What's a Teacher Want: Intelligent or Creative Students?

The short answer for this teacher is: it depends...

This question arose for me two days ago when I heard NPR reporter Elizabeth Blair relate a story about the "science" of measuring creativity. 

In the educational world there are countless tests to measure countless things. But a test to measure creativity?

Blair interviewed James Catterall, a psychologist and director of the Centers for Research on Creativity in Los Angeles who suggested that if we as a nation want our schools to create intelligent AND creative students, we need to measure our progress. 

My knee-jerk reaction was, "Great, yet another assessment to administer in an educational climate that already seems saturated with assessments for assessment's sake."

But listening further to the story I reflected upon the true purpose of assessment- which should be to measure student proficiency on a subject so as to guide future instruction of a child. Assessment should not be used merely to hand out a letter grade to show mom or dad. (But it's true that test grades are a helpful way to communicate to parents how their child is doing in a subject.)

As the story unfolded, Blair talked about E. Paul Torrance who in the late 1950s worked with boys enrolled in military academies. He found that kids who were oftentimes labeled as "troublemakers" were in fact "high-energy kids with ideas." And it is these types of students who don't always fit into the traditional school construct. Through his research, Torrance found that many teachers would opt for a smart student over a creative one, since controlling creative kids can sometimes be a more challenging task. It seems our educational leaders and we as individual teachers ought to figure out how we accomodate these creative types. 

So back to the original question: What's preferable? An intelligent child or a creative one? 

The answer varies from teacher to teacher.

As I sat in my now parked car having arrived home, I finished listening to Elizabeth Blair's story, and I couldn't help but reflect on my 17 years of teaching: it seems our educational leaders for the past 12 years have been so focused on "covering" laundry lists of educational standards in our No Child Left Behind Act culture that we have singularly focused on student acquisition of "intelligence" as measured by uncreative standardized tests over creating creative kids as measured by alternative means.

My parents-both retired teachers who taught 30+ years each-have often said educational paradigms swing across the years like a giant pendulum so that everything old becomes new once more. 

Thirty years ago my mom called deep learning and attention to creating creative kids "thematic teaching." I'm hoping today's equivalent to that would be the Common Core Standards.

The Elk Grove Unified School District has begun moving toward implementing these standards over the past year with discussions at school sites, the creation of web resources, and a day of training that took place at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year. 

It seems we are still in the early stages of getting Elk Grove teachers familiar with these standards and modifying teacher practices within the classroom. There will surely be more trainings and site discussions to insure full implementation of the Common Core Standards by the 2014-2015 school year. 

Personally, I have been very encouraged by what I've learned so far regarding the Common Core: deep learning; an emphasis on integrating literacy, technology, and writing with math and science; a focus on both college AND career readiness. 

This past week my students and I were visited by Jeremy Predko, Coordinator of Instructional Technology, for Sacramento City Unified School District. Jeremy had heard how my students were integrating core instruction with writing and filmmaking, and he wanted to see how our classroom operated. 

For almost 2 hours Jeremy moved through our class, meeting with groups of students, watching them engaged with editing math instructional films, seeing how they recorded their voices, observing the scripting process, seeing how project-based learning was being welded to filmmaking, observing the rigor and critical thinking that was taking place.

Jeremy and I met for another hour after school was out talking about the Common Core and how our classroom operated.

His assessment: my students and our classroom looked VERY Common Core.

My reaction: excitement.

Take a look at the video attached to this post. It integrates online research, reading comprehension, expository writing, critical thinking, and technology to create a multi-media demonstration of learning. To me THAT is what the Common Core is all about. 

The advent of the Common Core might be a license for new teachers to start teaching more deeply than they have in the recent NCLB-influenced past. And for veteran teachers such as my parents who were thematically teaching decades ago and doing many of these Common Core-esque things, it might be a renewed license to teach the "whole child" once more and reignite the the fires of creativity.