already read chapter books, while the other can barely get through 10 letters in the alphabet. And yet they are put in the same class with one another, and the teacher is expected to get them to a certain standard of learning. Student A, who already reads well above grade level, will be expected to slow down and not get too far ahead, while student B has a lot of catching up to do to get where he needs to be by the end of the year. James Delisle calls this the difference between age mates and peer mates.

Difference Between Age Mates And Peer Mates

These two students are certainly age mates, but they are not peers. Student A would be put into a class where other children are at or near his reading level if they were with peers. Student B would be placed in a classroom with others at the developmental stage and able to progress at a natural pace of learning. This would be an ideal…

Many people think creativity is just something people are born with. I beg to differ. Like most things, it is developed. It may start small, like drawing stick figures as a child and working your way up through different art classes to oil paintings. It may be improving your chess game by playing tougher and tougher opponents, trying new strategies, and learning through trial and error. It could be becoming a better cake decorator by decorating cakes for your family at first, watching decorating shows or YouTube videos to pick up tips, until you are getting offers to make them for neighbors and friends.

Given this, if you want to be more creative, like anything, you have to practice in order to do so. You can’t just sit around waiting for your muse to inspire you or expect to create a masterpiece from scratch. You need to put in the work. The good news is that if it is something you love to do, it doesn’t really feel like work.

Why I Write Blogs

I believe my creativity comes from my writing. I have written over 20 books on education, and whenever I meet people familiar with my work, they always ask the same thing; how do you find the time to write so much? The answer; I write so much. Not only do I average writing two books a year, I write for three different blogs (such as this one here). Some people might be like “isn’t writing books enough, why blogs too?” my answer is that these provide me the chance to practice.

Blogs are a short form piece of writing where I can experiment with different techniques, try various tenses, and improve my craft. I also have editors for all three of the blogs who give their feedback and perspective. I’ve learned this past year that I write a little too much in the passive tense, so my goal has been to improve upon this.

How to Practice Creativity in the Classroom

1)  Offer many chances to exercise their ACC

The ACC is not a college football conference but rather the anterior cingulate cortex. In order to stimulate this, we need to give students the opportunity for insight. This typically comes with an a-ha moment, such as when you get a joke, problem solve or solve an insightful puzzle.

Motivation comes from one of two places. There is intrinsic, which comes from the self. This essentially means you do something because you find value in it for yourself, not value that someone else has placed on it. If you decide to read a book because you have heard it is good and want to enlighten yourself. This would be intrinsic motivation; you are motivated because you want to read it. The other version is extrinsic, which is motivation from other factors. An example would be your teacher assigning you a book to read under penalty of a bad grade should you not do so. This leads us to an honest conversation about student motivation and grades. 

Intrinsic & Extrinsic Student Motivation

Intrinsic motivation is the better of the two because it has a longer-term impact, and the purpose is deeper. Unfortunately, we live in a society that very much emphasizes extrinsic factors. It is taking a job because it pays more rather than because you find it fulfilling. Similarly, it is posting something on social media not because you want to spread joy or ideas but because you seek likes from others. Another example is doing something not because it is the right thing but because you will get something out of it.

Why Are Grades Bad for Student Motivation?

The problem is that not only do grades, an extrinsic motivator, pack a weaker punch, but guess what happens when you take them away? People will no longer do what you have been asking them to do. If you take away the grade students get for reading, they may no longer have the motivation to read.

We have trained students, much like we do dogs, to do something, and you will be rewarded with something. For the dog is a biscuit, and for the student, it is a grade, but make no mistake, there is no difference between these. They are both incentives to get someone to do something.

When you were a child, did you ever play school with a friend or sibling? If you didn’t, it usually looks something like this. Ring a bell, then the math lesson starts. Ring a bell, then reading begins. Another ring and then social studies or maybe science. It was always fun to be the teacher and not so much the student. And yet this is merely a reflection of what kids experience every day in school attempting to become Renaissance learners.

Realism & Renaissance Learners

If we were truly trying to teach something to someone, we wouldn’t be ringing bells, giving tests, or giving grades. For example, if you are trying to teach someone to ride a bike. You wouldn’t teach them the science lesson of centripetal force, stop that lesson, and give them a separate lesson on the mathematical area of a pedal. 

You would put it all together because you have to understand the whole picture to do the skill of pedaling a bike. The only test would be success or failure; the only grade is the smile on the child’s face once they figure it out or the crying when they fall into a heap on the ground.

Correcting the Renaissance Learners System

This long-winded diatribe is my attempt at an introduction to a series of five blogs spread over the year when I tear the entire school system down and rebuild it so that it makes sense. This means getting rid of some things we have come to associate as being necessary with schools, but the reality is that these requirements rarely occur in your adult life. My first suggestion; get rid of graduation requirements.

Graduation Requirements & Renaissance Learners

In US schools, we try to make everyone pretty good at everything but great at nothing. Take, for example, our graduation requirements. They force students to take four years of ELA, four years of math, typically three years each for science and social studies, and a smattering of electives, including health, gym, and others. This trickles down into middle and elementary school, where students are expected to have the four core areas at least once a day…

There are several national academic extra-curricular competitions that not only encourage creativity from students—they require it. Here are five I’ve done with students that most certainly fostered creative thinking. I like to use national competitions because the challenges and infrastructures to evaluate them are already in place.

1. Destination Imagination

Destination Imagination (DI) is a global program that has a team of students pick a challenge. The students must then create a skit that demonstrates the elements of the challenge and also demonstrates specific skills. By doing this, they are using creative thinking to come up with their solution.

There are various challenges to choose from, each with a different focus:

• Technical Challenge

• Scientific Challenge

• Engineering Challenge

• Fine Arts Challenge

• Improvisation Challenge

• Project Outreach

All challenges require students to be creative in the manner in which they solve their challenges, as well as in how they create and perform their skits. They actually get scored higher the more creative they are.

In addition to the central challenge, DI has another component which is called an instant challenge. Teams don’t know what the instant challenge will be when they arrive at the tournament. Typically they’ll be led to a room, told the instant challenge, and must immediately try to solve it without any sort of preparation. This is teaching the skill of adaptation, and again, the judges are looking for the most creative solution.

Click here to learn more about Destination Imagination.

2. Invention Convention

Invention Convention involves students coming up with an invention that solves a problem, but it requires more than just coming up with an idea. Students must envision what the invention will look like, create a model so that others can see their vision, and then explain how it works to others…

These are strategies I often recommend for working with gifted students:

• higher level questioning

• creative thinking

• project-based learning

• student-centered

• self-paced work

I’ve said it before, and I will continue to say it. These are not exclusive to gifted students. These work with all kids because they are simply good teaching.

Never was this more evident than in my attendance at the Teach Better Conference this year. I went to a couple of sessions on day two of the conference. At each of these sessions, not once was the term “gifted” used (including my own and I am the Gifted Guy). And yet the strategies that were shared were all ones that gifted teachers can use to challenge their students.

The Grid Method

In the first session, Chad Ostrowski was sharing the strategy that launched Teach Better: The Grid Method. The Grid Method is relatively simple in concept, but what it allows students to do is quite amazing. You take a content standard or content standards. You divide this into 5 levels of thinking using the DOK thinking platform.

I know there are only 4 levels of DOK, but Chad created a 5th one that blows the roof off for students which is great. At each of these levels of thinking there are activities for students to do. These activities are designed to help the student understand what it is they are supposed to be learning.

Why the Grid Method Is Great for Gifted Kids

When they finish one level of activities, working at their own pace, they move on to the next. One student might take 10 minutes to do the first activity while another might need 30 minutes. That is the beauty of the Grid Method. Students can work at their own pace. This means different students are going to get to different places on this grid which is its point.

I am in my 25th year in education, and I can say, without any compunction, that it is more difficult to be a teacher now than it ever has been in my career. The problem is not what you think it would be. Sure COVID has certainly made things more challenging, but even without the pandemic, it is a challenge to be a teacher for one simple reason; you never know what is going to be the next topic of turmoil.

Case in point. The assistant principal in Mississippi reads a children’s book titled “I Need a New Butt” to a group of 2nd graders and gets fired. This was a book that was written for 2nd graders (recommended ages are from 4-10). There was nothing objectionable in it other than the fact that it uses the word butt. He was terminated on grounds of “unnecessary embarrassment.” Let me restate it for those who misunderstand the offense; he read a book from the very library these 2nd graders use, and he was fired for it.

According to the Washington Post, there have been 160 teachers who either were fired or resigned due to their views in the past two years. Now granted, some of these terminations were justified for negative behavior–going off on rants on their social media or acting inappropriately. But there are others who simply shared in a civil manner views on politics or culture, which their administrators did not take kindly to.

I have been dealing with this myself. This year for Black History month, one of our teachers did an amazing job of conducting interviews with black professionals. She wanted to show black and brown students that there are people who look like them who are doing amazing things in their careers. One of these interviews was with a doctor. While describing the care he provides, he mentioned that he was a general practitioner and worked with people of all ages. He then briefly mentioned that he works with folks from the LGBTQ community as well as those experiencing gender dysphoria.

Out of the 10-minute interview, his mentioning of gender-affirming care took up like 30 seconds, and yet I had a parent calling members of the board of education complaining that this was the focus of the interview. I had half a dozen people watch the interview to ensure I wasn’t overlooking something or being blinded by my biases, and every one of them didn’t see the problem. Yet I spent weeks going back and forth with this parent as he continually accused me of pushing an agenda on our 4th graders.

Why this fear of civil discourse is problematic is not just the fact that people are losing their jobs. It is because, as teachers, we are charged with teaching students to challenge their thinking…

When we hear the term differentiate, we often think this means differentiating to support kids who are struggling. It might mean taking a complex task and chunking it into more easy-to-digest pieces. It could be scaffolding a lesson so that students can start with something more accessible to them and then work their way up. Maybe it takes the form of an assessment that allows a student to give their answers verbally since they are weak at writing. But differentiation is a two-way street. It goes up as well.

When you have a student who has a high ability, what are you doing to meet their needs? How are you going to change your questions, your activities, or your assessments to challenge these students? How exactly do you differentiate up?

What does it mean to differentiate up?

Imagine a student who can multiply multi-digit numbers together with ease whilst in a third-grade class learning the basics of how to multiply two, single-digit numbers. Think of a 9th-grade girl who reads the works of Flaubert and Chaucer being asked to read a James Patterson book with the rest of her class. These students are already ahead of their grade mates and yet often are asked to wait and let the rest catch up. What about their progress as a learner? Don’t we want them to be moving forward and not stuck in a holding pattern? Shouldn’t we be pushing these students to the limits of their abilities?

We have to differentiate up for these students. What exactly does that mean? It means introducing the math student who can multiply multi-digit numbers to new concepts such as division and algebraic thinking. It means helping the 9th grade girl choose a different book that will challenge her high reading ability. This would be meeting the student where they are at. This would be differentiating up.

Furthermore, remember that differentiation can be done in various places in the lesson whether it be the content, the process, or the product.