We often picture creativity as something big and bold. It’s the ambitious project that draws in the entire community. It’s the big project that kids remember years later. But creativity doesn’t have to be an event. In fact, some of the most powerful creative thinking happens in small, ordinary moments woven into the learning process.

In this article, I explore the idea of routine creativity and why small, consistent opportunities to create, experiment, solve problems, and think differently can lead to extraordinary results. The goal isn’t to add one more thing to an already crowded curriculum. It’s to make creative thinking a regular part of how students learn.

Creativity Doesn’t Have to Look Flashy

It’s my third year of implementing project based learning and I’m on a quest to take it to the next level. If the word “quest” feels like hyperbole, it’s probably because I felt a hyperbolic sense of mission in this moment. After leading a grassroots project based learning (PBL) movement and even teaching a few PBL workshops in my district, I am left feeling confused. I’m an imposter; that beloved wizard asking everyone to see green while I pull the levers behind the scene.  

Here is my chance to learn about authentic PBL. I’ll take it to the next level where we actually transform the learning process. 

I watch a keynote speaker who highlights some of the most mind-blowing projects in K-12 education. Kids designing their own custom shoes. High schoolers inventing new machines that they eventually patent. Documentaries that actually get screened at film at actual festivals (unlike ours which we screened in the cafeteria). 

So this is what real PBL looks like, I think to myself. Followed by, How am I ever going to pull off something that epic?

I run into fellow educators who nerd out on project based learning and share tips for improving collaboration and assessment. I attend showcases. At one point, we tour a PBL school with state of the art technology and a physical environment that would rival the newly opened Googleplex. 

I sketch out sprawling notes as I move from session to session including one where the presenter lays out a clear process for PBL. This is the gold standard approach. It’s what every teacher should be using. 

He warns us about “culminating projects” and “mini projects.” These are the “Diet Coke” of PBL. For what it’s worth, I like Diet Coke (especially with a splash of whiskey) but I don’t press him on his metaphor. When I leave the session, I skip the snack break (and snacks are my favorite). Instead, I pull out my notebook and compare my projects to the ones highlighted in this conference. Did I use the wrong driving questions? Did I have an authentic public product? Was my process too structured? 

I stare at the handout from the last session and think of the PBL examples I’ve heard about all day. This is the gold standard for PBL and I feel like I’m a silver. Maybe even a bronze. Actually, I don’t know if my PBL deserves any kind of medal. To be honest, we’re kind of basic. 

With my imposter status fully intact, I fill up pages in my notebook and dream up what it would look like to implement a more robust PBL program in our school. I waver between hopeful dreamer and defeated skeptic as I consider the massive systemic changes we will need to pull this off. 

A week later, I’m in a brewery with my best friend Javi. He and I co-lead the IMPACT program and Social Awareness Club. We’ve been combining design thinking and STEM with service learning for three years. We just recently led a team of social studies teachers to rewrite our curriculum to incorporate 3 bigger PBL projects and several smaller challenges we call “sprints.” 

“How was the big PBL conference?” He asks.  

“Overwhelming.” 

He raises an eyebrow. 

“I wanted to see how we could take project based learning to the next and then it’s like I saw what the next level is and I was like, ‘I’m at a lower level than I thought. Are we even doing real, authentic PBL?’ Honestly, I feel defeated.” 

“Nah, we’re doing real PBL. Just as real as any of the examples you saw there,” he points out. 

I start listing off their projects and he holds his hand up to stop me. “Look, those are cool projects but we’re talking about high school seniors. We teach seventh and eight graders. Would you expect third graders to do what our kids do?” 

I shake my head. “But they have the best iMacs and these recording studios that look professional and we have, what? Old computers we refurbished with Linux? Cardboard podcasting boxes with badly rigged sound proofing? Come on.”

He shrugs. “So, they’re finished products look more professional. Good thing we’re not teaching professionals. We teach kids.” 

“Okay but are we really nailing the public product? They have these big events and we have a showcase with day old donated donuts.”    

“It’s not about the public product. It’s about the creative thinking. Are our students becoming better creative thinkers? That’s all that matters.” He takes a sip from his beer and adds, “It’s not about the public product, ether. It’s about the community connection. Look at our family nights. Look at our community partnerships. We’ve done it on a shoe string budget. No, a donated shoe string budget where the shoe strings look like they’ll break at any moment.” 

Creativity Isn’t an Event

Those big epic experiences can be great, but they inadvertently turn creativity into an event where students get the message: We are taking the time away from learning to do something creative. 

It’s in this moment that I realize I don’t want to be a “PBL teacher.” I want to be a creative teacher. I don’t want to be tied to a lockstep method for project based learning. Instead, I want to find creative ways to help my students reach their creative potential. 

We spend the rest of the evening brainstorming ideas. Some of these are moonshot concepts that never pan out, like solar panels or a garden with hydroponics that help feed fish. Others are ways to improve the current projects we are doing, like the murals or documentaries. But most of our ideas are actually smaller. What if we change up the student leadership team to get more students of all backgrounds involved? What if we add smaller elements of problem-solving to the warm-ups? What if we find smaller, more frequent ways to add divergent thinking to their maker sprints? 

Culturally, we tend to think of creativity as something big. It’s that elaborate PBL unit that draws in the local news. The type of life-changing project that students remember forever. It’s that weeks-long service learning project that has massive ripple effects on the local community. It’s that science fair project where a young prodigy designs and new energy source that changes the world. 

Sometimes creativity is epic and life-changing. But sometimes it’s smaller. It’s a failed maker sprint that never left the four walls of the classroom. It’s a creative idea sparked by a sketch note during a lecture. It’s an interesting problem to solve in AP Statistics and a divergent thinking challenge with second graders. And, actually, when students participate in this smaller acts of creative thinking it is epic and life-changing. The final result might not change the world but it changes their world. 

You don’t need to incorporate every element of a gold star project based process to be a creative teacher. You don’t need to overhaul every aspect of your teaching practice for your students to become deeper creative thinkers. You can still design lessons with lectures and guided practice and worksheets. Your students can still take tests. Creativity doesn’t have to be big and flashy. In fact, it’s often routine. 

Why Routine Creativity Leads to Extraordinary Results

Authentic creativity is often surprisingly ordinary. Some of the world’s most creative people have built extraordinary work around mundane routines. Beethoven woke up early and worked through the morning, then took long walks in the afternoon.  

Kafka worked in insurance during the day and then pulled late night writing sessions from eleven at night until two in the morning. Maya Angelou left home each morning to write in a sparse hotel room, working for hours with legal pads, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of cards. By contrast, Stephen King sits down and blasts heavy metal while he cranks out novels. 

Some creative thinkers are early birds, others night owls. Some work in silence and solitude while others seek out noisy and chaotic spaces. Some work primarily alone while others prefer collaborating with others through most of the process. But despite these differences, one thing remains: a surprisingly ordinary habit of creative work. There is no waiting for inspiration. There is no secretive creative process. 

We remember the great music, movies and novels. We marvel at great inventions. But underneath those extraordinary creations are practices that look remarkably ordinary: show up, do the work (even when it gets boring), and keep going. Observe any of these creative geniuses at work and you’ll be struck by how mundane it looks.  

This idea is at the heart of routine creativity. It embraces both meanings of the term routine. Creativity can look routine. It’s small and mundane and unimpressive from the outside. But routine also means habit. It’s the idea that we can integrate creative routines into our practice as learners and makers. 

And here’s the cool part. Often, something extraordinary can grow out of something remarkably ordinary. Dolly Parton had a daily habit of getting up early and writing music. She didn’t focus on the quantity of the output. Some days she wrote full songs and other days she had small fragments that went nowhere. But one morning, she wrote both “Jolene” and “9 to 5.” 

The same thing happens in the classroom. Routine creativity doesn’t look that impressive. A student finds a different way to solve a math problem. Rewrites a paragraph in a blog post. Asks an unusual question. Makes an unexpected connection between two scientific ideas. Sketches an idea. Interviews an expert. These moments are small. So small an outside observer might miss what’s going on. But this routine creativity is developing the next generation of inventors, creators, and makers. 

What Routine Creativity Might Look Like

Let’s consider food metaphors for a moment. Creativity isn’t the dessert you go to on occasion after you’ve done the “real work” of learning. Instead, it’s a key ingredient in the main dish. And unlike a dessert, creative thinking is sometimes more like a slightly boring salad or rice (for what it’s worth, I love salad) rather than a crème brûlée. Moreover, creative thinking isn’t one more new thing to add to your plate. Sometimes it might require you to rearrange your plate (as is the case with PBL). But it’s often something we incorporate daily into the dishes we already make. 

I get it. We’re educators and not chefs. And I apologize if the food metaphor isn’t your jam (see what I did there) but the core question we can ask ourselves is, “How am I already using routine creativity in my classroom and what else can I try out?” 

When my students have to generate a to do list for a supervillain on his day off, that’s routine creativity. When they have ten minutes to design a school that exists underwater, that’s routine creativity. When I give them three items and they prototype a children’s toy in 45 minutes, that’s routine creativity. 

But also . . . when your students generate multiple solutions to a math problem and explain their approach to a partner that’s routine creativity. When they read a novel and imagine an entirely new world, that’s routine creativity. When they do a five minute sketch note that looks sloppy but connects ideas in new ways, that’s routine creativity. When they generate a hypothesis, rewrite a conclusion paragraph, or design a better classroom system, they are engaging in routine creativity. 

Routine creativity is all about the small things you do on a daily basis to integrate creative thinking into the learning process. 

Why This Matters

For over a decade, I’ve worked with teachers around the world on designing deeper learning experiences for students. Whether it’s in my home state of Oregon (where I’m a full-time professor) or in another country, I love to ask the question, “What do students need as they navigate an unpredictable world?” I’ve heard similar answers in rural, urban, and suburban areas and in low-income and high-income schools. 

Teachers talk about resilience, self-direction, focus, and collaboration. And nearly ever time, they mention creativity. Sometimes it’s divergent thinking. Other times problem-solving or even innovation. But the core idea is the same. Our students will need to be creative thinkers as they face the challenges of an unpredictable world. 

But I’d argue that as they engage in routine creativity, they also develop those other key competencies that teachers mention (often the ones listed on a district’s Portrait of a Learner or Profile of a Graduate). Students grow more resilient as they face the iterative process of creative thinking where they’re forced to problem-solve when faced with big challenges. They improve in their communication and collaboration skills as they work creatively in teams. They learn how to focus as they hit a creative flow state where they then grow more self-directed. 

On an academic level, creative thinking allows for applied learning and higher order thinking. That means students learn the content at a deeper level but it’s also more permanent. So, a student who thinks creatively in Calculus will master the content at a deeper level while also applying what they learn into new contexts. The learning then becomes more practical. Similarly, a second grader engaging in creative thinking around animals and their habitats while remember what they learned while also growing more passionate and curious about the topic. 

So, we know that creativity is vital for learning and for life (and for life-long learning). But here’s the challenge. If creativity requires an epic project, teachers understandably struggle to find time for it.

Sometimes a big project doesn’t actually fit the content. If you’re learning discrete skills that require precision and repetition, a PBL is a bad fit. In these moments, a quick creative thinking prompt might work best. Sometimes there’s not a true authentic context to the content students are learning and what they need is a short creative challenge instead. If students completely lack background knowledge and it won’t be possible to learn through the project, PBL might not be a good fit and here a simulation with creative thinking might work best. 

Routine creativity can live inside the curriculum rather than competing with it. The goal isn’t necessarily to add another creative activity. It’s to create more moments when students routinely engage in creative thinking. 

The Start of a Series

Throughout this blog series, I want to explore some of the counterintuitive ideas about how creativity works. We’ll see why quantity actually leads to quality and constraints can lead to creative breakthroughs. We’ll explore why structure can lead to freedom and how designing for the marginalized will benefit everyone. 

Along the way, I want to push back against some of the lies we’ve been told about creativity. We tend to think creativity requires total freedom, a sudden burst of inspiration, or a big, bold project. But often, creativity grows out of things that seem surprisingly mundane. It comes from habits and routines. It comes from deep knowledge and focused attention. It comes from imitation, experimentation, and even failure.

This is why I’m interested in the idea of routine creativity. Creativity doesn’t have to be an event. It can happen in small moments woven into the learning process. Throughout this blog series, I’ll be exploring small tweaks that can make a big difference and introducing specific routines we can integrate into our pre-existing lessons. These aren’t meant to replace the larger PBL units we already love. Instead, the goal is to make creativity something students practice regularly, so that over time, creative thinking becomes a natural part of how students learn.