I don’t think creativity is welcome in education. Not the way it should be. Schools and classrooms should be oozing with creativity. Because kids are oozing with creativity. Sure, we have things to teach kids along the way. Writing structure. Mathematical algorithms. Data analysis. Reading fluency. Main idea. The standards everyone loves to talk about. But, then there’s the creativity. It’s not a standard, it’s not a focus, and many times it’s reserved for art and music class. We condition our kids to color inside the lines, to keep their answers inside the box, and to bubble the right answer with the perfect pencil. But, creativity? It’s asking the questions no one else thinks of. It’s developing your own ideas, building new thoughts, making new and different things. All of the standards? Embed them. But don’t make the mistake of trying to make learning look the exact same for every kid so we can evaluate it in the exact same way. That kind of makes it seem like every kid is exactly the same. Something we’re lucky isn’t true. Our world thrives on new ideas, innovative practices, and the uniqueness that each of us bring to the table through our own creativity. It’s time to embrace it.