Here I am back. Again. It is true that, like everyone else, I’ve had my life rhythms disrupted by COVID. But I am among the fortunate in that my immediate family and friends have been spared major illness thus far, so that isn’t a great reason for my absence. I do have one good one, at least for several months. The 7th Edition of Creativity in the Classroom is, at long last, completed, indexed, and published.
I’ve always felt that new editions needed to have enough new content to be worth calling them new, and I’ve tried to do that here. For those of you who know the previous editions, there’s new information on social-emotional learning specific to creativity, engineering/design thinking, and a number of other topics. But the biggest change is a new chapter on creative school environments. I’ve combined and edited some of the theoretical information in the early chapters so I could merge them and still end up with ten chapters. But now the last chapter moves beyond single classrooms to consider how we develop schools and districts that are supportive of creativity. Not surprisingly, part of that task was considering how we support creativity in teachers and other education professionals. Another was examining the kind of leadership necessary to manage such a venture. It was interesting to think about and interesting to write, perhaps even more so as I was doing so during the times schools and school leaders struggled with the problem-solving of the pandemic. I hope readers find it interesting as well.
Now, despite the fact that I theoretically retired in August, I’m back to teaching and blogging. Go figure. I have a list of pent-up ideas to share, so while I admit it is a bit hard to get started, it is also nice to be back.