25 important ideas to FOSTER CREATIVITY from WHPS School in Hollywood Florida

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25 Important Ideas a...
Authored by Ionel Coltea Ed.D.
5.0" x 8.0" (12.70 x 20.32 cm)
Black & White on White paper
68 pages
ISBN-13: 9781517017514
ISBN-10: 1517017513
25 Important
Ideas about
Education for
Creativity
The Methods of Teaching
at West Hollywood Private School,
Florida
Dr. Ionel Coltea
Claudia Beatriz Quintanilla
Steve McCrea (editor)
John Yi

ISBN-13: 978-1517017514
ISBN-10: 1517017513
The materials given here are shared to encourage
the people of China and USA to work together.
Can we combine the Asian respect for
experience and tradition with the West’s
impulse and obsession with “something
new?”
Let us find a balance together.
Write to us:
SteveEnglishTeacher@gmail.com
Visit our website:
WHPSus.org
TinyURL.com/ForCreativity
TinyURL.com/WebForThePeople
TransformTeaching.org 1 WHPSUS.org TransformTeaching.org 2 WHPSUS.org

Contents
Introduction
I cried when I heard this radio show
Part 1
Ten Questions
Part 2
Important Quotations and Discussions
Part 3
Creative Procedures
Contact Us
TransformTeaching.org 3 WHPSUS.org
Introduction
I cried when I heard this radio show
I am a teacher in Florida. Since 1987 I have helped
students improve their scores on the SAT. I scored
a perfect 800 in the math and 720 n the verbal
(vocabulary). For many years I felt like an
effective teacher. Then on April 25, 2005, I
listened to a director of a school say,
"Students have been told what to do for nine
years. When they enter ninth grade, it's rough.
We are saying, Follow your interests and
passions, make choices. They are not ready,
they don't trust adults."
Dennis Littky
I spent the next week trying to find the radio show
and I listened to it four items. I transcribed the
words of the interview. You can find the interview

by searching “Dennis Littky NPR, 2005 interview
small school.”
I ordered Littky’s book, the Big Picture. I read his
book. I visited his central school,
MetCenter.org.
BOOK PICTURE <<<
From that moment I have tried to become less of a
teacher and preacher… I’m more of a facilitator
and a guide on the side.
Here are some quotes from Dr. Littky’s interview
on National Public Radio (April 25, 2005):
How kids in good schools are losing out too, and why
(The Met's accomplishments)
What makes me cry daily is when I hear a kid describe
how he or she was before, and then how they found their
passion and it changed their life.
It's really about the environment that we built to help the
kid find his passion. That comes from having respect for
the kid and giving the kid time to learn.
Half of our great work is because the kid got there when
the kid grew up and got more mature. We were just
patient. But in most cases, the kids never get to, they get
stopped before they did something stupid or they weren't
interested. By having the faith that the kid will learn and
by struggling with that through the years, we can see how
far they've come.
Our secret is that we have the patience and the belief that
anything is possible. Whatever you need to help you get
passionate about something is what we do. it's the true
belief in the student.
Every school says that they respect kids. If you give kids
work that is not important, you're not respecting them. I
think my frustration with the world is that in many
suburban districts where parents move to send their kids
and the students come home with their As and Bs, the
parents are satisfied, but they never look deeper, so they
think those are good schools. They have the highest SAT
scores, they have the most kids going to Ivy League
colleges.
Those kids are losing too. They are not dropping out
because they are playing the game. When you ask them,
"Have you made any decisions in school? Do you care
about anything, are you passionate about anything that
goes on during the day besides drama club or football
after school?" They're getting the short end. They aren't
allowed to get engaged with their work and go deeper.
"My kid did well at that school." Yeah, but where could
your kid really go if your kid got to work with a doctor in
9th grade, following her around, and really going in
depth?

The other frustration is kids are dying daily. They are
dropping out daily. In some cities, 20 percent graduate
high school. Nothing is changed drastically enough.
I appreciate the accountability part of No Child Left
Behind. There were some school districts that were not
clear about standards and the law is helping them focus.
The law is not going to help poor kids really achieve.
Taking tests is not going to help improve kids. We have to
engage them, help them find their passion, we have to
respect who they are and where they come from.
After hearing this radio interview, I bought his
book. Here are some of the quotes that impressed
me.
When I watch kids walk into the building on their first day of school,
I think about what I want them to be like when they walk out on their
last day. I also think about what I want them to be like on the day I
bump into them in the supermarket 10 or 20 years later. Over the
course of three decades watching kids walk into my schools, I have
decided that I want them to
● be lifelong learners
● be passionate
● be ready to take risks
● be able to problem-solve and think critically
● be able to look at things differently
● be able to work independently and with others
● be creative
● care and want to give back to their community
● persevere
● have integrity and self-respect
● have moral courage
● be able to use the world around them well
● speak well, write well, read well, and work well with
numbers
● truly enjoy their life and their work.
To me, these are the real goals of education.
(page 1)
What is Learning?
if you can get up and be passionate about something and tell
others about what you know, then you are showing that you are
educated about that topic. This is what an exhibition3
is: It is kids
getting up and talking passionately about a book they've read, a
paper they've written, drawings they've made, or even what they
know about auto mechanics. It is a way for students to have
conversations about the things they have learned. Exhibitions are
the best way to measure learning because they put the kids right in
the midst of their learning, which makes a lot more sense than
asking them to sit quietly for an hour and fill in test bubbles with a
pencil. And because exhibitions are interactive, they propel the kids
to want to learn more. That is what matters.
What is Teaching?

In the early 1970s, I was placing student teachers in schools with
“open classrooms.” These schools were influenced by a big
movement in the '60s that said having kids doing projects in small
groups was a better set-up for learning than the traditional lecture
format. One of my student teachers, a young, idealistic woman,
turned to me one day and said, “This is great, Dennis, but when am
I really going to learn how to teach?” She was standing there in an
exciting, rich learning environment, but she couldn't see it because
it didn't match her idea of what teaching was, which was standing
up in front of the room, looking out at quiet rows of faces, and
pouring knowledge into them.
Teaching is so much more than I ever thought it would be.
~ A Met advisor, after his first year
Unfortunately, to most people, teaching is the giving of knowledge.
What are you going to tell the students? What is your expertise?
But teaching is really about bringing out what's already inside
people.
From Chapter 4 of Littky’s book:
What we need is not just smaller schools and realistic education
goals, but authentic relationships between educators and kids.
What we need are truly personalized schools. A truly
personalized school is ultimately flexible: student groupings,
schedules, curriculum, activities, and assessment tools are all
created to be appropriate to the students and the situations at
hand. In a personalized school, the teachers' primary concern is
educating their students, not getting through a certain body of
subject matter. And in doing this, their primary concern becomes
the individual students themselves.
No matter how hard schools try, a one-size-fits-all approach to
education will always be hit or miss. Can you imagine walking
into a medical office and being shuffled off to a room with 20 or 30
other people who have the same complaint or disease, and then
watching as the doctor discusses the treatment that all of you will
receive before sending everyone out the door with carbon copy
prescriptions? Of course not! Doctors see one patient at a time. It's
the only way they can really help each person. It's the only way that
makes sense.
I want to attend The Met school because the school I am
currently attending is not a good learning environment for
me. The teachers at my school don't understand me and my
ways of learning.
~ From an 8th grader's Met application essay

Schools that are serious about fulfilling every student's promise
must develop structures and relationships that nurture the strengths
and energies of each student. Truly personalized learning requires
reorganizing schools to start with the student, not the subjects
or classes. A school that tries to take personalized education to its
full potential is equally concerned with what knowledge students
acquire as with how the individual students use and apply that
knowledge. The priority at such a school is to know students and
their families well enough to ensure that every learning experience
excites the students to learn more. There are many great small,
personalized schools that do all of this. What I'm saying is, they
need to take the idea of personalized learning to the next step: to
where every student has a completely different curriculum, based
on who he or she is right now and who he or she wants to become.
Central to the idea of treating everyone alike differently is
understanding that there cannot be a uniform curriculum for every
student in the country—or for every student in a single school or
classroom, for that matter. Force-feeding kids a rigidly defined body
of knowledge is in total opposition to what we know about learning.
Everything I know about kids tells me that there is no content
that's right for every kid.Photosynthesis or iambic pentameter
may be very important to you, but they aren't to me, at least not
right now.
The book went on to add:
The order we should be paying attention to is the one inside
the kid. So if Marcus is into poetry right now, he shouldn't have to
read Hemingway because that's what the 10th grade curriculum
requires. He should be reading and writing poetry now because
that's the right order for him! Traditional curriculum development
looks at all the information we have and determines what needs to
go inside each kid. Instead, we need to look at what's already
inside the kid and use it to figure out how to help him learn more.
One of my staff once told me how she wasn't allowed to follow her
interests and write a paper on the Vietnam War in high school
because they were still on the Revolutionary War in their textbook.
I, in turn, told her one of my favorite Met kid stories. Daniel knew I
had been to Southeast Asia and would always ask me questions
about Vietnam. One day, I asked him why he was so interested,
and he told me that since he was 10 years old, he had been trying
to get his dad to talk about the war. Daniel's father was a veteran
who was so affected by his experience in Vietnam that he would
not speak to his family about it at all. Then Daniel started doing
research and writing about his father's war. His dad finally opened
his drawer and showed his son his medals.
There's more: As part of his “curriculum” at The Met, Daniel took a
college training course for teachers on how to teach the Vietnam
War. He got an internship helping another local Vietnam veteran
build a memorial. By the time Daniel's senior project came around,
he had opened up the conversation with his father so much that the
two of them worked together to raise enough money for them both
to fly to Vietnam. Daniel was 18 then, the same age his father was

when he had flown there the first time. Together, they toured the
country and learned about the war and its effects on the land and
the people. They both kept journals. When they returned, father
and son went around and gave speeches about their experience.
Daniel even developed a Web site to help other kids talk to their
parents about the war. As of this writing, Daniel is a senior in
college, preparing to graduate with a degree in history and return to
The Met as an advisor.
We “allowed” Daniel to study the Vietnam War at that moment, in
that way, because that was the “prescribed” curriculum he needed
at that time. Again, there is no one body of content that is right
for every kid.
I was touched deep in my heart by the words of
Littky, so I decided to visit his central school in
Rhode Island called “the Met.” Here are eight
observations that I made while at his school:
The Littky Method
1. Ask each student to interview his/her
parents, relatives, friends of the family and put
together a 75-page biography of the student. Ask
“What did you want to be when you were a
teenager? What did you dream about?” the
student learns about the family and gets closer to
her history.
2. Ask teachers to get to know the students
and parents. In Littky's school, the teacher
moves with the student, so the 9th grade teacher
becomes the student's 10th grade teacher, etc. The
teacher has to be flexible and teach from a variety
of textbooks. The teacher even visits the student
and gets to know the parents in their home.
(Littky considers this part of "treating parents and
students with respect.")
3. No grades. Write letters to the students every
9 weeks. Narratives will guide the student toward
improvement. The teachers writes “This is what
the student planned to do, then this is what the
student did, and now here is the plan for the next
nine weeks.”
4. The teacher takes time to get to know the
student. The student tells the teacher about his
interests and passions. The teacher provides
multiple ways to let the student choose their own
way to discover more about their interests. Choice
leads to creativity.
5. After students identify their passions, connect
students to mentors (experts in the
community) who work in those areas. Let
the students see what is needed to perform in their
area of interest. (At the Met School in Rhode

Island, the student is at the workplace of the
mentor for two days in the week.)
6. Learn through real-world, real-work
projects. Many schools offer "project-based
learning." Littky insists that the projects are
connected to the real world. Example: A realtor
came to a middle school class and asked the
students to assemble a binder about their town
that she could show to new clients -- the kids
produced a 90-page looseleaf binder in two weeks.
They worked hard because "that lady is expecting
us to give her something real." Littky uses this
example to explain why students need contact with
the real world and why his school is everywhere
where there are mentors.
7. A plan for each student. The teacher meets
with the individual and creates an individual
education plan for every student.
8. Stand up and perform your
understanding. Tests are "stand ups" or
presentations. Students sit for written tests, too,
but the focus of learning and evaluation is the
"exhibition."
So, you see why I cried when I first heard Dennis
littky on the radio? I cried for joy because I had
found the words I needed to explain what I wanted
to teach. I also cried in sadness for the hundreds
of students that I had limited with my teaching
decisions.

Part 1
Ten Questions to Ask
Your Child’s Teacher
Procedures from
a Small School
West Hollywood
Private School
Hollywood, Florida
www.WHPSUS.org
These procedures come from Edutopia.com, Eric
Mazur’s PeerInstruction.net, HighTechHigh.org,
MetCenter.org and dozens of other websites and
innovative schools in the USA.
These procedures are part of the school work at West
Hollywood Private School.
TinyURL.com/AskTeachers10
Images from the Internet appear in this book.
Some of the creative posters by Krissy come from
VenSpired.com.
We have permission from Krissy to share these posters.
Go for it! You have my full permission. The book looks
like a fabulous way to spread creativity!
-- VenSpired.com

This section of the book
is dedicated to a creative teacher,
Gustavo Fraga.
The logo comes from an incident in a school…
Fraga walked into his classroom, put books on his
desk, pulled a sheet from a folder and asked, “Is
there anything that you want to learn today?”
“Sir, I’m not sure about the way to balance an
equation. You showed us last week, but I’d like a
review.”
Fraga looked at the sheet in
his hand, grasped the top
edge of the sheet in both
hands and ripped it into
two pieces. He walked to a
wastebasket and threw
away his lesson plan. He
proceeded to answer the student’s question.
This book celebrates teachers who focus on what
the students want to learn.
Summary
-1. Ask teachers to put lectures on video. At
Harvard University, some professors put parts of
their lectures on a video and the students arrive in
class ready to discuss the video lecture. The
students can pause the video at home and take
time to understand and get new thinking. This
means that lecture videos help students become
more creative.
-2. Ask teachers to create a Personal
Learning Plan for your child. Each student has
an individual intelligence, different from other
students, so he needs an individual way to go
through the course.
-3. Collect your child’s school work in a
website. When a student can look at his work
(from several years) in one place, it becomes easier
to see the creative connections between courses.
-4. Ask teachers to let students discuss the
new information instead of listening to a
lecture. This promotes diverse intelligence.
Students can often use different words to describe
the same subject.
-5. Ask teachers to guide students in
creating projects that include several subjects.
Working together stimulates creativity.

-6. Ask teachers to find apps for the student to
use on their mobile phones.
-7. Ask teachers for their mobile phone
numbers. Sometimes a student wants to ask an
important question, but forgets the question when
she is in class the next day. Creativity is often
encouraged when there is a quick reply from the
teacher.
-8. Ask teachers to look at your child as an
individual. Ask your teacher to teach your child
all four years of high school. This is the procedure
at Big Picture Schools.
-9. Ask teachers to put the Five Guiding
Questions on the classroom walls. (From the Big
Picture Schools). These questions push students
to find deeper learning.
-10. Show the 10 Expectations from
LeavingToLearn.org to every teacher in your
child’s school. The
Here are ten ways to make your
child’s education more creative.
The principal at High Tech High gives advice
about good procedures.

1 Ask teachers to put their
lectures on videos. Short lectures
are put on video for the student to view BEFORE
the class. Students should arrive in class ready to
discuss the topic for the day. The class time is for
one-on-one tutoring and small group discussions.
tinyurl.com/LecturesAreDead
“Research shows it's impossible for students to take in
and remember all the information presented during a
typical lecture.” American RadioWorks
How to make class work more interesting.
TinyURL.com/LecturesAreDead1
PeerInstruction.net
TinyURL.com/LecturesAreDead2
The video (60 seconds)
Katie Gimbar, a teacher in North Carolina, shows
the problems with lectures in a typical classroom.

Katie Gimbar explains how she makes videos for
students to watch before they come to class.
2 Ask for a Personal
Learning Plan. Ask teachers to start
with your child. Connect the homework and
school work to the child’s interests. This
procedure is used at Big Picture Schools
(MetCenter.org). This is not an Individual
Education Plan (IEP), which helps the student
adapt to the textbook and the system (putting a
square peg in a round hole). The Personal
Learning Plan is unique to each student.
An example of a Personal Learning Plan

Often the plans are completed with the help of the
parents.
Teachers need training to prepare to work together
to make projects and personal learning plans.
3 Collect your child’s school
work in a website. Students at High
Tech High School in San Diego, California use free
Google Sites web space for showing their projects
and school work. TinyURL.com/ExampleDP.
Ben Staley’s website showing his school work and
projects (High Tech High School)

This book shows you how to organize school work
on the website. The book was written by Dennis
Yuzenas, Steve McCrea, Omar Vasile, Ben Staley,
Matt Blazek and Mario Llorente.
4
Ask teachers to let students
discuss the new information
instead of listening to a lecture.
Ask teachers to use the method called “Turn to
Your Neighbor” that Harvard University
developed. TinyURL.com/EricMazur
TinyURL.com/TurnToYourNeighbor

Julie Schell explains the method of “turn to your
neighbor” and “peer instruction.” Students discuss
a question in class.
5
Ask teachers to guide
students in creating projects
that include several subjects. For example, the
math, science and history teachers can create one
project together with
the student.
This procedure is easier
when one teacher
teachers several
subjects (perhaps
English Grammar, a
foreign language and
history).
WHPSUS.org uses a project book by Matt Blazek.
TinyURL.com/BlazekProjects
This video explains how to use the Project Book.
www.TinyURL.com/MattBlazek
“Projects are the way to go.” Bill Gates during a
visit to High Tech High School, San Diego, Calif.

Omar Vasile
gives advice
about how to
organize
projects.
Dennis Yuzenas
describes a project
with National
History Day.
6 Ask teachers to find apps
for the student to use. Many
hours of classroom practice are spent reviewing …
and some of that reviewing can be done outside
the classroom on apps.
A teacher who can be replaced by a
computer should be replaced by a
computer.
Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space
Odyssey.
The teacher becomes a facilitator. The teacher is
not the source of information. The teacher helps
students manage their time.

A vocabulary app.
A math app.

This video shows students how to review new
words.
7
Ask teachers for their mobile
phone numbers. “Can my child send
you questions at night and on weekends?” The
questions can often be put in a photo and sent to
the teacher’s mobile phone. When a student has a
question, the student can take a photo and send
the question to the teacher. The teacher can make
a short video and reply to that student. The
student can view the answer and learn outside the
classroom.
The “Just In Time” Learning Method
- The student finds a difficult problem.
- The student takes a photo and sends
the photo to the teacher’s mobile
phone.
- The teacher looks at the problem,
writes an explanation, makes a movie
and sends the movie to the student.
- The student explains the solution the
next day in class to other students.

8
Ask teachers to look at your
child as an individual. Ask the
teachers to teach your child all four years of high
school. This is the procedure at Big Picture
Schools.
The same teacher stays with the same
students for four years. This often happens
in a small school.
Each student has his own lesson plan for
each day. Ask teachers to ask “What do you
want to learn today?” Teachers have been told
to teach students the Seven Survival Skills that
Tony Wagner has identified. Search “Seven
Survival Skills Tony Wagner.” Initiative and
Entrepreneurship can be developed if the teacher
allows students time to make the first move. Neil
Postman gave this advice: Ask the students,
“What do you want to learn today?”
The only way to know where a kid is 'at' is to
listen to what he is saying. -- Neil Postman
Tony Wagner interviewed over 200 managers to
find out “what do students need to know.”
Tony Wagner asks students to show their skills.

9
Ask teachers to put the Five
Guiding Questions on the
classroom walls. (From the Big
Picture Schools)
You can get the exact wording of the
questions by going to
TinyURL.com/metquestions
HOW DO I DESCRIBE THIS SITUATION?
(How do I talk about the problem?)
WHAT NUMBERS DO I NEED TO USE?
(What kind of math do I need for this topic?)
HOW DO I COMMUNICATE THIS
INFORMATION? (Should I use a poster or a
video? Where can I get more information? How
do I get more information?)
WHAT DID OTHER PEOPLE WRITE
ABOUT THIS TOPIC? (What is the history of
this topic?)
WHAT CAN I ADD TO THIS TOPIC? (How
can I make this topic personal to me?)
metcenter.org/about-us/one-student-at-a-time/goals
10
Show the 10 Expectations
from LeavingToLearn.org
to every teacher in your child’s
school.
These ten "Questions that Parents Can Ask" come from
a video that supports Leaving to Learn, a book by Elliot
Washor and Charles Wojkowski.
LeavingToLearn.org

Relationships
Am I just another face in the classroom? or do my
teachers know about me and my interests and talents?
Do the teachers help me form relationships with peers
and adults who might serve as models and coaches?
Relevance
Is the work just a series
of hoops to jump? Or is
the work relevant to my
interests? Do my
teachers help me
understand how my
learning contributes to
my community?
Time
Am I expected to learn
at a pace decided by my
teacher or can I learn at
my own pace?
Is there time for
learning to be deep as
well as broad?
Timing
Do all students have to
learn things in the same
sequence or can I learn in an order that fits my learning
style or interests?
Play
Is there always pressure to perform? Or do I have
opportunities to explore? Make mistakes and learn
from them? Do I have opportunities to tinker and
make guesses?
Practice
Do we learn something and then immediately move on
to the next skill? Or
can we engage in
deep and sustained
practice of the skills
that we need to
learn?
Choice
Am I following the
same path as every
student? Or do I
have real choices
about what, how
and when I will
learn and
demonstrate my
abilities?

Authenticity
Is my work just a series of worksheets? Or is the
learning and work I do considered significant outside of
school, by experts, family and employers?
Does the community recognize the value of my work?
Challenge
is the school work just about completing assignments?
Or do I feel challenged? Am I addressing high and
meaningful standards?
Application
Is my learning all theoretical? Or do I have
opportunities to apply what I’m learning in real world
settings?
TinyURL.com/MattBlazek
Ask the history teacher to “teach history
backwards.” If we start with the years that the
child knows, then we can connect to the history of
his grandfather. historyinreverse.blogspot.com
These ten procedures will help teachers be
more effective. The teachers will prepare
your child for the Global Market. We use
these methods at our school in West
Hollywood, Florida.
This book describes the
benefits of small schools.

Bill Gates believes that students receive more
attention in a small school.
When you insist on making the world
better, then you matter. -- Seth Godin
Poster by VenSpired.com

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try
-- Seth Godin Poster by VenSpired.com
This book is dedicated to Gustavo Fraga, an
advisor to hundreds of young people.
The principal reason for your learning how to
listen to students is that you may increase your
understanding of what the students perceive as
relevant. The only way to know where a kid is 'at'
is to listen to what he is saying. You can't do this if
you are talking.
Teaching as a Subversive Activity
page 164
Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
TinyURL.com/PostmanPDF

Part 2
Important Quotations and
Discussions
Learning should be fun for the learner.
Abraham S. Fischler.
Dr. Coltea’s comments: Learning happens
when we take the student from point A and
get him to point B. That will be different
for each student. The important thing is to
make a difference and make the learning
fun.
The curriculum should be flexible based on
the needs of the student. Give students
choices.
(from a meeting with his teachers)
Ken Robinson talks about the difference
between imagination and creativity.
We know three things about intelligence. One, it's diverse.
We think about the world in all the ways that we
experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we
think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think
in movement. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic. If you
look at the interactions of a human brain, as we heard
yesterday from a number of presentations, intelligence is
wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into
compartments. In fact, creativity -- which I define as the
process of having original ideas that have value -- more
often than not comes about through the interaction of
different disciplinary ways of seeing things.
By the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two
halves of the brain called the corpus callosum. It's thicker
in women. Following off from Helen yesterday, this is
probably why women are better at multi-tasking. Because
you are, aren't you? There's a raft of research, but I know
it from my personal life. If my wife is cooking a meal at
home -- which is not often, thankfully. (Laughter) No,

she's good at some things, but if she's cooking, she's
dealing with people on the phone, she's talking to the
kids, she's painting the ceiling, she's doing open-heart
surgery over here. If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids
are out, the phone's on the hook, if she comes in I get
annoyed. I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in
here." (Laughter) "Give me a break." (Laughter)Actually,
do you know that old philosophical thing, if a tree falls in a
forest and nobody hears it, did it happen? Remember that
old chestnut? I saw a great t-shirt recently, which said, "If
a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears
him, is he still wrong?" (Laughter)
And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm
doing a new book at the moment called "Epiphany," which
is based on a series of interviews with people about how
they discovered their talent. I'm fascinated by how people
got to be there. It's really prompted by a conversation I
had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people
have never heard of, Gillian Lynne. Have you heard of
her? Some have. She's a choreographer, and everybody
knows her work. She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the
Opera." She's wonderful. I used to be on the board of The
Royal Ballet, as you can see.Anyway, Gillian and I had
lunch one day and I said, "How did you get to be a
dancer?" It was interesting. When she was at school, she
was really hopeless. And the school, in the '30s, wrote to
her parents and said, "We think Gillian has a learning
disorder." She couldn't concentrate; she was fidgeting. I
think now they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But
this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn't been invented at
this point. It wasn't an available condition. (Laughter)
People weren't aware they could have that.(Laughter)
Anyway, she went to see this specialist.
So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there with her
mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end,
and she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man
talked to her mother about the problems Gillian was
having at school. Because she was disturbing people; her
homework was always late; and so on, little kid of eight. In
the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian, and said,
"I've listened to all these things your mother's told me, I
need to speak to her privately. Wait here. We'll be back;
we won't be very long," and they went and left her. But as
they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was
sitting on his desk. And when they got out, he said to her
mother, "Just stand and watch her." And the minute they

left the room, she was on her feet, moving to the music.
And they watched for a few minutes and he turned to her
mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a
dancer. Take her to a dance school."
I said, "What happened?" She said, "She did. I can't tell
you how wonderful it was. We walked in this room and it
was full of people like me. People who couldn't sit
still.People who had to move to think." Who had to move
to think. They did ballet, they did tap, jazz; they did
modern; they did contemporary. She was eventually
auditioned for the Royal Ballet School; she became a
soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet.
She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School,
founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company, met Andrew
Lloyd Webber. She's been responsible for some of the
most successful musical theater productions in history,
she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a
multimillionaire. Somebody else might have put her on
medication and told her to calm down.
Search “TED Talk Ken Robinson creativity”
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_
says_schools_kill_creativity/transcript?lan
guage=en
Sugata Mitra tells us about the ability of
students to teach themselves with his hole
in the wall project:
I got an interesting phone call once from Columbo, from
the late Arthur C. Clarke, who said, "I want to see what's
going on." And he couldn't travel, so I went over there. He
said two interesting things, "A teacher that can be
replaced by a machine should be." The second thing he
said was that, "If children have interest, then education
happens." And I was doing that in the field, so every time I
would watch it and think of him.
========================
Search: Sugata Mitra hole in the wall ted.
Dimitri Christiakis, “Media, Children and
the Mind.”

If a baby watches more television before age 3, that child
is more likely to have problems with attention in school.
For each hour that they watch per day before the age of 3,
the change of having an attention problem increases 10
percent.
A child who watches two hours of TV a day before the age
of three, will be 20 percent more likely to have attention
problems compared to a child who watched none.
A child who receives cognitive stimulation is more likely to
have better attention.
Cognitive stimulation includes reading to the child, taking
the child to a museum, singing to the child.
Reading to your child reduces the problems of attention
later in life.
Each hour of cognitive stimulation per day reduced the
chance of getting an attention problem by 30 percent
-- Dimitri Christiakis
======
Seth Godin asks us to “stop killing
dreams”...
http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopst
ealingdreamsscreen.pdf
If school’s function is to create the workers
we need to fuel our economy, we need to
change school, because the workers we
need have changed as well. The mission
used to be to create homogenized,
obedient, satisfied workers and pliant,
eager consumers. No longer. Changing
school doesn’t involve sharpening the
pencil we’ve already got. School reform
cannot succeed if it focuses on getting
schools to do a better job of what we
previously asked them to do. We don’t
need more of what schools produce when
they’re working as designed. The
challenge, then, is to change the very
output of the school before we start
spending even more time and money
improving the performance of the school.
The goal of this manifesto is to create a
new set of questions and demands that
parents, taxpayers, and kids can bring to
the people they’ve chosen, the institution
we’ve built and invested our time and

money into. The goal is to change what we
get when we send citizens to school. --
Seth Godin.
My background is in psychology. When it comes to
teaching, I implement the cognitive and behavioral
components of a student for the learning experience.
For instance, some students may have differences
in intelligence, motivation, performance, emotion, self-
regulation, and cognitive development. This sort of
understanding is improvised to make the
classroom environment
flexible. With the combination of a neuroscientific
approach to the application of early teachings of Plato
and Aristotle, this teaching style makes the learning
experience versatile.
--- Claudia Quintanilla
Part 3
Creative Procedures
These are procedures that we use at your school in
Florida. The West Hollywood Private School is
independent of the state system of public schools.
We use procedures that appear adapted to
individuals.
1. We have a music keyboard in the
classroom. Someone in the group usually
knows how to play the piano and it gives
students a chance to show their love of
music.
2. We use mobile phones to help boys
write essays. Many boys don’t like to
write. So we invite students to bring their
smartphones to class. They speak to the
phone and the phone writes their words.
Then they can send the words to a word
program like Google Docs.
3. We begin with the “end of the course”
in our minds. We ask our students to
think about how their time will be used to
create essays, projects and new
understanding.

4. We offer “food for the brain.” We
remind students to include omega-3 fats in
their daily diet. We offer a protein drink
with fruit and oats (it is called “a smoothie”)
and we give free sardines to students who
want fish. Foods include nuts, tomatoes,
blueberries, black beans, walnuts, yogurt,
carrots and spinach.
5. We interrupt our work every twenty
minutes to increase blood flow. We
take time to stand up, stretch, sit down
again. This simple act increases the blood
flow in the legs and the rest of the body,
including the brain.
6. We remind students about their
posture. We even check to see if the
students are wearing the same shoes for
three days
7. We put posters on walls. Some
students don’t want to be told to do
something. Eventually they get the right
idea because they are given choices. We let
the walls teach. We use a method called
“the third teacher” (we recommend the
website thethirdteacherplus.com), where
posters carry messages to the students.
8. We put interesting books on tables in
our school. We dont always tell students
to read the book.
9. We use Apple computers for specific
creative reasons. The Screenshot (shift +
Command + 4) is a very helpful tool for
creativity. We encourage students to use
the right tool for the right situation.
10. We sometimes don’t help the
students so that they can develop their
own creative answers. I sometimes allow
the students to arrange the chairs in the
classroom so that they develop their own
sense of “what is beautiful.” Maria
Montessori wrote, “The students are
working as if the teacher does not exist.”
11. We use “lateral thinking puzzles.”
These puzzles guide the student to think
outside of the standard choices of “yes/no”
and “with vs. without.” See the work of
Edward deBono.
12. We show images of “negative space.”
Look at the logo for FedEd. What do you
see? Look at the images that have a picture
inside the logo. That’s how to stimulate
creativity.

13. We ask students to carry a notebook
and to copy or take photos of “designs that
you find attractive.” Dan Pink recommends
that we should all keep a record of “what is
good design?” In his interview with Oprah,
Pink pointed out that “designers give us
things that we didn’t know we needed.”
(Oprah bought 4500 copies of Pink’s book
to give to graduates of Stanford University
in 2005).
14. We keep tools in the classroom, ready
for the next idea. “Tools” We encourage
students to use their smartphones and
computers, but we also make paper and
pens available.
15. We let students put things together
and them them apart. We have a “take
apart” lab to allow students to
disassemble broken computers, printers
and cameras. “Find out how it works” is a
reliable teacher.
16. We ask students to watch movies.
Movies are the literature of our age.
Understanding the genre, and knowing
about “what came before” in films will help
students analyze films. We also ask
students to take turns presenting the films
and guiding the discussion.
17. We interrupt movies every 10 or 20
minutes. Research shows that people who
watch movies with interruptions remember
more details about the movie than viewers
who watch the movie without interruption.

Some parents ask, “How many acres do you have
in your school?
We answer, “How many acres do you need to
foster creativity in your child?”
Some famous people, like Bill Gates, are very
interested in education. They are worried about
our schools because they had a bad experience in
high school. Bill Gates doesn’t want high school to
be boring in the future. He wants more creativity
in high schools.
Contact Us
Please send comments to Steve at
SteveEnglishTeacher@gmail.com
QQ: 2784033372
Skype: SteveEnglishTeacher
Mobile: +1 (954) 646 8246
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25 important ideas to FOSTER CREATIVITY from WHPS School in Hollywood Florida

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25 important ideas to FOSTER CREATIVITY from WHPS School in Hollywood Florida