Imagine two classrooms, each with the exact same supply closet — inside, a stack of empty cardboard boxes that has been randomly gathered during the academic year. 

In the first classroom, one of those boxes is used to store textbooks, another stores forgotten waterbottles, and sweaters, and the others wait for other things to be put into them. 

This makes those boxes useful for sure, but that’s the extent of their use. They’re containers, and they’ll always be containers. 

In the second classroom, those same boxes bring a classroom to life, offering an opportunity to play rocketships in the playcorner. A stage to act out a play. A way for students to shade their screens from the light, and customized private cubicles for silent reading. 

Same boxes. Same Objects. Completely different outcomes. 

So what’s the difference? It’s not access to resources. It’s how existing resources are perceived and utilzied. 

And that’s part of the challenge behind the expressed difficulty of budgetary constraints and limited resources… are we maximizing what is already available? 

We’re on episode eight of this summer series, which brings us to the eighth of the ten actions for Fueling Creativity in Education: Maximize the Environment.

WHAT “MAXIMIZE THE ENVIRONMENT” ACTUALLY MEANS 

This action isn’t about acquiring new resources or addressing budgetary constraints. It’s about rethinking how we utilize what we already have. 

There’s a theory in education called sociocultural theory, and some of its core concepts are that we don’t think, learn, or create in a vacuum. We have people and objects that influence how we engage in a learning experience, including how we express our creativity. 

A pencil, a whiteboard, scrap cardboard, and even unused apps on our chromebook — how we use them is ultimately determined by how we perceive them. And that perception is often influenced by the assumptions we form through observation, training, and how we associate them with past objects. 

WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE 

Consider the interactive whiteboard for example. When it first showed up in classrooms, many teachers used it exactly like the chalkboard it replaced — writing on it, nothing more. It took years of exposure to other ideas before teachers began using its interactive features to build entirely new interactive learning experiences. The technology didn’t change. The perception did. 

Another example to consider is Google Docs. Most of us use it the way we used Microsoft Word in the 1990s: type, save, done. But strip away that assumption, and it becomes a real-time collaboration space, a feedback tool, even a platform to create interactive, game-based lessons students navigate through embedded links. 

None of these advancements required new resources or software. It just required a different question: what else could I do with this tool? 

THE HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 

This week, take fifteen minutes, alone or with a colleague, and look around your classroom or learning space. Pick out six to eight objects or pieces of technology already available. Write them down in a list, and for each one, ask yourself: what else could this do?

Generate at least three alternative possibilities for each item, including the unconventional, or even the absurd. Then narrow it down to one idea you could realistically explore with your students. 

And if you want to take it further with your students, hand them the same constraint. Give them a design challenge using only what’s already in the room — no new supplies, no budget. 

THE BOOK HOOK AND CLOSING 

In our book, The Future Creative: Ten Actions to Fuel Creativity in Education, we share more stories of how educators transformed their classrooms or designed entirely new spaces, using simple, everyday objects many of us already have access to. This can include turning the media library into an interactive museum, transforming a corner of your classroom into an innovation hub, or building an entire maker space out of materials you already have on hand. 

This is creativity in action: the capacity to see things in new ways, to reimagine existing tools and spaces, and to see new possibilities in what’s already there. 

We hope you enjoyed this episode of our Summer 2026 Listen and Learn series. And don’t forget your letter for this week, it’s E. 

Write it down, hold onto it, and keep collecting because you’ll need all ten to unscramble the secret phrase and enter to win a signed copy of The Future Creative. You can submit your entry at FuelingCreativityPodcast.com/summerreading2026, and that’s also where you’ll find more information about the book, including where to pre-order it. 

We are still booking guests for Season 13 of the podcast, so if you have ideas for researchers or practitioners you’d love to hear from, or topics you want us to dig into, please reach out at ideas@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com. 

Stay curious, keep that door open, and I will see you right back here next week.

Thanks for listening to Fueling Creativity in Education.