Cyndi Burnett:
Have you listened to the last three episodes of the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast? If not, you wanna listen to this episode. And if you have, you definitely wanna listen to this episode, because we’re gonna be debriefing our discussions around micro schools, creativity assessments, and bringing in serendipitous surprises into your classroom.

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

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.

Cyndi Burnett:
So welcome back to our second debrief of season 11. Now, Matt, we are a month into the semester at the time of this recording. It’s October 1st. Did you have anything exciting or interesting or surprising happen at the start of your semester?

Matthew Worwood:
You know what? It feels like such a long time ago. Is there a story I’ve shared with you?

Cyndi Burnett:
I mean, you’ve shared so many stories with me.

Matthew Worwood:
I. I can’t remember. Oh, yes, I know what you’re talking about with the Marshmallow Challenge. Cause we were speaking about this in the previous debrie. Okay, so, excellent, excellent opening question. I wasn’t ready for that one. So I don’t know if you remember. We.

Matthew Worwood:
I don’t. I don’t know if it was an episode or a debrief, but we’re speaking a little bit about. It’s the opening of season 11 podcast, and we was talking a little bit about different things that we can do to bring in creativity. Cindy had asked me what I do, and I had shared a little bit of information about the Marshmallow Challenge. And I believe within that episode, Cindy, you may have spoken about, you know, opportunities to change things up a little bit. And I.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, not. Not being afraid to get messy, essentially, because I know that you were concerned about creating a mess inside of your classroom.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, yes. Now the story’s really coming back to me. Yes, yes, yes, I remember it. So basically, I have the Marshmallow Challenge, right? And. And. And the Marshmallow Challenge. I’ve been implementing it for about, I don’t know, 10 years. I.1 of the things I like about it, I’m highly flexible in the conversations that follow the Marshmallow Challenge.

Matthew Worwood:
I think, you know, when you, when you turn it over to students and you say, hey, you know, what were some of the insights you got from. From that experience and how do you. Relates to your. Your start at the University of Connecticut or your learning experience as we move forward in this design, digital media and design program? And you get all these great conversations. Sometimes it’s around failure, collaboration, you know, giving and taking ideas. I mean, every single semester, I feel like I get a different conversation. So I do value it. But one of the things that I, I don’t usually do is change the marshmallow challenge a lot.

Matthew Worwood:
So this time I found myself in a situation where we didn’t have any string. And so those of you familiar with the marshmallow challenge, you have 18 pieces of spaghetti, you have a marshmallow, you have a yard of string, and you have a yard of tape. And I didn’t have. Oh, sorry, I didn’t have a yard of tape. So that’s kind of like, really important because most of the structures that you, you see, created utilize the tape to keep the spaghetti together. So I went into the class and I said, you know what? I’m going to go and implement all of these wonderful things that we talk about, the podcast, and just go with it and be open change. And so I went in with that mindset and I said, hey, usually we have masking tape, but today we’re not gonna have masking tape. You could have an extra piece of string, or I think I did a ribbon instead.

Matthew Worwood:
But I still gave them the same challenge. Build the tallest freestanding structure with the marshmallow at the top. And then a student asked a question that I typically nearly always get, is that, can we cut up the marshmallow? And usually what I say is no. And the reason why I say no, to be fair, is that, you know, you want the. The marshmallow at the top of the structure. So it’s easy to measure in the event that you’ve got two or three groups that have similar sized towers. Now, I remember when we was talking, now it’s all coming back to me. Cindy, you said, well, maybe you can have someone, you know, eat the marshmallow, for example, and be open to that, that question.

Matthew Worwood:
And we was kind of half joking, but I, I decided to say, yes, you can cut up the marshmallow, because I was somewhat sympathetic to the fact that they didn’t have tape. So, you know, we had all these folks turning into marshmallow. And then the students suddenly realized that you can kind of Almost use it as glue. So they found themselves kind of rubbing and warming up the marshmallow to create this kind of sticky texture to which they could stick the marshmallow. And the reason why I bring it up is it’s not usually a kind of messy art and craft, and it became incredibly messy. There was kind of like, you know, a mess everywhere. I tidied the mess to the best that I thought I could do. I had, funny enough, some of the most interesting marshmallow.

Matthew Worwood:
Sorry, Interesting spaghetti structures that I’ve ever, ever had. In this challenge, a number of students actually got their. Their marshmallow up as well. So it was a very different experience. And then on my way home, I received a text message from one of my colleagues that said, did you use glue today? Because there’s glue all over the tables. So I had to apologize. And then I Marco Polo’d you and said, cindy, you know, I kind of did what you said and said, yes, and I’m never doing it again because it created an absolute mess in my classroom. So, yeah, I totally forgot about that.

Matthew Worwood:
I forgot about the fact that you. We should talk about it on the show. And that’s me executing everything we preach on the podcast. And that’s also me saying I’m never doing it again because it made too much of a mess.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love that story. Matt, thanks for sharing that. And I think it really goes well into our first guest, which was Jason Blair. And if you don’t recall, Jason Blair was an art educator, and he talked a lot about how to bring creativity into the classroom. And I don’t know if you remember him telling the story about the first day of class and how there was a tunnel that students would walk to the door, and they’d have to crawl through the tunnel, and then on the other side, inside the classroom were a bunch of open objects that they could play with. And that level of serendipity and surprise that the students had showed the students that this was not going to be your everyday classroom, and this was going to be someplace that was special. And so I think building on that, you know, I’m sure your students were just thinking, like, wow, he let us, like, touch and play with and separate and eat marshmallow in class. This is going to be a college class like no other.

Cyndi Burnett:
And so I think having that element of surprise or serendipity like we Talked about with Dr. Wendy Ross way back in season one, I think it’s such a great way to bring creativity into the classroom is just some element of Surprise and fun and mess. Not. It doesn’t happen every day, but just once a semester, once every quarter, you do something that just allows people to get dirty and play and explore. So that was my first takeaway, and.

Matthew Worwood:
What a wonderful way to connect it to the story because I. This. This is a really creative opening to this podcast because my. My takeaway was very similar. And I actually, I think at one point, Jason, I quoted him as saying, kind of break away with the. From the chains. And I suppose in some ways, by me not having the masking tape, it forced me to break away from the chains. And I have to confess, if I had the masking tape, it probably would have run exactly how it always runs, and I probably would have said no to that question.

Matthew Worwood:
So, funny enough, I had a catalyst that disrupted how I typically go about this activity that forced that change. And so I think that serendipitous element is a great example of that, because sometimes we need those unexpected situations to force us out of those comfort zones. But to throw it back on you, um, what are some of the ways that we might be able to kind of, you know, find serendipitous moments and disruptions to our existing practice while kind of not looking for them or wanting them?

Cyndi Burnett:
So, Matt, you know, one of the things that I love to do is look for those moments inside of the classroom that surprise you. So a student might say something and it surprises you, and you can either go with it and play along with the students and make jokes and bring in objects, or you can dismiss it. Now, sometimes you have to dismiss it because you have time, but sometimes it’s just fun to play. Now, the other thing that you can do is think about items inside of your classroom. Maybe you don’t know why it’s there. I remember when I was teaching, I had someone mailed me 10 drumsticks, actually 10 sets of drumsticks. So I had 20 drumsticks. So I brought them into my students, and I said, I have no idea how I got these or why I got these.

Cyndi Burnett:
They were addressed to me. They were sent from Amazon, but I did not purchase them. What might be all the things I could do with them. And we just played with the drumsticks. We made different structures with the drumsticks. We used them as pointers in the classroom, and it was just so much fun. So I think anytime we can do that, I remember even, you know, a student brought in something like had something in their bag, and I realized it was part of a Halloween costume. And I put it on.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I came back in the classroom and I was Darth Vader with a sword. You know, any. Any of those moments that can bring in an element of surprise where students are like, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe this is happening right now. Is going to make it memorable and engaging.

Matthew Worwood:
I love it. And I think you’re right. I suppose there was that opportunity for me not to. Just to abandon the assignment. Right. And I didn’t. And I also could have run over to Target. And I was kind of sitting there thinking, do I have time to do that? Not time to do that.

Matthew Worwood:
And I chose not to. And I. And I think what you said earlier was I just. I just went for it. And I’m hopeful that there’s a teacher out there who didn’t receive drumsticks on that day, and they decided to work out how to play the drums without the drumsticks. And maybe there was a great creative outcome that come from that as well.

Cyndi Burnett:
So what’s one of your insights? You want to talk about David Richards about micro schools?

Matthew Worwood:
You know, I will talk about David Richards with micro schools, and I will tell you that that sparked a really cool idea with me. So this idea that we’ve got this movement and a growing network, different people for different reasons, setting up their own micro school. And if you did listen to that episode, I’d asked the question about whether or not this. This is. Was somewhat fueled from the homeschooling network, where, you know, you might have a community or a neighbor or friends that are also homeschooling their kids, and they’re looking to identify an office space, a building where they can actually set up their own school. And it sounds like there is a relationship with that. But we’re also now seeing nonprofits and other organizations put the micro scores. And so I suddenly thought to myself, I said, wow.

Matthew Worwood:
I said, theoretically then. And I feel like we’re going to air this. And now someone’s going to take my idea if it doesn’t always exist. But you know what? I’m not going to run with it. And I think it’s a great idea. We could have teacher training programs at universities setting up their own micro schools in their local communities and think about the freedom that they have to kind of explore and experiment. And particularly if they’re working with an existing micro school maybe where perhaps there’s already, you know, resources, including teachers and parents, that providing the curriculum and administrating it. It’s kind of a great way for, I think, teachers to, I think Express their creativity in a way that they might not necessarily have the opportunity to do within the traditional classroom environment.

Matthew Worwood:
So what do you think of my idea? That I know someone somewhere right now is writing down and planning to run with it.

Cyndi Burnett:
So are you saying teachers are doing the professional development with students that come on campus?

Matthew Worwood:
Kind of. I’m literally saying so you could have a university that has their teacher training program and the administrative team. Maybe they receive some funding, maybe they work with the non profit, but they establish a micro school. They seek out an opportunity to establish a micro school inside, within their community. And the teachers training in the program are teaching in that micro school, developing curriculum for that micro school. And the reason why I bring it up is I feel like it connects a little bit with some of the conversations we had about Henry Smith and the lack of creativity within the system and the idea of kind of like constructing a new house while you still got the existing house.

Cyndi Burnett:
I think that’s a really, really great idea, Matt. And I think I would build on that because my concern, if I think about it from a, the stakeholders of public schools and you know, you’re getting trained in a school that’s sort of non traditional and then you go into a traditional school that might not be easy to make that transition. But I do wonder if in graduate school, as part of your graduate education, you work within a micro school to try new things and explore new ideas. Because once you have that foundation, then you could go in and say, here’s what I think isn’t working, let me test it out in this microschool. And the other thing I love about that idea about doing it at the university is that inspires students to be like, this is where I belong on a college campus. Like I, I want to continue on my learning into college. So it’s almost like a college prep ish kind of school. So.

Matthew Worwood:
And also. No, and I think that’s a good point and I think maybe you’re right and I kind of like thought a little bit about that. You know, it might be good that they have a micro school that they’re connected to and maybe there’s an opportunity, some, some, you know, exploration, exploration of different strategies and curriculum there. But then also they should absolutely still have an opportunity to do their training in a, in a traditional environment as well. But I, I think that there’s some good questions that you’re raising and you know, and maybe I do need to go and think a little bit more about my idea. But I think it also brings that last piece you said it also brings that entrepreneurialism a little bit as well. I mean, you know, I, I shift over to your takeaway, but I think probably that entrepreneurialism could have also been a close second takeaway. For me.

Matthew Worwood:
The micro schools, this, this entrepreneurial culture or, or trend that we see towards education is I think just got another new framework to, to available to people.

Cyndi Burnett:
I agree and I think my, my biggest takeaway, and it’s, it’s slightly brief, but is that I wish I would have 10 years ago when I left my teaching position at the college, I wish I would have started a micro school because I would have loved to have started a micro school on creativity. And I think, I think you probably felt the same way, like with our having especially our children and thinking about how our children learn and how our children are very creative individuals. I would love to have started a creativity school for them. Because I think one of my frustrating things right now as my kids are sort of heading out of high school is just the lack of inspiration. They feel like when they come home, there’s nothing new to report. There’s no serendipity or surprise. It’s just sitting in and listening to their teachers. And I just feel like learning can be so much more.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I think micro schools really have that opportunity to explore new ways of learning and really to create lifelong learners. And I think in the voucher programs that he was talking about, so David Richards, in the micro schools, he was talking about the vouchers and how when in states where parents have vouchers and they can use that money to go wherever they want or they could start a micro school, I mean, it makes it feasible for really anybody to do, I mean, anyone that knows someone who’s starting micro school. Right. So I think there’s so many opportunities there. And as we start to have these conversations like we did with Henry Smith about, you know, do we need to, you know, him saying we need to burn down the house and rebuild. These are ways we can sort of prototype this new educational system. And I think it’s really exciting.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. And also to, to pick what David said, you know, build that micro school relevant to your community and local needs. And I don’t want to undermine anyone who’s thinking now that that also creates chall if you’ve got lots of people working on different curriculums and potentially coming out with different outcomes. But I, I think from that creativity perspective, the, the whole concept of micro schools, as you say, is a highly creative idea.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay, Matt, we’re going to Talk about Cellchuk Ajar’s episode. And if you remember, he talked about his new creativity assessment that is available to anyone and, and you can go and take it for free. And it’s assessed on one single answer that’s meant to be surprising. So you see this, this whole theme of surprising happening right now. And if you go to, you search Moats, which is Michael, Oscar, Tango, Echo, Slima Moats, and you will find this open creativity scoring assessment. So, so I’m going to take you through it right now. I’m going to fudge you on the spot. Are you ready?

Matthew Worwood:
Yep.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay, so I want you to come up with one surprising answer or use for a backpack. Let’s hear what it is.

Matthew Worwood:
Carrying eggs.

Cyndi Burnett:
Carrying eggs. Okay, next second, I want you to think of a surprising example of something that is loud. So give me a surprising example of something that is loud.

Matthew Worwood:
Mosquitoes.

Cyndi Burnett:
Mosquitoes. Okay, I want you to complete this sentence. When the friends met on the playground, what happened?

Matthew Worwood:
They shared a burger.

Cyndi Burnett:
They shared a burger. Okay, amazing work. All done. Now we’re going to have the motes scored and downloaded.

Matthew Worwood:
You’re going to tell me that didn’t score very high on my creativity test as co host of the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
So it did score it for you. And you scored on originality. On the carrying eggs, you got a 2.0. On mosquitoes, you got a 2.7. And when the friends met on the playground, they shared a burger, got a 2.6. So there is, oh, actually a 3.0 on the loud piece. So now you have a mean and a median. So you can see where that would benefit.

Cyndi Burnett:
If we looked at a bunch of different results, you could see where your results fell based on other results. Does that make sense?

Matthew Worwood:
It does. I think I break the rules. Cause I took the burgers. Because you got some burgers in your image. Do you have to, do you have to come up? Do you have time? Is there a time factor? Because I thought my. My bag one. As soon as I said eggs, I came up with a much better idea, but I felt pressured for time. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m ruining your takeaway.

Matthew Worwood:
I think it’s absolutely brilliant. And that, that was awesome. You put me on the spot. But I think that that exercise was amazing. And so to throw it back to you, what’s the future with this? Where is it going? Why is it your takeaway?

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, I think what’s so interesting about it is just in a really quick, you know, maybe you take. Even if you Took five minutes to do this activity. Five minutes, not much time. And there’s some little videos you watch in between. And then you can look at your students and see where some students might be more original and others might not be. And, and you might be able to see that some student has that ability to craft original responses. So maybe that helps give you a glimmer into their sparkle. How about that?

Matthew Worwood:
I love it. And you know, to build on that, I think there’s opportunities for you to be in class and have your students write down the answers and then put it into the system. Maybe give them a little bit of time to come up with those answers and then ask AI the same questions and then they have to, to input the questions for AI. And I suspect based on the research you’re going to find that there’s a lot more originality in the students responses as there would be to AI responses. And I think that, you know, there’s also opportunities to. If you’re one of the listeners and you’re familiar with things like the Torrance incubation model and targeting, for example a creative thinking skills such as originality and pursuing originality. It could be really fun for teachers to now do this kind of their pre and post assessment where at the beginning of the semester they test the originality of their students, go on this journey of when they’re trying to promote originality and then at the end do a post assessment and it’s kind of like some nice, fun, action oriented research. I think that these tools can keep providing or rather these tools could serve as resources for teachers that are interested in doing that.

Matthew Worwood:
Because that was a very quick, simple way of evaluating my creativity. So thank you. Even if I did badly. Well, Cindy, I feel like I want to kind of come up with a really great way of putting you on the spot. But unfortunately because of my lack of creativity, I’ve got, I haven’t got a really good idea on how to do that. So all I’m going to do is share a comment that I thought was really interesting that Celchuk said. I wrote it down. It says when schools teach well, they are teaching creativity.

Matthew Worwood:
I just wanted to get your thoughts about that. I thought it was a great, a great, a great comment. It’s something that I think I’ve always believed as well. But I want to see, you know, unpack this a little bit and say what do you think is meant around the statement like that?

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, I mean, you have to think about what he considers, well, what is good teaching. That’s That’s a question of, in and of itself, what is good teaching or what when something is taught well, is it, it’s clear, students absorb and understand it. And I would say engage with it. I would say that’s what teaching well is about.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I, because, does all creative teaching happen in that capacity of clearness? You know, I don’t think it necessarily does. So I think there’s definitely overlap, but I don’t think they’re one and the same.

Matthew Worwood:
You know, it’s really fascinating as well because I’m hearing you go into the creative teaching piece and get the connection with, with, you know, creative teaching and that’s part of, of bringing creative creativity out in the classroom. But I, I mean the other way of phrasing it is do you have to be a creative teacher to teach creativity? And so the reason why I bring that up is that I wouldn’t necessarily define my use of the marshmallow challenge and the way I facilitate the conversations afterwards as representing creative teaching. I think I’m implementing an activity, a well oiled activity I think I’ve kind of perfected over time. Of course there’s elements of creativity. I don’t want to say that there’s not. But ultimately, you know, my take on this a little bit is that if we are providing students with information that they can construct as knowledge, then that knowledge, those new discoveries and connections that they’re making is, will lead to creativity and will help fuel creativity. You know, and way back when we had a conversation with Jonathan Plucker, you know, we had this conversation about do we ever start with a blank canvas? And if you think about these kind of, even this, this concept of incremental creativity, we’re typically building on things that have come before, which, in which obviously is, is knowledge and our experiences. So I think the key thing that I went away and I started to think about is that, so going back to the evolution versus revolution piece, maybe it’s not so much of and, or, but actually just revisiting the recognition that if we can be successful in our students mastering content and providing opportunities for them to apply their knowledge of that content to real world problems, then we will continue to teach and facilitate creativity.

Matthew Worwood:
And there’s probably lots of different ways to do that. But even with the current system, we don’t have to actually break it down and rebuild it. The system itself, if done well and we meet our objectives within that system, we can teach creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt, I just want to say, you know, you say that wasn’t a creative activity or that it wasn’t creative, but the activity itself was creative. But you as a teacher might not have felt creative because it was a prepackaged sort of lesson, right? So you weren’t being creative in the way in which you took it and you implemented it, except when you didn’t have the materials. And then you had to be creative in how you were going to approach it. So I think going back to the beginning of the this episode, when we talked about how do we bring in these serendipitous moments, it’s taking those and embracing those. And you just, you just gave us a great example of that. So thank you.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed this second debrief episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And we do want you to go to our website, fuelingcreativitypodcast.com, subscribe to our extra Fuel newsletter, and of course, engage with us on LinkedIn, where we have some regular conversations about past episodes and conversations with past guests. And before we go, Cindy and I do want to do just a really quick shout out to Jimmy Wilson, who’s our emerging scholar in residence. Jimmy has just had a baby, and we’re wishing him his family, his, his new family well as they kind of transition to what is such a beautiful and exciting time that so many of us can relate to. With 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 Ah.