Some Great Creative Thinking Quotes

Creative Thinking Quotes from Luke Sullivan's book - Hey Whipple Squeeze This

 I have been taking an art direction and typography class to satisfy an elective requirement for a master’s I’m pursuing.  The text is by Luke Sullivan entitled Hey Whipple, Squeeze This.  There are many things I could say about it, however, I am just going to share some quotes.  I had a difficult time curating these, as there is least one per page.  What’s more, Sullivan mentions other books he’s read which I’d love to get into, maybe after the thesis.  Anyway, enjoy!

“Look for polarities.  Where you find them you will also find tension.  And where you find tension, you will find creative sparks.”

“ ‘Ask a better question.’ By that he means a question to which you don’t know the answer.  He likens it to ‘placing the solution just out of your reach,’ and in answering it, you stretch yourself.”

“I’m serious.  Creativity is exactly like washing a pig.  It’s messy.  It has no rules.  No clear beginning, middle or end.  It’s kind of a pain in the ass, and when you’re done, you’re not sure if the pig is really clean or why you were washing it in the first place.”

“The best answers always arise out of the problem itself.”

“Woody Allen says, ‘If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything innovative.’ “

“When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas.  Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.”

Ok that’s it for now.  I’ll come back with some more later.

Cheers,

Devin

Where Creative Teaching Comes From

It's been a long time since I've written this blog, in part because I am being pulled in many directions, but also because I have set out to do some research-oriented writing for this blog.  The research is coming along, but I want to share the following writing in the meantime.

I wrote this because I am looking for a job and using What Color is Your Parachute as one of the guides to help me along my way.  I wrote this following little story to look closely at something I did quite well, something that defines me to an extent.  It also happens to fit into the concept of this blog.  So without further introduction . . .

Developing Creative Thinking Strategies for the Classroom

            I had been teaching about a year at BCIS and fumbling around for the right way to do things.  I felt that I was using technology well with the students, but I was not very happy with the overall results.  The ones I expected to do well were but a lot of students were performing fine, but not good.

            Honestly, at this point I cannot recall what the actual tipping point was.  I think it may have been reading and studying the outlining text closer, looking at the assessment criteria and what the guide said about teaching the arts.  I remember a little better now, I was looking for ways that assessment would not be vague but able to be pinned down so I could show students exactly where they were succeeding and where improvement needed to be made.  That’s where I saw the artistic process component and thought:  “Design and thinking are part of the artistic process.  Like in mathematics, students need to show their work.” 

            I wanted my students to do well so I helped them through this process and found that not only did many more of then asses better, they also enjoyed the class a lot more, became more engaged, and made better art.  Once I found this I took a systematic look at different thinking styles, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and peers’ work and began to create my own system.  Truthfully it’s not my own system, but it’s my own protocol that is culled and adapted from ideas I found in every source imaginable.  Talking to others, research, and plain old pragmatism.

keeping it Going On Instagram

Unfortunately, the Bodies exhibit would not allow us to take photographs, so we couldn't make it work there.  However, With the grade seven Japanese exhibit we had the students complete
their responses using Visible Thinking routines.  It would be inappropriate for me to send out the the student Instagram posts, but I put of a couple of their responses on my Instagram.  Recently I also made a post all on my own.  check out #mralleniscool.

http://instagram.com/dplusinternational

# Thinking Routines on Social Media

This is a test and I hope it works well.  In a week and a half I am driving the science bus to the Bodies exhibit (I'm an art teacher but I like the science people.)  I hoping to engenineer the employment of visual thinking routines through social media as a learning tool.  Following are the instructions.  Please try it out so we can see how it works and what needs to be fixed.  I'll put some of the posts up here in the future.
Yours,
Devin
D Plus International

Follow the thinking routines below.  Either on Instagram of Twitter post your reposnse and use the appropriate hashtags.

#TPS for Think Pair Share
#WMYS for What Makes You Say That
#AIS for everything
#msfloresiscool for everything (For those of you who don't know, Ms. Flores is one of our science teachers.)


Think Pair Share
1. Take a photo of something and ask a question in your post.
2. Find a classmate's post and respond.

What Makes You Say That
1. Take a photo, tell us what's going on and say why.

You can see my example here:
D Plus International

Process Boards and Polariods with a Side of Corn

Greetings Everyone, It has been quite some time, I’m aware, but this is the life of a teacher/student.  Finally I am getting some images up to show something a Project Zero teacher/friend of mine suggested and some double-ended art making that recently occurred. 

About a year a go I wrote about film making as an educational tool and the unit has come around again.  This group of students is very good about staying on task and while they were making their sets and characters, I ran around the class with the Polaroid to take photos of the process.  My reasons are two fold.  1. To be a bit of a goof ball (the charm of being a middle and high school art teacher is that it is in the job description to be a little corny), and 2. To document the students’ progress and post it on their semester process board. 

The idea of the process board is to help the students visually see where they start the term and how it progresses along.  Not only is it a history making device, I believe it helps students make connection between experiences they have, what they learn, and what they accomplish.  Hopefully in the future this will reinforce their ability to call on prior knowledge when approaching current tasks.

Enjoy the corny photos!
Devin

Challenge

It has been difficult to write with school keeping me busy over the past three months.  I have a little respite so I am taking advantage to write here some.  I will make my best effort to continue to write this blog over the following terms.  There have been several creative thinking ideas I had over the past stretch of time, above is an image from an eperience I had that was most definately a creative thinking exercise.  I was brought in to work with Theatre du Reve for a performance at the High Museum of Art.  The performance celebrated French History and specifically the role the Tuilerie Garden took. My role was to create street art during the performance.

To develop the imagery I looked through the script and experiemnted withusing differnt elements in a graffiti style.  I found that dialog from a play isn't always the most graffiti friendly.  There is a reoccuring theme throughout the play, how people should be free and that this sometimes comes through violent action, the French Revolution, the Terror, WWI, and Nazi occupation all played a part of this performance.  The balloon also made several apperences in the text , so after a while I took my freedom message, droits de l'homme, the balloon worked as a good visual element that attracts the attention, then it was just time to work out the color scheme.  This came mostly from experimentation, in the end, one doesn't go wrong with a primary triad.

What you see above is a mock-up I did on the painting wall at school.  As it turns out the museum was funny about me using spray paint so the mock up turned into the actual thing the night of th performance, where instead of painting, I wheat pasted. Problems promote creativity!