Cyndi Burnett:
What does it take to create a classroom that feels more like a family than a traditional learning space? Today, we welcome to the show Emily Jamison, an elementary school teacher who not only builds that kind of community, but adapts everything she does to meet the needs and passions of her students.

Matthew Worwood:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field of education.

Matthew Worwood:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin. Emily Jamison is a passionate elementary school teacher who centers love and connection in her teaching practice. Entering her seventh year in education and preparing to teach second grade at St. Gregory the Great School in Connecticut, Emily believes that strong relationships are the foundation of meaningful learning and is committed to helping each child grow into the best version of themselves. For Emily, teaching is more than a profession. It’s a calling rooted deeply in her heart and soul. Emily, welcome to the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast. Now, I should premise this entire discussion by saying that Emily, who I know as Mrs.

Matthew Worwood:
Jameson, is or was the fifth grade teacher to my middle son. And I confess, my wife and I instantly have been a huge fan of yours throughout the semester. And I think one of the things that’s really stood out is your passion for teaching and also some of the things that you did, I think, to nurture our middle son’s interests as the academic year progressed. So we want to get into that, but before we do, what I’d like you to do is just talk a little bit about your education background and how you landed in teaching.

Emily Jamison:
Yeah. So thank you, number one, for having me. And when I was younger, I didn’t really fit into the mold of, like, what typical kids in school were like. I feel like back when I was younger, it was more like, hey, this is, you’re either good at school or you’re not good at school, or you can memorize things or you can’t memorize things. So as I was growing up, I just kept working with kids and I kept trying to find different ways to kind of help them understand what it is we were doing. So I taught at a summer camp. I was a summer camp counselor. That was how I first kind of got introduced to working with kids.

Emily Jamison:
And then I wanted to be a landscape design architect. I didn’t want to be a teacher at first. And when I went to go do my internship for landscape design, they actually placed me into a children’s garden. And I enjoyed working with kids way more than I enjoyed actually doing the landscape design part. So I kept kind of gravitating towards that, and then I realized that, well, if this is what I am enjoying, then maybe I can make an impact here, and maybe that’s how I can make a difference. So then I got into teaching, and then I went back to school at Sacred Heart for my master’s in education, and I took that route, and now here I am.

Matthew Worwood:
Could you describe a little bit about what a children’s garden is? Just the reason why I bring it up is we were actually just talking a little bit last year or towards the end of the last academic year around opportunities to get kids outside of the class, and kind of nature reserves came up. And I didn’t know that about you, but I’d like to hear a little bit more about children’s gardens and whether or not you’ve ever thought about integrating that into your practice. A little bit.

Emily Jamison:
Yeah. So I got an internship at Penn State. It’s actually when both my sisters went to college. So I, my junior year of college, got an internship at the children’s garden there, and they had just started opening it to the public. It was just built, but there was still aspects of it that they were building. So basically all it is is that they take elements of nature and make it so that kids can interact with it. So there’s, like, vines that become, like, teepees and forts that the kids can run around. And there’s certain flowers that when you touch the petals on them, they close.

Emily Jamison:
There’s certain ones that are called, like, straw flowers, where you can keep them open and they turn and they face towards the sun and they never close, which is pretty cool. These little things called mouse melons, which they look like little watermelons and they taste like cucumbers. Kids can pick them off and eat them and try them, and it’s kind of encouraging them to, like, build that relationship with nature and allow them to be introduced to healthy foods and kind of see where food comes from, interact in the water, go into a cave that has bats living inside of it. So it kind of encourages them not to be afraid of certain things that are, like, the stereotypes for kids to be afraid of as well, and encourage them to, like, interact and play outside. And that there’s other things to do besides, like, inside games or just sports outside. You can actually interact with nature and kind of build a passion with that, too, which is pretty cool.

Cyndi Burnett:
Oh, that’s so much fun. And it just makes me. I think, especially because we’re recording this at the start of summer, it makes me think about the fall and how teachers might build that sort of thing into the classroom. Even the idea of touching nature and bringing it inside the classroom and flowers inside of the classroom or plants. I imagine you might have to be a little bit cautious in terms of allergies or things like that. But I’m sure there’s lots of plants and flowers and types of things that you could even bring into the classroom or grow outside of your classroom, even outside of your classroom window to sort of foster that sense of growth inside and out of the classroom.

Emily Jamison:
Yeah. So I really like encouraging kids to kind of connect with nature. One of the things that we actually did on Earth Day this year, and it might be part like, I’m. My birthday is actually on birthday, so I kind of encourage kids to do that as well on Earth Day birthday. So it’s fun. And one of the things that we did this year was we went outside and I told the kids that we were just going to have a special activity to help the planet. And we ended up bringing out a garbage bag. And I sent them into just one section, and I was like, okay, we see this section of the field every day.

Emily Jamison:
You guys play on this every day. Do you see any garbage looking right now? And they were like, no. And then I said, okay, now your job is just in this one area. Look just for garbage. And we’re going to pick it up. And they filled about half a trash bag just from that one little area, just picking up, like, bottle caps, little toys, or, like, erasers or things that fell out of people’s pockets, blew in the wind over there, and kind of opened their eyes, too, and learning how to. They can protect nature. They can interact with it.

Emily Jamison:
And some things, yes, we don’t touch them. But other things that you can kind of make a difference just by picking one thing up. It can help improve your environment.

Matthew Worwood:
This is a wonderful topic. I hadn’t heard anything about children’s gardens. Obviously, as I said, we’ve spoken a lot about nature and kids, but I don’t know. I mean, Cindy, you’re. You are in. In the garden a lot, aren’t you? I mean, I just. Why, why. Why are we not seeing more of this? I mean, it seems like the elementary school in general is just this wonderful playground.

Matthew Worwood:
And, you know, we get these snippets of it, but sometimes it’s not it. I just wish we could build more of the elementary school experience from these snippets that do exist, these really wonderful snippets. But I almost feel like we’ll, we’re. We’re losing them. I’d spoken again in the same episode about, you know, a reduction on field trips when we went to.

Emily Jamison:
St. Well.

Matthew Worwood:
We went to st. I’d said when we went Sturbridge Village. You look at that type of experience, why isn’t there more of that? And just from an elementary school teacher perspective, are you able to answer that question? Why aren’t we able to integrate more of that into the academic year?

Emily Jamison:
I think a lot of it is that things become very content based and it’s more about, like, you want your scores to be well, you want the kids to learn and take in the information. And I think sometimes people are afraid to integrate the outside component in and seeing that the kids might take it in learning somewhere else. Like we went to Sturbridge and watching the kids learn about like the sawmill and the gristmill, like just watching them and having somebody firsthand explain it to you within like five minutes. I think the kids took in more in that time than they would if they read a book about it or saw a video about it. Just having that person that was dressed up and kind of playing the part of the olden days and telling them about it. That interaction, that experience did connect with them more. But sometimes it is just a fear of saying, okay, we have to take this leap and go out there and kind of take a risk. Whereas if they read a book, they’re reading the information, taking it in.

Emily Jamison:
So sometimes it’s just about practice and saying, okay, can I take this risk? Can I afford to take this risk and do that.

Matthew Worwood:
There’s an element of control as well, isn’t there? When you’ve got the book, you kind of know that all 20 or 25 or 30 kids are accessing the same material learning in the same way, which I suppose to a certain extent facilitates the conversation that you can have, the questions that you can ask. Whereas when you go on a field trip and you go to Sturbridge Village, you can invite everyone to go to the sawmill or the grease mill, for example, and you can pose these questions, but it’s, it’s maybe somewhat more challenging or potentially, you know, a concern or a fear that they won’t be able to walk away with the same pieces of information. And Cindy, I don’t know if you’ve got any thoughts about this, but that’s fascinating. Right? Is, is, is that it? A little bit. This, this need to, for everyone to walk away with the same pieces of information, do you think?

Emily Jamison:
Yeah, I think that it definitely is an element of when everybody has access to the same information, you know, that they’re all taking in the same level of content. And then your assessments off of that can be structured to what it is that you have written in the text. Whereas if it’s a firsthand experience, you don’t know what they’re taking in. Right. Like you could have a kid fully invested and paying attention to everything that that person is saying. That five minute period of time. And one group maybe didn’t even go visit that sawmill. Maybe they went somewhere else.

Emily Jamison:
Or maybe one kid was just very focused on the logs being moved or something like that, where they’re more focused on one aspect of it than the other. So I do believe that part of it could be the content that what they have access to in that moment.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Emily, I have been hearing about you from Matt all year long and he speaks so highly of you, but one of the things that I think he’s really appreciated is your willingness to adapt assignments in response to the interests or needs of the students. So can you tell us how you do that, especially at the elementary age, and why you think it’s important in the first place?

Emily Jamison:
Yes. So a lot of the information that we take in, in schools is, especially in the fifth grade level, is you’re learning about history, you’re learning about things that have happened in the past and sometimes the kids don’t connect to it as well. So one of the things that I like to do is kind of relate it to modern times or modern events to help them kind of build a better understanding with it. Because what I’ve noticed is that in the past kids have, if I’m teaching, let’s say about civil rights, they have no kind of background knowledge on that or understanding. So if you can relate it to events that are going on today or even kind of show them firsthand, okay. What that means, then they kind of build a different relationship with. Some kids do better with understanding it by reading a book or hearing it read to them. Other kids do better when they act it out or have something physically happen where that they can say, oh, remember when we did that? Remember that project we did? Remember that act it out skit we did so kind of adapting things to seeing what the kids need in that time that will be able to help them.

Emily Jamison:
Another thing is with writing assignments, and I know me and Matt have touched on that throughout the year, is that I. One of my favorite subjects to teach is writing because when kids come into fifth grade, they’re a little bit hesitant with writing. You go from writing about daily life in your daily journal and maybe something like that about, like, how my day was to actually learning how to write an essay. You’re writing a personal narrative, you’re writing an informational story. You end the year by writing a research paper. So it’s not just writing down your thoughts on a paper anymore. It’s actually learning how to communicate them in a way that people want to read and people want to hear. So each kid kind of does that differently and it’s kind of figuring out, okay, what is their interest, what is something that they enjoy doing.

Emily Jamison:
Some kids love typing, some kids love writing it out. Some kids are better kind of dictating it first and then making an organizer and then going back and being able to write it. So it’s just kind of helping them navigate what it is that they do best. Because my job as a teacher is not to teach them, hey, this is how you’re going to write your essay. It’s to set them up for success so that when they go into the future years and they become developing writers and these growing writers, that they have the tools and resources available to say, I know that I like typing, or I know I need a graphic organizer in order to start. I know that this is what I need and this is how I’m going to continue from there.

Cyndi Burnett:
I really like that, Emily, because what it sounds like is you’re setting them up on this creative process and to understand sort of their own creative process and what makes them effective in their own creative process of writing. So I see writing as a creative process. So this is fifth graders.

Emily Jamison:
Fifth graders, fifth graders.

Cyndi Burnett:
So you’re working with these fifth graders on a research paper and you’re giving them different options in terms of how to approach their writing. So my question to you around that is, how do you. How do they know at this point at fifth grade what’s going to be most effective for them? And is, are there things that are sort of non negotiables? Like, do you have to create an outline before you generate ideas for what you want to talk about? Can you, you know, when I think about, you know, cognitive style, Matt, you know, and I think about you know, clarifiers and ideators and developers and implementers. Do you have students where you look at them and you say they just need to, like, brain dump before they actually go about writing their paper? Like, is that the kind of connections that you have with them? Because I think it’s really. It’s really fascinating to me because not only does that go about interest, but it’s like the meta of the creative process. It’s like you’re thinking about the way in which you approach the creative process. Is that accurate?

Emily Jamison:
Yeah. So at the beginning of the year, we start out by having every kid use a graphic organizer. They write a story about their summer vacation, and they tell me a little bit of what happened. And then I go through the stories, and I’m able to see, number one, what interests them, because they’re writing about what they thought happened during the summer, and usually they include the fun parts that are standing out to them and that are interesting. So I kind of get a feel for what it is that they like there. And then I kind of see, okay, they have an introduction to the story, or this kid just wrote it all as one whole entire paragraph. So maybe they need a little bit of structure on how to break up the ideas. Then the next essay we go into, we talk about something having to do with, like, the school year.

Emily Jamison:
So it could either be the first day of school or a moment that stands out to you from last year. And I have them use a graphic organizer. So we break it up into the parts of a story we call. So it’s like the rising action, the climax, the falling, actual conclusion, your introduction, and your hook. So when we break it up into those elements and those different components, are they able to do that? Or is that something that’s kind of throwing them completely off? Some kids spend way too much time on a graphic organizer where it’s like two days in, and all of a sudden they’re nearing the end of their graphic organizer, and some kids are already on writing. So then that kind of tells me, okay, maybe we need a simpler graphic organizer where they don’t need to write down fully all of their ideas. Or we can just kind of go, this is what your paragraph one is about. This is paragraph two.

Emily Jamison:
So just jot down the ideas, but you don’t need to go into all the details. And then it helps them kind of realize, I’m spending too much time here. If this is an assignment length, I get this amount of time to work on it. I can’t be spending two days working on this assignment. So maybe it goes into writing and I have to start writing right away. Or maybe I’ll outline my introduction, then write my introduction, outline my paragraph one, write my paragraph one, so that it kind of helps them build those skills to be able to realize what it is that they need to succeed and be able to write a successful essay.

Matthew Worwood:
You know what I find fascinating as well as you’re kind of relaying your story and the process is one, we in the podcast, we talk a lot about interests. And I know this is something that you see as being important as well as identifying the different interests that exist with your students and then tailoring the learning around those interests. But it sounds to me that you’re also using the work to identify the interests. And, you know, it seems so simple, but I quite often sometimes think about asking questions, doing questionnaires, hanging out with the students, and then it’s like, oh, I don’t have time for this. But identifying a medium to which they can express themselves and what they like doing is obviously a great way of identifying their interests and to kind of like stay related to interests. I’ve got a follow up question because you said something about how you love writing, and obviously this was a big reason why I started to talk a little bit about you with Cindy and saying I’d like to bring you on the podcast is because my son, he’s into sports. You know, I think he’s very academically capable. I think he’s got a much better aptitude than I probably had at his age.

Matthew Worwood:
But he just isn’t always digging school. But it was fascinating because as the year progressed, he fell in love with writing to the extent, as you know, that he stopped doing your writing assignments because he was too obsessed with writing his own books. So I had to reach out to you to say, look, we’ve got a problem here. He hasn’t done your creative or writing assignment, but he’s kind of done his own. And you were so willing to adapt your assignment, allowing him to type, allowing him to modify, within reason, the prompt. And, and so I saw this huge passion that he was expressing for writing to the extent, you’ll be happy to know that actually he was typing out his Westwood expansion the day after he broke up from school. So he still wanted to kind of like capture it. I share all of this because I’m just wondering, do you think there’s a relationship between your passion and love for writing and maybe the passion that I saw in at least one of your students, you know, kind of, like, flourish.

Matthew Worwood:
Is there a relationship there, do you think?

Emily Jamison:
Yes. So at the beginning of the year, one of the things that, without fail, always happens is when I tell kids it’s time for writing, majority of the class, their faces just droop and they’re like, oh, I don’t like writing. And I tell them, Mrs. Jameson’s favorite part of the year is writing. I love writing. And then I explain to them, do you know why I love writing? Because it lets me know about you. It tells me all these creative ideas that you have. It tells me what you love.

Emily Jamison:
It tells me what you don’t love. It allows me to kind of connect with you when not even in the building anymore, I get to learn a little bit about you. I get to make prompts about you. Then when I teach a lesson, I can say, oh, I know that this person loves dance, and this person loves soccer, and this person loves turtles. So let’s include these things in our day to make it more interesting for each kid. So talking about this writing assignment, sure, let’s throw something in to make it more interesting for you. And one of the things that we do also is I love encouraging them to love writing. So whenever it’s the beginning of the year and we’re talking about writing, writing at that point is still building.

Emily Jamison:
There’s still not wonderful writers yet. But if you encourage them and you say, I love this part, I love how you did that, you find something in there. Instead of nitpicking the parts that aren’t good, you focus on what they’re doing really well. So say they use figurative language. They use assembling. They use a metaphor. I love this. Let’s drag it out.

Emily Jamison:
How can you rephrase this sentence? Or what can we add here to make it even better? Can you add in some dialogue for them to have that positive outlook with it? And saying, oh, I’m not a bad writer. Like, my teacher is focusing on the good parts of my writing instead of the bad parts of my writing. And then we get into elements of editing and revising. That’s a whole lesson that we just do an entire day of doing editing and revising and teaching them how to look over their own words, how to fix mistakes. But if we go into that from the beginning of them writing something, be like, oh, you don’t need that line. You don’t need that line. They’re going to have that mentality of defeat of saying, I’m not good at this. Whereas if you focus on the good, they’re looking at it like, wow, I did that really well.

Emily Jamison:
Let me add more of that. And then they’re writing builds automatically. They kind of do it on their own and it allows those creative ideas to show up. So in elements where it’s like your son not wanting to do the specific assignment, that’s totally fine because the goal is just to encourage that creative side of their brain thinking. It’s them wanting to write, it’s them learning to write about certain topics, but also encouraging them that if that’s a topic they’re interested in, take it and run with it. Because not all of your assignments are always going to be cookie cutter. You’re going to get to a part in life where someone’s going to say, write an essay about whatever you want. And having those ideas, that’s kind of the scariest part of it, is having a prompt to go off of already kind of gives you the idea.

Emily Jamison:
When it’s a creative writing assignment and you don’t have an idea to go off of, then that’s where kids tend to spiral. So in the sense of them already coming up with their own ideas, you let them run with that. Because that’s the hardest part of writing is coming up with an idea on their own first and being able to run with it. So than when you get to see that happen. And that really is the goal.

Cyndi Burnett:
Emily, that’s so lovely. And I’m curious from your perspective. So my. When my kids were in third grade, they had a teacher who would criticize their writing with a red pen. And this really bothered me because I’m like, you know, third grade you pick up like a journal entry and it would be covered in red pen. Now I believe that there should be constructive feedback, especially in the writing process. But I don’t like the red pen just ever. I don’t.

Cyndi Burnett:
I. I didn’t like it with my graduate students. I wouldn’t, I would never do it in red pen. So I’m curious, how do you give constructive feedback to your students, given you’re so thoughtful about nurturing that creative idea and that creative potential that they have.

Emily Jamison:
So one of the things that I do, actually I agree with the red pen. I rarely ever use the color red when it comes to grading because I always remember people writing my tests when I was younger and my papers and everything was crossed out. We do one on one meetings with the kids where we call it our editing time. And they come up to me and they say, I need help with my writing. I have, I don’t know exactly what to Call them other than antennas. So I have different antennas that I put on for different seasons of the year. Some of them are squirrels, some of them are antlers like reindeer. Some of them are pine cones.

Emily Jamison:
It just kind of depends on the time of the year. And when I put those antennas on, it tells the entire class that that’s my do not disturb time. That’s the kid I’m working with at that point in time. Unless it is an emergency, that that is our time to work. So refocus on that. The kids know, they understand. Okay, that’s my. You cannot come over during that time because I am focused on giving them the feedback.

Emily Jamison:
Because when it’s your time to work with me, you want me to be focused on you as well. I tell them when they come over to do that work with me, they get to pick a color pen or a color marker I use from my bin that they want me to do edits with. So I say, okay, what color you want? They pick the color, we start working on it together. A lot of the time what I’ll do is I’ll do some of it in pencil. So say a word is spelled incorrectly. I’ll circle the word and then I’ll ask them, how do you write this? We’ll do it on a sticky note on the side. And. And then if they’re still kind of struggling to do it, I’ll write it on the top so that way they can go back and erase it.

Emily Jamison:
There’s certain things that I might move with the pen or with the marker where it’s like if a sentence. Let’s say they’re writing a research paper and their thesis statement is in the wrong spot. Okay, I might make an arrow just saying, move that up to the top or move that here, that’s where that belong. Or this line sounds really good, but maybe not really good there. So let’s put it to the side for now. A lot of the times what I also do is I draw an arrow to the side of the paper and then we’ll write it on a separate piece of paper so that that way their writing still remains their writing, just with little touch ups to it. But it’s not scribbled and crossed out and looking at it like defeat. It’s looking at it saying, okay, I have all these revisions that I can make.

Emily Jamison:
I have all these great things to go off of. And these are elements on the side that if I want to include, I can.

Matthew Worwood:
I love that. I absolutely love it. And listen, you know, we kind of like, getting pressed for time. So we kind of have to move into our last couple of questions. But you can see your love and passion for your teaching and the students that you serve. And I’m gonna. I’m gonna invite you just to comment on something that my middle son had made on the way back. And I think it was our last day of school.

Matthew Worwood:
He was kind of, like, reminiscing on the year, and he said to me, he said, dad, I don’t know how she did it, but she said, Mrs. Jamison turned us into a family. We are a family. And I’m really upset that I’m not going to be with my family for the summer, you know, and compared to other years, I mean, I get the fact age is a factor as well, but that as a parent, when you hear something like that, that was. That was wonderful to hear. So I’m wondering if there were any specific strategies to which you used. You know, they’re a great class. You’ve said that they’re one of your favorite classes.

Matthew Worwood:
But there’s a lot of energy in that class, you know, and there’s at times, you know, agitation that comes from the playtime, from sports. And it would kind of carry through the lesson for my son to say something like that. It was a big deal. And so I am fascinated on how you got the class to see themselves in that way.

Emily Jamison:
So at the beginning of the year, one of the things that we do is we tell. I tell the class, whatever happened in previous years, whatever happen in fourth grade or third grade or second grade, we leave it at the door. You’re in a completely different classroom. You’re in a completely different grade. Nothing from the previous years should carry over. So it’s a clean slate. It’s a fresh start. We don’t talk about anything negative that happened in previous years.

Emily Jamison:
So it’s kind of getting rid of that mentality and moving forward of looking at it like, okay, this year is a clean slate. And then everybody has a personality, just like in a regular family. I tell our. We read a book called Our Class as a Family, and then we list out elements of our character traits of who we are, because everybody is different. And some of those elements should be embraced. You know, like, some kids are silly, and that’s part of their personality. They shouldn’t have it squished down just because it’s not appropriate for school. Okay? But they have elements where they can express it in terms during school, where it is okay to be expressed, and their silliness, they can have that sentence, but learning when and where to use it and when and where it’s appropriate, and then having that translate to have them learn, okay, I am funny, I am smart, I am kind, I am this person and I want my classmates to see it.

Emily Jamison:
But also learning, okay, this is not the time to be acting that way. Maybe I’ll save that comment or I’ll save that joke, or I’ll save that energy for transition time, or I’ll save it for a time that’s more appropriate. So it helps them kind of learn to embrace their uniqueness and embrace their qualities, but also learn when and where it’s appropriate so that when they go into life, you don’t want them sitting there and suppressing all of their silly energy or maybe something that is truly who they are as a character, but you want them to embrace it, but also learn the appropriate times to say it. So throughout the year, that’s just something that we work on and say, okay, is that fitting? If something happens, is that fitting for this time? No, probably not. Okay, so let’s see. Now it’s the time. That’s a great job. Then the class laughs with it.

Emily Jamison:
See, that’s a great job of using that silliness or that joke or that time during this time period.

Matthew Worwood:
And before we ask the last question, and Cindy, I know you’ve got it on your list to ask this last question, you know that psychological safety that you’re creating is going to be conducive for creativity as well, because they’re going to feel more likely, they’re going to feel more comfortable taking risks, and they’re probably able to feel more comfortable taking risks because they know if they make a mistake, they’re not going to feel shamed. And so it is such an important part of facilitating an environment that can nurture the expression of creativity in young children. So as a parent of that class, thank you, Mrs. Jamison, for a wonderful year last year.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Emily, before you go, we ask all of our guests the following question. So can you tell us about your most creative educational experience, either a formal or informal educational experience? And why was it your most creative? And then can you tell us a little bit about that impact that it had on you?

Emily Jamison:
Yeah. So you’re talking about when, like something that a teacher did for me.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes.

Emily Jamison:
So when I was younger, one of the things that actually really stood out to me is that I teach in fifth grade, we teach the westward expansion. When I was in eighth grade, we learned about the Oregon Trail. And I remember at that Point in time, we were getting ready for high school. So majority of our work was essays. They were teaching us how to write essays. Most of the school year was writing formal essays. And our last project of the year was a video essay. It was like a video prep.

Emily Jamison:
So our teachers explained it to us, and they told us that we would have to explain the Oregon Trail in a video diary. And they gave you a group, and it ended up being all of our friends, which was really nice because if you’re going to do this kind of skit and act it out, you do want to be comfortable with the people that you’re around. So I thought that that was really nice that they put us with our friends and we had to film our version of the Oregon Trail, and we spent weekends on it. They gave us a certain amount of time to do it, and it was so much fun. And I still remember it like we had a covered wagon, and we had to take time to build this, and we had to make our costumes and make it look believable. And everything that we did at that point really helped us kind of take in that experience. It wasn’t so much of being like, okay, these are the facts of what happened on the Oregon Trail, but it kind of put us in the shoes of the people that actually had to go through that experience and learn about it and say, that really happen. Like, these people really had to do this and how hard it was for us just to reenact it.

Emily Jamison:
I can’t imagine what it would be like to go through that. So having that video essay really kind of changed my perspective that things aren’t always as concrete and just straightforward as writing an essay and regurgitating kind of what you learn, but putting it into perspective and having taken that moment and realized that real people had to go through this, and it really was a real experience, and it’s hard reenacting it, so it must have been so hard going through it.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, Mrs. Jameson, Emily, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. Now, if you’re a teacher who is listening and wants to learn more about creativity in education, we invite you to visit our website and explore our collection page, where episodes are grouped together in topics like creativity in the arts or creativity in stem. And if you don’t find a topic you’re interested in, please reach out to us at ideasueling Creativity Podcast, and we’ll be sure to make one for you. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Cindy Burnett and Matthew Worwood. Our podcast assistant is Annoying Fernando and our editor is Sheikh Hammond.