Creativity Boosts Learning And Prepares Children For Life Beyond School (2024)

Research affirms the powerful ways creative expression can help students understand and retain academic content. When learners draw and produce visual representations, they can communicate their ideas in powerful and personal ways. This brief Edutopia video explores “Why Kids Should Draw More” to promote information processing and deeper learning.

Discussion of the value of creativity in education and in the workforce is ever-present. If you study academic plans for schools in your area, you likely will hear about 21st century learning skills. Many schools embrace “portraits” or “profiles” of learners and graduates that identify the communities’ academic and life-ready goals for students.

Creativity, A 21st Century Skill, Promotes Success In School And In Life

Partnership for 21st Century Learning, now a part of Battelle for Kids, was a pioneer in identifying and promoting 21st century skills for all children. Battelle for Kids, a national not-for-profit organization, collaborates with school systems and communities to design and “realize the power and promise of 21st century, deeper learning for every student.” The result of these partnerships is a Portrait of a Graduate. South Carolina, Utah, Washington, and Virginia are among the states that have put in the deep thinking and community engagement, including business leaders, necessary to imagine their learner and graduate profiles.

The P21 Framework for 21st Century Learning recognizes life and career skills; information, media, and technology skills; and learning and innovation skills. The learning and innovation skills are commonly known as the 4Cs—critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity.

The 4Cs “prepare students for life beyond high school,” according to educator and author Sandra Love, Ed.D. Learning through the 4Cs provides a holistic, life-ready approach for students. Dr. Robert Kay, an industry and academia researcher, suggests empowering teachers to bring instructional practices out of the 20th-century model to “focus on how, not what, students should be learning.” He asserts learning through critical thinking, analysis, and creative solutions “involves solving real problems that matter in a feedback-rich environment. Students then build their cognitive skills to become innovators who can identify and create answers to problems that are currently unknown.”

School leaders know business leaders want to hire innovative thinkers. The International Society for Technology in Education encourages educators to bring creativity into their classrooms to spur student motivation, higher-order cognitive skills, and emotional growth. According to ISTE, creativity is an essential job skill today and for the future. Business leaders affirm creativity is important at work and look for healthy and productive ways to harness creativity in their organizations.

Teachers, parents, librarians, Out of School Time providers, homeschool families, and others interested in channeling student creativity, boosting confidence, and promoting enhanced learning will be interested in Crayola Creativity Week.

Crayola Creativity Week—Free, Curated Experiences And Resources

What is Crayola Creativity Week? It is a week-long, free, easy to access worldwide event. The 2024 theme is Creativity Connects Us. Well-designed instructional strategies intended to “spotlight children's creativity and the joy it brings to teaching and learning any subject” are available.

The event’s reach is significant. This year, Creativity Week expects to engage five million children of all ages across six continents and at least 77 countries.

Creativity Week was originally conceived as schools across the globe were coming out of the coronavirus pandemic. According to Kailee Baylor, Marketing Manager, Crayola Education, the Crayola organization heard the universal conversation about (re)building social emotional health and relationships among children in schools. Crayola surveyed 800 K-8 educators and found support in nurturing creativity in the classroom and reigniting children’s love of learning was a top need. As a result, Crayola Creativity Week was born.

Beginning Monday, January 22, 2024, Crayola will make available free resources tied to literacy, science, technology, arts, and mathematics. Materials include inspirational videos, daily challenges, livestream events, downloadable Thinking Sheets, and interactive activities. Kailee Baylor notes creativity is not isolated as artistic ability; creativity involves problem solving, analysis, and expression. The Crayola materials are intended to help people of all ages “see who we are and express ourselves in creative ways.”

This work is well grounded in education circles and through significant partners such as NASA STEM, Khan Academy Kids, and numerous book publishers. Activities align with academic standards from 15 countries and various professional organizations including national associations of art education, music, literacy, libraries, and theater. Materials are available in eight languages.

The 2024 lineup involves famous creative artists, actors, authors, astronauts, musicians, entrepreneurs, and athletes. These celebrities will lead 30-minute lessons in which learners with a wide variety of interests can draw, dance, cook, read, and more.

Education Week, an organization dedicated to K-12 education news and information, affirms that “when children apply creative thinking and express their ideas, every learning experience becomes richer and more engaging.” Teachers who participated in Crayola Creativity Week in 2023 noted the activities helped them get to know their students better. When surveyed, 83 and 85% of teachers, respectively, reported students were more confident in sharing their work with peers and more focused and engaged in the content. Considering life beyond high school, 64% of responding teachers reported students had an increased interest in creativity in a future career.

Schools Can Harness The Power Of Children’s Creativity

No conversation about schools and the responsibility to inspire creativity in children is complete without recognition of the late Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D., author and international advisor on creativity, education, and human potential. With over 76 million views, his 2006 TED Talk “Do Schools Kill Creativity” is emotional and a bit terrifying, in my opinion, as he calls out the extraordinary power of human creativity and the ways schools neglect it in students. He passionately calls for a global movement toward unlocking “the creative energy of people and organizations.”

Crayola Creativity Week is a well-curated opportunity to foster creativity in your children and yourself. The Creativity Connects Us theme can encourage moments for adults to talk to young people about their thought processes and what they are trying to express through their creations. This can be a fun and educational way for all ages to explore, create, and learn together.

Anyone interested can learn more about Creativity Week and sign up here. The first event, on January 22, kicks off learning with chef and Food Network TV personality Eric Adjepon. The event runs through January 28.