"Do Schools Kill Creativity?"

Every now and then I run into an assignment for graduate school that gets me fired up.  I watched this video and shouted, "Amen!"  I even clapped!  Sir Ken Robinson delivers a TED talk explaining how schools are killing creativity.

"If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original...  

We now run our education system where mistakes are the worst thing you can make.  

We are educating people out of their creative capacities."

Every year I have students with special gifts in the arts.  While some of them attend classes outside of school for these gifts (dance, music, art, etc), many do not.  They feel defeated because they don't make grades like so-and-so or they never "clip to the top of the chart" because they are always getting in trouble.  Public education has put intelligence in a box.  These students are so out of the box, they don't know where the box is!  By the time many of them get to me, students are so discouraged by the snickers and remarks from their classmates that they won't even attempt to answer.  They won't ask questions because a teacher thought their ideas were crazy or didn't make sense.  It hurts to know that at such an early age they've learned that their differences in thinking are wrong.  

My goal next year is to do more activities that promote different talents.  One of those ways is project based learning.  I want students to feel successful in my class.  My favorite assignments in graduate school are when I get to be creative....use my clip art, cute fonts, etc.  

How do you incorporate creativity in your classroom?