Portugals discovering Ljubljana and creativity

We hosted a lovely group from Portugal at tailor made course. Eight participants from Profitecla school attended our Erasmus+ course inspired by Edward DeBono – Teaching creativity in schools.

Our trainer Nastja Mulej, an exclusive trainer licensed for teaching effective constructive thinking (Six Hats), creative thinking (lateral thinking) and direct teaching of thinking for schoolchildren (CoRT – Cognitive Research Trust) following the principles set out by Dr. Edward de Bono showed us that creativity is not something that comes to us in times of last minute panic (although we are all familiar with this approach 🙂 ), but also, that you can teach and train yourselves to be more creative.
By getting to know the tools it became more and more clear that creativity is not just something that comes to you, but that it is also something that you can and have to work for.
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Why was it useful for them?
Here are some feedbacks on the training content:
“Sometimes I’m so worried with the contents I teach, that I tend to turn my classroom into a routine and I don’t like it. Today I feel the need to stop a little bit and think.”
or
“This is the first time I feel I’m actually learning tools (creative) which I can take to my classroom, to my students. I have made other creativity trainee but not as effective as this one.”
The participants could really relate to some situations presented during the course, like for example every day conversation about a certain topic in their classrooms that can soon develop in an argument where nobody listens to anyone. Sounds familiar to you as well? That is why they were really happy to get to know a tool called the PMI.
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Little something about PMI
PMI (Plus, Minus, Interesting) is an activity that encourages participants in a discussion to look at an idea from more than one viewpoint. Students can help each other in discovering all aspects of the problem situation rather than argue their point of view. In the process they have limited time to list positive things of the matter (write them down first) and then share them with their classmates. Even If they do not agree with the subject, they should try their best to find some positive facts about the topic. Later they do the same, but this time for the negatives. After they share these, they have some limited time again to list what is interesting about the topic of conversation. The most important point is that they realise they can find pluses, minuses and interesting things about a topic they at first had only one opinion. They have to think about, what, why and how it is interesting to them.
This was just a quick preview of one tool. If you are interested in learning more about the tools that you get to know at our Erasmus+ course Teaching creativity, you can read about it in the description.
Theory is nothing without practice
The ingenuity of this course is, that you get to experience all the tools first hand as you are divided into groups and develop your own projects.
Sometimes it is also really useful to hear about it from someone who is already using the tools. That is why our participants also had the opportunity to meet a teacher from a local high school Gimnazija Bežigrad, who is already running a thinking club at her school and had some first hand experience to share with them.
Wrap it up
The whole week here was an inspiration that did not only boost creative thinking but also provided us with the tools needed to train and teach creativity in schools. Also the participants said, they will be back for the next level of our course and that’s a good enough reference for us 🙂
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If you would like to to get to know more about our courses click here.