Look what I did!! (Part 3/4)

Dear Packy, 

So if we need innovators, and innovators need creative problem-solving as a skill, how does your child learn creative problem-solving?  The same way she learns everything else --practice.  To explore that further, I want to take you back to my daughter learning how to use a saw.  

Hana, age 5, had decided to work on a project (the usual unit of measure in our house).  The project needed two pieces of wood and she had one.  She had watched me use a saw, so she knew a saw would cut wood.  So she grabbed a saw and wood and set to work.  I watched, cringing, as the saw blade skittered across the wood heading directly for her cute little fingers. Fortunately, she managed to recognize the danger and stop pulling.  We talked about what a saw designed to cut wood does to fingers, so she clamped the wood, then tried again.  More skittering.  She paused to brainstorm.  Then she tried pushing, which resulted in the teeth digging in, the blade bending, and another temporary failure. Another brainstorm.  Then she put the blade back where she wanted, pushed down slightly and pulled slowly. The teeth stayed where she wanted, she made a groove, picked up the blade, pulled three more times and was finally able to move the saw back and forth to cut all the way through.  Then she looked at me and grinned, silently communicating those magical words for parents: “Look what I did!”.  That’s what we are going for.  

It’s easy to miss the depth of what happened here because there are so many layers of learning. Obviously, she learned how a saw works (and that the saw doesn’t care whether it cuts fingers or wood). But  the far more important learning was the process itself.  Hana used her own process here. It involved identifying the problem (need to cut wood, saw skitters, etc), brainstorming ideas (pull, push, push down, etc), evaluating the ideas (which one first?), testing the ideas, and then repeating the process over and over until she succeeded.  IDEO formalized this process and called it design thinking. But this is an innately human process that we’ve used for thousands of years. Naming it actually helps because now we can talk about it, teach it, share it and improve it. She not only developed her process, but she started to develop the confidence that she can figure out projects that she doesn’t know how to do.  And that her process can work even if she doesn’t know how to do it.  

She also started to understand that her process likely involves swings in emotion. She didn't give up when her fingers were in danger.  Or when the sawblade bent. It will take a few more projects, but she will learn that successfully making anything involves working through the inevitable frustration and failure.  

Finally, she started to develop what Agency by Design calls “A sensitivity to the designed dimension of objects and systems, along with the inclination and capacity to shape one’s world through building, tinkering, re/designing, or hacking.”  It will probably take a few more projects, but she’s never going to look at a piece of wood or a saw the same way again. Every time she sees something that’s made of wood, she’s going to understand a little bit about how it was turned into its final shape.  In other words, she started to understand that everything around her was designed by somebody just like her.  And that she can do it too.  At age 5.

This project had one other important component: it was authentic.  Authentic means that it was relevant and had real consequences.  It was a project she designed, and the wood cutting was part of her problem-solving.  She cared about the result and the learning and thus had an immediate framework for learning.  The consequences were twofold - there was the possibility of danger via the saw (and a delinquent parent) and the project wouldn’t be finished without the cutting.  Again, she cared.  

So how do we teach creative problem-solving?  Like this.  Plus hundreds more authentic challenges that have relevance, consequence and gradually increase in difficulty and complexity.  By a teacher who can guide the process and create the context - just like how you described the Primer.  

But without a Primer, what do we do as parents to encourage these projects?  Here’s four ideas:  

First, create the conditions for challenges like the one above. It’s not as difficult as it seems because they seem to pop out filled with curiosity and creativity.  If you can, create a place where there is material to work with, ways to put them all together, and perhaps even a list of things to work on.  Then guard those conditions ferociously.  I always thought that the “Look what I did” comments were a good proxy for creating the conditions well.  You want to create as many "Look what I did’s” as possible.  

Create the context for challenges like the one above.  After she finished the saw project, we talked about it, identifying the failures, the frustrations, and the brainstorms so that she could better understand how she was using this process.  Then we talked about how everyday items around us are made from wood and how people shaped them.  

Water the shoots of curiosity  - every time you see signs of curiosity, encourage them.  The best learning (the most authentic) is going to be based on things she is already interested in. So watch for them and throw resources at them when possible.This project was the result of her initiative.

Finally - model what you want to see.  It doesn’t matter if you’re not the best woodworker in the world. It’s not the woodworking that’s the model. You are modeling the process: the idea of being curious about something, researching, and following the process. Solve the problem and share the obstacles and the solutions.

This was not the last woodworking project.  Hana went on to learn how to use a lathe and make gorgeous wooden pens.  She even set up her own store on Etsy, which, though it made $120 in profit, lasted the microsecond she was interested in it.  The project and even the store weren’t important. What was important was the idea that came on the other side of  “Look what I did!”.  It’s the “and maybe I can do that too….”. 

Next up - where are they going to learn this?

Parker