Creativity: defining our work, determining our success.

Dear Colleague:

Innovation. Change. Transformation. Vision. These ideas are part of every important goal--personal and professional. But there are days when simply maintaining the status quo seems like an achievement. Performing routine activities with efficiency may make you feel as if you're holding your head above water. But our work as educators requires us to be inspirational leaders who stimulate creative growth, and this requires forward movement.

Author Stephen H. Davis asks, "Given the unrelenting pressures of school management, how can principals and superintendents devote the time or resources to do much of anything that deviates from addressing the basic needs of schools?" Davis notes that "problems often arrive at such a furious and unpredictable able pace that in order to keep up," administrators become focused on the solution rather than the problem, and may miss opportunities to lead their schools or districts "in strategically advantageous ways."

In his article, Davis goes on to offer a series of "levers" school leaders can use to infuse "creativity and innovation into the cultural fabric of their organizations."

Creativity is the focus of this issue of Leadership magazine. And creativity must be an element of the curriculum as well as our leadership style.

ACSA's assistant executive director George Manthey writes that the California Content Standards emphasis on factual knowledge results in a de-emphasis on the other end of the cognitive scale. This means that it is the responsibility of the creative educator to ensure that the curriculum is much more than the memorization of facts. Manthey includes examples of standards in each subject area that are written at the higher level.

As part of our examination of creativity, we also take a look at the importance of the arts in education. Author Morgan P. Appel outlines the research that helps educators make the case that the arts positively impact achievement across the curriculum, as well as teachers' abilities to use various modalities and intelligences.

Appel writes that the research "points to the many ways in which the arts cultivate the cognitive and behavioral skills necessary for success in any part of the K-12 curriculum." But he warns that injecting the arts into the curriculum in bits and pieces is not a panacea: Arts integration requires careful thought, planning and assessment.

Innovation and creativity define our work and determine our success. For school leaders as well as students, the ability to think creatively is what enables us to solve problems, respond positively to opportunities and challenges, and make a difference.

Sincerely,

Toni Hyland

ACSA President