For my final post on creativity, I decided to share this upcycled bathtub of herbs that my friend keeps at their cottage up in Northern Ontario. As a gardener, I am always looking out for plants in unique spaces and this arrangement caught my eye immediately when I went to visit her. It seemed like such a simple concept, but proved to be both creative and effective at the same time. My friend explained to me that they simply planted their herbs and would leave it to grow naturally, since they were not always up at their cottage. I thought about my own basil I grow indoors, that requires water every 3-4 days or it will shrivel up. Sometimes less is more, and it is the same when it comes to creativity. Critical thinking and creativity does not have to be forced. Allowing for natural moments of flow, (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi, 2020), and having these moments occur naturally can encourage us to engage in a deeper level of thinking.
As I mentioned at the start of this course, there are always opportunities for creative and critical thinking in the Music classroom. However, critical thinking and creativity opportunities do not just occur in traditional Arts classrooms. This is what I appreciate so much about creativity; it can be found everywhere. This course has also taught me the importance of “little c” (Gini-Newman & Case, 2015, p. 53), moments, and that no matter how busy life gets, almost anything can be turned into a moment of creative reflection. To grow a garden requires an understanding of your environment, what you are planting, and empathy. We can apply the same to a classroom or any other professional space. All of these things require nurturing and preparation but once the foundation is built, good things will grow. I look forward to taking what I have learned from this course, and this program as a whole, and continue to apply it to my professional practice.
References
Gini Newman, G. & Case, R. (2015). “Critical, creative, and collaborative dimensions of thinking, pp. 45-60, Creating Thinking Classrooms: Leading Educational Change for a 21st Century World. Vancouver, BC: The Critical Thinking Consortium.
Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2020). The Experience of Flow: Theory and Research. The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, 3rd Edition, 279–296. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199396511.013.16
Toronto, October 2023
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