Creativity is Alive

I began thinking about Ashley's last post on new metaphors for school and also of my last post on creativity and how they are intertwined.  The premise of the post on new metaphors referencing Sam Chaltain's blog and work, is that the common and out dated metaphors of school as factory and a child's mind as a blank slate no longer serve us and are holding us back. 

What lively mind, naturally curious and wondering, could ever be considered blank? And what kind of lab or studio or place to think and solve problems and contribute to the world could ever be considered a factory?

The kinds of schools that are nurturing the better angels of our nature are also developing our intelligence, creativity, spirit and wholeness.  And our desire and ability to contribute to our communities and a healthy, hopeful future for our planet.  

From The College School, St. Louis, Missouri

I visited my son, Chris at work in Brooklyn a few weeks ago.  He works for a start up LED company called Wavelength.  He works on the 19th floor of the MetroTech Center in the Urban Future Lab...New York City’s hub for smart cities, clean energy, and smart grid technology.  This floor is filled with young people in their 20s and 30s who are all working on energy for the future.  Chris works with two other Middlebury College graduates, one a few years older and one a few years younger than he.  I was so inspired.  Young, talented, visionary, successful people inventing and designing a healthy, hopeful future.  This is what creativity looks like.  

Urban Future Lab, Brooklyn, New York

Both of our sons attended The College School in St. Louis for middle school.  Their schooling there was creative and innovative. They learned to be independent and collaborative learners.  In seventh grade, they each composed a resume', interviewed for jobs, and took public transportation to reach their job two afternoons a week.  Since then, neither of them has been without a job for very long and they have continued to learn and grow throughout.   

Chef Alden Cadwell speaks with visitor to Allendale Farm Annual Tomato Festival

Chris attended Middlebury College where there is a Center for Creativity, innovation, and Social Entrepreneurship, labs and studios where students are encouraged to pursue innovative ideas and work, and a popular course called MiddCORE.  Look what MiddCORE is offering this summer: 

MiddCORE, a four-week, mentor-powered innovation experience for undergraduates who desire to launch their education and passions into the world at large. 

This credit-bearing college program offers:

• Learning in a highly collaborative environment
• Guidance from mentors who are top-tier professionals
• Problem-solving focused on the real world
• Exposure to worldwide businesses and organizations

And take a look at this. It is a promotional video for Middlebury College and look at what it emphasizes...creativity and innovation, leadership and risk-taking, deepening and sharpening one's skills and knowledge while offering them with others to the world in a way that creates a vibrant future. 

Creativity involves doing things, and making things of value in all disciplines and domains of life.  It can't take root if students feel that they are receiving and repeating back information instead of wrestling with real world problems and using their research, reading and brains and hearts to make sense of things and actively participate in life. 

My sister in law, Kathy Cadwell has worked tirelessly to bring Socratic Dialogue to her classes and to many other teachers in her high school and beyond.  In her classes, students participate in creating their own knowledge and informed, skilled perspectives on history, current world problems, and life. 

Ken Robinson says that often people think that being creative means being artsy.  But that is not the idea.  Creating things of value as an engineer, designer, architect, cook, entrepreneur, farmer, seamstress, mason... all involves skill, perseverance, motivation, contribution, imagination, and also beauty.  Everything done well, produced and composed over time, has balance and beauty to it.  Imagination is the source of all human achievement writes Sir Ken Robinson. 

May you all have a creative, vibrant, energetic time this summer making things, as we do all the time in our every day life...meals, occasions, flower arrangements, photographs, gardens...And when you are not being actively creative, we hope that you are floating in a lake, river or ocean, resting and relaxing, rejuvenating and dreaming.  That downtime will feed your creative spirit and we all will benefit!

We Need New Metaphors for School

My good friend and collaborator on school design, Trung Le, posted a link to a fascinating blog by Sam Chaltain, To (Re)Design School, We Need New Metaphors. Let’s Start with These Five.

Chaltain’s stated drivers for the “need” for redesign of school are familiar to most of us by now:

contours of global citizenship are shifting

barrier between man and machine is shrinking

time to undo human damage to the natural world is running out

SO, how can school meet these drivers?

Chaltain writes: I believe we won’t succeed [in meeting the challenge] until we retire the two dominant educational metaphors of the past one hundred years: the assembly line and tabula rasa. 

Chaltain then suggests and explains five new metaphors: (and here I quote Chaltain extensively)

School as murmuration: how can we reimagine the spaces in which learning occurs so the movement and flow of human bodies is closer to the improvisatory choreography of a murmuration of starlings than the tightly orchestrated machinery of a factory assembly line?

School as a cabinet of curiosities: how can we craft new experiences and learning spaces that will invite young people and adults to be more curious than certain — about themselves, one another, and the wider world?

School as partially-painted canvas: how can schools create the conditions that will allow for deeper learning expeditions that are less bound by space, time, and tidiness, and more by open-ended inquiry and discovery?

School as aspen grove: how might we more intentionally design schools for both sides of the brain, the left logical, narrow, focused attention and the right creative, broad, vigilant attention…both trees and the forest?

School as swarm: since, as Andreas Weber writes, we have to think of beings as interbeings, how can we craft spaces and experiences that invite young people and adults into the synchrony of a swarm?

As emerging examples of these metaphors in school design Chaltain cites: Crosstown High in Memphis, Brightworks School in San Francisco, Big Picture Learning Network https://www.bigpicture.org , and your neighborhood Montessori school.

I would add your neighborhood Reggio inspired school and your neighborhood Expeditionary Learning school.

I find Chaltain's metaphors fascinating and inspiring.  Moreover, I know his medium for rethinking education is compelling: change the metaphor.  For instance, when working with groups of teachers who want to develop more collaborative systems, I frequently invoke the metaphor of music, of moving from a classical symphony with ONE conductor and set music to a jazz band with a central melody that each player can innovate/riff on.  Changing the metaphor is dynamic.  It at once changes one's perspective and invites new ways of thinking.

Images above from Buckingham Browne and Nichols School, Cambridge, MA, The College School, St Louis, MO, Hutchison School, Memphis, TN and La Scuola, Miami, FL.

Reflections on Creativity

The Wolf and the Owl by Asher Cadwell

I was lucky enough to spend last week with my grandchildren.  They are still in school so I drove them to and fro and generally helped out.  On Friday evening, we sat out on a neighbors' deck on a perfect June night with children spanning ages from 3 to 13 playing so happily.  The older girls choreographed an impromptu play with sound effects, sticks, and dance moves.  My grandchildren, Delilah and Asher, were the audience as were 3 sets of parents.  So spontaneous and refreshing! 

In Boston, we have a small condo in a duplex just a stone's throw from where my son, his wife and our grandchildren live.  It is so easy to walk back and forth and enjoy both back yards, kitchens and living spaces.  On Saturday, Delilah and Asher could come over to play and they did.  We made waffles bright and early.  After breakfast, Asher, age 6, and Delilah, age 3, wanted to put on little plays and puppet shows with props and wooden and felt toys that I keep in Boston.  So inventive and fun, and inspired, with sound effects, snippets quoted from nursery rhymes, like.."the dish ran away with the spoon!" and using unlikely props as a stage. They took turns performing and I filmed them on my phone.  We had some little digital "shorts" to share with the family and that was fun. Then, Delilah and Asher broke out a rousing rendition of "We all live in a yellow submarine."All of this, I am certain, was inspired by the plays of their neighbors from the night before. 

After the preforming and musical arts spontaneously improvised and composed by the young team, I brought out all the art materials that I had assembled...water color and gouache paints in tubes, a variety of good quality brushes in different sizes, colored pencils, oil crayons, sharpeners and erasers, pens and paper and small square canvases.  I love to do this with them!  As an art teacher by trade, it is a supreme joy to bring out all these luscious materials for my grandchildren, to encourage them and to observe them fall in love with them.  (I became reacquainted with gouache and fascinated by offering it to young children when I visited the Campus Children's School at the University of Vermont last winter.) 

Campus Children's School Toddler Room

Asher chose a small canvas as he had used one before with success at our Vermont house. He announced that he wanted to paint a dragon.  (His little league baseball team is named Dragons.) He asked me how to do that and we looked for images of dragons on my phone. (Such a handy resource these days!)  Asher found, on his own, a simple step by step dragon that he liked and proceeded to draw his own version with a pen on the canvas in short order.  Then, he mixed blue and white paint to make the sky.  "This looks just like sky color!" he said with enthusiasm.  Then, he used a different blue color oil crayon to complete the sky with the pen rendered flying dragon in the middle.  He was so very pleased.  It all unfolded so naturally and with ease. 

Dragon by Asher Cadwell

His sister was captivated by the colors of the gouache that she chose herself.  I showed her how to rinse the brush throughly in the little pot of clean water, and to dab it on the paper towel when changing colors.  She caught on right away and did this successfully from the beginning.  I don't think she had painted with gouache or in this way before. Many layers of paint on a deep purple square of pleasing card stock.  And then, with a pen she wrote, with strokes of the pen as she spoke outloud, "D for Delilah...This is for Mommy." Spoken slowly in rhythm and synchronized with the marks that she was making.  

For Mommy by Delilah Cadwell

What was creative about the morning that we spent together? What made the context hospitable and welcoming to the creative spirit in Asher and Delilah? We could speculate that the uninterrupted time helped; the availability of the open-ended and beautiful toys and materials that they have played with for some years now; being able to be outside on a blue sky, cloudless June day under the shade of the big maple tree; the presence of an adult in their lives who loves and knows the arts and who also loves them...their mood, luck, and I would say, freedom.  

No one was telling them what to do.  Yet materials and time and attention were given to them. They had an audience when necessary, they had a camera person when they wanted that.  They had an organized facilitator with an array of enticing materials. They had a coach to support their processes. They each had ideas that could manifest because of all this.  

Ken Robinson defines creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. Creativity involves putting your imagination to work: you do things.  Creativity is a process, a way of thinking and acting rather than an inborn trait, creativity is something we can all learn to apply in our lives. He goes on to say that teachers can provide opportunities, encourage, mentor, and inspire creativity to thrive in their students. 

This particular morning is among the most gratifying that I can remember.  We were each doing the things we love, we were all free, we were all creating, we were all outside, we were all engaged and absorbed, we were all having so much fun both together and independently.  I was able to continue to give to grandchildren the legacy of beauty and creativity and joy that has been given to me.   We were all boosted by a morning of confidence, creativity and making things of value.  May we all have mornings like these during these most glorious summer days.   

Radical Empathy: Graduation 2018

I am always moved by graduation ceremonies.  They give us all a formal time to celebrate the enormous accomplishments of those we love.  Yesterday, our nephew, Parker Cadwell, graduated from Middlebury College.  Middlebury holds a special place in our hearts because Ashley and I are both alumni, our son, Chris graduated in 2006, and countless other family members have walked these grounds and studied here since the late 1800s.  Parker is the last Cadwell we may see graduate from our dear college at least for the foreseeable future.  We were all there to celebrate him.  Along with Parker, we cheered for the 531 other graduates from 55 countries.  

The graduation speaker was Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns, the story of the great migration of African Americans from the south to points north over three decades.  She is also a recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism.  

Reading The Warmth of Other Suns, I feel that I am living alongside the real people who experienced such horrific injustice for so long.  The way that Isabel Wilkerson writes engenders empathy as it informs us of three African Americans' experiences and stories of seeking a better life.  Ashley and I also listened to her interview with Krista Tippet on On Being, which we recommend.  

Yesterday, Isabel Wilkerson had this to say to the graduating class of 2018: 

Here we are…gathered together, your shining faces, the robes, exams over, requirements met…at what will now be your alma mater. 

You are singularly connected to this historic moment of polarity and promise.

You were studying and incubating into adulthood as the world changed or rather revealed itself to us. 

So today, in our fractious era, I am here to make the case for radical empathy.

Radical empathy means putting in the work to learn and to listen with the heart wide open.  To understand another’s experience well enough to know how they are feeling not as we imagine we would feel.  

Radical empathy is not about you and what you would do in a situation you have never been in and perhaps never will.  It is the generosity of spirit that opens your heart to the true experience and pain and perspective of another.

We need more of that in this world.  If you love yourself and if you love humanity, if you have empathy, you cannot hurt another human being any more than you would want to feel that pain yourself.

The work that goes into learning another person's reality opens up new ways of seeing the world, allows you to more accurately assess any situation that you happen to be in.

Radical empathy is a super power that can heal and build bridges stronger than steel and concrete. 

The most important bridge that any of us will ever cross is the bridge to the human heart. 

This year, the student commencement speaker, Sebastian Tomas Sanchez of Brooklyn, N.Y. echoed the words of Isabel Wilkerson:

At Middlebury, we have gained a multi-faceted view of the world, seeing beyond one perspective or viewpoint.  We might not like it and we might not agree, but we have the tools to challenge opinions and engage in deliberative dialogue.

We are transitioning into a world where harsh views and fake news seem the norm, where people are unashamed to spew hate.  But now we have the tools to engage with this world, leaving it a little more truthful, a little more kind. 

Though the world is wildly unforgiving, we learned to be intellectually fearless in the face of adversity.  We must press on with persistence and resilience… So, let’s keep learning, let’s keep progressing, let’s keep loving.  Let’s keep pressing on.

Onward, to all of the brand new graduates all over our country and all over the world, and to all of us.  Radical Empathy, Perseverence, Resilience, Truth, Kindness.  At this moment in time, we are called to bring all of these qualities into the world every day of our lives.  

Matters of Life and Death

Mid May in Vermont is as close to heaven as I can imagine.  Everywhere you look there are tiny spring green leaves and the palest pink apple blossoms.  Hills and fields open to the Green Mountains, finally turning shades of blue and green after what is almost always in Vermont, a long, hard winter.  

The world feels new and so do we.  We are refreshed and amazed that this time of year has come again.  Sneakers and sandals replace boots, the air is soft and light.  We hear a symphony of bird song starting at 5 a.m. as the eastern sky turns pink. 

This spring, just as all of this beauty was arriving, Ashley's dear mother, Mary Cadwell was in the process of floating out of this life.  Alive and well, present and beautiful, at 95 and a half years old, she decided to make her own exit plan and she did.  Six weeks ago, she stopped eating.  For four weeks she got dressed with the help of a care giver friend of the family and sat at her desk to write letters, talk to family and read.  Sometimes, she went outside on the porch with one of her six sons to greet the sun and the day.  The fifth week, she was too weak to get out of bed but she was still present, curious and interested in hearing about anything any of us wanted to share with her.  

We were all...her big, loving family of sons, spouses, grand-children, great-grand-children, in awe of her grace, her courage, her gratitude and her resolve.  Of course, we respected her wishes.  And so it goes.  Mary died a week ago today.  Now, in some miraculous way, she is a part of this spring that is all around us.  She is in everything...the blue sky, the shifting clouds, the new growth on the maples, the scent of her lilac bushes planted in our yard.  A cousin sent us this piece below by Buddhist monk, Thich Naht Hanh.  It is comforting and it is true if we can allow ourselves to embrace the mystery of birth and death.  

The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, "A serious misfortune of my life has arrived." I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet... wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as "my" feet were actually "our" feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.

God speed Mary Cadwell.    

In the name of the Bee-

And of the Butterfly-

And of the Breeze- Amen!

Emily Dickinson

Mary Cadwell in 1983 with our sons, Alden, age 3, and Chris, a few months old.