Activities to Build Creative Confidence

Hi Adobe Creative Educators! Welcome back to our Adobe Creative Educator show. We're very excited to be here with you today and have some very incredible guests that are joining us. But if you're just joining us from Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter, please post in the chat what you're teaching and where you're joining us from. We'd love to get to know a little bit more about you.

I see some folks already joining in, and we have Tarek joining us from Egypt. Welcome! And we have Jessica joining us from Gwinnett County. Jessica, I know we just did an event earlier today, so it's really great to see you joining us.

So again, this is a live show, so you do have the opportunity to ask questions live and join with other educators from our international Adobe Creative Educator program. For those I haven't had the pleasure of meeting, I'm Clara. I manage our educator community programs here at Adobe.

As I mentioned, this is a very special edition of our Adobe Creative Educator Show. Every month, we're focusing on a different theme and have challenges throughout the year for you to create remixable templates with your students and with other educators. This month's theme is cultivating creative confidence with your students.

Now we know, especially in the month of April during testing season, this is something that is prevalent in all classrooms around the country and even around the world. We're thrilled today to be joined by Sal Khan of Khan Academy. I'm the CEO of Khan Academy, and you're going to hear from him, get his perspectives, and also have the opportunity to ask some questions live in the chat.

But without further ado, I'm going to bring Sal on. So Sal, thank you so much for joining us today. How are you?

I'm doing well, thanks for having me, Clara.

We're so excited to have you on the show. For the vast majority of our audience, you likely need no introduction, but just to kick us off, could you please introduce a little bit more about yourself and share more about your current mission at Khan Academy and how it's evolved since you founded it 14 years ago?

Sure! So, I'm Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy. As you introduced, we're a not-for-profit organization with a mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. It started over 14 years ago when we set up as a not-for-profit in 2008, but it started back in 2004 as a tutoring project.

I was an analyst at a hedge fund and started tutoring a family member remotely. I was in Boston; she was in New Orleans. That went well; it was helping her. I became what I call a "tiger cousin." I started tutoring more cousins. Before I knew it, word spread that free tutoring was going on, and I was tutoring 10 to 15 cousins. I noticed that the reason they often struggled was because of gaps in their knowledge.

So, I started writing software for them. My original background was in software, so I did this as a hobby for them to get as much practice as they wanted. A friend suggested that I make videos to supplement the software. I thought it was a silly idea at first, but I gave it a shot, and those videos took on a life of their own. By 2008, I formally incorporated Khan Academy as a not-for-profit.

You fast forward to today, what started with a handful of cousins is now 130 million registered users. About 30 million folks come every month to the platform; we're in 50 languages around the world. But our mission—free world-class education for anyone, anywhere—is still the same.

Our vision is: can we offer all core academic content from pre-K through the core of college for everyone in the world in all the world's major languages? Can we do it in a way that really meets students where they are? These principles I'm happy to talk more about include personalization, empowering students, meeting them where they are, and mastery learning, which always provides the opportunity and incentive to improve—where you could keep working on it to achieve a higher score like a 90 or 100.

The third pillar of our vision is: how can we make learning translate into real opportunities like getting into college or getting a job? We've come a long way since those early days, but we still have a long way to go. We aspire to empower billions over time.

Thank you so much for sharing that background. I know there are a lot of educators in our international community using Khan Academy.

I'm popping over to see some of the chat. We have Benjamin joining us from England, Rachel joining us from Texas, and Tim—hi Tim—from New York says, "I'm excited to learn more about Khan Academy today; have some amazing resources!"

So we're looking forward to diving more into that. Rebecca, who's going to be joining us here in a moment live, says, "I love the tiger cousin role!" So it's great to hear those origins of Khan Academy that we know and love here in the international educator community.

We also have another guest joining us today, so I'm going to bring him on here in a moment. Hey Ben, how's it going?

Hello there, good to be here!

Ben is here on our team as our director of education. He leads an incredible team of evangelists, community members, and community leaders here at Adobe. Ben, you're quite the legend in your experience in education, including your tenure at Adobe. Can you share a little bit more about yourself and your background?

Sure! I'm not sure about legend, but thank you! Yeah, I have a wonderful team here at Adobe. We focus on helping K-12 educators worldwide inject creativity into the classroom in very meaningful ways. I am an educator myself; I've been teaching for over 30 years. I'm also an author; I've written 40-plus books that have taught coding to over a million people.

More relevant to our topic today, my most recent book uses game coding to introduce creative thinking and creative problem-solving for middle and high school students. That's what we do—we spend a lot of time thinking about creativity and how to help K-12 teachers. It's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you for joining us, Ben. Sal, I know we have a great conversation ahead of us, particularly focusing on mastery learning and creative confidence in the classroom.

For Khan Academy, how do you see educators in the community cultivating creative confidence in their students?

Well, I think creativity can only happen when there's space for it. I think it's important, and I think about this as a parent as well. When I was a kid, my family didn't have a lot of resources, so I was bored a lot. But that boredom fostered creativity. You learn to make things as opposed to being directed on what you should do.

As a parent, I now have resources, and my kids are probably getting overscheduled. Am I squeezing out the time for some of their creativity? In classrooms, teachers can feel the burden to make sure every second is productive for their students. That's a good instinct, but it can be nice to give them a little space to potentially fail and have a larger variance in what they might produce.

I think that creativity, which I believe all human beings have, can atrophy if it's not given enough space. It can happen at every level. A lot of people associate creativity with arts, but creativity can also happen when you're looking at an equation—reflecting on its meaning and connections.

So, you need some time and space for creativity to flourish.

Absolutely! I see in the chat that educators resonate with their own experiences. Sal, I love how you mentioned creativity is not just the arts; it's about making connections and applying creative thinking across subject areas.

Ben, do you have anything to add in terms of what you've been seeing at Adobe?

I echo everything Sal said. We need to reach students and educators. When reaching students, not much is needed; just get out of the way, give them room to play, and let them experiment and fail. The trickier part is the teachers—they're overwhelmed and often have strict guidelines.

We spend a lot of time working with educators to help them understand how to inject creativity into every subject in a meaningful way. We want to empower educators with confidence to let their students do what they do best.

In our community, we see that allowing creativity leads to powerful outcomes. You mentioned diversity, which brings value through different perspectives and ideas.

For the overlap between creative confidence, mastery mindset, and growth mindset—especially during testing season—how can educators approach these elements together?

It's important to mention that a growth mindset provides the basis for not stigmatizing failure. If you reflected on your failures, that's where you're going to grow the most. Mastery learning is how that gets implemented in academic settings.

When a student gets an 80 on a test, they may consider themselves a C student, which creates a fixed mindset. Instead, they should have opportunities to learn from their mistakes. If they don’t address knowledge gaps early on, those gaps persist and can be harmful in STEM subjects.

Mastery learning tools can help build competencies that fuel creativity. Creativity happens in fields like mathematics and science—you're trying to find new ways to express ideas and understand reality.

I think you can use mastery learning to build those competencies, then allow for creativity to flourish.

Absolutely! Creativity and mastery are interlinked. Nurturing creativity has long-term implications for future success. Employers want diversity in thoughts and problem-solving, and it all starts in the classroom by fostering that creativity.

Timothy from Canada mentioned that traditionally, math hasn’t been recognized as creative, but students can produce videos with creative elements based on math.

I like that idea! I spend a lot of time making videos, and there's a creative aspect in tutoring as it challenges you to unlock concepts in someone's understanding.

We have a creative process we go through in every live stream: define, create, and reflect so many Adobe Creative Educators know this process well.

Now, let's move on to the create portion where you're going to have the opportunity to get hands-on with Creative Cloud Express and actually co-create alongside Sal Khan in our April challenge.

So, as we move to the create portion, I'm going to bring up my colleague, Rebecca Hare!

Hey, Rebecca!

I'm thrilled to announce that Rebecca joined our team full-time as our education community program manager. Rebecca, do you want to introduce yourself quickly before we dive in?

I'm really excited to work alongside you on this and get the graphic going! I've been a teacher for almost eight years and a designer before that, so I love working with creative educators and coming up with ways to make learning come alive for students—that's our big focus right now.

Let’s get started right now! Sal, this is our creative educator challenge for this month: we have a student challenge, "I am more than a score," and there's a template for students to get started with.

We’ll click the remix this design option, and it opens up for you in Creative Cloud Express.

It's just a prompt to get started—you're not stuck with this design or colors. Your job, Sal, is to start thinking about the words you want to change. I have an image of you, so I'll go ahead and change that out first!

When you start in Creative Cloud Express, it’s a good idea to click on the artboard and open up the layers panel. I will replace the default image with a picture of you. It will magically take away the background and apply the same filters.

How many people have a Great American Educators folder? There are only six in there!

This is pink; maybe that's not your favorite color. This is a duotone effect we can use to change your image to a color of your choosing.

What’s your favorite color?

I don't have favorite hex codes, but maybe a pastel, warm green sounds good?

Let’s see what happens if I try red! That’s kind of fun! Perhaps more of an orange?

This is really fun; I can change this. We have shapes over here as well! Give me a word to search for—something you think won’t have a shape, perhaps?

Spiral!

I love the idea of making videos, and tutoring someone else is truly a creative process. We have tons of spirals to choose from!

I also heard you say the word reflective, so I added that word in already. You're more than a score; you're creative, collaborative, courageous, and resilient.

We should remind students they’re more than just a grade.

Maybe something like an "explorer of the wonder of the cosmos?"

That’s great! We could spend more time on this, and I could tinker with it some more and send it to you.

Thank you so much for creating with us today, Sal and Rebecca.

Before we sign off, if you want to create your own graphic, we’d love for you to share it with the hashtag #AdobeEduCreative!

Thank you, Sal, Ben, and Rebecca!

Quick closing comments: Sal, how can everyone stay in touch with Khan Academy?

You can find us on all major social channels—Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn—with Sal Khan Academy.

Great! Ben, your social channels?

I'm at Benford on Twitter, and you can find me online at walter.com!

Rebecca?

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s creative work!

Thank you for joining us today! Be sure to use the hashtag #AdobeEduCreative. Have a wonderful rest of your week. We look forward to seeing all your images and continuing to inspire creative confidence in all your students.

We'll see you next month for our next live stream! Bye everyone!