Action 9

Face the Feelings

from The Future Creative: 10 Actions for Fueling Creativity in Education by Matthew J. Worwood and Cyndi Burnett.

Scanned the QR code from the book? You're in the right place.

Creativity is an emotional experience. Face the Feelings makes the case that the real barrier to creative risk-taking isn’t skill or knowledge — it’s the fear of shame, the sting of embarrassment, and the anger that lingers after a failure. This chapter isn’t about normalising failure with a slogan. It’s about helping students recognise, name, and work through the emotions that shape every creative decision they make, so that when discomfort arrives, they have the tools to stay in the struggle rather than walk away from it.

“Emotions, whether sparked by ego, uncertainty, or failure itself, are not obstacles to be brushed aside, but experiences to be validated and worked through.”
⬇  Download the Face the Feelings Resource Companion resource for Action 9 from The Future Creative — coming soon

Episodes referenced in this chapter

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    Laura McBain & Ron Beghetto

    My Favorite Failure · Season 4

    The chapter's central argument in action — Laura and Ron push past "failure forward" to something more honest: the only way to teach failure is to name the emotions it provokes, not paper over them with a slogan.

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    Todd Henry

    How to Develop a Brave Habit in the Classroom · Season 8

    Todd opens the chapter with the question that reframes everything: what would you do if fear had no hold on you and failure was an option?

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    Salome Thomas-EL

    Using Chess to Teach Failure and Perseverance · Season 6

    Principal El uses chess to teach students how to enter the frustration zone — and how to lose with dignity, which he sees as one of the most important creative skills a student can develop.

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    Wendy Ross

    The Role of Serendipity in Creativity · Season 2

    Wendy's challenge to educators: students must build a "comfort with discomfort" — and we undermine that goal every time we remove the emotional struggle from a learning experience to make things easier.

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    Eitan Buchalter

    Integrating Creative Thinking in the Classroom · Season 3

    Eitan argues that uncertainty is a crucial ingredient for creativity — and that educators who engineer risk out of their classrooms are also engineering out the emotional experiences that teach students how to persist.

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    John Cabra

    Teaching for Creativity in Higher Education · Season 8 Special

    John's three-word instruction for students navigating emotional struggle in the creative process: stay in the struggle. Not around it, not past it — through it.

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    Zorana Ivcevic Pringle

    Emotional Intelligence and Creativity · Season 6

    Zorana makes the case for teaching students to regulate their emotions during the creative process — not to avoid negative feelings, but to use them as information rather than letting them derail the work.

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    Jim Friedman

    Looking Ahead to Creativity and Innovation Week · Season 1

    Jim's "failure bonus" — a grading approach that explicitly rewards risk-taking — is one of the chapter's most practical examples of designing consequences into learning experiences on purpose.

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    Kulvarn Atwal

    Building the Thinking School · Season 1

    Kulvarn's reminder that the culture of a school is set by whether educators themselves are willing to try new things and make mistakes — and whether they model what it looks like to face those feelings and keep going.

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