You’ve heard it. That saying. The one teachers use constantly when they are trying to get their students to do something new and creative. They tell them to “think outside of the box.” But, the question is… are they really thinking outside of the box?

You see, here is the issue. These same teachers are trying to encourage their students to do something different. The problem here is not in the intent of the teacher, but the saying itself.

You see, most of the time, the teacher intends to grade the project. Often, the student has a rubric they will be graded by. So, as they work through their ‘innovative original out of the box’ project, they are following along using their rubric, checking off boxes. 

Whoa… what? Checking off boxes? Yep. 

What really happened here is that we just changed the box. Maybe we made the box bigger, maybe smaller, or maybe a different box altogether. Either way, most of the time, if a project is graded, you are forcing students into a box. To make it worse, you are forcing them into a box that is your box (or whoever designed the project and rubric).  Every time we tell a kid to get out of the box, we just redefine the box. The box represents restrictions, and attempting to force certain types of thinking is still a box.

A box, by any other name, is still a box. (yeah, you see what I did there)

This happens often with gifted teachers. I get it, they want to encourage their students to be creative. But I also get that we are required to have grades. 

So how do we overcome this problem? Well, for one, stop telling kids to think outside of the box, then forcing them into a different box. When you want complete originality, genuine attempts at being innovative, take the box away… even if that means you don’t get to grade it. Let kids do something just to see what happens. That is when kids can truly try to do things that are outside of the box.

So, have those days where kids create simply for the purpose of creating. Don’t worry about grades, don’t worry about trying to ‘mold them’. Let them do just to see what happens. We can’t really force them out of the box… about all we can do is let them learn to climb out of it. 

So…. let them.