Video Transcript:

I always thought that creativity was something that you had to be born with, I did not realize it was a skill that you could actually build and become better with practice.

Meet Mary Bennett unit director of the Summit Academy in Amherst, New York. Mary took one of my Creativity courses at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State and was then instrumental in bringing me into the school to infuse Creative Problem Solving methods into the organization.

Taking the creative problem-solving courses was different than any class I’ve ever taken. You walk in and there’s music playing and there’s fun things on the table. You can just tell that it’s going to be good experience. The classes were on Saturdays from 10 to 5 and other than finding childcare I never once dreaded spending my entire weekend with you or with our classmates. It was a wonderful experience.

How are you different as a result of taking the class with me?

I think you probably remember one of the classes that I was angry that I had gotten to the age of my life that am and I was never made aware that this was something that I could work on. These are skills that I could build and I felt that this was something that even young children should learn from [a] very early age and it’s something that should kind of continue through adulthood because it would just change everything about how people interact with each other.

As educator’s the creative problem solving process I believe is crucial. Education is constantly changing and I think we have to be able to deal with those changes

Working in education can be complicated and it seemed that everything that I was learning, I could see being solutions to almost everything that we are kind of contending with,

I think the creative problem solving process is very key to being able to contend with those changes.

I’m Roger Firestien

Thanks for watching.

Stay ahead of the herd. Get creative.