Creativity is action.
We tend to celebrate creative thinking: “What a creative idea!” “You’re thinking outside the box.” “I love your imagination.”
But I don’t believe the idea is the core of creativity.
The core is taking your ideas and putting them into action.
It doesn’t take much effort to believe that there is a new or better way to do something. It’s not hard to be creative in the mind.
What’s hard is creating. Taking your germ of an idea, and seeing it through the struggle of making it real: that’s the creativity I want to celebrate.
I don’t think our students have a problem imagining, or being creative in their minds. I think we need to do a much better job of empowering them to be creative in the concrete world.