5 Reasons Why Common Core Will Promote Creativity

There are a lot of reasons to #stopcommoncore, 5 of which I shared here about its effect on creativity, but let me give you 5 ways CCSS could be good for our right-brained students, and actually promote creativity in our schools.

1. Modeling with mathematics. 
Modeling "real-world" situations with arithmetic, formulas, and statistical displays and inferences is one of the the Standards for Mathematical Practice, which while not much different than the current Missouri process standards (the "placemat"), go a necessary step further for no other reason than acknowledging that technology beyond scientific calculators exist.

Modeling can often leads to multiple solutions and different approaches to the solution of a problem, and require much more holistic thought to a task than simply "Solve the quadratic function by factoring."

Another aspect of CCSS math standards in particular that encourages creative thinking is the new prevalence of statistical literacy in nearly every level. Something I love (and some hate) about the study of statistics is that there are seldom black and white answers in inference. Interpretations of results given a particular situation makes statistical study inherently more of a right-brained activity.

• CCSS.Math.Practice.MP4 Model with mathematics.

2. Evaluating Authors' Differing Points of View
Is role-play not an element of creativity? When we evaluate viewpoints, replacing the author's attitude for our own, we experience fresh perspectives and we can express individuality in new ways. How do we innovate without empathizing with what is different from our own?

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.6 Evaluate authors’ differing points of view on the same historical event or issue by assessing the authors’ claims, reasoning, and evidence.

3. Using and consuming diverse formats and media.
If you're assessing in your classroom in student centered methodologies, I trust that you're doing more than giving students homogenous paper tests and you're pushing them to use more than 5 paragraph essays to provide evidence of and for learning.

I don't think drawing upon multiple info sources is too much of a problem for teachers, gathering info for lesson plans, but how often do we actually model that and expect it of students?

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.11-12.6 Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RST.11-12.7 Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., quantitative data, video, multimedia) in order to address a question or solve a problem.

4. Using Design and Digital Media Strategically

Using color for emphasis = good

Using color because its cute = bad

It's a creative work to thoughtfully include media and design in a presentation or project. It's lipstick to have an item on your rubric that says something like, "Student used color."

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.5 Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

5. Writing Narratives for Real or Imagined Events

From my social studies background, this might be my favorite creativity-promoting standard of them all. I had my Algebra 2 students do this for linear inequalities last fall and a lot of students really got into it. (Kids made up or recounted a scenario in which they could have used a linear inequality to make a decision and gave details of how the inequality was set up and how they used it in the story)

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

As far as history class, you're challenging your students to know just tell you what happened at the Battle of Hastings - they should be trying to make you experience it. Like World War Z.

Conclusion

English class, is, admittedly probably less "fun," now, but how many kids were getting overly expressive about Huck Finn and The Scarlet Letter, anyway? The good news is, "creativity" in every other discipline is promoted and has been emphasized. Creativity hasn't left our schools, its been given a purpose and legitimized.