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Original Vision
My first attemp in developing a vision of myself as a creative leader was to view leadership through the lense of music - my lifelong passion. In doing so, I discovered that my strengths lie in collaboration and "connecting peers with purpose," as Fullan would say. -
Ten Faces of Innovation
The Ten Faces of Innovation provided concrete context for me to develop my original vision of myself as a creative leader. In particular, I found that the personas of Cross-Pollinator and Collaborator really resonated with my existing vision. The work of IDEO provided tangible examples of what these abstract ideas look like in practice. -
Drive
Reading Daniel Pink's Drive introduced me to new, somewhat unintuitive notions about motivation. These ideas influenced my conception of the creative leader, especially regarding education. Students motivated by interesting, engaging challenges will learn more deeply than students motivated by reward and punishment. This idea played a very significant role in my work within my group when developing our ideas for Earth Academy. -
Work on Earth Academy
In working with my group on Earth Academy, I was able to begin implementing my vision of myslef as a creative leader. I found that I did indeed 'cross-pollinate' ideas between my group members as well as my research. -
Research on Divergent Thinking
Inspired by the work of Ken Robinson, I decided to look more deeply into divergent thinking. What I found was that, viewed as a capacity for creativity, divergent thinking falls right in line with my interest in developing as a cross-pollinator and collaborator. -
Today
My work in this course has served to provide concrete goals for me to work toward as a creative leader. While I began with lossely formed ideas regarding my strengths as a leader, the main texts of the coursework, the reasearch on creativity, and the group work developing the school of the future all supported the pursuit of these goals.
