Creative Feelings
Another critical aspect of understanding creativity is considering how it feels to be creative, to be truly engaged in the creative experience. When describing the optimal state of creative expression, we could refer to this state as flow. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined this term in 1975 and describes the state of flow as follows:
Flow is a subjective state that people report when they are completely involved in something to the point of forgetting time, fatigue, and everything else but the activity itself. It is what we feel when we read a well-crafted novel or play a good game of squash, or take part in a stimulating conversation. The defining feature of flow is intense experiential involvement in moment-to-moment activity. Attention is fully invested in the task at hand, and the person functions at his or her fullest capacity. (Csikszentmihalyi, Abuhamdeh, & Nakamura, 2005, p. 600)
Flow connects to creativity in classrooms because when students are fully immersed in creative pursuits, their investment is tangible—they groan when the recess bell rings; they continue to glue, tape, and fold even after being asked to place their creations on the back counter; they rush from friend to friend, excitedly explaining how they are making decisions. This bodes well for all kinds of deep learning. Erkens et al. (2017) explain the importance of the kind of student investment in a flow state: “When people invest in something, they typically devote resources (time, talent, energy, and so on); persist through challenging problems that arise; seek help when needed; and develop confidence in what they are doing, learning, or investing in” (p. 113). The flow state invites authentic self-assessment and peer assessment and serves as a natural platform for seeking and giving feedback at times that matter to our students. They quite naturally move through creative processes, trying out ideas, seeking others’ advice, and reflecting on successes and challenges. In the state of flow, creativity, investment, and formative assessment are almost inseparable.
The line between process and product blends during creative flow. Students seek processes that get them to the products they are trying to create. Assessment and feedback from both teachers and their peers lead them in new directions or reinforce the choices they are making. The road of creativity is never straight. As Sawyer (2006) explains, “Creativity occurs while we’re doing a task, and as we’re performing the task we have to improvise through it, responding movement by movement to the changing needs of the situation. Everyday creativity is improvisational” (p. 445). Students imagine products, and we work alongside them to discover the processes that will get them to those products in meaningful and enriching ways.
Creative Qualities
When a process is not yet successful in approaching the goal, students refine and adjust; they revise and revisit. In the end, we help them decide when to stop and begin a new task. Anyone who creates something knows that the creative process could go on infinitely. Often, bringing closure to a creative effort means accepting that the process has run its course for the time being.
Regardless of whether we are working to enhance creativity through our attention to processes within our classroom or striving to provide catalysts to creativity through unique products, we are primarily working to develop or enhance specific personal qualities that are closely associated with creative people, which include the following (Dacey & Conklin, 2004; Renzulli, 2000; Sawyer, 2006; Wagner, 2012). (For a more in-depth list of the qualities of people in tune with their creativity process, please refer to table A.1 on pages 201–202 in appendix A.)
Developing these qualities is part of the most important work we (as teachers) do with our students because it influences who they become as learners and creators in the long term. Being aware of these qualities allows us to support students’ whole development as they grow and learn.
Through creative processes in our classrooms, we can build curious, imaginative learners. Very young students, such as those in preK through fourth grade, often enter our schools filled with wonder and possibility. Through creativity, we can sustain those qualities. By providing time for students to ask their own questions and imagine their own products, stories, and solutions, we communicate the importance of these qualities in a variety of learning contexts.
Creativity also provides the perfect fertilizer to grow the qualities of risk taking, critical thinking, and persistence. When elementary-grades students work with unfamiliar materials or create their first stories in writing, we can take the opportunity to invite them to try things in new ways, seek new ideas, and persist through immediate challenges. As students advance through the grades, we can continue to invite them to solve problems in unique ways and try different approaches on for size. By withholding summative assessment in favor of formative assessment in the early stages of the creative process, we explicitly show students that the creative journey is equally as important as a right answer. We give students time to persist through wrong answers and solutions that do not yield desired results. We allow them time to fix mistakes and try new approaches when necessary.
By structuring conditions in which students can develop and use these qualities, we are supporting the move toward an increasingly creative classroom. When we understand the qualities that underlie creative processes, we can explicitly encourage students to strengthen them in their everyday experiences. We can share these qualities with students, assess their development, and celebrate them when they are visible.