Creating Hope
An article by Amy Swisher about the Youthwise Program
Written for Soul Magazine
Students from the Cape Flats and farm schools come together at the Paul Roos Akademie to learn creative thinking skills, and discover the power of possibility.
The boys sit quietly in the big auditorium, their attention focused on the questions we have just asked. "What do you hope for? What are your dreams? What is your big wish for the future?"
This is our first day at the Paul Roos Akademie, where we are working with 60 boys from 12 schools in the Cape Flats and surrounding farm communities. Experienced leaders with the Creative Education Foundation (CEF)-an international organization headquartered in the United States-we have been joined by two of our colleagues from South Africa. And we are here in Stellenbosh to share the CEF YouthWise program, which we have designed to give young people the creative thinking skills they need to imagine and give form to their dreams. For these seventh grade boys, who comprise the pilot group of a unique initiative at Paul Roos Gymnasium, studying in such a setting is already fulfilling one of their big wishes.
"We asked the teachers at our participating schools to select students they believed had the potential and interest to go on for higher education," explains Paul Roos rector, Jock De Jager. "The boys come here for four of their holiday weeks each year, studying mathematics and cultural arts, technology and entrepreneurial skills, science and language. They will continue with us through grade eleven, and next year, we will add another 80 students to the program-both boys and girls. Eighty more will come in the following year, until at our apex, we anticipate having 400 students enrolled in the Akademie."
Dr. Kobus Neethling, creativity author and lecturer, President of the South African Creativity Foundation, and a member of the Creative Education Foundation's board of trustees, read about the Paul Roos Akademie in his morning newspaper last summer. He immediately phoned De Jager to ask if he would be receptive to CEF volunteers introducing a creativity curriculum as part of the program, and De Jager was enthusiastic from the start.
De Jager's attitude of openness and discovery is echoed by the Paul Roos faculty and by the teachers from Khayalitsha, Langa, and Crossroads. "As the boys have been speaking out and sharing their stories, I've learned so much about one of my students, who had always been quiet before," says Mzimkhulu Oliphant, a teacher from Liwa Primary. "When we return to the school, I will have him and the others practice what they have learned so all the students can benefit."
During our two-and-a-half day program, the boys move from shy curiosity, to thoughtful reflection, to playful engagement. We have built the program around a storytelling theme, inviting the boys to recall where they have come from and to envision where they hope to go.
The first group challenge is a mural on which the boys combine their stories to reflect the group's future hope. Working in three separate teams, they flip through magazines for pictures and headlines to cut out and glue down, then add their own drawings and colors to the collage. One group's mural is filled with sports figures and symbols; another's is surrounded by colorful merging waves, representing unity and diversity; another's features paper chain cut-outs of people holding hands, and across the top, the group has written "South Africa-Our Rainbow Nation."
Posting their murals on the auditorium walls, the boys cluster around to hear each group's story, and to reflect on the process of creation. This "debrief" model will be repeated after each of our exercises so students have a chance to consider not only what they have just done, but to answer the questions, "so what?" and "now, what?"
In this case, the "so what" has been completion of our Objective-Finding stage, which is the first step in the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving (CPS) model. During this stage, we ask ourselves, "What are some goals, dreams or visions we would like to achieve? If we could make one wish come true, what would it be?" Working individually and collectively, the students have effectively answered these questions. Now, what?
Varying the pace, moving back and forth between indoors and out, and using a variety of games and exercises, we acquaint the students with the next five stages of the CPS process: Fact-Finding, Problem-Finding, Idea-Finding, Solution-Finding, and Acceptance-Finding. For each stage, we use both divergent thinking skills-with which we generate as many ideas and choices as possible-and convergent thinking skills, with which we select from this field of choices.
One of the best known of the divergent skills is "brainstorming"-a term coined by Alex Osborn, co-originator of the CPS process. To teach the students the rules of brainstorming, we use a series of hand motions that serve as visual cues. "Reach for as many ideas as possible," begins Joette Field, our CEF team leader, and the students stand on their toes, arms straight above, stretching as high as they can. "Build on ideas," and the students bump their fists one on top of the other, pantomiming a building going up. "Defer judgment, good or bad," and the students cross their flattened hands back and forth across their bodies, then give a thumbs up signal and a thumbs down. "Go wild," and the students wave their open hands on either side of their heads, laughing as they repeat the command.
Recalling this exercise during tea time, one of the boys announces, "I'm going to teach other children about brainstorming so they can get many ideas. "My hope is to become a scientist, and I know I will use the brainstorming to succeed."
Creativity is not just a process, it's a way of life, according to Field. "When we fully understand our capacity to transform problems into possibilities, we view everything differently," she says. "Our goal with the boys here is to leave them with a set of thinking skills they can use in their schools and communities-discovering, strengthening and applying the beautiful talents they each possess."
Another goal is to remain connected to the students throughout the year. Our first connection is the novel, My Friend, My Hero, written by Jerald Hoover about two boys growing up in the public housing projects of New York. We have brought copies for each of the students, and will ask them to write about the similarities and differences between their own lives and the lives of the characters; to rewrite the ending; and to imagine how the book's characters might respond to a specific challenge in South Africa.
"By learning to think about their thinking, and by consciously using their creativity skills like this, kids minds will become as fit as their bodies," comments Hessie Slabber, one of our South African colleagues on the team. And once they do, their world of possibilities will open as high, wide and hopeful as their imaginations can reach.
