Divergent Conversation (2012)

One of my mentors once suggested that, “the world doesn’t need more bad pots.” The statement haunts me, and makes me more cautious about putting my work out into the world.  And yet, I spend my days coaching students through making… well… early pots, and my evenings firing kilns full of them.  When I looked at the objects with which we were presented, I couldn’t see myself creating anything more substantial than a bad pot – another object that would end up in storage, or getting chewed apart by my dog.  

So I opted to take a different approach to to this project.

I see creativity as a verb – the act of creating with substance.  In a school setting, I indulge the bad pots, because they aren’t really so bad – just early.  Because what is behind those pots is the beautiful act of creating something, anything, in an environment where the act sometimes seems so rare.  

In an arts class, we’re using all of our senses with a goal in mind, and that goal is tangible but not absolute.  Elliot Eisner – a great in the arts education field – stated that the arts teach us that problems can have more than one solution, and that questions can have more than one answer.  

Contrast that with the intangible and absolute “learning” – and I’m making air-quotes around the word – that is assessed via a scantron sheet. I sometimes get weary of hearing my subject declared “recreational” or “relaxing.”  If we’re preparing our students for an unknown future, which scenario is more real: the one in which every question is answered by A, B, C, or D, or the one in which decisions and actions lead to consequences, and evaluation is contextual?  I think about this every single day that I teach.  If the bad pots represent my students decisions, practice, actions, and consequences, combined with just a bit of chance (a.k.a. a kiln) – every single clumsy pinch pot becomes a conscientious objection to the multiple-choice model of education that I have come to despise.

In “art teacher school” – besides just learning how to load hot glue guns and sharpen crayons – we learn very early on to become sharp advocates for our content.  We have to.  It’s the first area to get sliced-and-diced, when times are tight.  Arts education is messy – tangibly and materially messy, messy to assess, messy to standardize.  So is creativity.  So is life.  I sometimes wonder what would happen if all educators were challenged to advocate for the relevance of their subject matters in the same way we do in the arts.  Defend math.  Tell me why literature, or history, is “core” rather than “elective.”  Scratch the assumptions, and clarify why what you teach is something that students should learn.  

In my piece for this show, I’ve invited students, colleagues, and friends to talk about how the verb creativity has affected their lives.  Their stories paint an interesting and rather challenging picture of the word and its meaning.  Since the piece is a conversation, I’ve set up a conversation space, with an invitation to practice some divergent thinking about the objects that comprised the challenge. I’d invite you to spend a minute or forty – the combined length of the audio linked to this piece – reflecting on the role of creativity in your own life.  Is it a noun?  A verb?  An abstract concept, or a real one?