Creativity

I believe that most educators would agree that fostering creativity in a student is one of the primary goals when structuring a curriculum. The problem is creativity is a skill that many students either have or don't. I compare it to athletes who perform well during the most pressure-packed moments of a game. This isn't a skill a coach can really teach, either the athlete has that "it" factor or they don't. The same goes for creativity. Once a student reaches the high school level, it becomes more difficult to teach a student how to be creative if they just aren't.  I would imagine that at the elementary level, there are activities given to try and foster a student's creative side. In my subject area (mathematics) it can be hard to see creativity on a regular basis. There is rarely more then 1 or 2 ways to solve a problem so either you follow the strategy laid out by the teacher or find yourself lost. However, there are moments when we discuss certain topics where a student will find a way to solve something using a strategy I wouldn't have taught because it would be too diffiicult for the entire class to grasp. The class I find the most creativity shown is Geometry becasue students have a variety of ways to solve problems using different theorems and shapes in different scenarios. Again though, I only find a handful of students thinking at this higher level. So this begs the question, do those students who don't come up with those alternate strategies not have as creative a mind as the others, or do they just stick to the fundamentals as shown in class? Does that make them less creative?