I Think of Myself Thinking, part 1

NOTE from the Editor: Our Learning About Learning Colleague and partner in New World Kids teacher training is Dr. Cynthia Herbert. She has authored a "cognitive autobiography" that traces a number of the core ideas in New World Kids, The Parents' Guide to Creative Thinking. We will excerpt her essay with a continuing series from her writing. Her essay explains the how and when and where of the origin of many of the ideas that form the foundation of our new book. Susie Monday was also a student at the Baylor Children's Theater and shares many of Dr. Herbert's personal experiences.

I Think of Myself Thinking:
A Cognitive Autobiography

by  Dr. Cynthia Herbert

Childhood
In the 1950's, when I entered an afterschool creative arts program at the Baylor Theater, directed by Jearnine Wagner, I was much too young to realize how unusual it was. We were young people of diverse ages, ethnicities, backgrounds, and ways of thinking collaborating to give form to individual and group ideas. We also talked about thinking and the creative process routinely. The tacit tenets of the program included the following:

All children are creative.

Each individual has a unique way to give form to ideas.

Uniqueness, diversity, and creativity are all desirable qualities.

The teacher's job is to discover, and help the child discover, the characteristics of a personal form.

The creative process can and should be taught.

The creative process begins with finding an idea (or problem).
Ideas can be found in many ways: By using all your senses to explore and participate in the world around you; by plumbing your own feelings, experiences, opinions, and knowledge; by brainstorming (or "wildmanning") possibilities; by exploring the potential of media and materials; through random juxtapositions and happy accidents, and so on.

Engaging in the creative process means helping ideas grow and giving them form.
"Form-finding" can be done through some of the "idea finding" strategies as well as through changing physical and mental viewpoints; conducting research and experiments of different kinds; trying ideas out in a variety of media; and routinely sharing forms and collecting feedback with peers, experts, and others.

The elements of form (and sometimes the unifying elements) provide a vocabulary for thinking about thinking.
Both the qualities of an idea, the qualities of a form, and a person's characteristic style of creating can be expressed in these terms. Children learned to use this vocabulary, which evokes all the senses, to discuss thinking and the processes and products of thinking.

The elements of form (defined as THE SENSORY ALPHABET in New World Kids): line, color, texture, shape, sound, space, movement, rhythm, light.

unifying elements: balance, direction, mass, number, repetition/pattern, size, emphasis, volume, weight, tempo, dimension, etc.

The elements of form remain more or less constant in a person's "best" work.
For example, a child who always notices sound, movement, and rhythm will also most likely produce dramatic forms where those characteristics are essential. Another child who more naturally attends to space and shape will most likely produce sculpture, architecture, or other forms where those characteristics are best expressed.

Young people can (and should) learn to reflect upon and characterize their own creative work.
One of the paradoxes in the program was that "thinking of yourself thinking" caused most students to become more, rather then less, interested in the thinking of others. I was fascinated by the diverse viewpoints we all had for interpreting our world and expressing what was meaningful. In addition, our teachers exposed us to the best "expert" minds possible—either through reading, viewing, or actually interviewing outstanding adults and older young people whose forms were similar to our own. Thus, we reflected on our own thinking and compared it to the thinking of our peers and to that of experts in different fields of study.

Creativity needs an environment in which it can be practiced.

The instructors in the program provided a safe haven for trial and error as well as theaters, workshops, patios and other spaces to work together and alone. Media and materials included "beautiful trash" and other recyclable materials, raw film to paint upon, house paint to create Pollock-style creations, magazine words and pictures for collages, lumber to construct totem poles, black ink with Japanese brushes to make beautiful lines, and almost anything that could be used to express unique ideas.

In addition, older students were recruited to help younger children realize their ideas on a proper scale; e.g., help a six-year-old transfer her small self-portrait to a six-foot tall wooden figure. Each child and their ideas were nurtured and allowed to grow as tall as they could be. For example, my younger brother, at 11, wrote, directed, starred in, and invented a new kind of set design for "The Hysterical Historical Soldier," a musical-comedy satire, in the style of the commedia dell'arte, on the futility of war.