Without curiosity their can be little to no creativity. Creativity asks, “what if?” or, “what about?”, it challenges norms and questions accepted ideas. Without curiosity, creativity is dead.
In a busy classroom, and with deadline looming, it can be tempting to shut down your students’ curiosity. To tell them, when they ask questions, that you don’t have time to discuss it now. But for creativity to thrive, curiosity must be allowed.
When something ignites your curiosity, regions of your brain associated with reward, memory, and motivation actually "fire up" with activity. In other words, curiosity can be a great motivator that makes the brain sincerely want to learn.
And it is in that desire to learn that creativity awakes, wanting to explore, to develop, to question the topic at hand.
Reflecting that curiosity in yourself, sharing your own questions on the subject you’re discussing with your students, by suggesting questions to them for exploration, will not only build their creativity but will develop your own too.
It is also worth remembering that just because an idea is accepted, just because an answer is known, there is no harm in questioning it, in asking the ‘why’ of it. You never know where this curiosity may lead.