Are You Growing or Killing Creativity?

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It’s been ten years since Sir ken Robinson gave his inciting Ted Talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? Since then his books and talks continue to challenge us to transform education— to value varied talents, build creativity, and help people find their element.

Here are some questions and recommendations with quotes from his book Out of Our Minds, Learning to be Creative

“It is often said that education and training are the keys to the future. They are, but a key can be turned in two directions. Turn it one way and you lock resources away, even from those they belong to. Turn it the other way and you release resources and give people back to themselves. To realize our true creative potential—in our organizations, in our schools and in our communities—we need to think differently about ourselves and to act differently towards each other. We must learn to be creative.”  —Sir Ken Robinson

 

How do we support creativity in our kids ? 

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Olympic Learning and Letting Curiosity Lead

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When we started homeschooling, even though I’d been a teacher, I remember wondering how in the heck we would manage all the learning I thought we had to do?

When we started moving from homeschooling to unschooling, I still wondered if it would really work to let a learner’s interests and curiosity drive their education.

I was still in the schooling mindset; that learning was somehow separate from life. And that it only “counted” if someone else told you what to do and how to do it and then measured it.

It took awhile for to deschool myself.

And then a wonderful thing happened, I realized we’d always done tons of learning on our own –it just didn’t look like school.  We’d already created an environment with time and space to ask questions and then try to find the answers.

I realized you can allow wondering and curiosity to evolve without having to preplan and control the outcome, and learning will happen.  Amazingly motivation that had gone missing can return.

If it seems hard to imagine, here is a little snapshot of unplanned, natural learning that can happen when you make time for wondering, curiosity, listening, and space. 

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Nurturing Unlabeled Seeds, Allowing Kids to Bloom

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Try to see your child as a seed that came in a packet without a label. Your job is to provide the right environment and nutrients and to pull the weeds. You can’t decide what kind of flower you’ll get or in which season it will bloom. I love this quote shared by a mom … Read more Nurturing Unlabeled Seeds, Allowing Kids to Bloom

4 Things I Wish I’d Done When We Began Unschooling

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When you know better, do better. 4 Thiings I wish I'd done when we began homeschooling at www.LisaNalbone.com

If I’d known then, what I know now..Document, document, document!

4 things I wish I’d done as soon as we started unschooling are:

 

1. Written in a journal every day

I wish I’d started blogging, even privately, about our learning adventures while we were in the middle of them. (I also wish I’d done this from day one. No baby book in our house!) I did some scrapbooking and haphazard journaling but it doesn’t capture all those wonderful moments. And those things I thought I would never forget? Well, I’m glad for the photos we have, but I wish I’d written the details.  

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