By Charlotte and Melinda

At Syncreate, we’re interested in what the brain has to teach us about how to grow connections, transform communities, and foster adaptability.  So far our investigations have lead us into discussions and presentations about the neuroscience of creativity, and the ways in which educators and leaders can strategically build creative communities. As community college professors, we are currently exploring the ways neural pathways grow, strengthen, and become pruned.  

We constantly keep these questions in mind:

• Can educators take inspiration from neural networks to create relational links that weave students and content more tightly together?

• If we encourage students to see themselves and their peers as resources, could we create a buzz within learning communities that encourages new and meaningful connections between people, ideas, and real-world challenges?

• How can play, ritual, and community-building exercises create new neural pathways through kinesthetic, embodied learning?

We don’t necessarily have all these answers to these questions, but we believe asking the questions may reveal the path to becoming more effective, engaged, and collaborative in our educational work.

New insights into neural architecture, (also known at the connectome) such as the work of Dr. Van J. Wedeen of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, reveal the deeply interwoven quality of the brain’s structure (see “New Discoveries in Brain Structure and Connectivity”). In addition, current neuroscience research offers exciting insights, such as the brain’s incredible ability to artfully enhance helpful connections or prune away unused pathways.  Every synapse creates a connection and the more times a neuron fires, the stronger a synaptic connection becomes. In other words, the brain changes with every new experience and nothing exists in isolation. We’d like to suggest that with every experience in the classroom (and within the institution itself), the student’s brain, thinking process, and understanding of the world changes. Educators who embrace this idea become empowered to skillfully plan classroom lessons, discussions, and activities to facilitate more powerful and lasting connections.

Each student is part of the classroom “brain,” if you will. It’s not that teachers stand in the front of the classroom and transmit ideas; instead, teachers can facilitate connections and pathways between students. However, in order for this to work well, we first have to acknowledge the creativity, unique perspectives, and resiliency of each student present. If we don’t, we might unwittingly “prune” the student from the necessary pathways he/she needs to connect, comprehend, and succeed. For example, the website Mindfulness Starts Here states, “Neural pruning is the process of removing neurons that are no longer used or useful in the brain.”  For those students who don’t have a positive family history or positive personal experiences with school and/or higher education, the figurative neural connection to the classroom may be shallow or tenuous, and therefore it only takes a few experiences of isolation to “prune” the student from engaging in the classroom.

Educators interested in enhancing connection can welcome a sense of play and associative thinking by conceptualizing the classroom as a type of extra-neural network that fosters meaningful connection, encourages empathy, honors student well-being, implements strategic collaboration, and emphasizes creative problem solving. At the heart of the neural classroom is a faith in creativity to forge new pathways and to connect students in meaningful ways so that each person is woven into the fabric of the learning environment. Many teachers already do this by encouraging students to work together outside of the classroom on collaborative projects. Learning to work with others isn’t just a social skill; it’s essential in both drawing out the strengths of each student and interlacing individuals to ensure the resiliency of the entire classroom.

We suggest that promoting creative/associative thinking can teach students how to value their own ideas and learn to enjoy the process of thinking. How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci author Michael Gelb offers many creativity-enhancing activities, including an exercise of comparing two seemingly unrelated items or concepts. Taking this into the classroom, teachers can ask students to consider what two disparate ideas have in common and write all of their answers on the board. Students thus learn to take risks (for example, a bird is like a typewriter because they both can involve pecking; the array of typebars is similar to a bird’s rib cage) and create connections to other students who resonate with their analogies. If educators can prioritize a portion of teaching time to making creativity a daily exploration, students learn courage, adaptability, and collaboration. Indeed, Linda Smarzik, author of The Mind of Thuse!! Thriving With Effortlessness, observes, “Taking small risks, and doing so consistently, shifts us out of our comfort zones into the process of creativity.”

Additionally, the instructor who emphasizes collaboration, active listening, and dialogue might, in fact, be using neural mimicry to weave together a classroom that breeds student success. Creativity can enhance neuroplasticity (the dynamic process of brain rewiring), which can serve as a classroom strategy for reaching all students and weaving them into the fabric of engagement and success.

If you find this concept worthy of further exploration, please vote for our proposed “The Classroom as a Neural Network” topic at the 2014 SXSW Education Conference (SXSWedu) PanelPicker forum. It will take about two minutes of your time. Voting opens Monday, August 19 and closes Friday, September 6, 2013. Thank you for your support!

By Charlotte

In the creative process, so many challenges arise, and as a writing teacher, these challenges seem to boil down to two essential cries of the critic:

1)    what you want to create has no value, and/or

2)    you don’t have the skills to deliver on the idea that has come to you

What I have learned to live and learned to teach centers on this concept: since the idea has come to you, there is no one other than yourself to birth the message to the world. It is through your own five senses that you will be able to bring forth the vision–it is the air you breathe, the road under your own specific feet, the smell of cumin in the Israeli souq that epitomizes your year in Tel Aviv—it is these exact things that will bring forth the idea that has been born within your private landscape. There is no other filled with the sense of this specific story, this specific sculpture, this painting. What you sense is worth bringing forward has arrived singly to you, and it is this singularity that both thrills and terrifies us.

Once a person can accept that the idea, the vision, is worthwhile, he or she has to come to terms with the reality that the necessary skills may not be available in one’s current tool kit. I would offer that it is only through time and practice that one can find the insight necessary to birth the message.

More specifically, I am thinking of my friend Amy, who lived for a year in Israel, working for a time at the Diaspora Museum, the Museum of the Jewish People. She lived in an apartment that held a sentinel tree in the courtyard and a door barred by a large piece of furniture. One night she decided to re-arrange and moved the wardrobe. To her surprise, she discovered a small room and in it, a box of letters from a woman to her brother, both political refugees from Russia; the sister resolved to be part of the Jewish settlement in Israel, and the brother went to Paris to cultivate his screenwriting/directing (and when the Nazis invaded he had to flee France, being on a list of most wanted of theirs. He made it to the US and finally to Hollywood where he continued his career).

I won’t give away all the electrifying details, but Amy’s discovery of that box has led her to meet new people and to know the world through an important, altered lens, and yet, the book that is waiting to be born remains unborn because Amy needs to arrive—to the place within herself that understands process, the development of skills, and the power of drafts. There is no one else to tell this story, and I firmly believe she is only one to bring this story to the world.

Like so many of us, Amy struggles with her faith in her ability to do justice to the story. Perhaps we sometime confuse humility with doubt—perhaps there’s more comfort in discounting our ideas because we sense the amount of learning we will have to embrace. Amy’s experience is profound and worth sharing; I only hope she comes to the point where she allows process to teach her what she needs to know about the story, about the nature of the human experience.

I’m ready to read the book of her experience. I’m trusting she will write it when both the confidence and the faith in process combine to give her the courage to pen the story.

By Melinda

Have you ever felt so connected to a story you read or heard that it changed the way you think about your life? Have you experienced the cathartic process of journaling, such that the act of writing about a trauma or challenge allowed you to release and transform it? I remember when I moved to Austin from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and then experienced the traumatic breakup of a long-term relationship; around that same time, I had the good fortune to come across Pema Chodrön’s book When Things Fall Apart. Reading Pema’s story about how her own marriage ended under similar circumstances, as well as her advice for sitting with difficult emotions, helped me through the panic attacks and allowed me to start rebuilding my life. I began practicing meditation and journaling about the anger, the betrayal, the hurt, and the sadness, until slowly my world opened up again, allowing me to live in a fuller and richer way than ever before.

In recent years, scientific research has demonstrated the profound effects of writing and storytelling, both on the people who share their stories and those who receive those stories. Storytelling, perhaps the oldest distinctly human pastime, allows us to make meaning of the events of our lives, to teach and transmit information in a compelling way, and to share our experiences with others. Writing, a newer and more sophisticated human invention, helps us to solidify our learning into memories and makes it possible to address a much wider audience over a broader span of time than oral communication alone.

Recent studies have shown that storytelling (rather than simply relaying facts or bullet points) exerts a powerful influence on our emotions and thoughts, and helps us relate to others. When we hear a story, our brains activate as though we’re actually experiencing the events of the story firsthand. Writing your story and reading others’ stories can also have a calming effect on breathing, blood pressure, and anxiety. For example, a study published in 2011 showed that medical patients who listened to others’ stories of similar health problems received benefits in the form of lowered blood pressure. And the benefits may go well beyond the physiological: a National Public Radio report also from 2011described how end-of-life patients encouraged to write down their life stories often find new meaning in their lives and create a legacy that they can pass on to their families.

Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas, has spent his academic career researching the effects of writing on health. In one study, he asked trauma survivors to write about the traumatic events they experienced. Those that did were able to make sense of their experiences in new ways, leading to healing and long-lasting health benefits, even years after writing about their traumas. Dr. Pennebaker’s website offers helpful instructions for writing about traumatic events to improve your physical and emotional health.

Syncreate embraces transformation through the creative process; this is one of our major areas of interest. Have you experienced the physical, mental, and emotional benefits of writing and storytelling? We’d love to hear your stories!

Links:

Visual News – How Does the Act of Writing Affect Your Brain?http://www.visualnews.com/2013/05/28/how-does-the-act-of-writing-affect-your-brain/

The New York Times – When Patients Share Their Stories, Health May Improvehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/health/views/10chen.html?_r=0

National Public Radio – Dignity Therapy: For the Dying, A Chance to Rewrite Lifehttp://www.npr.org/2011/09/12/140336146/for-the-dying-a-chance-to-rewrite-life

Weebly.com General Psychology – How Can Writing Improve Your Health?http://general-psychology.weebly.com/how-can-writing-improve-your-health.html

Dr. James Pennebaker – Writing and Health: Some Practical Advice http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/pennebaker/Home2000/WritingandHealth.html

By Charlotte and Melinda

Syncreate grew out of Melinda and Charlotte’s weekly coffee meetings, where we felt continually inspired by each other’s ideas. Together, our individual interests amplified in an exciting and innovative fashion, and this synergy began to expand out to other people and the wider world, and so we formed Syncreate.

Our first offering, “The Art and Science of Creativity: Exploring the Path and Expanding Your Tools,” took place at Case de Luz, in Austin, Texas, with seven lovely participants. From the get-go, the room sparkled with a collective desire to take risks and explore how the neuroscience of creativity might enrich any artistic process.

Wanting to make the most of our time together time, we emailed the participants ahead of time, asking them to reflect on:

1) What engages and inspires you?

2) What assets do you bring to this experience?

3) What do you hope to learn or take away from this workshop?

These questions form the basis of Syncreate’s vision.  We want to help you ignite your powers of innovation, tap into your inner resources, and enhance your tools so you can radiate your contributions to an ever-widening sphere of positive influence.

The workshop explored the neuroscience of creativity, presenting several strategies for deeper explorations of artistic pursuits.  One key component of creativity is the ability to create connections between seemingly unconnected ideas and objects, also known as associative thinking.  Participants engaged in a personal exploration of what a necklace and a prayer might have in common, and then worked together to build upon the initial connections.  This simple exercise can reveal our individual perspectives, and how—with a little time and supported space—we can bridge seemingly disparate ideas. To increase our insights, collaboration can be an essential aspect of the process.

We encourage people to spend a little time each day considering how vastly different elements of our world have common characteristics. We believe that this kind of activity can both bolster creativity and knit together the social and neural pathways so that our work might move toward more clarity and precision.

Here are a couple of interesting links for more information on associative thinking and creativity:

The Handbook of Creativity, edited by Robert J. Sternberg – Chapter 7, “The Biological Bases of Creativity,” by Colin Martindale, touches on this topic:http://books.google.ca/books?id=d1KTEQpQ6vsC

“Being Creative with Associative Thinking,” by Thomas Cotterill:http://thomascotterill.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/being-creative-with-associative-thinking/

By Charlotte

I believe in the power of art to transform the frightened heart, the scarred psyche, the unquiet mind.  In the tradition of Spider Woman, I have been taught that the story is a co-creation woven by what we each bring to the circle, that to tell is as important as to listen.  Storytellers use the web of story to inform, educate, enlighten, explore how we might live as social beings, capable of inflicting the worst kinds of pain and dispensing the deepest moments of compassion.

I believe that humans crave narrative, and that storytelling offers a path for healing, growth, and clarity.  It is through the story we learn to know each other and to overcome our bigotries and our pettiness.  I believe art should be available to all, no matter a person’s education, class, race, gender, sexual orientation—any of those small-minded categories where too many of us get confined or lost.  I believe that art needs to remember to be humble, that accessibility is just as important as aesthetics, that the garbage man is just as important on the stage as is the senator.

Specifically, I believe art has taught me my most important lessons: to be patient with process, to keep an open heart toward all people; that to there is more risk in vulnerability than there is in intellectual posturing; that sentimentality is too easy.  Instead I want pursue the quiet moments of potential change that are housed in every moment of our lives; that stories are a certain kind of magic, one that we willingly seek out so that our lives might seem brighter, wholer, more intact.