Matthew Worwood:
Hello, and welcome to our first debrief episode of season 11 of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And because we’re on YouTube for the first time, or shall I say we’re making a commitment to produce a whole bunch of episodes on YouTube throughout the season, we want to just give you a quick summary of the debrief. So Cindy and I engage in a debrief to talk about our past three guests that have been on the show. We have 12 episodes in a single season. That means we produced four debriefs, and today’s the first one, as I said, of season 11. So, Cindy, why don’t you tell us who we are debriefing today?

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. So first we had Dr. Henry Smith, who is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and is the former Assistant Secretary of Education for the Clinton administration, who talked about policy. And then second, we had Emily Jamison, who was an elementary school teacher of Matt’s son Liam, and she came on the show to talk about bringing creativity into her classroom and building a culture of family in your classroom. And finally, we had creativity researcher Dr. Keith Sawyer, who talked about his latest book. And you just read it. So what was it called, Matt?

Matthew Worwood:
In fact, I still have it on my desk. It’s called Learning to See Inside the World’s Leading Art and Design Schools. That was a great conversation.

Cyndi Burnett:
So we’re going to be talking about these three episodes and our three big insights based off those episodes. So, Matt, do you want to get us started? Who would you like to talk about first?

Matthew Worwood:
So let. Well, we should do it in order. So let’s talk a little bit about Henry. And we’ve touched on education policy before, but I think this was the first time we had someone who has experience, particularly working in government, the national level. And, you know, it was the conversation around school vouchers. You know, you and I have had some Marco Polos about school vouchers, and obviously, with the current administration, it’s come up again recently. And it’s the. The conversation ultimately centered on the system and the lack of creativity in the system of schooling.

Matthew Worwood:
And when we started to talk a little bit about finding alternative models, this idea that school vouchers could provide an opportunity to fund or at least support alternative model and therefore gaining greater attention on those alternative models so that if they are successful, possibly there’s opportunities for that success to be replicated within the larger public school system, I found that really fascinating. And I found myself in a situation where I was saying, okay, we’re looking at the system lacking Creativity, then I probably need to be a little bit more open to some of the suggestions on how to improve the system, including things like school vouchers, because, you know, there might be people listening right now that school vouchers are bad. I mean there’s a lot of concerns from an equity perspective around school vouchers. But ultimately I suppose my takeaways for me to be a little bit more open in terms of my how I’m reviewing the system and you know, avenues to which creativity may unexpectedly come from.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah, it’s interesting about the school vouchers, Matt, because I’ve also had sort of mixed feelings that if students get vouchers and they can go to private schools or pay for other schools and there will still be money that is required for those schools. So only those students that are middle class would be able to attend those schools, leaving students that are low income behind in back in public schools. So I see the concerns around the vouchers. And at the same time we have an upcoming interview that we’ll be sharing with someone who is in microschool movement who talked about the power of vouchers to create your own micro school. And so I think that was also a little mind shifting for me. And I’ll just heighten the anticipation there, Matt, for our listeners to say that this episode was really enlightening in terms of the possibilities for the future. Because ultimately what I found fascinating and I was a little nervous going into this interview with Dr. Henry Smith and he was so lovely, but I was nervous about what he was going to say, like creativity doesn’t belong.

Cyndi Burnett:
But he was all for creativity one and second off, he said not only is the school system not working, but we need to tear down the house. And that’s the phrase he to used, tear down the house. And I remember thinking, wow, he’s really for that revolutionary approach. Because that we’ve had many times conversations on the podcast about do we need an evolutionary approach and small changes or revolutionary approach. He was all for a revolution to just totally tear down the house and rebuild from the beginning. And so I think, you know, the vouchers could be one way to set sort of test that idea. But I thought that was really interesting and scary. And I remember him saying, and I wrote it down actually.

Cyndi Burnett:
He said, I remember talking to someone that was a faculty member in the department of Ed at Johns Hopkins and they said, well, if we knew what the secret sauce is, we would all be out of a job. And there’s something powerful on that is that we’re all trying to figure it out. And this is a question that comes up in conversations over and over when we’re at educational conferences and we’re working with schools. You know, what is it that we truly need to do to catch up with the current state of the world? So I think the vouchers piece could be a really interesting avenue to test things out.

Matthew Worwood:
What was your second takeaway of our first three episodes?

Cyndi Burnett:
All right, so let’s talk a little bit about Emily Jamison. And I think one of the things that I loved it was a really simple strategy she used that I would like to just reiterate in case you didn’t listen to that episode. But one simple strategy she used was making time for feedback in her classroom and specific growth oriented feedback where she would have a student come up and she would say to the student, pick the color of the pen that you would like to use for me to write your feedback. And so giving students that choice and agency to select the color and then going through and explaining the work and how they could strengthen the work they were doing. And I remember she did something that was a visual cue to the rest of the classmates that it was her time with that particular student and they should let her work with that student and not interrupt. And I just thought that was a really powerful way to sort of set boundaries and allow the students a little agency. And it reminded me of something that really bothered me. When my children were in third grade, they had a teacher who he had them journaling all the time.

Cyndi Burnett:
And then she would go with a red pen and just write all this feedback in red pen. And there was something like viscerally wrong with that to me because I’m like, you know, during third grade you’re writing in a journal. This isn’t like a research paper. I wouldn’t do that to my graduate students. But I do like the idea of feedback. So giving them that choice of like, I want my feedback in purple sparkles, you know, and writing your feedback on that and you look at that and it makes you happy instead of making you feel that yuck reaction to that red pen that means everything you’re doing is, or some of the things that you’re doing is wrong. So that was my big takeaway with Emily’s and of course, you know, her talking about the family and how the best environments feel like family. But is that creative? You know, and I think it, I think it is.

Cyndi Burnett:
But does it need to be at that level in order to be highly creative?

Matthew Worwood:
What do you think oh, you gave. Gave a lot there. I mean, the first thing was she put something on the head. I forgot what it’s called the headband. And funny story, Liam, as you referenced, was her student last year. We had a wonderful time with Mrs. Jameson, and he loves elephants. So over the summer, after she told us that story, because we recorded it before we went away, I actually found some elephant type bands, and I gave it to her last week just so she’s got another kind of headset that she can wear.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think those visual cues in the classroom are great. And I would say creative. Right? You know, as we’re kind of like creating our routines, I think that’s an example of that everyday creativity. How do I come up with an outcome that helps students recognize that this is my time with somebody else other than them? And there’s probably lots of ways we could do it. And the way Mrs. Jameson chose to do that, I think was a creative outcome, and I think it’s the example of us being creative in our practice. So, yes, I do think it is. As we’re working toward building that culture of family and the instructional methods and decisions that we make or the protocols that we put in place to do that.

Matthew Worwood:
Just before I kind of share my. My takeaway, it was funny, you know, when you was talking about that red pen piece and you. You alluded to it, but I want to kind of throw it back and challenge you to expand a little bit more. We have on this episode, encourage us to think exactly as you just referenced that feedback. We use, I think, in one of the episodes, as it is, in essence, a note to go forward with. And so if we’ve successfully created a culture where feedback is just seen as a note to be better, and perhaps we even value feedback, then it wouldn’t necessarily matter what color the pen is. Right. So are we getting them to choose the color of the pen? Because, in essence, we’re still acknowledging this discomfort with feedback and therefore, potentially a shortfall in our efforts to make feedback, you know, normalize feedback as part of the learning process.

Matthew Worwood:
What. What’s your thought on that? Is it. What’s. What’s the word? Are we, in essence, putting a band aid over the problem or not?

Cyndi Burnett:
I don’t think it’s putting a band aid on it. I think it’s actually making it a little bit more playful. So if I’m looking at something in purple sparkles that you’ve given me feedback on or going to take to that a little bit more than I would take to red Pen feedback. And maybe that’s my own bias against red pen. I remember having like a writing teacher in college who just marked everything with red pen. And it was like the more red pen you saw, the, the more worry you got that, you know, you don’t know how to write sort of thing. But I think just make normalizing it and giving students a way to accept in a way that’s pleasurable to them is, is a positive thing for the classroom. I don’t think it’s putting a band aid on it.

Matthew Worwood:
Okay, I could keep going on that. But I think, I mean, ultimately giving them a choice. Right. I think there’s certainly a plus that a situation that might be perceived as creating discomfort by going and having some choice. You might even get to a point where a young child is like, oh, more sparkles, more sparkles on the paper potentially. Right, I see that. But I’m still, I’m still going to go away and think a little bit more because ultimately, potentially are we in a time because of how many things that teachers have that actually, the more red pen you see on the paper, it actually might actually suggest the more commitment and dedication you’ve had to that paper. And as I said, the more, the more feedback you’ve got to make it better and changing that mindset.

Matthew Worwood:
But it also could be something that we have to think about differently by the grades as well.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right. And I think it’s also contextual. Right. It’s like if, if I’m looking at a third grade journal where students, you’re just trying to get students ideas out, that might not be the place to use a pen. Right. Because you just want them writing, you want them in the practice of sharing their ideas. But as they get into middle school and especially in high school, maybe you do take firm hand to like your purple glittering marker and giving them a lot of feedback because they’ve learned how to generate ideas to articulate your thoughts. So I think it is contextual as well.

Cyndi Burnett:
Like, I don’t think there is a reason why you need to give a young child in elementary school a lot of that feedback on things that are just like, tell us about something you did this weekend or tell us about your best friend or what’s something you love to do in the summertime, like those sorts of things. It’s really about just getting students to generate ideas. It’s almost like diverging and converging at the same time. Right.

Matthew Worwood:
And yeah, you’re right. And potentially delaying judgment in some places. And it’s all part of that, you know, the whole conversation was also that sit down that one on one time with the teacher, with the student. So if you’ve got that one on one time, then obviously there’s certainly less need to kind of communicate everything on the paper. All right, so my one Mrs. Jameson was very simple.

Cyndi Burnett:
And you know what, it could just.

Matthew Worwood:
Be an oversight on my part, but I was really taken with the strategy of getting students to write about their summer and write about themselves. Because obviously there’s a lot of passion towards writing, but being able to express yourself on the page and deliberately facilitate ongoing questions. But with the strategy of, oh, I’m actually, it’s not about, yeah, I’m testing their writing, I’m getting them to do some free writing, etc, but it’s also a tourist strategy for me to better know my students as they’re coming in the year. And it seems like, you know, an obvious idea. And I kind of worry that everyone’s like, yeah, we’ve been doing that for years and months. But, you know, I was in the grade one classroom and I never did that. It never occurred to me to do that. And I just really like that idea.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think that speaks to Mrs. Jamison. I’m biased. I’ve experienced Mrs. Jameson, but you know, that the whole. She really knows her students throughout the year. And I think studying starting off with that activity shows a commitment that this is. I’m going to provide a learning experience, but I’m also going to go get to know my students from the very beginning and do my best to kind of make various connections to them, their personal interests and their personal background along the way.

Matthew Worwood:
I love that. So less of a takeaway, more of just an acknowledgement of a teacher that obviously I really admired and grateful for.

Cyndi Burnett:
Based on last year and the importance of starting off the school year not only with this mindset of I’m interested in knowing you, but getting students to write their ideas and share their ideas and making writing a normalized thing. Right? Especially, I think, at the elementary school. It goes back to the story that I just shared about the third grade. Teachers like you just want to get them writing and thinking and sharing, and the more they feel safe in doing that, then you come in and with the layers of, hey, why don’t you try this? Why did you do this this way? You missed a period here. Let’s make, you know, all of those things they sort of scaffold in because they feel safe in sharing ideas with you.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I love it. Really love it. Great, great, great episode Great. Two episodes. So third one. Our third. Why don’t you start with.

Cyndi Burnett:
Why don’t you start with Keith Sawyer?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, first of all, you know, I enjoy Keith’s book. And, you know, the. The obvious connection for me is that Keith is conducting research in a space that I’m very familiar with. So I teach in University of Connecticut School of Fine Arts, so I’m regularly interacting with artists and designers. And, you know, I struggle to define me and my place in that. I probably. My instructional design background, design thinking background, it allows me to relate a lot with design. But some of the things that we sometimes see as art and the art process, perhaps I identify with less those still highly respected, but I interact with a lot of colleagues and know in that space.

Matthew Worwood:
And it’s always been fascinating to me around that creativity piece because of the stereotype around creativity in the art. I know myself. I’ve recognized that if someone says, what’s your background? I don’t typically say creativity when I’m in that type of environment, because I think it sets up a lot of misunderstandings. And everyone ultimately sees themselves as being in the field of creativity, and arguably they could say that they are. So sometimes we find ourselves then saying the science of creativity. And I think even that creates some challenges. So I think ultimately I was really excited to have our interview with you, and ultimately I got even more excited when it was centered around the book that evolved to being Learning to See. So instead of learning to be creative, it was learning to see.

Matthew Worwood:
And seeing is so important in design and it’s so important in art. But also what’s wonderful about seeing is the different perspectives to which we can see and learn to see. So just that general concept really, really enjoyed. And I could go on and on, but if you want to provide me with a specific point, the Studio Talk piece, I think the Learning to See, you know, Keith referenced something in the book called Studio Talk and spoke a little bit about that episode. And I think we need to make sure we have sufficient time that typically art studios provide. When you talk about what you’re seeing and you talk about what you saw emerged, and you get to reflect on the different seeing that’s occurring in that environment. But the challenge for me is how do you take that Studio Talk, which is where you’re talking about what you see and what you saw into other domains or other subjects rather, when perhaps the time is squeezed. So that was.

Matthew Worwood:
That was really my. My takeaway. And I don’t know if you’ve got any thoughts of that, because I know when we speak to educators, there is a feeling that time is squeezed. And I think the level of talking that’s needed to find all of the seeing that can exist in a creative experience could be an entire lesson, could be two lessons. So how much time do we actually dedicate in this very packed curriculum to just having conversations about, what are you seeing?

Cyndi Burnett:
I love that Matt and I have so many questions. So let’s start here. We. When people ask you that are in the arts and design, what’s your background? What do you say if you don’t say creativity?

Matthew Worwood:
I think I say creativity in education and trying to facilitate and cultivate creative thinking. I sometimes by default, might use the word design thinking, but I know that doesn’t do my background justice, so I don’t like using it. But you can see even in that response there, Cindy, I’m struggling. And it’s interesting, you know, it’s. That struggle has primarily come about because of my experience working in the department. And it could be, you know, myself doing it, might not necessarily be from anyone else, but it’s definitely a question I struggle to answer.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, it’s interesting, Matt, because I. I think I say that a lot. I’m noticing that. It’s really interesting. Our podcast is really interesting. I have had so many conversations with artists about creativity, and, you know, like, one of my passions is bridging the language between arts and sciences of creativity. And I have always found that going to artists of any capacity and saying, I’m going to talk about deliberate creativity, and sometimes that’s a phrase I use, deliberate creativity. They just, you know, they cross their arms and give me the eyebrow furrow and don’t really want to listen.

Cyndi Burnett:
They’re not. I would say they’re typically not open to that idea. I actually had one woman who just got up and walked away and said, I’m not listening to what you have to say. So I laugh because I’ve experienced that as well.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett:
You know, I laugh because it’s. It’s mildly comical because, you know, one of the first principles we teach is, is keeping open. Right. So it’s like, wait, come back. Just keep open just for a moment. And you’re trying to have that conversation. And. And I know we tried to ask Keith about what designers say, and he said, they just don’t say, don’t.

Cyndi Burnett:
Don’t say what I’m doing is creative, but they consider themselves creatives. So. And I remember that conversation we had with Dorta Nielsen from Denmark, and we asked her, like, how do you do this. And she said, it’s never been an issue. So we see this range of feelings around the word creatives with people like designers and artists, and it is confusing in terms of the language and how we approach it and what we do. But going back to what you said around what you see, it reminds me of my son who this year has taken an AP art class. And he decided sort of late in the game in the summer that he was going to take this APR class and he wanted to focus on photography. So it was just a few days before school started.

Cyndi Burnett:
And he said, mom, I need you to drive me around because I need to take photographs around a single word. So the word he chose was night. And so we had to go find 15. Had to go take 15 different pictures of night. And, you know, I go to sleep at 9 o’. Clock. And so that was challenging because it had to be between 8 and 9 o’ clock that we were driving around trying to find pictures of night. And it was all different.

Cyndi Burnett:
He had all these different ideas of how he perceived night and how he would capture that in an interesting way. And then he had to showcase this on the first day of school. And I left, and I said to my husband, who also loves photography, I said, we should think about doing a challenge like this, like once a month as a family like that. We pick a phrase. And not kidding you, this guy walks past us with an Oreo T shirt that day, because we were walking around Canada. This guy walks around with an Oreo T shirt that says, stay playful. And he said, that should be our theme for this month, Stay playful. And so all of a sudden you think, okay, let’s see what kind of images we can capture around this theme.

Cyndi Burnett:
Stay playful. What does it look like? What does it look like to you? What does it look like to me? What does it look like to. Now, let’s expand this into the classroom. We get everyone in the classroom to focus on what does stay playful look like. And let’s bring those images together and let’s have a conversation around that. So going back to, like, how can we bring this into the classroom? I think that’s a very simple way, is you’re teaching maybe a vocabulary word or a content piece. How was this particular thing that happened in history? How is it impacting your world? Now? Let’s go take. Let’s think about that and take a photograph of that.

Cyndi Burnett:
And our goal this week is to find a photograph that represents how this incident impacted this. Whatever it is you take a photograph of or we had Joe Buller on the podcast talking about math and concepts of math. How can you capture concepts of math through images? There’s so many different ways you can bring it in. But what I think is really interesting is now, ever since that day, we went out looking for images. Everywhere I go when it’s nighttime, I’m looking for an interesting image to capture on my phone because I’m like, this is really fun. It’s really fun to take photographs and. And it’s fun to be, like, on the lookout for something. And I think it’s one way that we can both heighten anticipation and extend the learning around a particular content area.

Matthew Worwood:
And, you know, you were using the word a lot, like, what does this look like? You know, and then having conversations about, you know, well, this is what I saw. And, you know, I think that that still speaks to this idea of what do you see? But then also, no. When you actually told me that story a couple of weeks ago, I was going to play with you and said it was. It was curious that because you had said you had to get up between five and eight. And I think a really fun question would. Could have been, well, how do you see night during the day? And it might have been fascinating that it didn’t have to be at nighttime. Night, the concept of night probably is expressed in different ways during the time. And I was.

Matthew Worwood:
From that conversation I had with you, I was thinking about, well, how do I differentiate night leaving? And I started to say to myself, well, there’s typically dew. There’s typically that calm, you know, like. Like night has just left birds chirping, things like that. That. That can represent night in some ways as well. But the key point is we do need that opportunity to have a conversation about it. Why did you select that image? Why did you. What do you see here in this historical artifact or what do you see happening or occurring in this historical event that we’re talking about? And then what do you see? What similarities do you see between this event and, you know, today’s events? And imagine that you are this or you have this background.

Matthew Worwood:
How might you see things differently? And I think that that ultimately is what you’re talking about and building upon. I love that idea. So, again, it’s finding the time to pose those questions. What do we see and what do we hear other people see? Yeah. Fuhman Foreign.

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt. Well, I think that was a great kickoff to season 11. And before we go, we did mention in our launch episode that we were going to share something about a dance that you’re going to learn by the end of the season. Did you find out what the dance was called?

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, yes. Thanks for bringing that up, Cindy. It was, it was called the Shuffle. You had the shuffle. No, you don’t know the shuffle. So.

Cyndi Burnett:
No, you gotta show it to me.

Matthew Worwood:
That that’s the dance move. It’s like, it’s like. And you know, my knees feeling okay at the moment. So.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. If you missed our opening. I was talking little, a little to Cindy, who had shared a story about dance that I wanted to to try and do a dance move by the end of the year. And Cindy didn’t know what dance move I was talking about. It’s called the Shuffle. So you could have to go on social media. It’s like the Running man. But Cindy, I really enjoyed the first three episodes.

Matthew Worwood:
Some challenges with the fact that it’s video, some additional hurdles that we had to cross, but looking forward to our next three guests and our next debrief together. And of course, we are getting a little bit nearer to the national association of Gifting Talented Conference where we will be presenting as well. And anyone who is listening and have not signed to our Extra Fuel newsletter. We encourage you to go to our website fueling creativitypodcast.com you can subscribe there as well as catch up with past episodes and also check out our collections page. My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Cindy Burnett and Matthew Warwood. Our podcast assistant is Anne Fernando and our editor is Sheikh Ahmed Sa.