Matthew Worwood: What happens when we lose our handwriting as a form of creative expression? And what do we miss when we limit tactical creativity to the sports field and what would change in our schools if we identified the non-negotiables that truly reflect our values and then actually live by them? We’ll be discussing this and a lot more in our first debrief of the season.

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

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 fields of education.

Matthew Worwood: We’ll be

Matthew Worwood: 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. So welcome back to our first debrief of 2026 and also our first debrief of season one.

Matthew Worwood: We’ve had three very exciting guests on the show, haven’t we? Cindy?

Cyndi Burnett: Yes, we have. We have had Carlos Moreno, who is the CEO of Big Picture Learning, and then we had Holly Brighton who talked to us about handwriting and creativity. And then we had Daniel Memet, who is researcher in the area of sports and creativity.

Cyndi Burnett: So it has been a really interesting first section of our podcast. And Matt, I think, you know, we set out this year that we wanna have different conversations on our podcast that we have never had before. And I think this first part, we definitely achieve that.

Matthew Worwood: A absolutely. And, and you know, we, we won’t start our debrief yet, but I think.

Matthew Worwood: In some ways, I would say at least two of the three episodes were almost like outliers, like they were, they were topics that we haven’t really spoken about ever before, like you could even make a connection. So I, I certainly know that I, I found myself making new discoveries and, and going back and thinking about things and connections with creativity and, and these topics in ways that I’d never done before.

Matthew Worwood: Thanks to these wonderful guests.

Cyndi Burnett: All right, so let’s talk about Carlos Marino, who heads up the big picture learning, and I was really excited about having him on the show because I have been in a big picture school here in Buffalo, New York through a friend of mine, Karen Monaco, who is a vice principal, and I have worked with some of the students at Big Picture Learning, so I was really excited to meet with him and he did not disappoint because right now.

Cyndi Burnett: We are building school systems and then we’re trying to fit our students into those school systems. But what we should be doing is looking at our students and then bringing in the education and curricula into the schools to, to fit the students, so not vice versa. And I think I knew that intuitively, but it was never articulated to me in that way.

Cyndi Burnett: And I just love that because I think, you know, as we talk about. How we start to shift education. I think that’s a good place to start, is really by looking at students and empowering them through their communities, which he talked a lot about as well, and really thinking about how do we make those connections between the student and what they’re interested in and taking on projects with their communities and becoming, creative in a transformational way.

Cyndi Burnett: As we’ve talked about before, both in our book and with Dr. Robert Sternberg, transformational Creativity.

Matthew Worwood: You know, just, and, and, and it was interesting that you brought up the community piece because. My, mind went back to our interview, with AJ Cray.

Matthew Worwood: Who you remember was a consultant with school advisory boards. Mm-hmm. And a big, big piece of that conversation with him was the importance of you’re setting goals and thinking about what do you want this school to look like? What is its mission statement? Bringing in the community because you know, and I think spoke about this as well, but schools are.

Matthew Worwood: Probably can relate to this and this is one of those kinda like given things, but whenever you’re thinking about society and, and looking toward the future, quite often schools are a big part of that, of how you achieve that. But reminding us that yes, there are obviously national objectives.

Matthew Worwood: But we do need to think at the local level, and thinking at the local level also includes thinking about the students who we’re serving. So I, totally agree with you, and it was wonderful to actually have a conversation about what that looks like in action from one of the leaders at, a collection of scores that are trying to do that.

Matthew Worwood: Just that.

Cyndi Burnett: 50 there. He talked about 50 schools around the world. So you know, if you think about that connection between the community and the students, I think we need to be doing more of that. If you think about students, and I think about, being a champion, like every student needs a champion.

Cyndi Burnett: And I remember talking almost the same conversation with principal l , many seasons ago about finding students creative champions. And I think people in the community can be creative champions. So for me it was also, how do we do more of that outside of big picture schools, you know, find mentors for students that may not have a champion inside.

Cyndi Burnett: Of their own scope of the world. Right? So what do you think?

Matthew Worwood: I mean, I, totally agree. And actually now you’re getting me to think a little bit just about the model itself. I referenced on the episode I’ve referenced previously in the podcast that I was fortunate enough while working at the Center for 21st Century skills, we had this investing in innovation grant.

Matthew Worwood: And, we were tasked with, in essence, we used to say putting a school within a school. We had that freedom to kind of experiment and explore with what my a STEM educational experience looked like for a cohort of between 18 and and 25 high school students from ninth to 12th grade.

Matthew Worwood: And, we had to kind of like think creatively and strategically about how we put that experience together. And then ultimately we were looking for school partners who were willing to go and actually implement what was called the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. So schools would quite literally go and sign up to it.

Matthew Worwood: And then as new students were coming in from middle school, they would kind of either apply or opt to be part of the Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Mm-hmm. And I think this idea, , just talking to, Carlos and the fact that there are different models and it’s not always about. Having to have a completely new building or a completely new skill.

Matthew Worwood: There’s opportunities sometimes to partner with someone like Big Picture Schools who have their own school, as well as working with existing schools with their model that we should be facilitating and doing more of those relationships because for whatever reason. If we are perhaps struggling to, to do the creative things that we want to do in our school because perhaps we’ve got other priorities, then we’re in a situation where we can actually bring in outsiders to kind of focus in and, and bring that creativity into those schools.

Matthew Worwood: So I think that’s something that Carlos and big picture schools, are doing and something that I truly valued as well.

Cyndi Burnett: So let’s hear your insights.

Matthew Worwood: You know what I, in some ways it kind of builds on, on what I just said so thinking about the fact that you’re going in and you’re working with the school, what I really liked was when Carlos said, look, there are some things that are not negotiable.

Matthew Worwood: So while we recognize that. Our, program or our experience might take on different flavors or have such slightly different ingredients at each school, which kind of makes sense to what you said as well, because the community might be different. The areas of focus might be different. There are some non-negotiables and I’m not gonna go through all of the non-negotiables.

Matthew Worwood: I’m simply gonna talk a little bit about, us referencing champions, but this idea of kind of one-to-ones and the advising piece. And, Carlos was, was quite rightly saying, look, everyone has these kind of like advisory experiences and even at the university level we have these advisory experiences, but they can look.

Matthew Worwood: Feel very differently. And so what I took from that episode is if you wanna kind of implement our model, one of the, the non-negotiables is that you’re gonna go and deliver an excellent advising session, which has. A mentor, or to your words, a champion working one-to-one regularly with an individual student.

Matthew Worwood: And that speaks to values as well. That’s something that big picture schools say, look, this is something we greatly value and therefore this is non-negotiable. And I just found myself wondering, wow, how how many schools have identified values that they have and that they say this is non-negotiable. Yeah, it’s non-negotiable in your classrooms.

Matthew Worwood: It’s non-negotiable when it comes to extracurricular activities. It’s non-negotiable when it comes to, sports and everything else we’re doing in this district, in this building. These are the non-negotiable things and really working out exactly what that looks like.

Cyndi Burnett: Man, I love that. And I think, so many schools have values in their mission and vision and values and you read their values and you know the school and you think, uh, they’re not really hitting the mark.

Cyndi Burnett: But if you have those non-negotiables and that administrator stands up and says, this is a non-negotiable and this is what I wanna see every day when I’m walking through the school and when I walk into your classroom, I think that’s a really powerful way to frame it. And I think it, it can’t be, you have 10 non-negotiables or 50 non-negotiables.

Cyndi Burnett: You have to have maybe just a couple, what is it that is at the heart of what you value? And so I think it’s a deeper level of values, what you’re talking about.

Matthew Worwood: Absolutely. Yeah. I, I love that. Deeper levels of value and it’s about implementation and of course that requires training.

Matthew Worwood: It requires you to go and have accountability measures in place. Even though we don’t like those accountability measures, it’s not about catching out and saying, ah, you’re not doing it. But it’s more a case of we, we need to maybe provide you some support and assistance to make sure that it’s being done the way we say it’s being done, because I didn’t think about that.

Matthew Worwood: Every school has their, you.

Matthew Worwood: Quite often they, they’re very similar to each other.

Cyndi Burnett: Yeah.

Matthew Worwood: But you’re right. How, how often do schools really say, are we really following through on that?

Cyndi Burnett: Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett: All right. Tell me about Holly Brighton. What did you learn from her episode?

Matthew Worwood: Ah, very cool. So we, we switched to me styling, first of all, I like the, conversation about the value of writing. In, in the future , is something that I was just really fascinated about and, I had mentioned before the interview that, because my boys are at parochial school, handwriting is something that they have, there’s a lot of, basically a lot of time and energy that goes into handwriting and there are people that raise questions about that, but they have, all three of my boys have beautiful handwriting and you spoke a little bit about cursive and they all have cursive.

Matthew Worwood: So my first thought was, to what extent are they actually using that in the real world? And that that’s one conversation. But another part of the discussion that, I found fascinating was the idea that writing is a modality. Creative connection. It’s a, modality to connecting ideas, that are occurring in your head.

Matthew Worwood: And so it actually is less about penmanship. And I remember Holly referencing that it’s less about penmanship and it’s more about being able to quickly express those thoughts on a page. And suddenly as the interview progressed, it was like. We, we might lose that. We might literally be losing the capacity to express your ideas on a page that mini see creativity.

Matthew Worwood: Just think about how often that mini see creativity is expressed in some shape or form through writing on a page. Mm. And, then suddenly we might lose that. Well, where else? How, how else are you expressing it? And, and it could be that there might be other forms of expression. You know, I’m open to that conversation, but I certainly don’t think we’ve been sitting down and having a conversation about the potential impact of not having the ability to do that.

Cyndi Burnett: And what that does for our creativity. I agree. Mm-hmm. And I think what was really striking to me, and I would love to hear from the teachers listening to our podcast, is the fact that she said that that handwriting, not even cursive, because I knew cursive wasn’t being taught as much in schools, but handwriting in general is not being taught in schools.

Cyndi Burnett: And that was kind of shocking to me. I’ll be honest. I was like, wait, wait, wait. They’re not teaching handwriting at all. So how are we supposed to articulate. Ideas or their ideas and, and as I mentioned in that episode, when you look at AI and students now having to like hand write essays, how are they gonna be to do that if they, how to?

Cyndi Burnett: So. I think that’s what really struck me in in her episode was just that lack and what’s happening as a result, and I feel like I need to do some research to really understand that more. Maybe we asked Jimmy if he could look into that for us.

Matthew Worwood: You know what’s really funny is I had a note I. To say we need to do a shout out to Jimmy Wilson, when he is listening to this episode.

Matthew Worwood: Just to say that, you know, first of all, there was a few occasions on the show where Holly had referenced that that sign supports exactly what you’re saying. Yeah, yeah. So we should definitely bring Jimmy on to kind of like unpack some of that science a little bit. So yes, Jimmy, if you’re listening that, that’s a call to action.

Matthew Worwood: And hopefully we can pick some of that. Up, later, but one of the things that you said just then that got me thinking a little bit more is, have we intentionally. Stop teaching writing and if, if the answer is kind of like, no, we haven’t intentionally, like there hasn’t been, someone sat around and said, you know what?

Matthew Worwood: Let’s stop teaching handwriting. We don’t have to do that no more. And it’s simply just become something that’s drifted away because of all of the other priorities that teachers are having to, to address. And we’re in this situation that because it’s not being tested, because there’s not workshops saying you must do this and must do that.

Matthew Worwood: Teachers have just let it go by the wayside. My now question is, well, what else are we currently losing right now? You know, like that, that kind of worries me a little bit. Like, are we, are we losing? I don’t think we’re losing drawing. Right. But like I’m sitting there, what else might we be losing?

Cyndi Burnett: Right. Well, even like fine motor skills, if you think about holding a pencil and being able to craft something with a pencil. Like has that gone away? I don’t know.

Matthew Worwood: You know, it sounds crazy, but might we get to a scenario where people dunno the difference between cities and states and, and countries because we can unintentionally lose the teaching of things in education.

Matthew Worwood: That’s worrying.

Cyndi Burnett: It is worrying.

Matthew Worwood: Tell us about Daniel Memet.

Cyndi Burnett: So I thought Daniel’s episode was really interesting because I don’t know that much about sports and I’ve never thought more than a fleeing thought in, in passing a soccer field what creativity would look like in sports. It’s just not my area. So I really enjoyed the novelty of his episode.

Cyndi Burnett: And I think what really struck me was the term tactical creativity, which, you know, I went back and, and looked at that definition that he gave for tactical creativity, which is unexpected and appropriate. And thinking about teaching divergent thinking to students, particularly when they’re at a young age, to look at all the different ways they can do something, so it can be unexpected in sports, but also appropriate in that it’s gonna be effective. So it has to be those two things, unexpected and appropriate in order to be tactical creativity. And I just thought that was a really interesting piece and something that I feel like I can now relate to, let’s say teachers who are in sports education and physical education.

Cyndi Burnett: Because typically if I go into a school and they say, oh well. You know, you have the, the physical education teachers there and they’re like, well, how does this relate to me? Now I can point to tactical creativity and go a little bit deeper into that.

Matthew Worwood: Yeah. And you know, I wasn’t planning on talking about tactical creativity, but just to try and take this concept and just take it outside of sports, there’s so many different domains or situations where we are trained a certain way to behave and respond to situations in a, in a particular way.

Matthew Worwood: Mm-hmm. Ultimately those, those ways of responding are because hopefully they’ve been deemed effective. Like there’s evidence to say this is the best way to approach that situation and approach that situation effectively. But there are scenarios, as we know, disruptions the, unexpected happens. And so in that moment you are then tasked to say, okay, this isn’t working.

Matthew Worwood: You, you’ve gotta do something else. And. My, my feeling was that in that situation, if you’ve got that tactical creativity mm-hmm. Again, we could, we could come away from sports for a moment and therefore you’ve got the ability to say, okay, I’m gonna switch up. I’ve got options. I can generate ideas that, that are available to me, for me to then quickly go through and identify which of those ideas are most appropriate right now.

Matthew Worwood: Now I’ve got another option. Mm. And you just wonder how many times, both on the sports field and off the sports field, where someone can perform so well at a repetitive task, but then suddenly when that repetitive task is no longer working, mm, that they kind of freeze and they’ve got, they dunno what else to do versus someone else who doesn’t freeze and say, okay.

Matthew Worwood: I’m gonna switch and do that.

Cyndi Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Matthew Worwood: And you know, to your point that, that tactical creativity, I think there’s a lot of of things to talk about and, and potentially repurpose it in, in different areas other than sports.

Cyndi Burnett: Hmm. Okay. Matt, I know you were anticipating Daniel’s episode ’cause you were really excited about the sports and creativity.

Cyndi Burnett: So was it all that you hoped it would be? And what did you walk away with?

Matthew Worwood: Oh I loved it. It was definitely great and you know. I’m aware that that,, I definitely steered the conversation very sport centric, and I spoke a little bit about coaches and I spoke about,, the players and how we can nurture a tactical creativity, we spoke a little bit about risk taking.

Matthew Worwood: I, of course I want to kind of delve deeper into all of the relationship, all of the connections I saw to my kids playing sports and my experience with kids in sports, but. There was one comment that I loved that I thought, again, is applicable beyond sports. And it came from when I was asking, Daniel, I believe the question was something along how, how do coaches find this balance of teaching students or rather players what they must do in a situation while also making sure that there’s the door open, that if that situation is not effective, like I just said, around tactical creativity, they’ve got the option to explore something else.

Matthew Worwood: And he said, you don’t use the word must. I went away and I said, wow, you know, how often do we say in a science or anything with our kids, you must do it this way. You know? No, no, no. We must do it like this.

Cyndi Burnett: Mm-hmm.

Matthew Worwood: And obviously we’ve gotta now find another word that suggests that, hey, you nearly should be doing it like this most of the time.

Matthew Worwood: If you realize it doesn’t work, you can do what you just did, but I what you do what you just did. Now I have no idea what that word is, but Daniel’s position is that it’s not the word must and I dunno if you’ve got any thoughts about that, but that was a big takeaway for me.

Cyndi Burnett: I think that’s an interesting takeaway.

Cyndi Burnett: I wonder if it’s like, well, it could be. Maybe you should consider, maybe you should consider, would that work?

Matthew Worwood: You know what, from a sports perspective, you’ve got a lot of players that are like, like doing extra dribbling, going past the extra extra player, you know, a little bit too much. It’s like, no, I need you to, in fact, classic example right now, switch sports is basketball.

Matthew Worwood: Alright? I got all of these young kids that are trying to score three pointers and I’ve spoke with, with a friend who’s coaching the, the high grades and he says, you can’t get the kids doing three pointers because they changed their whole position, right? So I’m saying. I don’t want you doing three pointers in that scenario.

Matthew Worwood: You must do this. Right. , And they keep ignoring me. Like, going back to your question, they keep ignoring me, so I can’t leave the door open. Have you ever considered not doing a three pointer? Because you can’t reach the ri

Cyndi Burnett: so that doesn’t work. Yeah, yeah,

Matthew Worwood: yeah, yeah. So that’s, that’s, that’s what makes it fascinating because these are kids.

Matthew Worwood: So we kind of have to say, you know, have you ever considered that might be too high for you, you know? So it’s, I suppose it’s about identifying the appropriate times when you don’t have to use the word must, perhaps. That’s, that’s what it,

Cyndi Burnett: yeah. And I also wonder if it’s about having them think, so this is sort of getting into metacognition, having them think through mm-hmm.

Cyndi Burnett: What happens when they’re always shooting, the three pointers. Like,, what does that do to their bodies? How does that impact how they play in the actual game? Right? So. What? Yeah. Getting them to like, alright, let’s go back on this. Do you remember when we had Joe Bowler on the podcast and she talked about math ish and she was talking about, talk about your process of, you know, you know, doing math, but think about that in the terms of shooting baskets.

Cyndi Burnett: So tell me about the process. When you’re going to shoot the ball, tell me what’s happening. So talk through everything that’s going on for you.

Matthew Worwood: Mm. I’m liking apply that law that apply. Yeah. Would that

Cyndi Burnett: apply? I’m liking Would that apply to sports?

Matthew Worwood: Yeah, I actually think it does. And you know what, now we can, we can go back to what we said at the very beginning, but it’s about probably identifying your values and what’s non-negotiable.

Matthew Worwood: And in this scenario, that requires one-on-one. To bring this into sports, I think there’s not enough one-on-ones in, in these, the, uh, many of these sports academies or, or teaching experiences. Of course, perhaps that comes down to time again, but it is quite often too much around, oh, I was gonna say it’s too much around teamwork.

Matthew Worwood: I, I like the fact, I like the fact that, it’s about teamwork and teaching the team to win. Mm-hmm. But I think we do need some one-on-ones, and I think those one-on-ones are when you can have those conversations. Yeah. So maybe it’s about bringing those one-on-ones so you do get the chance to ask those questions.

Matthew Worwood: Did you ever consider this as an option? Yeah. Love that. Particularly actually when things aren’t working, but that’s what I was told to do. And that is what usually works, but when it’s not working, have you ever considered this as an alternative option? Yeah. I love that Cindy.

Matthew Worwood: Okay, so for our takeaway of this first debrief, we want to kind of go back to something that we had shared in our kind of end of year show going into 2026 show. And in that we invited you, our guests to provide us with some suggestions on where we might go with the book when it comes to engaging.

Matthew Worwood: Our audience, whether it might be monthly webinars, maybe regular meetups, potentially, you know, some online learning experiences. And ultimately we had said that we would put a form in the episode show notes, and we said, anyone who fills out that form gets invited to our five year anniversary, most likely virtual party, though possibly turning into an episode.

Matthew Worwood: We haven’t kind of worked all of those things out yet, but. To put in the show notes. And the reason why we’ve gotta put in the show notes is, is that we’re only a kindergartner episode, only five years old. So that’s what happens. And, we realized our mistake. And so we’re going back and we’re inviting you again to fill out that form, and provide us with some suggestions and ideas on how we can potentially support you.

Matthew Worwood: And the reason why the timing of this is, is also really important. Is that Cindy and I do like to utilize the summer to produce some content that supports you in your professional learning. I know it, it might feel far away right now, but just having this information is really gonna assist us as we start planning for that, probably around, April, early May.

Matthew Worwood: So please fill out the form to this link and as I said. We will, invite you to that special celebratory five year anniversary of our podcast. So that’s the call to action and we’ll end it there. My name’s Dr. Matthew Warwick,

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

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