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Creative Thinking Initiative

Welcome

Creative Thinkers are able to visualize and actualize thoughts, plans, and outcomes and develop greater confidence about their abilities to succeed.
Creative Thinking is incorporated into all classes at AOA and co-curricular programs to guide students beyond content mastery. Classroom activities encourage students to modify and complicate existing content and assemble or invent new products and perspectives. It is about process and product. Creative Thinking is characterized by fluency, flexibility, originality and value.

Creative Thinking comprises two fundamental cognitive processes:

  1. Divergent Thinking which involves stretching beyond existing ideas, boundaries, and combinations to generate many and different ideas; and

  2. Convergent Thinking which involves the narrowing and filtering ability where one works toward developing task-appropriate content or a viable solution.
Creative Thinkers are more receptive to other people's ideas, and they're better able to come up with alternatives in challenging situations. Such development of "Leadership Competency" reflects AOA's mission to empower students to lead and serve in a global community.

Thinking creatively is an academically rigorous process. Creativity is not simply "unconstrained originality"; creative thinkers thrive on constraints, ambiguity, and a task or problem at hand - the context in which to be creative. 

Our teachers model creative thinking, design lessons to spark student interest, and encourage risk-taking to make creativity intentional in the classrooms. Our methodology aims to develop students that are both flexible and fluent, their product both original and valuable.

Elements of Creative Thinking

While grades and overall GPA reflect content mastery, students are also assigned CTI scores based on a 4-point rubric that explicitly defines essential elements of Creative Thinking: Fluency, Flexibility, Originality, Elaboration, Curiosity, Risk-taking, Complexity, Imagination, and Value. 

Students are allotted the time and the physical, intellectual, emotional room to explore their ideas. Cultivating student ability in the following areas is vital:

Ideation

An ability to generate multiple ideas increases the likelihood that students will find solutions, create unique works, or identify new perspectives.

Risk Taking

The process of creating something is hard work.   Students require the courage to begin badly, to work when they do not want to, and to expect initial failures.

Decisiveness

Decisive students refine ideas to those that are most valuable.

Grit

Resilient students recover from failures smoothly.
Andrews Osborne Academy

Andrews Osborne Academy

38588 Mentor Avenue
Willoughby, Ohio 44094
Grades PK - 12, PG
 
P. (440) 942-3600
F. (440) 942-3660
Located In Willoughby, OH, Andrews Osborne Academy is a Private Co-ed Day & Boarding College Preparatory School For Pre-Kindergarten (ages 3 and 4) - 12, PG. Students benefit from a challenging academic program, fine and performing arts, competitive athletics, and a wide selection of extracurricular activities.