Matthew Worwood: We talk a lot about the importance of creativity in education, but when it comes to funding priorities and teacher training, creativity often feels like an afterthought. That’s why in this episode, we’re gonna look beyond the slogans to talk about how money systems and professional preparation shape what’s actually possible for creativity in today’s classrooms.

And we’ll be doing that with Susan Riley, author of Creativity’s Edge, unleashing Humanity’s Greatest Advantage in the Age of ai. Hello everyone.

Susan Riley: My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood,

Cyndi Burnett: and my name is Dr. Cyndi Burnett.

Susan Riley: 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 fields 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 [00:01:00] scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood: So let’s begin.

Cyndi Burnett: Today we welcome to the show Susan Riley. Susan is an internationally recognized educator, author and founder of the Institute for Arts Integration and steam, the world’s largest online professional development provider for teachers and leaders using arts integrated approaches. She has spoken at the United States Department of Education, national Public Radio, and Americans for the Arts, and her articles have been featured in numerous publications worldwide.

Her latest book, creativity’s Edge, unleashing Human’s Greatest Advantage in the Age of AI is being released this week and today we welcome her to the show. Hello, Susan.

Susan Riley: Hi, I am so excited to be here.

Cyndi Burnett: So Susan, you open your new book Creativity’s Edge with a provocative question that I really appreciated.

Why isn’t creativity a priority in our [00:02:00] schools and workplaces? And when you look across education industry today, what do you think keeps creativity on the margins, even though, everyone says that they value it.

Susan Riley: Yeah,, it’s the thesis really of the entire book, right? It’s why I dove into various components of this ’cause it’s a tricky question. But at the heart of it, really, I was surprised by what the research really brought to light, which is that it’s really an equity issue. It’s and it’s not. Just equity in and of itself.

It’s really a socioeconomic issue. It’s about money. And that was really surprising to me because the first thing that you think about when especially as educators, if you were to poll educators, in fact we did, we said, what do you think is the barrier, the biggest barrier to creativity in teaching or in education?

And immediately people are gonna say standardized testing.

Cyndi Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Susan Riley: Testing kills creativity. And that. Is true to a degree, but if you unfold everything as to why did we get into this testing mentality in [00:03:00] the first place, where did this come from? Why is this ingratiating itself instead of the things that we know are gonna advance our children in the 21st century and beyond?

It all comes down to money. What schools have money, what schools don’t have money, where they can invest their time? And that money being spent in terms of teaching. Looking at things that actually work. When you have schools that don’t have money, they don’t have time, right? Money buys time. Wow. It’s not about the materials, it’s about the time.

It’s about the time that we can spend with our students giving them opportunities to be creative. The time that we have with our curriculum what’s expected in that curriculum, how do we get it done? The teaching methodology. Kinds of teachers that we can hire, the backgrounds that we provide, the teaching artists and extra components that can come in to support creativity, all of these things it really comes down to money.

It was really interesting to see that in broad daylight. And it had just be this stark [00:04:00] reality sitting in front of us because money we can fix. We can add money to different pots, but when it comes down to it, it’s about priority. Money. We give money to things that we prioritize.

And creativity, up until this point has not been prioritized. It has been seen as fluff. It has been seen as nice to have. Our affluent communities can have that because they have the money, they have the time, they have all of these extra things. So it’s not been, the priority for them because it hasn’t had to be.

If you were to look at the career tracks of our students and where we were pushing them and wherever they were landing,

creativity was living on the fringe, but it wasn’t something that was required of them to succeed in their jobs for a very long time. And we know this, the history of education with the industrial age and how it evolves for a very long time, you could have just stood on an assembly line and done parts and, done your thing on that assembly line, and that would be fine.

My [00:05:00] grandparents did that for 50 years, right?

Cyndi Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Susan Riley: That’s not the reality anymore. And especially with ai, there is very little that is coming down the pike. That is something that AI will not be able to do. So what is it that we can give to our children to allow them to thrive in an age where AI is coming right, or is here?

Mm-hmm.

Prosper and to really, experience life in a whole new way.

Matthew Worwood: Just to follow up on this, because you know what I think you’re saying when you say that money is primarily the problem is that you are saying that money is directed towards certain subjects.

Is that right? Yeah. And are you saying that it’s about the mastery of those subjects or are you saying that some subjects might provide more opportunities for creativity over others? I just wanna piece a little bit more [00:06:00] in terms of how you are seeing creativity being facilitated, promoted,

in a classroom environment.

Susan Riley: Yeah, that’s a really good follow up question because. Lot of times when we’re talking about creativity, people think it’s like this subset that we either have to teach individually, as in an arts class, and in order for us to qualify as having creativity being taught, it’s taught in the arts class or it’s, it’s a subjugated as a integrated component to your own classroom. And the arts are not necessarily a part of it. And really it’s both, right? And so all subjects can have creativity being embedded into it. And it’s about intentionality on how to do that. Many of our educators want to do that. In fact, that’s why they get, you don’t get into education to just, create.

A worksheet or even to just copy a worksheet and give it to students, right? We’re creative individuals. We wanna facilitate creative thinking, creative thought experiences for our students. The problem though is when your curriculum is so [00:07:00] jam packed with this, pacing guide mentality, which still is prevalent in many schools, right?

It’s not, that’s not the exception. That is the rule that many of our educators are facing. And time. Remember, money buys time and when you have more money, you can give teachers more planning time so they can collaborate, they can connect with another teacher and look at creating creative experiences or even creative habits that their students can be a part of every day.

When you don’t have that money, your teachers are lucky to get planning time if they’re not covering another subject area lunchtime, going out to do car duty, something else. And so that’s what I mean when I say that money is really at the root of this, because when you don’t have funds, you don’t have options.

Cyndi Burnett: Okay, Susan I do agree with you. And I wanna unpack something because I look at some of the districts that we’ve worked with that do have a lot of money.

Susan Riley: Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett: And, [00:08:00] we’re looking at private schools they charge a lot. They have professional development funds to, to actually bring creativity in, but they don’t.

Susan Riley: Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett: So why aren’t they bringing it in? And do you have examples of schools that have been bringing it in successfully with additional funds?

Susan Riley: Yeah. I, and I wanna make it clear, you don’t have to have extra funds. You can get creative when you don’t have the funding. There’s ways that you can work around that, but knowing that is gonna be your biggest obstacle is the first step.

For those who do have money. And, there’s a great example. There’s a school that is close to us that’s a private school, has a ton of extra money that comes in. They have every opportunity to do something like arts integration, steam, project-based learning, things of that nature.

And they don’t, because their main goal is getting their students into college. They’re playing the college game.

Cyndi Burnett: Yep.

Susan Riley: And the college admissions game for a very long time , is waited on a lot of different things. And so when it comes [00:09:00] to, if you have a lot of money, you have to look at what’s your end game,, who are you playing to.

And in this case, in private schools, oftentimes it’s to colleges. Now colleges are starting to change some of their requirements, what they’re looking for. And I’m starting to see a slow shift in schools that are playing to. That particular end game because they’re seeing that hey, colleges are wanting to see more, well-roundedness, more access to artistic experiments, creativity and how you’re writing, especially in the writing prompts and the essays that are coming in.

They don’t wanna see, the standard boilerplate because hello, that’s AI that’s coming at them. So there’s, they’re starting to change that, but there’s always been a list of you need to have. These courses in order to get into the top programs you need to be in AP physics and calculus AB for, in order to be considered for higher level programs.

And so schools that’s their pathway, they’re gonna spend money on the things that get them to that pathway. At the end of the day, [00:10:00] you have to look at where your end game is. So for schools that the end game is not necessarily college, it might be career in tech, it might also be college, it might be career readiness in whatever capacity.

We need to look at the more opportunities that you’re trying to get. Or pathway. So you’re trying to send your students

The more opportunity you have for creativity to actually be leveraged. Because as we get to know these new workforce skills that are coming out, we wanna prepare our students for that.

You can then build those relationships. That’s where, when I, when we look at an example of schools that are doing it well, the schools that are doing it really well have partnerships with community businesses, with career and tech centers, with their colleges. And they’re having conversations with them.

They’re talking about , what gaps do you see that our students need? And where can we fill them? And then they’re also leveraging those partnerships to get the money that they need in order to provide those things. So it truly becomes this [00:11:00] synergy between schools, higher ed, career tech, and industry in order to develop those skills that our students are gonna need.

The schools that are having that singular pathway. We’re just getting everybody to this point because that’s what, we’ve always done. That’s where it gets a little tricky.

Matthew Worwood: And I think, this is starting to make sense to me with the money piece. Because the money piece, ultimately where it gets spent is what we most value.

And we’re talking about things like priorities when you’re talking about public private partnerships with research. Advocates for, and I certainly have been involved in a number of public private partnerships. Fantastic. But they take time and typically you’re gonna need to put together a committee, an , ad hoc committee, or at least have an individual who’s going to dedicate that time, as does the businesses.

Because that’s the other thing that I’ve noticed in higher ed, is that. Industry is never short of wanting to partner as well, but they’ve gotta find that one person. And so even within the business it’s [00:12:00] okay, am I gonna be paying this person this much money per hour to be working on this additional project?

So I could see that connection. And the other piece of it of course is that, the professional development piece in, ’cause you had referenced you don’t need money to take my science class for example, and identify ways to promote creativity. But if, but it does require training, requires teaching teachers about creativity, how they can, if I’m a science teacher, how I can integrate creativity within my science class per se.

And so when we get something like, at the moment, if I had to guess last year, this year, there’s been a big emphasis on the science of reading. And we don’t wanna undermine that need. Skill and knowledge to reach those high level of creativity post-graduation. But when you look at that science of reading.

How much of it those sessions are gonna be dedicated to cultivating things like imagination and, interpretation, identity, emotional, all those different things that we [00:13:00] know can feed creativity. What I would imagine happening is here are, procedures of the science of reading that can improve readers in your classroom.

Therefore. Coming back to the standardized test that can be demonstrated that we’ve seen those improvements on the test and that’s where the creativity piece gets lost. So what I’m hearing you say is that really it’s a case of it’s, the, we value where we put our money, and it’s a case of, so let’s demonstrate that creativity is.

Central to, to what we’re trying to achieve in education by identifying a creativity officer dedicated more time to creativity. And that includes professional development as well, and providing time for the public private partnerships.

Susan Riley: Yeah.

Matthew Worwood: How we do that? I don’t know though. Like I’m overwhelmed,

Susan Riley: right?

Matthew Worwood: We do it because there’s so many other things that teachers and administrators are trying to accomplish. So it’s a really tough one.

Susan Riley: Yeah, it’s we’re dealing with competing priorities on a daily basis, right? If you pulled any single school, [00:14:00] like we just did this last year our average school that we’re working with is focusing on nine priorities right now.

I don’t know how you even say that. Those are priorities.

Matthew Worwood: Outta curiosity, how many days do they have of PD to address those nine priorities?

Susan Riley: Oh, whopping six or eight. If you’re lucky.

What do we even begin? So this is where embedding creativity as a part of the process and knowing that it’s not just about the product, right? It’s the truly the process by which we are embracing this. That’s really important because small steps.

Lead to big change. We know this.

Matthew Worwood: Mm-hmm.

Susan Riley: So even something simple like having a, an established procedure, like every, beginning of every class we’re gonna do a see, think, wonder, or there is no such thing as a, a failure. It is just a reiteration. So how do, what are we gonna learn from those failures?

Putting environments and habits into place where creativity is encouraged? And it is something that is built [00:15:00] into the process by which we. Facilitate education is the best starting line, right? Mm-hmm. Because it doesn’t require a whole lot, it doesn’t require us to shift our full curriculum, it doesn’t require a change in priority.

It does require us a slightly different lens. Like you just went from a 35 millimeter to a 50, right? It’s not a huge difference, but it provides a little bit of clarity. It gives a little bit of framing and it begins those conversations and it starts the curiosity component, and that’s really where I find.

Creativity starts to flourish in our schools and with our, with teachers and with students is when you braid creativity and curiosity because they are part of the same strand, right? The more we ask questions, the more creative students become, the more creative we become, right? The more constraints that we’re provided with, the more questions we have to ask, the more creativity we have.

Actually, even though there’s a ton of priorities in [00:16:00] it, and it’s and it feels overwhelming, I always say start small. Start really small. Pick one strategy, but make it a continuous habit or build a set of habits for yourself that are non-negotiables. Like for me in the mornings, I have this rule that I create before I.

It’s really simple for me, but it makes a huge difference if I get 15 minutes to write in my journal before I pick up my.

That puts me in a completely different framework for the rest of my day,

Than when I pick up my phone and first check my email, and then suddenly I’m barraged with everything I have to do and creativity gets put on the back burner, right? So small habits, little frames that you can commit to that don’t take much time, that can make a big difference or an easy way to begin.

Matthew Worwood: No, I’m not even gonna challenge it. But what I’m gonna open up is how much of this do you think, because I’m listening and I’m like, okay I see the money connection, but I also see instructional challenges, [00:17:00] right? Because some of the examples that we’re talking about and, and I, the school, it’s still.

Identifying how to promote creativity or teach creativity within these constraints we’re talking about. And I know that I’ve seen teachers do that successfully. So I’m just wondering to what extent maybe is it that actually the money, if you follow the money, it’s actually about teacher training. If we feel, if we devote in more time for teacher training, and teachers are like, all right, I know I’ve got a kind of rigorous curriculum and I’ve got the script and I’ve got these standardized tests, I can do all of this.

Mm-hmm. Naturally inside me, I know how to craft a lesson plan that not only teaches the content, but also can develop some creative thinking skills. Have those questions, the curiosity piece that you just referenced. Then maybe I am able to go and attend a session on the science of reading and not be taught the creativity piece.

’cause I’m immediately can make the connections by myself. So I’m just wanting to get your thoughts a little bit around the teacher training aspect as opposed to the money, [00:18:00] challenges and time challenges within the current system.

Susan Riley: Yeah, that’s a really good point. And it’s it’s something that we actually see on a regular basis in our certification program that we run.

That’s for veteran teachers, right? It’s for teachers who are already in the classroom anywhere from five years to 25 years. We’ve got the big, the gamut. And what was surprising to me on the second year that we ran that and we’re like seven years in, is that nobody knew how to write a lesson plan.

These are people who have been in a classroom for 25 years and they didn’t know how to write a structured lesson plan with vertical alignment standards alignments, looking at engagement into the process. Being able to go, looking at assessments that actually assess the standards.

Stumbling block for almost everybody. And what we found is that we actually had to go back and teach how to do that. And you know it, when you’re a practicing educator, you’re like, my lessons could live on a sticky note, right? And that’s the reality of [00:19:00] how we teach. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t know how to write an actual plan that goes from beginning to end.

And that we found was a direct relation to their teacher prep programs. And yes, those programs. There’s so much to cover. If you think back to your teacher prep time, I think, I go back and think, man, I don’t know how we got everything done that we had to get done in order to get me to graduate.

So that it is packed at the same time. Where are their priorities? What are the things that they’re actually teaching? Because if it’s not how to write a lesson plan because you’re gonna get curriculum. You don’t need to know that. Anyway, we’re gonna, we’re gonna miss that piece in order for us to move forward.

Yeah. But then you lose the whole process of how to create what that looks like. How to think critically, what questions you need to ask, how to know the process of teaching itself. Mm-hmm. ’cause it doesn’t always come naturally. Some people it does. But for a lot of educators, it is a craft.

And if we don’t set them up at as a foundational level of knowing [00:20:00] how to do those things, yeah. They’re gonna. They’re gonna fall behind and it’s gonna feel overwhelming. So absolutely. There has to be a dialogue and a change in the foundation of how we are prepping our teachers for the reality of what they’re gonna step into in four years.

Absolutely.

Matthew Worwood: I just want to throw something out there, so I’m gonna counteract my comment, but you’re also talking about existing culture as well, right? Mm-hmm. So you can imagine I’m a 21, 20 2-year-old, 23-year-old. I’ve just graduated from this program. I’ve been taught all of this I know I’m gonna go.

Be creative, but then you step into a culture at a school.

And they’re not doing these things. And before you knew it, after a couple of years, this feels a little bit risky. And so that does bring us back to that system piece a little bit that I basically lose all of that. Because of the results of the system that you were talking about so much at the beginning.

So tried to counteract. I couldn’t do it. I failed.

Susan Riley: There’s a lot to, there’s also the leadership aspect, mm-hmm. We teach a lot [00:21:00] of scaffolding, these frameworks of, you have to know how to write a lesson. You have to know what assessment and how to assess. How in the world do you even begin to assess creativity through the whole chapter in that?

What does that look like? You also have to have a leader who’s on board with you and wants to develop that as well and recognizes that. So there’s a lot of systemic things. That’s why I said the thesis is a big one. It’s not a simple answer anywhere.

Cyndi Burnett: And even the leadership piece met, it reminds me of Donna Luther, who runs the Inly School in Boston, she was this head of school, it was a pre-K through eighth grade school, and she talked about how, she had this what if culture.

So she’d say, I’m just. I just have ideas here. Let’s just go with some ideas. And every time she had meetings with teachers, she would say, okay, what if? And just having these ideas and just sharing ideas. And that sort of became a thing with the teachers and then it became a thing with the students.

And just even having something simple like that can be a culture shift in terms of bringing creativity in because suddenly you’re open to new [00:22:00] ideas, you’re expressing ideas, you’re not judging each other’s ideas. For us, one of our actions in our book is, that’s coming out is around keeping open, and I said, this should be the opening chapter because everything is about keeping open.

If we can’t keep open to things, creativity is not gonna happen. It’s just not so I think Matt it’s good that you tried, but I still think we’re singing in a very similar song. Just different parts. Slightly different parts, yes. So I wanna hear about this idea of the 212th degree, the final degree where transformation happens.

Can you tell us about this metaphor?

Susan Riley: Yeah. I’m the founder of the arts the Institute for Arts Integration and steam. Steam education. Mm-hmm. And as I was thinking about STEAM education for a little bit, I was like, what we typically think of as steam is actually water vapor.

Steam is something that you cannot see. Mm-hmm. So if you’re thinking about like a tea kettle and the water vapor that comes out, we don’t call that, we call it steam. There is a moment when it, when that temperature hits two 12 [00:23:00] degrees exactly. That suddenly it’s not water vapor anymore.

It’s steam, which means that it’s around us, but it’s invisible. It’s still, it has changed form and transformed, and that’s really where. We’re, we need to go. When it comes to creativity, it’s the foundational underpinning to the whole book is that it is so it surrounds us. We don’t necessarily see it all the time, but there is a moment when, in every teacher, every person’s life, when you’re working in something where.

That creativity just it’s the tipping point. It’s the two 12 degree where suddenly it goes from something you can see to something that’s intangible, but that still lives beyond you. And that’s where I want us to get to. And that it doesn’t have to be, a product showcase or your room doesn’t have to look like a rainbow through up in there in order for it to qualify as being creative.

It’s something that, surrounds us and and keeps going. It’s a real thing. You just can’t see it. That’s okay.

Matthew Worwood: But it’s a challenge for assessment, right? Within the system and Absolutely. Yes. But I think, and [00:24:00] we can shift into the, a little bit about the future of creativity but I know that

we’ve had people on the show that are talking more and more about this idea of being able to measure creativity, so perhaps part of the future. And the challenge is being able to put steam detection goggles on and being able to see it at least from a systematic perspective.

Susan Riley: I like that. I like that.

Yeah. In the book we have a chapter about assessing creativity and the. Some of the research that, that shows how you can assess it and how it lands on the four branches of creativity. Because I think when we’re in this mindset of what is creativity in our schools, we miss at least two of the branches that currently exist.

So there’s skills and there’s application, and there’s thinking and there’s expression. And oftentimes when we’re thinking about creativity. Especially when it comes to assessment, we’re thinking about skills and we’re thinking about application. Mm-hmm. But it’s, it can be a challenge sometimes to think about how do you assess creative thinking and how do you create, [00:25:00] how in the world are you gonna assess somebody’s creative expression?

And there are ways to do it. And it’s, and there’s ways to connect those branches and assess multiple things, multiple creative opportunities at the same time, and lots of different research around that. Different kinds of rubrics and tools, but too much to get into now. But it is possible, and that’s the thing that I wanna put out there, is that it’s not, creativity isn’t this fluffy thing

that you can’t put your finger on and assess at some point. You just have to be intentional about what it is that you’re assessing, why and what specifically you’re looking for.

Cyndi Burnett: Well, Susan, I’m really looking forward to getting a copy of your book this week. And before you go, I wanna know, we wanna know what was your most creative educational experience, either formal or informal, and why? And can you tell us the details of this experience and how it impacted you?

Susan Riley: [00:26:00] Yeah, so I’m gonna actually go all the way back to when I was in college.

I was in college during nine 11. We were about 45 minutes away from the Twin Towers where I went to school and I went to school at Westminster Choir College. We were a bunch of singers and that day, it was a powerful day for everyone. But we all came together to sing in what we called the Playhouse, is where we did rehearsals every day at 1120.

Cyndi Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Susan Riley: We all came together and to just gather as a community. And after talking about what was going on and how to, we all wanted to give blood all of the things right and making sure everyone was safe. Our conductor led us in a choir singing of the Lord’s Prayer, and in that specific moment of time.

The way that we all sang together, the way that their voices blended, the way we could hear each other the way it was a moment that was pure magic for me. And what that taught me was that the moments of creativity that are magic are something that will sustain you forever. Every time on nine [00:27:00] 11 that the day arrives, I think of that and I hold that prayer and I think of the people that I was with and the way that felt for me.

But also that once we dispersed from there, the magic continued. It wasn’t isolated to the moment.

The magic keeps going beyond when we’re together into what we do individually. So creativity is both a communal act and also something that we take individually and put our individual stamp on. That was my biggest lesson that I learned, and I think it sustained me for a long time.

Yeah.

Matthew Worwood: Thank you for that beautiful story.

Cyndi Burnett: That wraps up another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast. For more information on Susan Re’s work, be sure to check out her new book, creativity’s Edge and to keep fueling your own creative practice. Subscribe to our Fueling Creativity newsletter.

You’ll find the links in the show notes below. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett,

Matthew Worwood: and my name is Dr. Matthew Ward.[00:28:00]

Cyndi Burnett: This episode was produced by Cindy Burnett and Matthew War. Our podcast assistant is Ann Fernando, and our editor is Sheik Ahmed.