Linking Leisure and Creativity

In a recent NPR interview, Jonah Lehrer spoke of the ingredients that can help foster creative moments. One of the most creative companies is 3M, maker of thousands of versatile products. Their secret? An hour a day of free time for all engineers. They use the time for projects, hobbies, reading, but the point is trust and feeling relaxed. As Lehrer put it; "they don't have to justify it to their boss — all they have to do is promise to share it with their colleagues. This sends an important message early on: we've hired you, we think you're smart, we trust you, we trust you to find solutions, you manage your time in your own way."


I've never been a good planner, but as a teacher, I feel my greatest strength lies in my creativity and ability to teach 'off the cuff', and I often deviate from the plans that I'm forced to write and turn in on a weekly basis. Don't get me wrong, planning is good, but I completely disagree with the "backwards by design" model that's pushed on many novice teachers. The standards movement and to some extent, models like backwards by design have helped force teachers into jobs where there is zero creativity.  What it's doing to children is worse. Where is the trust from administrators? We teachers should be thought of as the engineers of schools (heck, the engineers of our society!) and be given free time, just like the engineers at 3M. Instead, that free time and creative license is nowhere to be found in any school I've ever worked. That hour of planning I get daily is never ever spent on something leisurely. It's grading, meetings, writing lesson plans in a pre-set form, it's clerical, and sometimes even medical (accident reports, band aids, finding ziplocks for freshly-lost teeth). Non-teachers have no idea. Teachers are the hardest working people I know and the most overworked. Our creative potential plummets each time we're asked to conform. 


I would love to encounter a school where the WHOLE SCHOOL participates in a leisure hour. I would love to be able to have 15 minutes to just see what other teachers in my school are doing - to get ideas and share ideas that are awesome. Every day. Instead of (often irrelevant) faculty development or professional development, the time would be much better used to share the things we read, play with, design, or write during this hour. 


I am tired of feeling the need to justify my teaching, to justify my content area. I've often heard the phrase (and I agree, with one important caveat) that teachers should be allowed to close the door and teach. Teach in our own way we must do, but opening the door is essential. Not opening the door to un-trusting administrators looking over our shoulders, but to other colleagues, their inquiry, their ideas. The accountability movement needs to re-consider to what and to whom we're being held accountable. How about a bonus for creativity and innovative schools instead of those slaves to test scores? 

Hearts with Haiti Collaboration 2012, Part I: Possibility and the "us" vs. "them"

Something life-affirming in diversity must be discovered and rediscovered, as what is held in common becomes always more many-faceted-open and inclusive, drawn to untapped possibility.  – Maxine Greene, “The Passions of Pluralism”

I’ve been presented with a wonderful opportunity to deeply understand the meaning of the phrase “music is the universal language”, and to explore this concept with 6^th and 7^th grade students. The idea: to teach the same lessons, same material, and present the same questions to a group of suburban Georgia students and a group of early high school Haitian orphans and to each compose and present a musical work to one another. An unlikely pair, you think?  As the first day of collaborative work reveals, perhaps not. 

Before going into our amazing discoveries though, I want to introduce the key players of this collaborative effort. I am teaming up with two dear friends. Hearts with Haiti, a non-profit organization based in North Carolina is sponsoring the trip.  Geoffrey Hamlyn, Executive Director of Hearts with Haiti and amazing violist is teaching music there along with Clara Lyon, a passionate and accomplished violinist. Both of these Juilliard alums will be living in a Haitian orphanage for the next week, working with students on various music projects. These students have been through a lot, especially the horrific 2010 earthquake that left many injured, sick, and without home and family.

In the coming week, my 6^th and 7^th grade students and their students in Haiti will take part in lessons designed and taught by Clara, Geoffrey, and myself. We aim to ask more questions than we answer, but a few of the discussions we will have include: What is music and how is it used in my community? What messages can music communicate, and how?  How can music be understood as universal?  How can we use music to learn more about ourselves and others?   

Our first lesson really touched upon this last question. Both sets of students listened to George Crumb’s “Black Angel Quartet” Night of the Electric Insects. While listening, they were asked to describe what message or story the composer told. Both students in GA and in Haiti came up with images of fear, death, zombies, etc. What was most interesting though was the response when we posed the question, “What do you think the other students will come up with? Will their responses be similar to yours or different?”.  Overwhelmingly on both ends, students felt the “others” would have a different answer than theirs.  This is a classic assumption and misconception that happens to people of all ages and experience levels every day. We constantly separate “us” from “them”.  As one of my students put it, , “it’s different over here and we have different experiences”.  While that may be true, there is something about the interpretation of art that simply transcends cultural difference, as the interpretation of the Crumb showed so clearly.

So what can be gained from this experience? While I won’t let my own predictions be limited, it’s worth venturing that the debunking of the “us” vs. “them” mentality is a lesson in being a good citizen. Indeed, many in Washington today could use a lesson like this. After all, we may look different, act different, believe different things, and live in vastly different environments but doesn’t it say something that we can hear music and all think as one?  Perhaps music is not the only thing on which we can see eye to eye. . .oh the possibilities!

Stay tuned for the next tale of our collaborative adventure!