The Six Hats

          And today we returned to creativity and how to inspire creative thinking. It seemed that our teachers were trying very hard not to rehash territory already covered by Burak on Monday, but it was still difficult. I really enjoyed the morning exercise where we all sat together and identified ourselves as an animal by explaining the characteristics that we found common between us and the animal. I decided that I would be an owl because they are fierce, symbols of wisdom, independent, far-seeing and quite protective of their young.

 My favourite Snowy Owl

I believe what could have made the exercise more effective was familiarizing all of the students with the different animals and their characteristics before we began. It is easy just to make a physical comparison, but the behavioural and metaphorical similarities require students to have prior knowledge of the animals, which some of the students present today did not have (for instance, one of the students I was talking to had no idea what an owl was).

            I think it is easy to incorporate many of these practices into my classroom, particularly the Six Hats of Edward de Bono. The hats really explicate the process for examining problems and help students examine problems from many different perspectives, some of which they may have never used otherwise. Another use for the hats in my classroom would be to eliminate classroom conflict by using it as a behavior management strategy. I would ask a whole class, not merely the students who are struggling to regulate their emotions or who are teasing and bullying each other, to examine a given situation and write down what they would do from each perspective. When followed by a class discussion I think that it could really useful for students to use their common experiences and prior knowledge, combined with new perspectives, to creatively problem solve real life situations.