THINKING CREATIVELY

CRISTINA P. CALMA

Creativity and innovation are two of the skills needed by students nowadays. In class, teachers should introduce a wide range of idea creation techniques, such as brainstorming to create new and worthwhile ideas, both incremental and radical concept s.

During this activity, students will be able to elaborate, refine, analyze and evaluate their own ideas in order to improve and maximize creative efforts. This also leads them to work creatively with others.

It would do well for teachers to teach their students to develop, implement and communicate new ideas to others effectively by being open and responsive to new and diverse perspectives.

The teacher, for her part, should incorporate group input and feedback into the work.

Students should demonstrate originality and inventiveness in work and understand the real world limits to adopting new ideas. Teachers should show students that failure as an opportunity to learn. They should understand that creativity and innovation is a long-term, cyclical process of small successes and frequent mistakes.

In class, teachers should be able to implement innovations and make students act on creative ideas to make a tangible and useful contribution to the field in which the innovation will occur.

It is known that creativity and innovation are the number 1 strategic priorities for organizations the world over. It is innovation and creativity that enable the development of new ways of working that ensure profitability.

Let’s face it; creativity is part of our everyday lives. According to research, creativity is concerned with producing ideas that are original and useful in order to solve problems and exploit opportunities.

Studies have also shown that creativity is vital for individuals, teams and even organizations. It is considered to be the number 1 leadership trait for the future, aside from discipline and integrity.

Leaders – in school and in class – need to be creative – solve problems in new and useful ways – to stay abreast of rapid change. Teachers need to identify and develop creativity in students, and then build and nurture this creativity.

— oOo— The author is Teacher III at Sinura Elementary School