We often talk about teaching students to be creative, but what about the school itself? Creativity is critical for successfully navigating uncertainties in our rapidly changing world. Our school must inspire and nurture creativity at all levels to realize our vision of inspiring minds through innovation and ingenuity, and thus ensure that Stratford Hall always thrives as an educational institution.

Creativity is more than a single skill, certainly more than the popular concept of having an active imagination. Scholar Natalie Nixon defines creativity as wonder + rigour, which includes attention to detail and disciplined practice. The IB features creativity within at least half of the Learner Profile traits: inquirer, thinker, open-minded, risk-taker, and reflective among them. Creativity is one of the thinking skills within the IB Approaches to Learning.

At Stratford Hall, we create the institutional conditions for creativity. We have a history of adopting ideas that have come from any member of the community. When we were smaller, this happened informally. The staff could fit in one classroom! Now that we are larger, we create intentional processes to share and surface out-of-the-box thinking.

To implement our new strategic plan, we have used design thinking to capture and test creative ideas from our community. The strategic plan contains three pillars and 24 total commitments. This fall, we have identified eight commitments that have had the most initial momentum and created a task force to study each one. Each task force has conducted a design sprint to identify audiences and generate ideas. We have shared recommendations with the full staff for more feedback and will share with students and families as well. This process of task force → design sprint → recommendations → feedback inspires creative and rigorous thinking to implement our strategic plan and advance the school.

Such practices are helping us become a more creative institution overall. We reworked the daily schedule and monthly calendar to preserve more time for exploration, practice, and reflection. We hosted the Witness Blanket to deepen our connection to residential school experiences and share with the broader community. We redesigned the Remembrance Day assembly to feature student perspectives and connect to contemporary issues while honouring veterans’ service. We explored the implications of Artificial Intelligence for education and shared early findings in our new Parent Academy. 

Stratford Hall is nimble, imaginative, and disciplined. We look forward to continuing to partner with all members of the community to advance this very special school.