Week 7 – Creativity

There’s no unique tool that I use, other than my imagination.

-Hannah Beachler

(Photo Credit: VALERIE MACON/Getty Images)

For an in-depth overview of each weekly slide presentation, please skip below to your specific grade level.

• To see the 1-page Creativity Character Card and share it with your students’ families, click here.

• For the P2 Reflection Journals, used by all elementary students at the end of the week, click here.

Starting Monday, Partner Schools nationwide will begin learning about creativity. Creative people can look at the world in original ways. They are open to new experiences, and have an imaginative and independent thought process. They generate lots of different ideas and can pursue them with energy and enthusiasm. Creativity is a process that takes courage. Anytime you share your original ideas with the world, you risk being criticized or even ostracized.

Positive psychology breaks creativity into two components: First, he/she must produce original ideas or behaviors. Second, the original idea or behavior must make a positive contribution to that person’s life or the lives of others. There are both big and small acts of creativity. Big acts are exemplified by great artists and scientists. Small acts include everyday acts of creativity, such as how people create solutions to deal with problems at work or at home.

This week’s character strength example is Hannah Beachler. She is a production designer and the mind behind the film sets of Black Panther, Moonlight, and Creed. As a production designer, Beachler’s describes her job as making “the director’s vision come to life.” This work takes time, research, and a lot of creativity.

To create the set for Black Panther, she had to imagine — and then create — what the fictional country of Wakanda would look like. As Beachler explains in the below video, “I had to have a reason for every move, every building, every street. Everything had to have a story behind it. There is not one thing you will see in that movie that doesn’t have a story.”

So, why is this strength important? Creativity is associated with intrinsic motivation, meaning the process of creation is an end in itself. The work is not accomplished in order to receive an award. Creativity is also correlated with self-actualization, or fulfilling one’s talents and potential. Those with the strength of creativity have the urge to create and build something new and original. The act of creating itself makes them happy.

On a group level, creativity is vital. It helps us solve seemingly impossible problems, create something we never knew we wanted, or simply see the world in a new way. Technological examples include the printing press, refrigeration, electricity, automobiles, and the internet. Just think of what we’d be missing without Renaissance art, Enlightenment thinking, Harlem Renaissance jazz, or hip-hop emerging from the South Bronx in the 1970s and 80s.

And, as a reminder, you can find all of our weekly slide presentations on our website’s Resources page here. This page is the place that we recommend you go to access all of the resources — not via Google Drive folders.

To find your grade level’s presentation, you can simply type the word “creativity” into the Resource Title search bar or sort by Character Strength and select Teamwork. Each of those options will provide you with 10 slide presentations and one 1-page character card. For a simple overview of the Resources page, with pictures and videos, click here.