TAPE # and time code

Audio

A31

Joette Field

02:00:10:07 02:00:41:07

[Would you start off by introducing yourself…giving us brief history.]

Hi, I’m Joette Field and I‘ve been with the Creative Problem Solving Institute for 25 years. I’ve been a student of Sid Parnes’ forever, but much longer than that. Went through a research program with Dr. Sid Parnes, Dr. Ruth Noller on the CPS process, the Creative Problem Solving process. After the research, we got very interested in a group of students and decided to continue and form a master’s program and we did that on the spot, got approval and have been going strong ever since.

02:00:44:10 02:01:03:06

[Would you begin by simply defining creativity?]

Creativity, I’ll take Sid Parnes’ definition of creativity in that it’s knowledge, combining your imagination and after you get the thoughts that you get, evaluate it according to the purpose you have in mind.  So, it’s a continuous process.

02:01:05:08 02:01:21:13

[What’s it like to work with Sid?]

Sid is my hero. He is spontaneous; anything he does is directly from his heart. He lives the process everyday of his life. I’ve known him for twenty-seven years and every year has been a gift.

02:01:27:23 02:01:52:25

[When you took the class with Sid and Ruth, what was the focus of that class?]

As I mentioned we were part of a research study, and what Sid and Ruth did is initially introduce the CPS process right through from mess finding to acceptance finding.  We did it in a classroom setting, but it was unique from any class I have ever taken before because both Sid and Ruth did it from the perspective of not only learning but experiential learning and it was new to me.

02:02:27:12 02:02:55:20

[When you teach this process to children how do you begin the teaching process?]

I teach the Creative Problem Solving Process to children K through 4, kindergarten through 4^th grade.  So, you have to start out with the basic principles.  We start out with convergence and divergence, we use Howard Gardener’s Seven intelligences, we sing, we dance, we do experiential types of activities and the kids really internalize it. You’d be amazed that they understand the concept of diverging and stretching and converging and coming down to some solutions.

02:03:05:08 02:03:39:19

[ …would you again define divergent and convergent?]

We have the children for example, in divergence, you stretch for ideas, you go beyond your own limits.  So, you are trying to explore all different realms in order to get the wildest and craziest ideas you can possibly get.  You’re entering a realm that some people dare not go.  And if you start with children they’ll begin to internalize it and not be afraid.  Because after they diverge, they always have the comfort level of knowing they can converge.  Which means once they get the wild and crazy ideas, they get the opportunity to throw the ones they don’t like away and converge on the ones that are really useful to them.

02:03:45:05 02:03:49:15

[What’s the difference between teaching the creative process to adults and to children?]

Nothing, except that children are much more receptive.

02:03:56:08 02:04:32:29

There really is no difference in teaching Creative Problem Solving to adults and to children, except for the fact that children are much more receptive. I use the same techniques. We might sing the same crazy song because for adults it allows them loosen up a little bit and to really experience what divergence might feel.  I meet with more resistance from the adult world, of course, because the problems are more “real” especially in corporations when you’re dealing with CEOs and you’re going to be making visionizing statements and you’re coming up with a vision or a mission.  So, you have more barriers of creativity to break.

02:04:37:00 02:04:43:19

[How do you get by this resistance?]

With a smile on your face and trusting the Creative Problem Solving process. The process will get you through every time. 

02:04:57:21 02:05:29:00

[I know that you started teaching the creative process in Brazil….the Brazilian culture and the American culture is quite different, how did that impact the teaching and the acceptance of the creative process?]

It’s been a transition because I started teaching CPS Brazilians in 1990 and I know that Ruth Noller had gone there previous to that.  So it was more or less an infusion and there was - I wouldn’t say resistance then but they weren’t as open to the concepts as they are now and I have noticed just in the past seven years, that there’s been a - they are like sponges.  They ask for it, they thirst for it.  It is amazing how much they incorporate it into their lives.

02:05:34:06 02:05:39:18

[Do you use the same teaching methods in Brazil as you do here?]

Well mostly you’re wired and so you have a simultaneous translator but as much as I can, yes.

02:05:48:09 02:06:23:15

[…You earlier talked about acceptance finding, can you explain that?]

After you go through the problem solving steps, you come to acceptance finding, which by the way, is a step that many people don’t get to and I’m not sure why.  But in acceptance finding you’re taking your solution and you’re really being tremendously specific with it, you’re giving all, the who’s, the what’s, the whys, the where, the when’s and the how’s.  And the one thing that I think is the most important is the ‘what ifs’.  What if it fails and you have alternative solutions ready and in that part of the acceptance finding we work a lot, especially with children in coping with failure and using failure as an opportunity.

02:06:24:25 02:06:45:19

[So I’m guessing that failure of the plan of action is not failure of the process?]

It’s not only not failure of the process; it’s not failure of the plan of action either. It helps us to go back and look at the process and maybe we made some wrong choices in our convergent techniques and any one of the five phases.  

02:06:59:14 02:07:23:17

[Would you agree with the comment that the current educational system in the United States stifles creativity?]

I don’t know if I wouldn’t go that far that the current educational system stifles creativity. I think what the educational system is trying to do now is focus now on so much becoming a stronger educational system that they are focusing much more on content than the method of presentation and that in and of itself causes the shift in stifling children’s creativity.

02:07:30:20 02:08:04:21

[How do you feel you can get the current educators to adopt the creative process?]

 I think you have to start from the bottom up and offer them a comfort level and by that I mean knowing that the content they know they have to get across and that’s for whatever tests, the national tests and things  they are responsible for - really assure them that if they use the Creative Problem Solving Process or they employ some of Howard Gardner’s Seven Intelligences that they will indeed get that content across but in much more depth and much more ways of understanding to children rather than doing it didactally.

02:08:30:17

02:08:57:21

[Please complete the following sentence: Parents can foster creativity by…]

Parents can foster creativity in their children by accepting the answers that they have and that come up with; by deferring judgment which means putting aside judgment, not abolishing it all together but listening to what the children have to say and I think listening is the key.

02:09:06:04

02:09:22:28

[In your words, why do we want our children to be creative?]

I believe we want children to be creative because what we are trying to do is to allow children to love learning and to love living and the creative process allows for that and if they learn to love learning, they will just seek things out for themselves.

02:09:37:22 02:11:33:29

[Explain the 7 intelligences]

Howard Gardner, from Harvard, is a researcher and one of the things that he researched is that we all learn in different ways, obviously. We are all not logical or mathematical thinkers, that’s one of the intelligences, by the way.  A second one is verbal linguistic and those are the two primary modes that teaching has used for years and years and years. So in order to get children who may be considered learning disabled, but in my opinion they aren’t, they just have a differentiated form of learning. There’s musical intelligence and we do that in creativity where we’ll take a concept such as divergent thinking, for example, and we’ll put it to a song that they’re familiar with, we do the ‘Locomotion’ and we sing ‘come on baby do divergent thinking with me’ and we put words that actually house the concepts and they sing it.  In addition, there’s the bodily kinesthetic intelligence where we have the children up on their feet and moving.

One is interpersonal intelligence, another one of Howard Gardner’s intelligences where you learn to communicate with people, especially in our changing world there’s more and more teams and in the business world we need to prepare the children to cope with differences and team building, to work with others, to accept their differences and not only to accept the differences of others but to build upon them. So we teach interpersonal skills.  Intrapersonal is having the children focus on themselves that it’s OK to be reflective. We have journaling to help that process along.  We have them debrief at the end of the session.  What does this session mean to you?

02:11:46:26 02:12:16:28

[ Which of the steps do you find the hardest to get adults to understand and which of the steps do you find it hardest to get children to understand?]

In my past experience over 25 years, it’s been the problem-finding part of the process. Because in all parts of the process you’re diverging and converging.  But, this is the third step of the process and you are really focusing on the essence of the problem. I know for companies and for the adults that I have worked with, that’s a very scary thing to do because as much as you want to get to the essence of the problem there could be elements of fear or other barriers, which would prevent you from getting there.  So, it’s problem finding.

02:12:31:14

02:13:03:21

We get people over the obstacle of problem-finding by having some fun, by getting up and doing up some divergent techniques of perhaps of acting out the problem and then we’ll change the verb and allow them to express or role play the verb.  Also, asking why and pairing up in either dyads or working in groups of three and four to really confront one another.  Also if you do it with a problem that’s not personal or you’re not - just the practice of the process with something very concrete. It helps tremendously.

02:13:13:28 02:14:33:12

[Do you have any tangible results, stories you can tell us either from the business world or from education?]

Since I started teaching Creative Problem Solving in the schools and very much believing in it and also weaving Gardner’s Seven Intelligences in it, there’s one particular story that I use quite frequently with children, two boys who are learning disabled - classified, if you’ll excuse me, as learning disabled.  I teach note making instead of note taking and we allow them to work in a mode that is very comfortable for them.  So I was walking around in my own inimitable teacher style saying you can make notes any way you want.  So they had chart paper on the floor and markers and some were at the desks.  And these boys were taking notes in pictures, which, by the way I had encouraged.  And when I saw them doing that, I felt a little frustrated cause I thought they’re not getting the point.  So, I went up and spoke with them and they looked up at me with these beautiful eyes and said, but you said we could take notes, we could make these notes.   So, I said look it boys we have an end product here could you please just give us seven facts, that’s what the challenge is and these boys could not physically write when they were told to take notes for the past 5 years. Because they processed in pictures first they were able to give me 22 written facts. It opened up a door for them and certainly it opened up a door for my teaching.