Thinking out of the box

I take great joy in my job. I think teaching/facilitating high school kids is rewarding and life changing. It is with in my job that I have found a truly happy person, this being said, it becomes frustrating when you lack the ability to teach certain life skills such as critical thinking and common sense. I am searching for many different ways to facilitate in the expansion of the brain with regard to critical thinking and making connections.
As I reflect on my educational experience in high school, I was that kid the made the random connections that was different then what others were saying and/or thinking. I remember having to practice thinking "outside of the box" and was actually in a competition for that idea. It is my personal and professional opinion that to think "outside the box" is a lost art form. I remember my science teacher saying "I am not your mother and you are not a baby, I will not spoon feed you the answers." as students, we had to figure it out. Lately, my observations has been that many students can't figure things out on their own. Which makes me question, what have we done to our students? Are they too afraid to say the wrong answer? Are they so fried from the Internet, video games, YouTube, etc that we can't get them to think creatively? I admit that some of my teaching strategies lean to the boring side, I have yawned through them too, but there are some that require you JUST TO THINK, and some students can't/won't/don't know how to do that. For example, I could give a list of directions for students to follow, step by step instructions, and with out a doubt, I will have 5 hands, after I just explained the instructions and they have the step by step list in front of them, "So what are we supposed to do?" It sincerely is becoming a growing concern, because being the type of person I am I reflect on, what words were to confusing? How did they not get that? What did I do wrong? And unfortunately those questions do not seem to have a good answer. I look at some of the other teachers in this school and even the one I teach with, he seems to have no problem getting the students to understand what is expected of them. Granted, I think it could be due to subject matter, and the "fluff" that coincides with literature and writing, and maybe (please don't take offense to this) its also because he is a male, and their minds can simplify things more then a females. (Men are like waffles think in boxes, Women are like Spaghetti, random thoughts all mixed together.) Who knows? But I am not defeated, I will continue my quest for teaching the "out of the box" skills in hopes that maybe those 5 students hands who raise after hearing directions will be reduced to 3.