[Applause]
so here's the scene the bell is just
rung students are starting to come into
the classroom to begin the next class
one student walks in visibly upset and
starts to unleash this rant about how
they feel about the education system
I've asked another student Charles Xu to
come and perform a monologue of the
words that that students shared that day
in that classroom the school system is
just like so rigged like all it does for
me is make me so stressed because it's
like we get hours and hours of homework
every single night and so we have to
stay up so late then the next day at
school we fail the tests and we can't do
the work because we're so tired and then
your grades drop so then the next night
you have to stay up even later to do
more work and more studying and that
just creates so many issues like sleep
issues health issues mental health
issues friend issues and when you really
think about it high school is just like
one big checkbox it's not about what
you're interested in or what matters to
you it's just checking off the list and
all these tasks like a CT SAT it's about
speed and prep it's not about what's
actually meaningful to you when you
really think about it the only thing
that the school system has done to me is
make me tired
thanks Charles now I wish this was an
isolated incident but it's not students
tend to share similar stories with me
almost on a daily basis and my greatest
fear is the day that my own children
come home and share the same
disillusionment and stress and anxiety
with the education system and I know far
too many parents who have among the
students tend to open up in creative and
comfortable expressive spaces among
other things the creative process
utilizes curiosity to make us open to
the world to build meaning through
connect
with ourselves and others and our
multiple intelligences it uses
imagination as a way to expand our
comprehension and empathy a great deal
of evidence as well as my own
experiences suggest that creativity is
how humans learn and grow and it will
save education as we know it
unfortunately schools are trying to kill
creativity and we know this thanks to
certain Robinson's most watched TED talk
of all time do schools kill creativity
which is something he confirmed thirteen
years ago and by many measures were in a
worse situation today than we were then
this is when creativity is widely
considered to be the number one skill
needed for the world
and for future success something that
was confirmed in a survey of over 1500
CEOs I also know that creativity is
rarely if ever taught in our classrooms
definitely not specifically or
comprehensively enough my own deep dive
into the educate into the creative
process started about nine years ago
when a student raised his hand in the
class after I had assigned a project and
said mister Sakura I can't do this
project I'm not creative I said okay
well what is what is creativity his
answer imagination
okay what's imagination he said
creativity then he got frustrated and
said I don't know it's that lightbulb
that pops up over people's heads that
doesn't happen for me
now imagination is really important to
the creative process but this magical
view of lightbulbs popping up over
people's heads is how a lot of others
view creativity and it was this moment
when I realized that I wasn't teaching
creativity specifically and purposefully
enough and that I needed to do something
about it
and there are two major things that I've
been
people struggle to connect to themselves
to others and the information and media
in their lives and they also struggle to
think creatively to adapt and embrace
change even when they say they want
change and these two things are linked
and they're part of the check box
culture that currently drives education
decision making one in which all the
students try to check off the exact same
boxes to get the college's they think
that they want to go to regardless of
their own interests intelligences skills
or aspirations it's also part of and I
think many would agree why we haven't
done more to meet the climate crisis
which is as much a failure of
imagination and empathy for others it's
why we make students carry around
50-pound backpacks full of books and
photocopied paper even though we live in
the digital revolution and all of the
information in the world is in their
back pockets but this talk isn't about
problems it's supposed to be about
solutions we have enough that proved
these issues in fact another famous TED
talk by Duncan Mardle on a similar topic
asked of his audience at the end what is
the opposite of bravery well it's not
cowardice the opposite of bravery is the
status quo conforming is easy it takes
courage to break outdated patterns so
let's be brave and let's start by
talking about some neuroscience a great
place to begin are the inputs and
outputs in the brain for example the
inputs and output receptors in a mouse's
brain are really close together which
doesn't leave a lot of room for
variation so if a mouse encounters a
stick it only really has one option go
over the stick the human brain on the
other hand has evolved over time to
expand the distance between input and
output so if a human encounters a stick
it might pick it up tap it on a tree to
make a Sabbath draw with it in the sand
pretend it's a sword or an early hominid
experiences use it to pull insects out
of a tree to eat this space allows for
variation failures mistakes unintended
consequences which are responsible for
some of the greatest developments in the
human history this space allows for an
infinite amount of connections the
neural connections and the more we
connect the better the more we connect
to ourselves our own lives and the lives
of others
the better and the more that we connect
two seemingly different content areas
the more interesting our outputs become
it's not just the arts all subjects
matter in the creative process now
scientists have also found that artists
friends have a gray matter in them so
yeah which is responsible for things
like the senses and memory
decision-making so the arts are
important as well and another gap that's
important to bring up is that between
emotional and our logical centers
simply put we are emotional beings
because those are the parts of our brain
that developed first and a great deal of
evidence is showing how important
emotional intelligence is on human
development hence the recent and super
important focus on social-emotional
learning in our schools ignoring
emotional intelligence for the sake of
academic achievement is pretty wasteful
it's kind of like asking kids to jump
before we teach them to walk we feel
before we think creativity directly
engages all of this and curiosity is an
important part of nurturing that
engagement in fact
curiosity is the soil for learning I
can't express
enough how important it is and how much
it came up when I was reading about
development and learning how it came up
as a source of mindfulness which is
important to the creative process the
source of creativity and innovation at
its core curiosity is about approaching
the world with an open eagerness to
learn it's it's inquiry like having a
conversation with a caring friend whose
only interest is the see you grow
through thoughtful dialogue it's the
source of excitement much like a child
anticipating a wrapped present in the
mystery of what's inside the sense of
awe as we stare into the universe of the
unknown and want more and that's because
it's associated with affection and we
all know how important affection is
thanks to Swiss child psychologist
Piaget who went so far as to say that if
you're not particularly interested or
like what you're learning about it's
pointless because you're not going to
learn anything everybody knows that
Einstein failed at school but do you
know why it's because he couldn't handle
the military-style
approach to learning he eventually
switched to a Swiss progressive school
at the age of 15 and he said nurtured
his curiosity and he succeeded and
flourished he's famous for saying I have
no special talents I'm only passionately
curious if curiosity is the soil for
learning then imagination is the light
an important fuel source for extending
our comprehension our connections and
our
and believe if I say or you read the
word skyscraper your visual cortex goes
to work forming an image of a tall
building that you can make associations
with that you can connect to imagination
is the ability to perceive things
without any sensory information in front
of us
neuroscience is Samir's iki went so far
as to say and I'll paraphrase that
creativity is the sort is it is an
extension of the function of the brain
the ability to form meaning from sensory
information or to imagine in the absence
of sensory information it has been
described as the ability to think of
things as possible
the source of flexibility and
originality in the human brain they say
that empathy only extends as far as our
sight an imagination has the ability to
extend our perceptions indefinitely
which is important because an extensive
survey of college students over the past
40 years has shown a great decline in
their abilities to imagine and empathize
with the situations of others so what is
creativity well at the root it's to
create many would say that it's the
ability to create things of inherent
value but it really goes much further
than this creativity is the big human
intelligence that which connects all
other forms of intelligence with the
goal of actualizing our learning of
manifesting our thoughts into something
that we can see and use at its core it's
about copying transforming and combining
all life on the earth was created when
cells started to copy then transform
mutate over time and then combine with
other cells to make all the complex
like ones you see on the earth today you
should check out Kirby Ferguson's TED
talk everything is a remix for more on
those fundamentals now this process is
not linear it ebbs and flows circling
back and forth until our thoughts become
creation until manifest our learning and
the shame is a lot of the words that are
a part of this process are missing from
our educational experiences things like
relevance relationships risk play
failure embracing mistakes critique and
agency for more clarity here are three
phases and six steps in the creative
process that can be used in educational
curriculum the first phase is curiosity
and the first step is influence
inspiration Sir Isaac Newton once said
that creation requires influence this is
collecting ideas learning through
emulation anybody who has learned to
play a musical instrument has learned by
playing other people's music by copying
and then we can start to connect the
ideas that we've collected in the case
of a musician it can be combining two
different sources of music to make a new
source of music to filter that and make
it a different thing to combine ideas
then we get to the innovation stage
where we really start to use our
imaginations to filter these connections
through our own lives ourselves and our
experiences this is what we start to
like build on the things that have been
created before to transform all we're
really doing when we make something is
innovating something that exists and
then we get to the creation phase
immersive experiences taking our
emotional thoughts our logical thoughts
and putting that into the physical so we
can see it and hold it and we start with
the prototype which is testing our
assumptions be it through
catching drafts modeling we start to
connect the head the heart and the hand
putting this into the world so that
other people can see it and this is a
great time to get feedback of our
creations and our ideas so because other
people can see it before we move to the
work step which is the hard part that
10,000 hours of practice needed to
master something this is meaningful
rigor because we are connected to it not
busy work this is where we create an
inner dialogue with the process where we
make something reflect on that respond
and make something else then leading to
the critique step this critique fails
and it's the last phase but it really
shouldn't have pitch it really shouldn't
wait till the end it should happen
throughout and it often sends us back to
the beginning
this is reflection qualitative
assessment thinking about our learning
metacognition and it's inherently
collaborative because we need other
people's points of views to see our
creations more objectively to challenge
our biases and work against our egos
with the name of progression for the
greater good so here's my call to action
let's take steps 13 years since the most
watched TED talk without much change I
think we can do better than that and I
think the first step is to start
cultivating a culture of curiosity and
we should begin with teachers
let's get teachers collaborating I
cannot preface enough how powerful it is
to work with another content area
specialist who sees learning differently
than I do working on a daily basis to
build new forms of learning together
let's have professional development that
teaches teachers how to bring creativity
into their classroom we need visionary
leadership that prizes this being
through
Chane mentorship or workshops this will
begin to work against the checkbox
culture that currently pervades the
status quo of Education and then let's
take a step of building classes that are
creative
if creativity is considered the number
one skill needed in the world maybe we
should have a class that just teaches
creativity having all this technology
spending all this money on this
technology that we have in schools is
kind of wasteful for not giving students
the ability to use it creatively it's
like we're all GPS units running around
without any sense of direction let's
create interdisciplinary co-taught
classes that break the current silos
that we've created on learning
connections are the tell-tale sign of
learning and fragmentation and isolation
are its opposites in the next step and
this is a really big one student
autonomy students need choice and
control over their learning I'm not
saying that they need 100% freedom
because they don't but they need to be
able to form the connections that build
the relevance that they need to really
learn and actualize that experience and
as such our assessment should be more
focused on the process rather than the
result tests should not be dictating
what students learn and we really
shouldn't want everybody learning the
exact same thing anyway everybody having
the exact same ideas about the world is
a terrible idea for the creative process
one of my favorite parts about
creativity is that it's inherently
differentiated any parent of two or more
children knows that every child is
different with a unique intelligence
with unique means and aspirations and
ways of actualizing their learning let's
start to build an education system that
recognized
and now we can get to the big change I'm
talking structural exchange the big step
things like graduation requirements the
schedule time and space graduation
requirements should probably in the
least be cut in half students need that
space to be able to take the classes
that they want to take that are
important for their futures now that
somebody decided 10 years ago or a
hundred years ago is important for them
student schedules are so packed and
they're full of things that displace
other experiences that we know enhance
human development things like reading
for pleasure having dinner with their
families or just exploring the world
with their friends we all know that
students are not meant to wake up and be
at school by 8 a.m. in the morning then
work through a military-style schedule
of 50 minutes and math now stop 50
minutes in English now stop when do they
have time to process the information let
alone make the connections in their busy
day these steps will start to work
against the this disillusionment the
fear the anxiety the negative stress
that's that pervades what students feel
on a daily basis we have to be willing
to fail and then try to get learn from
our failures and then do something new
remain stagnant is negligent at best
expecting different results the creative
process engages these things it asks us
to make changes the world has been
changing around us and we have not kept
up thought must produce action we can
take some steps thank you
[Applause]
you