Finding Warm Light

I loved Jim's analogy in class of how painters will sometimes move or vacation in spots that provide them with the right, warm light. There, they will start a bunch of paintings that they can then finish at home when the light there has changed appropriately with the seasons.

This made me think of the way I'm approaching my final project. I have decided on it, but I sometimes fear that I'm not spending enough time at it, just because I have no tangible product in the works yet. I have spent hours searching for inspirational work and experimenting with sketches that play with balance and with painted sheets of trial textures, color combinations, and washes. I have been, I suppose, finding a warm light, a place of security and starting ground. I like that this is something I should see as progress, rather than feeling anxious about the product.

I've actually been considering something similar in relationship to my personal plan for creativity and how it is working (or, as is more accurately the case, not working). I find it interesting that I always give myself a personal checklist of sorts and that I prioritize it such that I get the 'not fun' stuff done before I allow myself to do the 'fun' stuff. For example, in my marking, I always force myself to finish a set of essays before I mark a class set of projects. This is because I think I'll be more effective that way - I'll work through the more laborious stuff in order to get to the more enjoyable. But, if I'm truly honest with myself, this rarely works. It generally just means that I put off both things. What if, instead, I allowed myself the 'warm light' start of doing the thing I am more personally motivated to do first. Might I not then find myself in a better frame of mind for the other work? I would perhaps feel more productive, more capable, more 'on a roll'. I think I need to try this out.

Using Benjamin Zander's Ideas

I wanted to address a project I've been doing in my 30-1 class, one that I consider a huge exercise in creativity. I have, over the last few years, struggle with how to better teach my students how to write a critical/analytical response to literature. I find that the more I stress the process or reteach the elements, the more confused and frustrated the students get.

Watching the PopArt video in class with Benjamin Zander was inspiring, in that it offered an alternative to that stressful classroom structure that usually exists because of competition and 'the grade', which only allow for students to concentrate on their performance and not directly on actual skill-building. I wanted to use his ideas as best I could with my 30-1 students, especially with that most stressful of things: the critical/analytical essay. So here's what I did:

• I downloaded the video and showed it to the class. I told them it was to benefit the essay we were about to write, and that while that might not make immediate sense, it soon would.
  
• I stopped the video at a few key points. The first was to ask them what grade they all could expect on their next essay. It was fun to watch most of them immediately open to a page in their binders and begin a letter: Dear Mrs. Olsen... I hadn't even brought up how that would be part of the process.
  
• Another pause in the video was after he talked about how he could now be completely open and truthful with his students. I explained that this was what I was going to do. They would write an essay, and I would dissect it word by word, thought by thought, but that they (hopefully) wouldn't find that threatening because they already had the A.
  
• After he demonstrated with the young cellist, I gave them a run-down of all the resources they had and would have from me, including exemplars, a topic that fit our recent text studies but wasn't overly complicated, and past handouts on structure and dos/don'ts.
• They wrote their letters, and we discussed the topic and some texts together.
  
• They were given appropriate class time to write an essay, as if they were in the diploma setting.
  
• They handed them in, and we moved on to our study of King Lear, during which I divided them into groups of five for group study activities.
  
• Every other day, I would have one groups essays ready for revision. I made audio recordings of myself reading their essay aloud because I always suggest that as a strategy for finding awkward spots. Then I went from beginning to end, critiquing and offering suggestions in all five of the categories for scoring. I was brutal (without being personal, of course), but I constantly reminded them as they downloaded their recordings that they shouldn't let that get them down because they already had an A and because they were now trained to exclaim, "How fascinating!" instead.
  
• While most of the class worked on Lear, each group would get its own two days of listening to recordings and working on the essay with me giving them 1:5 attention at every step.
  
• Once all the revised essays were handed back in (with drafts and letters attached), I graded them all, still giving feedback as I normally would. In a class of 28 students, all but three scored - legitimately - proficient (an A) or higher. Those three I spoke to individually, and they all elected to write one more draft to make it a real A. They all now know what their work looks like when it's at that standard.
  
• This coming week, they will be writing their next critical/analytical essay (without the promise of an A), and I'm excited to see if all that work has paid off for them.

It was, in all, a very time-consuming process (each recording was roughly a 1/2 hour in length, and I still spent another ten or so hours on the second grading, not to mention the extra class periods), so I'm still undecided if I will make it a regular practice, but at least I feel like I was doing something proactive and creative about a problem in my teaching.

Another Intelligence

Cathy said something in her presentation on Wednesday that has stuck with me. She talked about how she believed in an emotional or interpersonal, almost spiritual, creativity. At the time, it popped in my head that I vaguely remembered that Gardner had recently added an emotional intelligence to his multiple intelligences theory. Since then, I've spent a few extra minutes trying to look that up on his website, but didn't find much. I plan and hope to devote a bit more time to it later. The idea fascinates me. Being that I've been studying and writing my paper on his Creating Minds book, and each of the modern-era figures that he studies in that book are indicative of creative genius in a specific realm of intelligence, I wonder who he could have added to cover that emotional intelligence. A poet? A spiritual leader?

I think that on the top of my list for studying creativity in an emotional genius would be my mom. Cheesy? Yep. Absolutely legitimate? You bet. Who better knows how to calm a troubled heart in a unique and customized way than a mother. Anyway, I know I don't have actual research on the emotional intelligence, and I may have dreamed about the addition, but still... makes me think...

Youth and Experience

I've been thinking a fair amount about last class - the illustration from the board and the discussion around it. I really liked that idea of the two elements, youth and experience, being necessary to achieve best creative potential. There is so much to be gained from each...the innocence, courage, exuberance, inquisitiveness, etc. of our childhoods and the wisdom, work ethic, skill, exposure to other influences, the amalgam of trials and triumphs that make us better problem solvers, etc. of our experience. All these things can be and should be a part of anything we create. We're not really complete or optimum creative beings without both elements - a yin/yang-type principle.

I made the comment in class that this makes sense when you consider some people that you may know. I was thinking about people I've met and some I know quite well who are out of balance in that they haven't really 'grown up.' They have strong creative genius, but they don't have the skills to harness it, and you can see that they'll likely never live up to their creative potential until they develop those skills. It's interesting because for a while, there was a pop psychology movement about the concept of finding the inner/repressed child that was sometimes taken too far. I guess I just always find it reassuring when I'm reminded of the wisdom of balance and moderation.

I know, too, that there are many people (and perhaps society as a whole) who are out of balance in the opposite way...they are much too 'adult' and don't know how to have fun, to let go, to trust, to giggle. In my musings since class, I've been wondering if that's not my common way of becoming unbalanced. I remember my own father telling me (when I was in jr. high) to "lighten up, for Pete's sake!" I'm glad he told me that then because in some ways, I have lightened up since then, but I know that tendency in myself. I've even been considering my personal creativity plan that we handed in earlier in the course. If I think back on it, I can't remember any balance in that. It was fairly rigid/structured and focussed on the work of creativity, not really the playful fun of it, at least not until I had all the 'adult' stuff done.

We learn specific things from specific stages in our lives; moving on shouldn't mean abandoning those lessons we gained in our youth and innocence.

A Lull

I keep having this small, but persistently annoying recurring thought about how I need to write a journal entry. Every time it comes up, though, I fret a little about what I could write about, and then I shove it back into the far crevices of mind, the spot where goes all my a-la-Scarlett-O'Hara "I'll think about that tomorrow" intentions.

I know I've been intellectually charged from the lectures and discussions in class, but for some reason, I just feel tapped out when it comes to mustering up something insightful to reflect on. I'm wondering if our minds aren't a lot like our bodies and once we've taxed them, sometimes they just need a rest. In the physiology of body-building, after a work-out on a particular muscle group, the muscles won't actually build unless they're given a rest. They'll just remain, literally, in a frayed state and actually begin to break down.

So maybe I'm in a mental lull right now because I have to let the mental workout finish its job while I rest. I can't really imagine getting more frayed in the head than I feel right now.

Massey Lectures

The other evening, I was driving home from my parents' place in Raymond, and I caught an interesting lecture on CBC. It was on the Ideas program, and they were playing a portion of the Massey Lectures 2009. Since then, I've tracked down some information about the program and the lectures. I appreciated CBC's synopsis of Ideas as "a series prepared for people who just enjoy thinking." That's precisely what this particular program did for me that evening. Specifically, I found myself making some interesting connections between our course and the ideas of Wade Davis.

As the CBC website explains, "The 2009 Massey Lectures are entitled The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Cultures Matter in the Modern World. Anthropologist Wade Davis argues that the myriad of cultures that make up our world are 'humanity’s greatest legacy…the product of our dreams, the embodiment of our hopes, the symbol of all we are and all that we have created as a wildly inquisitive and astonishingly adaptive species.' Wade Davis takes us on an astonishing journey through some of the great cultures and civilizations on earth, fragile and endangered, yet essential to our survival as a species."

In the episode I caught, Davis was speaking largely about the various regions and cultures of the earth that have lost tradition, and therefore knowledge, most often through a loss of geographical standing or indigenous language. It was fascinating that geography and language were so closely tied to each other. I found myself thinking about Gardner's ideas about what he called "symbol systems" and how each field has its own language, traditions and specialized medium (or media) of communication with interesting nuances and challenges. This means that one's skill is tied to his/her fluency in that symbol system. There were corollaries that made such perfect sense as I listened. I should have recorded those thoughts more immediately.

I can't remember Davis' exact words, but a few times he spoke to the idea that losing the land and the language was a tragedy because the stories and languages of any culture were the keys to its knowledge and ultimately to its preservation. Though a mythical tradition may not be considered verifiable knowledge in many circles, it became clear as I listened that it was because it was an art, a creative process. With the loss of a symbol system, skill was lost, another path to creating knowledge and understanding of our world and our humanity was gone. I began to see a connection between creativity and survival, similar to what I'd seen with Frankl's work, but this was on a more global scale. It was a little frightening, to be honest.

Halloween and Sadie Hawkins - a good excuse for falling behind on my journal?

So I've not been doing the requisite number of posts this past week or so. Life has been crazy busy, and I haven't been well. I'm hoping an explanation of some of the creative endeavors I have been a part of, though, will help as I plead my case.

Halloween, for me, is almost as magical a time of year as Christmas, and I've often wondered why. I've considered that perhaps I am a bit of a morbid personality, which is not an idea I loved. This year, being a part of this course, I'm wondering if it's not because it is, quite possibly, the most creative time of the year. People plan and dream and try to top last year's costumes and decorations. They look to be inspired. They consider the effect they want: scary, sexy, funny, etc. and they plot and conspire and execute something for the sheer joy of it. I figure it's either the creativity factor that has made me so enamored, or it's the excess of free candy.

This year, I took my costume cue from a picture I saw on Facebook last year of a child's costume. I've been planning on it since then. I did some previous work (which I already wrote about), and then I ran out of energy. (Given my HUGE love for the season, this speaks to my alarming difficulty with energy. Junior, as we call him/her, is sapping all my reserves!) Fortunately, I have an incredibly supportive husband who took over and rigged it up using his hockey pads...never would have thought of that on my own! I usually go for the scary/creepy vibe with my costumes because, well, you can at Halloween. The rest of the year, you have to pretend you don't believe in haunts and things that go bump in the night.


Friday, the 30th was also our school's Sadie Hawkins dance, one of many traditional student union sponsored activities.

CHS has another admittedly odd tradition that happens with Sadie's... a marriage room and ceremony. Students pick a theme for the entire dance. (This year was "Sadie Goes Neon") Then a group of teachers, select students, or members of the parent committee (depending on who's willing and able that year) choose a coordinating theme for the marriage room. It's kept a surprise, and that night, students partner up and take someone with them in to the room to be 'married'. We have cheesy fake rings, we write and enact a wacky ceremony that fits the theme, and we generally have a lot of fun with it. Usually, students get married several times that evening, which I find particularly funny given the Mormon heritage of our community.

This year I was in charge of the marriage room because I came up with the bright idea (literally and sarcastically figuratively) of creating an outer space setting using black lights. My eager committee of grade 10 girls and I covered all six sides of a room with black plastic. We created neon spaceships about 5 ft. tall/wide, and the shop helped us build a tunnel, a "worm hole", for students to enter through. This took 'just a few' after-school hours, but it was a lot of fun.

On Friday night, three teachers - myself included - came dressed as aliens. We switched off different roles, the funnest one being the person who 'married' five couples at a time. We adlibbed a fair amount, but stuck loosely to the following script that I wrote:

(Meeting the travelers as they first come through the wormhole, popping out and scaring them perhaps.) Welcome, weary travelers from a distant time and place to the alternate universe (strange long gibberish with tongue clicks, etc.). You look to be of planet earth, so-called Homo sapien, so I will endeavor to speak slowly and clearly to help your underdeveloped brains understand.

My name is (strange long gibberish with tongue clicks, etc.), which in your tongue means “most beautiful/handsome one of great wisdom and wealth.” I am the royal consulate of marital status, and I must inform you that in our universe (as well as your own – you just haven’t fully discovered this yet), you cannot physically survive in our atmospheres unless you form partnerships. You have a limited amount of time before you expire, unless we have you immediately joined in what you call wedlock. [We, of course, call it the more poetic and romantic term (funny shrieking, unpleasant noise).] Please pair off in front of an appropriate transportation pod for the commencement of the matrimonial ceremony before your health suffers further. Look! You are already looking terrible – so sickly, so horrifying.

Turn to your appropriate partner, and lock eyes to communicate telepathically. Never mind, I forgot your appalling mental incapacities. Just turn and smile – you are about to save each other from painful suffocation.

Now for the primitive spoken vows, since we must. Please repeat after me: "I, humanoid life form, take you, fellow space journeyer, to be my partner as we boldly go where no man has gone before. You will be my stargazing companion, forsaking all other alien life forms (excepting, of course, the event of abduction). I am devoted to your extraterrestrial well-being, safety and happiness. The force will be strong with us."

If you agree to take this equal as someone with whom you can jump aboard your identified alien craft and continue your space explorations “to infinity and beyond”, please respond with, “Nanu, nanu” (or some other strange, maybe even difficult, phrase).

Now to fully contractualize your union, create the sacred Vulcan sign with your right hand, extend it, and "kiss" your spouse.

The rings you were given earlier will symbolize your enterprise, and allow for your continued breathing in our universe. Please exchange them now. Go forward; live long and prosper!

I guess I'd just say that it was a busy, but very fun, week. I may not have been writing journal entries, but I was definitely exercising some creative muscle.