What happens when we create space for students and educators to pursue ideas that might initially seem difficult, unconventional, or even unrealistic? In this episode, myself and Cindy are joined by educator, principal, and author Dan Moult to explore creative problem-solving through Odyssey of the Mind, a program familiar to many educators for challenging students of different ages and backgrounds to collaborate, imagine, build, and solve open-ended problems.

But the conversation also moves from student creativity to educational leadership because Dan discusses why leaders need to remain open when teachers bring forward new ideas, even when the logistics make the first response like it should be a no.

And that connects directly to Be Open, one of the ten actions in our book, The Future Creative: 10 Actions for Fueling Creativity in Education. Because supporting creativity in education isn’t simply about asking students to generate new ideas, and even asking teachers to generate new ideas for that matter.

It also requires creating cultures where educators feel able to propose, explore, and develop ways to improve their school and class community.

 So from Odyssey of the Mind to the principal’s office, this episode asks an important question, how can we become more open to the ideas that might move our schools and community forward? 📍

 Today we welcome to the show Dan Malt, who is an educator and school leader with nearly two decades of experience. He began his career in 2007 as an elementary teacher, developing a passion for engaging instruction, educational technology, and creative problem-solving. While teaching, he coached Destination Imagination and Odyssey of the Mind teams,  and founded a STEAM club to  give students opportunities to collaborate, innovate, and explore. He later served as a technology integration specialist before becoming an elementary school principal in 2023.

Dan completed his educational leadership studies at Buffalo State University and is now enrolled in the Creativity and Change Leadership program. He is also the author of Creativity by Design and the host of the Real Talk School Leadership podcast. Welcome to the show, Dan 

Hi there. Thanks for having me

And Dan, I have to tell you that we were recommended to interview you by our very first guest on the show five and a half years ago, Dr.

Susan Keller-Mathers, who is one of your professors, and she said, “You have to interview Dan. He’s doing such cool things in his show.” So we’re really looking forward to this conversation

That’s awesome. I was in a class a couple years ago with her, and I’m in a class again this semester, so 

Fantastic. So Dan, you’ve worn just about every hat in the elementary school,  from classroom teacher, technology specialist, and now to  principal.

Along the way, you coached Destination Imagination and Odyssey of the Mind teams, which are two programs we’ve actually never dug into on the show, so we wanna start there. Can you tell our listeners, who may not be aware of these programs, a little bit about your work, and why you chose those programs for your school? 

Sure. So, those programs were actually already at my school when I came in 20 years ago. I think they were there for about 30 years, within my school district. So when I came on board, the first couple of years that I was there, I wasn’t quite ready to jump in yet because I really needed to dig my heels into, teaching and getting my, footing there. But as soon as, there was a teacher who retired,  she was, the coach, and she  passed the torch off to me, and I was happy to jump into that. When I was with her, it was just an incredible experience. So we started with Odyssey of the Mind. So for those who don’t know, it, there’s teams of seven students. It is, primary level all the way up until college actually. And we had third and fourth graders in the program, and we would, spend  the entire year from September until probably  February-ish, getting ready for, the tournament. So there was a local tournament, and then also a state tournament, and then a world tournament as well. My first couple of years, we had third and fourth graders, like I mentioned. We pick a problem at the beginning of the year. For both of the programs, there’s multiple problems that you can choose from. there are theatrical,   problems that you can choose. There is   an engineering problem to choose, and various other problems as well. It never failed that my students always wanted to go, with the engineering problem. So many of the things that I remember doing with my students, we would, have to build a structure that would hold as much weight as possible. And then that needed to be based on that year’s theme, there was an entire production that the kids actually had to write, a theatrical production that the kids had to write, which was  about 10 minutes or so, around that problem.

So some of the students were in the background, putting the weight on the actual tower that we built, that was always connected to the actual storyline that the rest of the kids were in front, and they completely wrote and designed everything themselves. So, as a coach, you’re there to facilitate and nudge in the right direction and make sure to clarify all of the directions, but really   it’s on the kids.

So to have  seven, eight, nine-year-olds, they’re looking through this problem and having to explore and be creative and solve this, it was truly like, it was one of the best experiences that I’ve ever had. The kids were incredible. The parents were incredible. I think the hardest part was, and this is not just with, Odyssey of the Mind or Destination Imagination, but it’s with anything teachers do, it’s very difficult to allow  kids to just take the reins, right? 

Because I think as the adult, we always wanna jump in and we want to, we wanna guide, we wanna give too much information. But I think that’s exactly what Destination Imagination and Odyssey of the Mind do. Like hands off from the adults, guide, support, make sure they have the right resources and tools, but really it’s on the kids to fully, implement the problem , and present that at each one of the competitions.

Yeah, it was a great  experience. I think I did that for probably around,  maybe seven years or so. We had, we had teams who did make it to the state level. We had teams who made it to the, the national championships as well, so that was also an incredible experience to take kids to different universities around the country when we made it to the world tournament, to compete against kids from truly not just the US, but around the world, which was an amazing experience for them 

And , I just want to follow up. I have no doubt that many of our listeners may have either participated in Odyssey of the Mind or be very familiar with it. But you, just to go back, it is a challenge that’s available to everyone. You  shared the age group. You referenced  that there are different problems to choose from. Are you in a position to , give us an example of a problem? W-was that the problem, build the, a structure that can carry the most weight? Or is it, that was the outcome of the problem? 

Yeah, there were multiple. Actually, this is funny. This last school year, I was the commencement speaker at our, district’s graduation, and this group of kids that was graduating, it was probably one of the most memorable teams that I remember from, 

Oh. 

Destination Imagination.

So that, that group of kids graduated last year, and it was definitely a full circle moment, to be with them back in the day, competing in this problem and then, and to be at the commencement this year. So that team, they were told that they had to, again, make  some sort of, design out of balsa wood.  Very specific regulations of as far as how much you could use, how heavy the structure could be. And they had to design this, but at the same time they had to develop that presentation, that theatrical presentation as well. And what I remember  about that one is it could take place, the setting could take place In any location, which they chose space. the entire thing was all on space. I think it was actually on the moon, if I remember correctly. They had to develop each one of the characters. Each one of the characters had to have  a full description of,  who they were, their age, what they, what their positions were, what their job was. Then they had to develop this entire thing, but it all had to tie back to that structure. If I remember correctly about this structure, there were weights, just like a normal, a round weight  that they would put on over top of a pole, which then went on top of their structure. And, for that, because the weights were the disk-type weights, they used those. They said that those were different UFOs that were going on top of the structure, and they had to see how many of those could sit  on top of that. As  that was going on in the background, like I said, the production was happening in the front. Now, the challenge was you have to build a bunch of prototypes, right? The kids tested it out throughout the entire year. We had to make various structures  to test them out throughout the year to see how much  weight we thought that would hold. When we got to the competition, we had an idea of how much weight it would hold, but you also, as the production is going on, when the structure breaks, you also need to modify and continue on with your production, right? There’s a bit of, improv  embedded in that because you’re never really knowing  when that structure is going to break in the back. It was a wonderful thing. Actually, I just found some pictures of that recently of the kids standing in front of their structure at that competition, and, again, one of the more memorable experiences I’ve had as an educator.

 I love it. And I love that improv nature. It’s like the cognitive flexibility we talk about so much in creativity, is being able to say, “Okay, this isn’t working. How are we gonna pivot into something else?” So what I find really interesting about what you just said, Dan, is letting the students take over and giving, and coaching them, because you’re considered a coach, right? 

That’s correct, 

So you’re coaching them, but not giving them the answers. How do you balance that piece between being there for them and leading them, coaching them, but not coaching them?

You know, not giving them ideas

Yep,   that was certainly one of the, most difficult things for me, and I think as any teacher, like I mentioned That is, we always wanna jump in because you want your kids to be successful, right? But giving them that productive struggle, I think is, imperative to anything we do in helping kids prepare for the world, right? I think for me it was always, going back to the actual parameters that were provided to the students.  So when they came to me and to say, “Well, how can we  do this?” It’s like, “Okay, let’s go back and let’s take a look at the rubric. Let’s take a look at what you were provided.

Let’s re-read through those and see if there’s anything else that something that sparks with them or, it may give us an additional idea.” Now, the other thing that was really great about this entire, Destination Imagination and Odyssey of the Mind was there were a lot of times throughout the year where we were able to get together with,  other school districts and other kids who were doing the same types of  problems. So although technically they were competing against these students, there was so much collaboration with some of the other kids from the area. We would get together, I would say, once a month, sometimes twice a month on a Saturday morning, and we would just have collaboration time with the kids, not just about this problem, but also we would just give, various problems, and this is where  being a coach was really cool.

We would develop different types of  problems where we would give these to kids, have them collaborate with kids that they’ve never collaborated with before, so that way they were able to just get the brain juices flowing there, I suppose, which helped in the real problem once we got back to school and we continued working on that.

Removing yourself, as a coach, certainly difficult, but we found ways for kids to collaborate with other students, to move us forward. 

And I just want to follow up because there is to a certain extent, because my understanding with Odyssey of the Mind, it’s almost like a sports tournament. You’re building a team you’re obviously, training, and then you go and compete in the tournament. If you win your local tournament, then you progress, as you said, state, national level. But there’s opportunities obviously, I think, for people to participate in Odyssey of the Mind challenges and not necessarily feel that they have to have that pressure to go and compete at a tournament or  maybe they choose to do an internal tournament at that school  because obviously parental volunteers, having teachers volunteering their time for this is not typically something integrated into the curriculum. But the other important part of this, if I’m an educator listening to this and thinking, “Well, this sounds awesome, I wanna do something like it, but maybe not at that level,” is that while we’re talking about this conversation around guiding on the side, the Odyssey of the Mind challenge, and that’s why I was asking some questions about the problem itself, Daniel, is that it’s not kind  of require specific technical  skills or subject matter expertise, not just from the students, but also from that coach along the side.

It really is a problem that starts with quite low barriers to entry. It’s not like robotics where you assume that those with certain technical skills, are gonna need the support of a coach with technical skills.  It’s a low barrier to entry that allows you just to engage in the process of creating and making, creative problem-solving.  And ultimately, where that challenge takes you, yes,  there’s a need to acquire knowledge along the way, but that’s where the coach can learn alongside the student. So actually it’s the skills of just being able to problem solve for yourself, the skill to know how to learn as well. And these are things that I think many of us possess. I just wanted to share that because I think there is something unique about the Odyssey of the Mind that might not always be in every other, challenge or project-based learning type challenge that we have available to us. 

That’s a really good point. So a couple of things. First of all, all of the problems, all of the old problems are available online. So if anybody wanted to go and find those, you could certainly just search, Odyssey of the Mind or Destination Imagination and see some of the problems that have been brought up in the past.

Now,  I will say that when the kids … Because I never  limited, and we’re not supposed to as coaches, we don’t limit the problem that the kids choose, right? So there are multiple problems to choose from. The first couple of meetings through, at the beginning of the year, we would take a look at all of the problems, read through those.

There were actually little videos that went along with those too,  so the kids could really, understand what the problem was.  never failed, like I mentioned, that the kids would jump to the engineering problem. And I’m not an engineer, and it scared me to death in the very beginning.

I’m like, “Engineer. Like, how am I ever going to do this with the kids? Like, how am I supposed to be a good coach when I don’t have   that mindset, that knowledge myself,”   it always worked, and I think that’s the wonderful thing about kids. Anybody who works with kids, that they’re able to just jump in.

They’re not scared. They’re not nervous to jump in. They just, “We’re gonna figure it out,” and I think that’s the, generally  a kid’s mindset, right? Just explore, and figure it  out. Yeah, I would certainly recommend to go, find some of those problems because even if you don’t do the entire problem as an educator, you could bust out some of these problems and use those with students throughout the school year too. One thing that I  will say is that we did start  moving, about, six years ago or so, maybe seven years ago, we moved to a different model. Now, the reason that we did that is because Odyssey of the Mind and Destination Imagination, they’re only teams of seven kids, What I saw happening, because , my  time is everyone’s time is extremely  limited, and we wanna make the most bang for our buck with our students.

We wanted to get more kids involved, and we had so many kids who wanted to be a part of, both of those programs, both DI or Odyssey of the Minds, and it just isn’t possible because of the way that it’s set up. So we moved to more of  a STEAM Club model, but we still use a lot  of the same principles.

So we actually, Matthew, we did go and pull some of those problems to use during STEAM Club with a bigger group of kids. So although we didn’t compete at the competitions, we still used the same style problems, in our STEAM Club

 ​

📍

  So Dan, I wanna talk a little bit about your book. You wrote a book called Creativity by Design. We have had people in the past, guests on the show, I’m thinking Casey Lethrop from our first season of the podcast, who talked about teachers as designers.

But what I’d love to hear from you is how do you design a school for creativity? What have you done? What have you tried? What have you been successful with, and what are the challenges that you faced? 

Sure. I think, one of the first, experiences I had with CPS and, when I was in my educational leadership programming. , At Buffalo State, we take two classes in the creativity program, and when I took the facilitation I remember a  few people who had already been a part of those classes saying, “It  will be, completely for you.”

Your mindset changes , when you start looking at the CPS process and start implementing some of those things. And as a very early, leader in my school, just moving into the principal role it was easy to start just weaving in some of those practices. So once I  actually did, get my position at my school,   we started using some of those practices at our, meetings.

Any meeting, I think it’s easy to weave in some of those things. One of the first things that I remember was a faculty meeting where we were just putting up the tenants, like, “Hey, let’s defer judgment. Let’s come up with wild and unusual ideas.” We were using some of those  things in our faculty meetings because we did need to change the mindset.  Being a part of the same school for the last 20 years, I have never left my school. I’ve always– I student-taught at my school. I was a third and fourth grade teacher at my school. I was a technology integration specialist there, and then I was the principal of the same school. And we had been through multiple leaders during that timeframe, and they  were all wonderful, and I learned great things from them, but I  knew that I needed to change the mindset of how we ran some of the meetings in our building, to make sure that every voice was heard, to make sure that, there was a good psychological safety is something that I always come back to, just making sure that people feel comfortable exploring and, bringing forth their ideas and weaving in the CPS  practices into all of our meetings, I think has  been really a game changer.

I don’t walk into a meeting and say, “Today we are going to use

this protocol.” Like, that’s not me. That’s not who I am. But I know how I can weave some of those things into our school, and that really has been a game changer, just making sure, like I  mentioned, everybody’s voice is being heard, and  ensuring that when someone comes to me with an idea of something that they would like to try I never shoot that down,

And I have to say I feel very lucky to be in a school right now where my superintendent feels the exact same way. When a teacher comes forward and says, “Hey, I wanna start a new club.” And,  a couple of years ago, we had a teacher who wanted to bring back  , have an elementary school musical, which we had never, we haven’t had in a really long time. And our superintendent’s like, “All right. Let’s figure out a way to do that,” right? So letting people explore their passions, bring in their ideas we have so many wonderful clubs and activities for students even at the elementary level right now. 

You know what? I wanna pick up on that because that’s actually a really important point. I serve on the board for my kids’ school. But also just to your point, working very closely with teachers, understanding principals, superintendents. You had referenced how difficult it’s been for us to get a meeting with you, and that’s part of the principal life

you’re always putting out fires. And  I think that’s really important because the reality is, let’s take a musical.  I wanna put on a musical. schools may only have one hall, one theater. It might be that many schools are in a situation that hall is also the basketball court, right? It’s also where the kids go after school to, for extra school curricu-curricular. The reality is, when a teacher comes and says, “I want to do this,”  it is probably going to create  disruption and logistical challenges for other people to solve. I mean, it might be, sure, if you can solve A, B, and C, go for it. But the reality is, when that thing starts moving, it’s gonna create logistical challenges for other people. And I would imagine during the academic year, and it might be interesting if principals, like teachers,  there’s certain times of the year where it’s like get the request in because  they’re more likely to be receptive. But I would imagine that certain times during the year, it must be really, really difficult to be open to those ideas. But it sounds to me, what you’re saying, that is part of the step, even if it’s just to challenge yourself to think as a principal or an administrator how many times you say no versus how many times you remain open to an idea that comes from a teacher.

Mm-hmm. 

Sure. Yeah, that’s a really good point. I think whenever somebody comes forward with an idea like that, it’s not an immediate no, it’s not an immediate yes. It’s let’s sit down and let’s actually figure out how we can make this work, right? And I think, both from me and, like I mentioned, my superintendent at this stage as well, she’s the same way.

Like, let’s figure it out. Actually, I have a sign in the main  office of the school. When I started, I think it was the first couple  of months, I put that sign up, we’ll figure it out. We will figure it out because no matter what problem we’ve ever had at our school, we’ve always figured it out.

And it applies here as well when, we’ll keep using that musical as an example. When she came forward and said, “This is what we need to do,” it’s like, okay, we need to come up with the logistics of that. You are absolutely right. Our auditorium is, booked  all the time.

We have band, we have orchestra, we have,   PTA events. We have just a million things. The community members who are using that. Even something as simple as like, okay, what is the best time to do this? Because you’re going to have your students in there practicing every day after school.

So what month is going to be the best, right? What are the materials you need? What is the budget going to look like? So there’s so many things to think about. So sitting down and really  truthfully brainstorming through, like, let’s come up  with every single thing that we are going to have to figure out about this musical, is a big deal, and we need to get that right in order for it to work,

and it has, and it’s been wonderful. And our, chorus teacher, she has run with the musical and it has been absolutely phenomenal for our second, third, and fourth graders, as well as our teachers and our community for the last few years,

 And I love what you said about creative problem-solving, that you’ve learned about creative problem-solving from your graduate work, but you bring in elements of it. Because I think that is the reality of creative problem-solving, is you learn it as this sort of prescriptive process,  and there’s various steps and tools and things that you can use,  but really it’s the mindset that you have, and just even being open to new ideas or looking for a potential or a plus before you get into the concerns.

And I think those, those things can make such a difference in setting up that psychological climate that you mentioned, so thank you for that 

Of course. Yeah, and I think one of the things too that, is it’s my job as a leader, what I’ve realized is, thinking about myself as a teacher there– I’m an implementer, by the way. So like I, have an idea, and I just, I wanna run, right? But as a leader and through the programming I’ve had at Buffalo State, it’s helping myself and teachers realize, you know what?

Maybe we need to go back just one step and  further develop, or maybe we need to go back and,  , clarify what the actual challenge is here really difficult for me , from being an implementer and just wanting to go. When a teacher comes to me and says, “I wanna do this,” I’m like, “Let’s go.

Let’s do this,” but it’s also me taking a step back and thinking, “Oh, no, no, there’s more to think about. If we wanna make this, successful, we need to take a step back, and we really need to make sure that we’re in a good place there.” Yeah, that’s been my job as an administrator for the last few years.

  📍 ​

 So Dan, obviously you’re in elementary school. There’s a conversation to be had around AI. But actually I’m right in saying that at the – elementary school level, and dare I say I think  I’m pleased in this direction, the conversation’s actually just expanded a  little bit more around technology, and from a creativity perspective, I found this discussion fascinating because ultimately I’ve heard some superintendents I won’t say  give direction, but encourage teachers  within their schools and school districts to say, “Look, if you can do it without the technology, it without the technology.” And so 📍 📍 📍 obviously we’re seeing the pendulum shift a little bit. I’m just wondering to see if you’ve  felt that swing happening. your view around 📍 📍 📍 that? And I’m particularly interested because I think it might open up some new doors or maybe perhaps revisit some old doors for creativity in the classroom.

Yeah. Yeah, that is certainly happening at this stage. We have 1:1 Chromebooks. We had them in, kindergarten through 12th grade. We were an iPad district for a bit at our primary levels. There are so many apps , that we saw they were great for our younger  students. We have moved away from that at this stage. So this year, is the first year that we took the Chromebooks away from the kindergartners. We do not have iPads anymore either. we were finding that they were not being used, especially at the  kindergarten level, teachers, knew the  benefit of just playing, of just having kids together, of, developing activities and centers and resources that were going to get kids talking, because that is what we notice.

And I think this is not news to any educator who is listening right now, that is  one of the most difficult things for students to do right now, is just  to have conversation with each other. Those social skills we have seen a decline in that over the last few years, especially since I’ve been in this role as a principal. So we did decide that we were going to move away from technology a bit in our primary levels. And I can tell you  right now, the centers that I’m seeing, the creativity from the  teachers and putting things together for kids to be, together working on hands-on things, building, tinkering, and just playing.

We’ve gotten away from that, and that is certainly something that we need to make sure that we are doing as educators. Because outside of school, especially in households,  we have seen, many times where,  kids are coming to school, and they’re– I know have difficulty breaking away from their devices, but we have seen the exact same thing happening with our students. I can tell you stories without, breaking confidentiality here about kids coming in for screenings, we have pre-K and,   kindergarten screenings, and there are so many times  where kids are coming in, and when a child is ready to go with the teachers, to do the actual screening, they have a device in their hands, and parents are having a, such a difficult time getting that device out of their kid’s hands just to go down to the screening. So we know that it’s our job, okay, we need to break that  we need to make sure that we are getting kids in these classrooms, we are  having real conversations, we’re getting them to interact and to just play. I think that’s the big emphasis at my school right now is just play. Be with each other and have those deep conversations.

Or, I think that’s what I have to say about that. 

Mm. That is music to my ears, Dan. I just feel like we have lost so much of that connection and that playfulness inside of the classroom. And we’ve talked a lot about technology in the classroom, and , there can be benefits.  But I think the time has come where  we do need to focus more on building those relationships because, I have children.

My son just went off to college, and most of the connections he’s made are still with the people that he is on technology with. So it’s like everyone  stays in their room, and they talk with their old friends through technology,  but they’re not getting out to really meet one another. We really need to find ways to get students to connect more in the  classroom and talk to one another and even just play.  

It’s an interesting shift that we’re seeing, right now, particularly after the pandemic. Because I know the pandemic was now five years ago, but when the pandemic was going on,   my kids were working from home. They were fourth  and sixth grade. They were on their computers all day, and the only way they could connect with their friends was through their computers.

So they were just on their devices all day long. When we look at our students across the whole entire scope  of, early childhood, which I find terrifying  saying the kids aren’t able to release that device in their hands, early childhood through university and beyond, I think with the increase of AI, we’re going to see a step back in that because we’re realizing that we’re not living  our lives.

We’re living our lives through our devices and not  through our connections with other people, and I think that’s where the real happiness and joy comes in.

  📍 ​

 So Dan, our final question, can you name someone who spotted your creative potential? Who were they, and what did they see, and what happened because of it? 

That’s a great question. So I could probably go back to elementary school, middle, high school, but I think I’ll go with this person. So when I first, started student teaching, , through Buffalo State, there was, my student teaching coordinator, his name was Dennis Devine.

 He knew from the get-go. He would give  me the best feedback ever , on some of the things that I was bringing into, to classrooms. He would stop in, say more than typical. He would stop in when I was student teaching almost on probably two to three days per week to just see the different things that I was doing with my third graders at that moment. Mr. Hake. I was with Mr.  Hake. He was my third grade teaching.  , he was with me through that entire experience and I remember a social studies lesson where, I was teaching a unit on Brazil, and, giving students pictures, giving students ideas, giving students, bits of, texts were all related to Brazil, and having students explore on their own.

And Mr. Devine and Mr. Hake would say, “Oh, I’ve never seen this  before. I have never seen anybody, get kids’  creative juices flowing , in such an impactful way.” They would consistently give me that wonderful feedback, and I think that’s really … motivated me to continue doing that. I thought that was the norm, to be honest with you. I think at that time I was thinking, “No, this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m supposed to be engaging kids and pumping them up to learn,”  

Mm.

  and I think that both of them told me, “This is not always the norm,” right?

“You need to do this. You need to keep moving forward.” And I guess, what I saw happening from that, I saw my students, they were so excited to be there. They were so excited to learn more. They could not wait to learn about new countries and new cultures and new ideas. And it was all happening  through that collaboration, that conversation.

 And I think, that stemmed back to the lessons that we were presenting to our kids. So a big thank you to those two people, to Mr. Devine, who was my coordinator, and, to Mr. Hake, that third grade teacher that I was working with at the time. They certainly nudged me in the right direction when it came to me as a

finding myself as a teacher 

Love it. Thank you so much, Dan, for joining us today on this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, and special shout-out to Dr. Keller Mathers for recommending him. If you like this episode and think this topic might be of interest to a friend or colleague, we encourage you to share it.

And also, check out   📍 Dan’s website, which we will link in the show notes, and check out  his book, Creativity by Design. And if you’re not already, please subscribe to the podcast on YouTube or your favorite podcasting platform. Finally, if you haven’t checked out our book, our latest book, The Future Creative: 10 Actions for Fueling Creativity in Education, we encourage you to find it at your favorite bookstore.

My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett

And my name is Dr. Matthew Worwood ​