ADHD and Creativity

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” Buckminster Fuller

When children are daily assessed for organizational skills and the ability to sit, synthesize and DO the work assigned, creativity promotes efficacy and wellbeing during a time when feelings of school inadequacy compromise personal and academic success.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Albert Einstein

ADHD Facts
• estimated to affect from 3 to 5 percent of school-age children
• conceptualized as a neuropsychological disorder that has a strong genetic component but that also is affected by environmental factors.
• Causes uncertain
• 50% of children with ADHD will qualify for special education, the majority of whom qualify under either the Learning Disability or Behavioral Disorders category

Behavior
• difficulty attending to tasks, remaining seated, resisting distractions, act impulsively, may be noncompliant, aggressive and disruptive
• more likely than their peers to have academic problems

Social Emotional Learning at San Francisco Day School

December 11, 2009

By Michael Pastor
Upper School Counselor

With contributions from Ashley Harsh and Loren Moyé

Progressive educators have always been committed to educating the whole child, however the movement to promote Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in schools is quite recent. In 1994 Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, founded the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) to promote SEL in schools. The work of CASEL and others has shown that SEL has a positive impact on students not only in the social emotional realm, but also in terms of academic success. SEL aims to recognize affective components of students’ education and strives to hone interpersonal skills, including effective communication, active listening, aspects as well as emotive and creative expression. SEL is a part of an integrated and structured holistic Affective Education program aiming to strengthen the skills and social and emotional competencies of a 21st century learner.

Prior to this year at SFDS, small steps were taken to incorporate affective education into the fabric of the upper school student’s education, mostly during health education and advisory periods. This year, with the revised upper school schedule and the Summer Learning Institute’s focus on advisory curriculum, we have been able to commit more deeply to this important part of the student’s overall learning. A group of teachers and counselors, including Anne Paine, Ashley Harsh, Leah Rosenkrantz, Tom Keller, and Michael Pastor, met over the summer to develop a seventh-grade curriculum for the activity and advisory periods. Eighth-grade advisors, Sarah Pizer-Bush and Loren Moyé, also met during the summer to create an eighth-grade curriculum. Also, plans are in the works for an expanded health-education curriculum this year for all upper-school students.

Following is a further explanation of how SEL is becoming more integrated in different grades:

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Wisconsin Task Force on Arts and Creativity in Education

In July, 2008, Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton and State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster announced a new initiative, in a gallery at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD). Also included are MIAD student Melissa Eckes and State Senator Lena Taylor.

Sir Ken Robinson Answers Questions about Education and Creativity

12 August 2009
TED and Reddit asked Sir Ken Robinson anything and he answered.

For the first in a new series of community-driven Q&As, TED and Reddit joined forces to ask creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson any question. TED fans converged on this article on Reddit to post their questions, and to vote on questions posed by others. Today, we asked Sir Ken the 10 questions with the most votes. Here are his answers:

submitted by kn0thing
What specific actions do you recommend taking to overhaul, say, public education to maximize how we identify and nurture creativity? And what place do you think things like critical thinking and logic (also noticeably absent) have in basic education?

Sir Ken: The basis of my argument is: creativity isn’t a specific activity; it’s a quality of things we do. You can be creative in anything — in math, science, engineering, philosophy — as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance. And you can certainly be involved in the arts in ways that are especially creative. And so it’s important to emphasize that it’s not about creating some small space in schools where people can be creative, and particularly not if that means just tacking on some art programs on a Friday afternoon. It’s about the way we do things.

And that really has a couple of implications. One of them is, if you want to encourage creativity in education, there are a couple of ways to think about it. One is that there are skills of creative thinking that can be taught. I think of this as general creativity. You can help them think productively, generate ideas effectively, help them to think of alternative approaches to issues and questions. So there are very specific skills that can be taught, and in a metaphorical sense, it’s kind of like a grammar of creativity. It’s a series of processes, not an event. And helping people understand how that works is an important part of being creative. You wouldn’t expect people to become literate just by hoping it’d happen. There was a time when people argued seriously that it was difficult to teach working class people to read and write — that they didn’t have the capacity for it. This was before the beginning of public education. But now we know that most people — we take it as axiomatic and ethically important that most people can be taught to read or write. But they have to be taught. They have to be given tools and techniques for it.

And I think it’s true in many areas of creative thinking that people can be helped by learning techniques and processes. So there’s a sense in which you talk about creativity in a general way. But I also think of it as a personal process, too. That’s what this new book I’ve written, The Element, is all about. It’s about people finding their particular, individual creative strengths, because we all have very different strengths and capacities. There are different types of intellectual strengths. Some people are very visual. Some are very verbal. Some people are good physically. Some people are good at mathematics, kind of naturally.

So that’s the first thing: Creativity can be facilitated in any sort of activity. Secondly that we can think about personal and general forms of creativity. When it comes to education, it has implications in three big areas. One of them is the curriculum. A lot of what I argue for in schools is we need to re-think the school curriculum. It has major implications for what it is people are meant to learn and understand, which is what the curriculum is. The second big piece of education is teaching, or pedagogy. There’s a question later on about this, so I’ll come to it there. And thirdly, there’s assessment — what we reward and the form the reward takes when we come to judge the work.

I did a big report for the British government called All Our Futures: Creativity, Culture and Education. It’s available online. The British government put together a national strategy to promote creativity in education. I also published a book a few years ago, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative. The idea is you have to make the idea of creativity clear and operational. Like we have done with literacy. And when you’ve done that, then the practical tasks become clearer.

submitted by guru
As a kid, I spent all of my free time at a computer, soaking up as much as I could about how it worked on every level. All that exploration really made my career possible.

But I didn’t have great grades in school, because I had a hard time developing a curiosity about much beyond the computer. My dad always said, “You need to be more well-rounded,” and he encouraged me to take on a sport or a musical instrument. But like many of the subjects in school, those things never really stuck for me when I was growing up.

As an adult, my interests have expanded far beyond the computer screen. In college I minored in photography, and at first it was a technical interest in the gear and the magic of the darkroom, but that quickly gave way a deeper interest in visual aesthetics, design, and the whole world of art and art history. I’ve found over time that similar links exist between all of my interests, and learning a new subject is only a matter of finding the right bridge from my current interests.

I imagine this is how most people learn. So why do we make these distinctions between “math”, “biology”, “history”, and “art”, when they are all linked, and when the interconnections so often make them meaningful? Is it OK if children are not “well-rounded,” as long as they are following their curiosities, or does a lack of “well-roundedness” mean we are not exposing them to enough bridges to new interests?

Sir Ken: I think he’s completely right about this. One of the points I make in the TEDTalk, and that I make generally, is that the human mind is essentially created. We live in worlds that we have forged and composed. It’s much more true than any of the species that you see. I mean, it seems to me that one of the most distinctive features of human intelligence is the capacity to imagine, to project out of our own immediate circumstances and to bring to mind things that aren’t present here and now. You know, to conceive of the past, to anticipate the future, and not just a future but multiple possible futures and many different sorts of pasts. Continue…

Adolescence and Depression

The tasks of coping with the physical changes of puberty, of separating from the family and becoming independent, of developing intimate relationships with others, especially persons of the opposite sex, and of discovering one’s capacities or talents for work may all lead the adolescent into an unhappy, sad, demoralized state of mind, as the unknown is faced. For most adolescents, such maturational tasks are achieved with minimal stress, a small number experience a persistent mood of sadness, hopelessness and apathy, which interferes with performance and can lead to considerable personal suffering. Such adolescents may complain directly of depression, or more commonly of lack of feelings, emptiness, self-depreciation, loneliness and hopelessness that things will ever be better. There may be a point at which suicidal thoughts arise in these cases. It is likely there is a history of behavioral problems, difficulties in school, episodes of anxiety and tenuous family relationships. (p.114)

Parry-Jones, W.L. (1989) ‘Depression in Adolescence’. In K. Herbst and E.S. Paykel (eds) Depression: An Integrated Approach. Oxford: Heinemann Professional Publishing.

Creating a Safe Place: Lessons on Managing Emotions Pay Off | Edutopia

Integrating social and emotional learning across the curriculum helps make a secure learning environment.

by Traci Vogel

The social ills found in public schools — bullying, school shootings, gang violence — litter the media. Here’s one headline, however, that didn’t get much play: “Student Encourages Peer to Hand Over Unloaded Gun in School.”

In October 2007, a seventh-grade student at Goldenview Middle School, in Anchorage, Alaska, was showing off the .38-caliber weapon he’d brought to school to show to a fellow student and friend. After the friend urged him to take it to a teacher, the student did the right thing and handed it over, despite the possible punitive repercussions. End of story. No flashy news hook — just a kid who trusted his friend, a sigh of relief, and, for the rest of the students, a normal, undisrupted school day. Continue…

Creating a Safe Place: Lessons on Managing Emotions Pay Off | Edutopia.

Ways to Teach Empathy

Education World® : School Issues and Education News: Wire Side Chats: Ways to Teach Empathy Skills.

Everyone has met people who are highly compassionate. But we would meet more of them if children were taught to be empathetic at a young age, according to author/teacher David A. Levine, who has created lessons and activities to teach empathy skills. Included: Activities to help children learn to think empathetically.

While many people think of empathy as an attribute or a character trait, teacher and author David A. Levine is convinced empathy can and should be taught in schools.

Levine, the author of Teaching Empathy: A Blueprint for Caring, Compassion, and Community, includes a mini-curriculum, lessons, activities, and a CD of songs in his book to help develop empathy skills in children and create classroom atmospheres where students feel safe and willing to be empathetic.

Gossip Girls and Boys Get Lessons in Empathy

By WINNIE HU
Published: April 4, 2009
New York Times

SCARSDALE, N.Y. — The privileged teenagers at Scarsdale Middle School are learning to be nicer this year, whether they like it or not.

English classes discuss whether Friar Laurence was empathetic to Romeo and Juliet. Research projects involve interviews with octogenarians and a survey of local wheelchair ramps to help students identify with the elderly and the disabled. A new club invites students to share snacks and board games after school with four autistic classmates who are in separate classes during the day.

And to combat feelings of exclusion, the Parent Teacher Association is trying to curtail a longstanding tradition of seventh graders and eighth graders showing up en masse Monday morning wearing the personalized sweatshirts handed out to the popular crowd at the weekend’s bar or bat mitzvahs.

The emphasis on empathy here and in schools nationwide is the latest front in a decade-long campaign against bullying and violence. Many urban districts have found empathy workshops and curriculums help curb fighting and other misbehavior. In Scarsdale, a wealthy, high-performing district with few discipline problems to start with, educators see the lessons as grooming children to be better citizens and leaders by making them think twice before engaging in the name-calling, gossip and other forms of social humiliation that usually go unpunished.

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Social Emotional Programs mentioned in article:

– The Character Education Partnership, a nonprofit group in Washington, said 18 states — including New York, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska and California — require programs to foster core values such as empathy, respect, responsibility and integrity.

- This year, Los Angeles is spending nearly $1 million on a nationally known program for its 147 middle schools, called Second Step: Student Success Through Prevention, which teaches empathy, impulse control, anger management and problem solving.

- In Seattle, seven public elementary schools are using a Canadian-based program, Roots of Empathy, in which a mother and her baby go into the classroom to explore questions like “What makes you cry?”

- Within the charter network KIPP, which stands for Knowledge Is Power Program, some schools are focusing more on empathy, with lessons about the Holocaust, role-playing and a “values jingle” sung to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”

- At Public School 114 in the South Bronx, where David A. Levine, author of “Teaching Empathy,” has been running workshops since 2006, the principal, Olivia Francis-Webber said that the number of fights had dropped to fewer than three a month — from one to three a week — and disciplinary referrals were down to about five a month from nearly 20.

Looking and Seeing

My daughter said to me yesterday that often people look and don’t see. This is a thought that was handed to her from someone else, a thought she is now making her own as she ponders what it means to her. We see what we want to see. We don’t take the time to see beyond what we have decided is there. It’s easier this way but it’s also dulling. There are fewer surprises when we expect something to remain exactly as we have decided it is. Why do we do this? Is it a need to control one’s environment and emotions? Life is far more interesting and intimate when you take the time to see the person in front of you.

I had this experience the other day. I bought a sandwich and was sitting outside to eat it. There was a man in a wheelchair nearby with a sign that read “Veteran – Please help!” I watched the people buzzing past him. I watched their faces turn slightly away so not to make eye contact. It was just he and I sitting still with me eating my sandwich and him trying to give me some space by not looking at me. I look at him and our eyes met. I asked him how he was, “having any luck today?” This was his work and it seemed ridiculous to ignore that fact. He laughed and said, “not yet.”

We chatted a few minutes. I asked him if he would like the other half of my sandwich. He said he didn’t want to take my lunch. I said I was full and would love to share with him. He said he would save it until later when he was really hungry. I said it’s a messy sandwich and I went back inside to get him napkins.

The people were still buzzing by and this man and I were having a moment together. We both felt it. I made him visible and he made me visible.

I said, “have a nice day” and he said, “you too.” Our eyes met again and we smiled. He is someone with a whole life that brought him to this moment. Those stories I will never know but what I do know is that I stepped out of the buzzing crowds and made a connection. I stopped looking and actually saw and so felt and experienced.

Parent Involvement in Adolescent’s School Life

Harvard researcher, Nancy E. Hill’s new book, Families, Schools and the Adolescent makes the profound point that education policy makers and initiatives “fail to take into account the distinct needs of adolescents” in the area of parent involvement in school related activities.

When considering education reform, we must respect the developmental stages occurring at any given age. How can parents get involved in their adolescents school life when the work of adolescence is to create autonomy from parents? This study focuses on middle school students at the beginning stages of adolescence. By the time students are in high school, parent involvement in school activities, including homework, chaperoning, volunteerism, even knowing who your child’s teachers is virtually non-existent.

It is important for adolescents to separate themselves from their parent’s scrutiny and presence when experimenting with new ways of being. That’s not to say that parent’s are no longer needed. Hill’s research shows that parent involvement at home is “twice as effective” than involvement in school.

This research emphasizes two major points:

• The “other” adults (teachers, coaches, community members) are critical replacement parents investing in the healthy development of all youth. As parents take a back seat to the day-to-day activities of their adolescent children, “other” adults must step forward to model and instill a positive sense of self.

• Education’s policy makers must take into account the developmental stages and needs of students and not idealistically create something that does not honor the developmental work of identity formation.

See Education Week article on subject.