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People need to connect with other people to be fully human and alive. Brain research demonstrates that all learning occurs in an affective context. We all have experienced this kind of learning. That which touches our hearts - or wounds them - stays with us forever. Children and adults will take learning risks and face difficult challenges in the context of a loving, trusting relationship. When our children and colleagues trust us, they will try hard because they believe the things we ask of them are good.

We need to nurture our existing relationships and build new ones. Seek out opportunities to travel, to meet new people, and find successful and creative others to invite to our homes and centers. We must make every effort to reduce peer pressure that leads to stifling conformity and to decrease or eliminate competition which makes a negative impact on creativity.

Model

Be a good role model to others. Demonstrate diverse interests and your own enthusiasm for new ideas. Encourage thinking aloud. This allows us into the mind of another to hear the self-talk and problem-solving strategies creative, competent people use. There is no more powerful impact than one mind encountering another.

Time

We all need time to devote ourselves to the things that interest us, toexperience the satisfaction of persistence necessary to the passionately curious mind. Do you, your staff, and children have enough time to persist at activities, or are there constant interruptions? Does your day contain too many transitions?

Is there space and time in the day for quiet reflection? To play with ideas? Without reflection, children never learn the necessary skills for calming themselves and attending to their inner worlds. Without reflection, children never learn to appreciate or enjoy the pleasure and power of their own minds at work, of ideas connecting one to another. Without time for this kind of quiet reflection, adults grow stale and stressed, their music silenced.

Values

Families of creative children tend to focus on values not rules. Children in these families grow to understand the basic principles that guide behavior and decision making. There are very few discipline problems reported in these families. Without the constraints of too many rules, children have the freedom to be creative, but the guidelines to make good choices. In the classroom, we can have rules that inform and
provide goals; but we don't need to control all the choices, thereby enabling children and staff to use creative alternatives to reach those goals.

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