< Among Dartmouth's Lathes And Saws, Lessons In Creativity

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Creativity was once thought of as the product of geniuses or divine inspiration. Now, it's generally seen as something that can be taught or at least cultivated. We're going to meet a teacher who, unbeknownst to him, has been teaching creativity for years. It's part of the series from our Ed Team 50 Great Teachers. NPR's Gabrielle Emanuel has our story.

GABRIELLE EMANUEL, BYLINE: When I think of really fantastic teachers in my own life, one person always leaps to mind.

DUDLEY P. WHITNEY: There's a couple of adjustments that you always want to make with a bandsaw.

EMANUEL: Dudley P. Whitney teaches woodworking at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. This afternoon, he's helping an undergrad cut a plank of wood into a circle. Dudley's been doing this for almost 30 years, right here in this huge basement room, with his workbenches just beckoning to students who walk past.

WHITNEY: It's well-lit. It's well-equipped. And down the middle of the shop are all the major power tools - the planers, the jointers, the bandsaws.

EMANUEL: When I was a student at Dartmouth, I spent oodles of time in the shop. It's a place with no curriculum and no grades. Students and professors just swing by with an idea of something they want to make. And then, working one-on-one with Dudley or another instructor, they learn how to make it. I carved bowls and built desks, but mostly, I asked zillions of questions. I knew Dudley was a really good teacher, but I didn't actually think about why. Since then, I've noticed that things I learned in that basement shop have popped up in other aspects of my life. To me, that's a mark of great teaching.

WHITNEY: I have no idea what kind of affect the teaching that we do in here really does affect people - how they carry it around with them, where they go with it, how they remember it. No idea.

EMANUEL: Just how much he influenced me and many others became obvious four years ago. It was a hard time for Dartmouth.

WHITNEY: They were having financial difficulties.

EMANUEL: He scaled back from full-time to part-time. And as word got around, Dudley started getting letters - dozens and dozens of them.

WHITNEY: It was pretty special.

EMANUEL: One former student after another wrote about how he had changed their lives.

WHITNEY: Well, those aren't the ones I remember. The ones I remember are the ones are how I was curmudgeonly, sang incredibly dumb songs. (Laughter).

EMANUEL: Now Dudley's quasi-retired and works only a few days a week. When I went back to talk with him for this story, I kept asking him what exactly it is he does. What makes his teaching so special? And he says he genuinely doesn't know.

WHITNEY: I don't really think about how I'm doing it. And I don't - I don't know. I don't know.

EMANUEL: Jennifer Mueller does know. She's a professor at the University of San Diego. For 15 years, she studied creativity. As a she told me about the key ingredients necessary to teach creativity, I suddenly realized that they're exactly what I remember from Dudley's workshop. Mueller says you have to get rid of the stereotype that creativity is unleashed.

JENNIFER MUELLER: There's this impression that give students freedom, and they'll be creative. And what we know is that they need some structure up front.

EMANUEL: They need a well-defined problem, like building a piece of furniture, and they needed to know the constraints and the range of possibilities. That echoes something Dudley said while standing next to those big machines.

WHITNEY: So you start with a stick, and they've never started with a stick before. And the next thing you know, you're making decisions. You don't even know about the possibilities yet. So that's my job, in a lot of ways. It's just to help people discover the possibilities - the potential of a stick of a stick of wood.

EMANUEL: Think about it. That's a recipe for creativity, one you can apply to all sorts of pursuits - a lump of clay, an unknown disease, a string of computer code. Dudley illuminates the possibilities, but he never picks among them. That's the students' job. Mueller says that's exactly what the research says is important. Another key ingredient for creativity is having fun, being intrinsically motivated.

WHITNEY: When people feel enjoyment of a task, they're more likely to explore.

EMANUEL: It's that way at the Dartmouth woodshop. No classes, no requirements - everyone is there because they want to be there.

WHITNEY: You feel good about yourself, and you feel good because you did it. You learn the skills necessary to do it.

EMANUEL: Dudley is a New England native - played hockey dropped out of Yale, sold dictionaries. He says he kind of fell into woodworking

WHITNEY: And the first thing I remember making was a couch. It was plywood. And we were young, we were foolish, and we needed a place to sit. (Laughter). I liked it just because I put it together in ways that I had sort of thought of by myself.

EMANUEL: And that felt good. But creativity involves the something we don't always feel good about - uncertainty.

MUELLER: There's no answer. There's no clear answer. We don't like that type of uncertainty at all. We really hate it.

EMANUEL: She says this is hard for students - that blank piece of paper. It's hard for businesses. Will people buy the product? Uncertainty is hard for everyone, but research shows it's key to thinking creatively. Dudley says most people who come into the shop have no experience.

WHITNEY: There's big, bad machines in here. They can hurt you.

EMANUEL: So he says the whole process starts with people taking a big risk.

WHITNEY: When you push it down, and you reach the surface, that's zero. Do you agree?

JONATHAN BRINK-ROVY: Yeah, that's what I did before.

EMANUEL: Dudley and Jonathan Brink-Rovy, an undergrad, are using a handheld router to hollow out a space.

WHITNEY: And where do you want to go to? How deep?

BRINK-ROVY: This thickness.

WHITNEY: That's a 16th. Is that going to stop when we get there?

BRINK-ROVY: No.

WHITNEY: So what's going to make it stop?

EMANUEL: Brink-Rovy is making a set of speakers completely from scratch.

BRINK-ROVY: This is the wholes for the drivers. This is the woofer, and this is the tweeter.

EMANUEL: He's an engineering student, where he works in metal.

BRINK-ROVY: It's cold, and everything comes out like you designed it.

EMANUEL: But he says the woodshop feels completely different. He never knows exactly how things will turn out or even if they'll turn out. Dudley says failure - that's okay.

WHITNEY: In fact, sometimes that's where they learn the most.

EMANUEL: What's kept Dudley coming back every year isn't the idea that he's teaching creativity. After all, he's never really thought about it in that way. Instead, it's a look of wonder he sees in his students' eyes. Then he tells me a story.

WHITNEY: Right there, standing between the planer and the wood rack, I saw a guy. He was a graduate student in biology. And he looked like he was really sort of upset. He had sort of tears in his eyes. I said, Jim, you OK? And he looked at me. And he said, I just can't believe that you can take this, and he pointed to a rough piece of lumber. And in his hand, he had another piece, and he said, and send it through that machine, and come out with this. And it was perfectly smooth and flat. I mean, it changed his view of the world at that point. How could it not?

EMANUEL: I remember where I was standing on the other side of the shop when I had that same moment - realizing the potential of a stick of wood and my own potential to shape it. Looking back through all those letters written about Dudley, many of his students had had that moment, too. And they say they now notice details they never saw before. They look at problems differently. They realize they are capable of creating. Gabrielle Emanuel, NPR News.

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