Monday, June 13, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com CC.hie fiichigan, BatIly Creative habits Editedand managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890. 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 tothedaily@umich.edu BETHANY BIRON EDITOR IN CHIEF MARK BURNS MANAGING EDITOR TEDDY PAPES EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. Allother signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors. Inadequate reform Education must reward, not punish teachers. n Thursday, the state House approved legislation that makes it more difficult for teachers to reach and main- tain tenured status while making it easier for low-quali- ty teachers to be dismissed. While the House bills have laudable measures, especially where it minimizes the importance of seniority, the generalized and vague nature of the legislation's language may limit its potential. The lack of explicit outlines for deeming teachers effective or ineffective, along with the shortfall of incentives for educators, ultimately outweigh the positive aspects of the legislation. The state Senate must not let these bills become law. Ken Robinson, education expert and creativity guru, claims in a thought-provoking video from TED, a non-profit organi- zation that encour- ages the spread of new ideas, that the current school system educates us out of our creativ- ity. Robinson illus- trates his case with ERIK an example: "Ask a TORENBERG class of first grad- ers which of them thinks they're creative and they'll all put their hands up. Ask a group of col- lege seniors this same question and most of them won't." Your perception of your own cre- ativity - the ability to generate origi- nal ideas that add value - is often a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's misguided to view it as somethingyoueither have or you don't. Like any skill, it can be deconstructed and deliberately prac- ticed. Through personal experience, as well as consulting various books and dogs, I'veaidentified three habits that foster creativity. The first habit: Write your ideas down. Carry a notebook with you everywhere. Your brain is good at creating ideas. Paper is good for storing them. For example, if you're working on a paper or a group project, write ideas and insights consistently. Often times if you start a project in the morning and take a break, ideas will come to you throughout the day, like when you're in the shower or on a walk. If you don't write them down you'll lose them. My column isn't solely writ- ten in a four-hour chunk. It's spread out over several unexpected "a-ha" moments - a response here, a rebuttal to a potential argument there. The second habit: Review your ideas at least once a week. Review- ing your ideas allows you to notice patterns in your thoughts, encour- aging you to connect them. You can read over them or use tools like the mobile application Thoughtback. Every time you add a thought to the app, it sends you back a random thought you've had in the past. Steve Johnson, author of "Where Good Ideas Come From," explains this phenomenon. Good ideas don't come from solitary "Eureka" moments. They are the connection of tangential ideas and experiences that have been accumulated. You read this article here, talk to this person there and then leave your head in the clouds for a bit and before you know it, you've got a narrative. Or a business idea. Or something thoughtful to say. Writing them down expedites the idea build- 4 ing process, but you need to add the second habit to maximize the benefits. The third habit: Share your thoughts with others. Networks like Silicon Valley are so conducive to success because people constantly share their ideas - they "get all the spare parts on the table," as Johnson states in his book. The collective can add invaluable feedback: "Try doing this. Have you thought of that?" Or my personal favorite: "That's already been done - 10 years ago." A recent piece in the New Yorker about innovation and creativity, written by Malcolm Gladwell, shows these three habits in action: "A genius is a genius...because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations and unexpect- ed connections that he almost inevi- tably ends up with something great. Quality is a probabilistic function of quantity." 4 Like any skill, ingenuity can be practiced. According to a June 9 Detroit Free Press article, the four bills propose revising the process for removing tenured teachers from the classroom. Proponents of these measures argue that changing the current tenure sys- tem will not only save time and money, but also encourage more rigid evaluation of educators - an essential move for improv- ing education in the state. Under the new legislation, all teachers - regardless of tenured status - will now be regularly evaluated as either "effective" or "ineffec- tive." This is a vital step in terms of education reform -Four cur- rent education system is anti- quated, placing more emphasis on seniority rather than quality. By taking steps to level the play- ing field, the proposed legisla- tion encourages establishing a more competitive environment for teachers, ensuring that teach- ers will be placed in classrooms based on merit and skill rather than seniority. It's clear that the state needs to up the ante when it comes to education, and this set of bills promotes a high level of quality and accountability in teachers.that cannot exist under more lenient tenure systems. Though the bill certainly takes positive steps forward in improv- ing Michigan's education system, the vague language of the legisla- tion hinders its potential success. The bills' creators emphasized the importance on assessments of teacher quality, but the leg- islation lacks comprehensive instructions on how to quantify or qualify the effectiveness of teachers. Without some kind of system to evaluate educators, the legislation may flounder in practice. The bills also disallow collective bargaining for issues such as performance evaluation systems and the placement of teachers. Considering the gener- alized nature of the bills, espe- cially when it comes to its quality assessment systems, it's illogical to throw out unions' rights to provide input on the new evalua- tion procedures. While the bills create a rough outline for eliminating inef- fective teachers - a crucial step in comprehensive educa- tion reform - the legislation ignores the need to incentivize the profession. A good educa- tion bill must not only draft a fair system for the dismissal of substandard educators, but also attract new profession- als of the quality it purports to be in favor of. Despite the irrefutable need to drastically improve the education system in Michigan, teaching remains an underappreciated profession both economically and socially. When drafting bills that aim to improve education, state legis- lators will end up doing more harm than good by making teaching a less desirable pro- fession. The state Senate must vote down these measures until the bills include reforms that increase the appeal of teaching. The first habit: Write everything down. Check. The second habit: Review insights, theories and ran- dom observations. Check. And the third habit? The New Yorker piece goes on to chronicle how Steve Jobs stole the idea of a personal computer from Xerox. The story displays Xerox as the big loser, but in reality, Xerox was a huge success. Xerox created a user unfriendly, unmarketable PC, and if they hadn't shared their creation with Jobs, there wouldn't have been a huge market for Xerox's flagship product: the printer. It took losing the big one - the computer - to win the small accomplishment of the printer, which considering Xerox's success today, isn't that small. The third habit: Share your ideas. Check. Ken Robinson outlined what cre- ativity is and why it's important. But he didn't outline how it could be taught - and more importantly, how it can be learned. But don't take soy word for it. Experiment with these habits, develop some of your own and see what works for you. That's some- thing to mull over in a notebook. Erik Torenberg can be reached at erikto@umich.edu.