Episode 010

Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Creativity with Chelsea

Jenny Woo [00:00:07] Hello everyone, I'm Jenny and you're listening to 52 Essential Conversations. Today we have Chelsea Myers sitting with us to talk about creativity. Chelsea plays in the intersection between teaching and neuroscience through her time spent in the classrooms and at the research lab. She has taught in project-based learning school environments from 5th all the way to 12th grade on both the West and East Coasts. While working for the Laboratory for Educational Neuroscience at the University of California San Francisco, Chelsea was a Research Fellow for the Center for Childhood Creativity, where she helped to translate neuroscience research to usable knowledge for parents and teachers. Welcome, Chelsea.

Chelsea Myers [00:00:59] Hi Jenny. Thanks so much for having me.

Jenny Woo [00:01:02] Tell us what is creativity is to you and why is it important.

 Chelsea Myers [00:01:08] It's so interesting from both my teaching background and my research background to answer that question. From a researching standpoint, a creative idea tends to be assessed based on whether it's both original and useful. As a teacher, I tend to think of inventiveness, spontaneity, and imagination. Really though, the non-researcher in me tends to feel that putting a strict definition around creativity is against its very nature. Parents like you, Jenny, of young children have an opportunity to see amazing creativity each day in your children, which stems so much from being so curious about everything around them. Children, when given the right environment can do tremendous things, come up with amazingly inventive worlds, solutions, and ways of navigating their surroundings. And it is through constraints, expectations, social norms, and responsibilities that we start to see that decline in creativity as kids get older and turn to adults. Something called the Fourth Grade Slump has been identified by researchers as a time around nine to ten years old where we really see a decline in creative thinking. Despite this decline, creative thinking is something that we are seeing become more and more important in our adulthood and for our economy. When so many of our jobs are automated now, top employers are looking for innovation and innovation comes from people who think creatively. Paul Tough, an amazing journalist that writes a lot about education talks about how we no longer need just problem solvers but problem finders as well. I have always loved that and I think it is so much related to how I approach creativity with my students.

Jenny Woo [00:02:46] Let's break this down. Tell us what you've done at school or even tips for parents in fostering the type of right environment where we can encourage problem finders.

Chelsea Myers [00:03:00] Great question. So much of creativity for children is about the imagination: coming up with new worlds and imaginary friends. It is probably really basic to say this, but embracing the power of play is one thing a parent can do. So often, kids are inundated with schedules so early on in their lives, and that leaves little room for imaginative play. Protect and prioritize that time for your kids. I think also, research shows us that it is important for us not as adults to put constraints on their curiosity, so using open-ended language as your child explores novel things, such as "I wonder what this is for?" "what do you think?" for example. A language that is encouraging and not dismissive of ideas. As an educator, we often call this "yes, and" rather than using that dreaded "but" phrased. As Carol Dweck promotes, using growth mindset language praising effort rather than results is a great way to foster creativity. Facilitating brainstorming can really help where kids are generating a lot of ideas and organically seeing how some ideas lead to others and asking questions that help kids to see patterns and relationships in the world. Being in nature can especially help facilitate that part too. And just overall, allowing your kids to fail a little bit and helping them through frustrations when they are stuck can be really helpful. Teaching strategies that we often use on our own as adults, like taking a break from something and coming back for example. Movement, as well, can be super important for those aha moments, and movement for creative expression is really great.

Chelsea Myers [00:04:40] Some really important research in psychology and neuroscience recognizes a phenomenon called the "Undermining Effect," which basically is that when something is already intrinsically rewarding--they just like doing something. It is given an extrinsic reward, a treat, or something of that sort, it actually undermines the innate desire and enjoyment of that activity. I think recognizing that is really important for parents and educators. Can we identify and help kids to see when they have done something for pure enjoyment, not for any outside rewards? I think especially as kids get older and approach the slump that we talked about, putting effort into creating environments for creativity can be important. I'm amazed during my time as an educator at how cardboard, pipe cleaners, and other recyclables turn into poly elevators and zip lines. Allowing for these materials and a space to get messy can be super important. When parents are able, providing new experiences such as museums, nature walks, cultural festivals, art performances can be really enriching in creativity provoking.

Jenny Woo [00:05:49] I love how you know these are great tangible examples of how to create that environment where they can make mistakes, fail, and explore that process. And it's so funny that you said "yes, and" versus the "but." It's like every time I lay out a bunch of materials for my kids to play, it's always "oh this is great, so amazing what you're doing" but then in my head, I'm like "oh it's so messy, what am I going to do!" So that's one thing, the balance of just the fact that you do need to clean it up and this mess is there and real. Then also I'm feeling the tension of when do you step in as a parent to use some creativity moments as a teachable moment, say "how about this or do it this way." It's such a balance between the two. Any tips for us in handling messiness and also the tension of letting go, leaving them alone vs. going in and teaching them.

Chelsea Myers [00:07:01] Yeah, that's such a challenging question. I do think that if you are facilitating your children in a way that again uses that open language rather than "you should do it this way," providing a lot of different options of how things can be approached and strategies. I truly believe that when you can, to try to let your children come to those moments on their own and it's really interesting because I think as parents and I know my own parents did this as well is that they're afraid to watch us fail. And really those are some of the most influential learning experiences in our lives and they're especially fruitful when they're in a supportive environment around parents that are there to comfort them or direct them or support them in that failure and all the emotions that come with that. Embracing that and the power you have as a parent to understand the comfort that you can provide in those struggle moments that lead to great learning and productive futures for your children.

Jenny Woo [00:08:17] Yeah. That's a great point. And it actually reminded me of embracing failures within ourselves as parents. I think a lot of the times we do feel pressure and that you know we need to get this teachable moment right. We need to capitalize on this learning experience. We got to do it now versus just modeling the fact that we don't know the right answers and we're looking for it together and embracing that. I think for me as a former executive coach, I've worked with a lot of adults who have a fear of failure. And ironically, those are the things that are holding them back from getting to the next level as you mentioned, the 21st-century skills and jobs.

Jenny Woo [00:09:03] So any tips or resources that you have for us as parents?

Chelsea Myers [00:09:09] A lot of my interest in this topic stemmed from my work with an amazing center out of Sausalito, California right outside of San Francisco called the Center for Childhood Creativity. While I was working at an educational research lab in the area they asked me to come on board to help them to translate some of the newer neuroscience of creativity research into some usable digestible knowledge. Their website has an amazing set of resources on the subject, including the paper that I worked on called Inspiring a Generation to Create, Critical Components of Creativity in Children. That paper includes a really interesting overview of creativity and also which I absolutely love, provides games and strategies that parents and educators can use to help foster creativity, some of which definitely has some parallels to what we talked about today.

Jenny Woo [00:09:58] Well thank you so much for your time, Chelsea. And thank you for tuning in to 52 Essential Conversation.