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

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 field 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 scholars with the information they need need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And this is our second debrief of season 10, which means we’re about halfway through the season, and around this time, we’re also about halfway through the academic year. Now it is a debrief. So we are going to be talking about our past three episodes. So, Cindy, why don’t you remind us who were our past three guests on our show?

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt, I. I thought we brought three very different interviews to our pod. And the first one was a double espresso with Jamie Celia Tosi, who is the director of education for the National Inventors hall of Fame, followed by Jaap Hardenson, who was the inventor of Bluetooth. And I don’t know about you, but I was a little starstruck during that episode because I just thought that was so cool that we were able to bring him on. And then we had our second episode with Dr. Jo Bowler, who is a professor at Stanford. And then finally we had a very different perspective from Jonathan Garra, who is a good friend of mine, someone I’ve mentored for years, and he is a Buffalo public school teacher. So really hearing about, you know, invention in that first episode and innovation and creativity, and then going into sort of math concepts and how we can teach math more creatively.

Cyndi Burnett:
And then finally with John, like, really thinking about what does creativity look like inside the classroom and what’s stopping teachers from. From bringing creativity into the classroom. Where do you want to start?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I think we should start with you, but just to follow up on what you said, I think it was very practitioner based. And I know you and I have shared, you know, as we try and cross that bridge between research and practice. It’s great hearing about research, creativity, research from the sciences, and having conversations about how that might apply in education. But it’s also wonderful when we kind of get, you know, three conversations that are very much practitioner orientated. And of course, Dr. Joe Boehler is a significant researcher from Stanford University. But her work is so much around the practice of mathematics in the classroom. So let’s start off with Yap and Jamie’s episode.

Matthew Worwood:
And I thought it was timely because, of course, we’re around Creativity and Innovation Week. So that was a good, good time. I don’t know if we deliberately timed it on, on that part, but I thought that was well timed. So what was your, what was your first takeaway from that episode, Cindy?

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, you know what’s really interesting, Matt, is, you know, each week I post on LinkedIn, and if you’re on LinkedIn, please do or connect with us on LinkedIn. But I posted on LinkedIn this idea that creativity is about skills and creativity training. So it’s not just enough to teach students creativity, but you also need to give them skills in whatever domain that you’re working in. And one of my wonderful colleagues, Julie Shibley, she said, yes, we also need, we need those two things, but we also need to give them opportunities to be able to do that. And there’s so many wonderful opportunities, like what Jamie’s doing in the National Inventor hall of Fame. But there’s also programs throughout the country and throughout the world that give students these opportunities to create inventions based on problems. And I’ll link some of those into the show notes in case you’re interested. But if that particular episode intrigued you and you thought, I would love to bring in some level of invention into the classroom, there are so many programs that allow people to do that.

Cyndi Burnett:
So really giving your students that opportunity to be part of something so wonderful.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I absolutely love it. And to build a little bit on that with, with opportunities, you know, I thought Yap, for the most part, took a lot of those questions around the importance of skills. And without those skills, you can’t really be creative or inventive. And of course, we’re probably talking about the Pro C and big C level creativity. And we see that within creativity research that there is a need to have expertise within your domain in order to kind of produce new and useful outcomes for that domain. And so the episode spoke a lot about how you’re building on. I think Yap said something along the lines of how we’re building on the shoulders of others. And so when he was going about designing Bluetooth, he was talking about, well, what already exists and what do we currently know about the challenge that we’re trying to face.

Matthew Worwood:
And we kind of teach that in our students. I know it’s a big part of design thinking as well, but this, you can, you can teach those skills to your point. But at some point I like the idea of giving them this opportunity because at the end of the day, I don’t know if this is a good, a good example, but if you imagine a paintbrush, you can have a conversation about how this tool can be used. Really what you need to do is provide them with the opportunity to interact with that paintbrush in a real world environment. You know, it might be that if you’re painting a wall and you’re doing decorating, you’re going to go and apply and see that paintbrush very differently than you would if you’re working on a canvas. And so there’s a need to apply the skills that you’re talking about and you’re developing. And I think that’s, that also kind of fits a little bit with that competency piece. David Cropley, you know, in our episode way back when, spoke about this idea of creative competencies.

Matthew Worwood:
And maybe that really is speaking a little bit toward the blend of creativity and skills, the capacity to apply your skill set in, in the, in a creative way and know how to do that. And the only way I think you can do that successfully is to provide those opportunities. And we’re not just talking about, you know, I suppose. Well, let me throw it back you, what type of opportunities are we talking about? Could it be an opportunity that’s presented in a 30 minute lesson or does it have to be something big like some of the projects that we saw Yap and Jamie talking about?

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, obviously having big, you know, opportunities is always, is always helpful. But I mean, small opportunities work as well. And even I remember in a conversation we had with Andrea Mango, probably season six, who was an educator, she had said, you know, in those morning sessions when students are coming in, instead of giving them a worksheet, give them, them something creative to work on. And I think so even having those small moments inside the classroom where you can bring creativity in or build on those skills in small ways can have a great impact.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. All right, what was your second takeaway?

Cyndi Burnett:
Oh wait, what, what was your first takeaway?

Matthew Worwood:
I, I think I kind of, I kind of referenced it. I think we, it was interesting to get back to the idea of how we’re building on previous knowledge. And you know, I think I’d quoted Jonathan Plucker again, we, we probably, you know, overused this quote now, but the idea of creativity is about taking old stuff and putting it together with other old stuff to make new stuff. And you know, it sounds like when Yap was kind of recalling his story of Bluetooth. There was a lot of that happening. And that’s one of the things I really liked about that show is having that opportunity to hear how Bluetooth came about. And when you’re listening to how it came about, actually, the process is very similar to some of the conversations that we’ve had on the show where teachers and researchers are talking about the importance of design based education and engaging students in project based learning. So that was really cool.

Matthew Worwood:
We spoke a little bit about research as well and how important it is again to conduct design research so that you are in a position to know, you know, what has taken place, you know, prior in your domain. And the other, the other thing that I thought that Yap referenced and I don’t think I’m going to do, I don’t think I’m in a position to quote it, but the suggestion that you also. It’s all about small steps, you know, like, so as you’re building, taking old stuff and putting it together with other old stuff to make new stuff, it’s not always gigantic leaps. It’s these kind of like small steps forward, these small discoveries that you make that you can build upon. And ultimately you could argue that’s all part of the learning experience. So it’s almost as if everything we do, when it comes to creating and making and inventing new things, it’s all about learning. And maybe we come back to the word opportunities. Is this really an opportunity for learning or is this more about an opportunity to recall and memorize facts that you can regurgitate on a test?

Cyndi Burnett:
Which really, Matt, brings me to my insight with Jo Bowler, which was all about metacognition is thinking about thinking. So having those opportunities to learn and also to build on what you just said, to reflect back and think, okay, so what did I actually do and what did I learn and how did I go about it and what steps did I take? And that’s really what keeps shining through in this season is metacognition and really teaching students how to think about their thinking and really to reflect, especially with the onset of generative AI and having these rapid moments of having the information right in front of you to get them to think in more deep and meaningful ways that are relevant to students so that they can, they can continue to use their brain and continue to learn and build on that knowledge.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I love that. And you know, I did this course, you know, we had a couple of courses around the learning sciences when I was doing my doctorate program. And so metacognition was, was a Couple of different modules within that. And, you know, it’s. It’s. It’s not just about assisting us in creativity. Going back to what we said is about assisting us in learning. So I think that’s a great connection that we’re making.

Matthew Worwood:
And it seems small, but it’s, It’s. I think. Did Joe reference it? Something along the lines of, it’s like the little voice inside your head. It’s thinking of thinking, but it definitely isn’t. We all do it. And it is. It’s something that’s active. And likewise, to your point, when you’re.

Matthew Worwood:
When you’re interacting with generative AI, for example, you know, it’s being able to catch yourself to say, wait, I didn’t actually think anything about that. I just copied the prompt in and I just copied and paste the answer. And I never once actually thought about it. Now, it’s not that the thinking about it that’s probably more critical thinking, but the metacognitive cognitive aspect is you catching yourself and saying, I did that wrong. And in essence, it’s almost like you’re mentoring yourself, how you’re engaging and thinking about learning. And obviously there’s a subcategory, creative metacognition, which is when you’re thinking about how. How original is this, how, how am I perceiving this as being. You quite often talk about the idea of perceiving it in different ways, making.

Matthew Worwood:
Challenging yourself to then go and shift the perspective and say, wait, what about if I perceive it from the perspective of someone in healthcare? Or what about if I perceive it from, you know, that student over in the room? That is that metacognitive process that you’re catching yourself challenging yourself thinking a different way. And I look back now and I think my inner voice, my power, who. I think at one point I may have even named any. Whoever it was, any. I. I think so. I think, you know, that voice in our head. Right.

Matthew Worwood:
But the point is, I think it’s been a companion all the way through, you know, my time, including catching myself when I’m getting frustrated and recognizing that my frustration is actually stopping me learning and saying to myself, take a couple of breaths, reengage. Let’s engage this strategy. That’s my metacognition kicking in. And I think it’s something that probably we could do better at teaching students and making them more aware of how they can utilize this as a learning strategy and a strategy to assist in their creative endeavors.

Cyndi Burnett:
I agree, Matt. And I think what you’re talking about is really what Dr. Bowler was really driving home, which is when you’re doing math to really talk through your process. And even when you’re talking through your process in front of a room of students, if you have a student talking through their process, then the student sees different ways in which other students approach their process in terms of solving problems. And I think it’s an interesting way to approach learning is to have students talking about their process as they go through things, because I’m sure there are some students that just never see things in different ways because they don’t see other people’s learning preferences. And I’ll give you an example of this. And I was talking to my kids about this. So have you ever picked up someone’s phone and it was the.

Cyndi Burnett:
It was someone else’s phone, and you started scrolling their social media? Have you ever had that happen to you?

Matthew Worwood:
I haven’t, but. But I hear you.

Cyndi Burnett:
Can you imagine? All right, so imagine you pick up my phone and you. You hit, you know, Twitter or Facebook, and you start scrolling through and you go, whoa, what is all this that I’m seeing? Right?

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I cannot. Yep, yep, yep.

Cyndi Burnett:
It’s really seeing the world in a different way. And I think in some ways, when you are talking through what you’re learning about, it’s sort of the same thing. It’s like, let me tell you what I’m seeing, and it could be completely different, and it could help people and see things, and it could help them in giving feedback to the student, other students, and say, you know what? Maybe you want to try doing it this way, and it becomes fun and engaging instead of just like, there’s one way to do it, and it’s only the way that you see doing it. Right.

Matthew Worwood:
I love it. And I can’t help my brain going off and thinking about how that could be really fun, whether it’s an experiment, whether it’s how to discover. I mean, imagine if you. If you. If you’re on a date, you know, and you say, do you mind if I scroll through your social media feed for, you know, a couple of minutes? You probably get to learn a lot about that person in that time as well. But then I catch myself thinking that actually we’ve probably created a situation where some of us might feel that our social media feeds are quite private to us. But what a wonderful way of trying to see things from other perspectives. I love that.

Matthew Worwood:
I love it.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah, yeah. So sort of random. And that it actually happened when I was with my mother, because I picked up my mom’s phone and I turned on her Facebook and I saw what she was looking at and some of the things I turned off because I thought she doesn’t need to be looking at this. But anyway, tangent. Okay, so let’s hear. Do you have anything you want to add about Joe or do you want to.

Matthew Worwood:
The only thing that I’ll add about Joe is that idea of the struggle of learning. You know, it’s keeps coming up and I think it’s, it’s really important to, to keep talking about it that, that I think meaningful learning is a struggle. We’ve, we’ve had it in the show a few times. It’s something that, as you know, I’ve shared in a past show that the, the process, these conversations that we’ve had around struggle on the show is something that I’ve worked hard in my classroom and there’s. That we can facilitate struggle. But if, if your students aren’t struggling. We spoke about this before, like there’s emotion we don’t want. But like, if you’re removing all the struggle in your, in, in your students, then you probably are probably removing some opportunities for more in depth learning to take place.

Matthew Worwood:
And so Joe was talking about that struggle and how important is to overcome that struggle. And as we overcome that struggle, we’re more likely to value the experience and the outcomes that we produce. And so struggle is important. And that was. Yes, yes, but I mentioned that.

Cyndi Burnett:
So I’m glad, I’m glad you mentioned that because I, I did also have that in my notes as well. Around the struggle and making connections and really thinking about math in terms of relevancy and working through those struggles to touch upon that relevancy and meaningfulness that math has in our lives, in our everyday lives. Right. So it’s not just, you know, math ends when you finish high school or you go to college, but there’s all sorts of ways that we use math in the world and to be able to understand that and decipher that is essential.

Matthew Worwood:
And also that comes back to that opportunities piece as well. Right. Because if I look back at, I mean, so, so you know, Joe was looking, in essence, she was talking. What we said at the very beginning is to providing opportunities to see and perceive math and interact with math in different ways and to express your knowledge of math. Math in different ways. And it strikes me that, you know, like, it’s probably really easy to just go walk into, you know, a hall in your school and start having a conversations about right angles and doing some calculations about right angles but we don’t. We typically do it on a worksheet or now on a computer program. But you know, there’s probably a lot of opportunities to interact with your math in your building, outside with nature.

Matthew Worwood:
And without us doing that, we don’t get to build those connections that Joe was talking about. And so, you know, maybe one of the challenges that we have in math and there was obviously conversations around how math is perceived and the challenges that exist in math education, maybe some of it is because there isn’t as much opportunity to apply the skills that you’re developing within a real world context. Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, Curiosity to Create.

Cyndi Burnett:
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Matthew Worwood:
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Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. All right, Matt, let’s shift over to John Guerra. What was your insight in John Guerra’s episode?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I loved, I loved the mentorship piece and the idea that we as teachers are also mentors. And I, I shared that. I also feel that a lot, particularly with, in fact, all the way through now I feel like it’s becoming less and less about the content because so much of the content can be accessed in different ways. And it’s more about mentoring students about how they’re interacting with that content and how they’re applying that content, how they perceive that content. And I think that continues to be a really important piece. And I’ve just finished that my latest roundtable around. It was called Riding the First AI Wave. And within that, the film, some of the conversation talks about the more human aspect of learning that can now take place with, with AI.

Matthew Worwood:
But I think it’s closely related because it’s around mentorship. But it was the sleep. You know, we got into this, do you know we got into this conversation about sleep and you know, we, we got to be doing better at sleep and we, we’ve got to. And when I say it’s not just the educator, we’ve got to teach students about the importance of sl. I think there is so many things now that can facilitate kids staying up late. Yeah, the extra sports events where they then have to come back and rush and do some homework. The social media, the gaming, you know, we are. And then school starts so early.

Matthew Worwood:
So whether you get to bed at 12 or 1 o’clock in the morning, you’re still getting up really, really early.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah.

Matthew Worwood:
And then this horrible pattern starts brewing. And I’m seeing it with my eldest at the moment, but I’ve also seen it with my students the last 10 years. And I did something small and said, do not submit work past 9pm like you submit it the next day. There is no advantage about submitting work at 12, at 12am 1am because that means they’re doing it at 10pm at night. Yeah, like there’s no way they are. With everything we’ve just discussed, there’s no way they’re engaging the same type of, in my opinion, the same type of metacognition, the same time of critical thinking. They are on autopilot and they are probably really struggling emotionally with that time. And so sleep, we gotta do more.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think it directly connects not just to learning with creativity. So if you’re listening, have you had a conversation with your students about the importance of sleep and what practices are you, do you have in place to try and promote more sleep? And do you have any practices without you realizing, maybe you’re accepting the behavior of I’m going to stay up till 1 o’clock in the morning because of the fact that you do accept an assignment at 1:00 in the morning. And I think in universities, what’s even worse is I’ve caught students, to quote a student from my film, we wear it as a badge of honor comparing, oh, I only got two hours sleep and I only got four hours sleep. That’s not cool. It’s not cool. And we shouldn’t be celebrating that.

Cyndi Burnett:
No.

Matthew Worwood:
So that’s my takeaway with that one.

Cyndi Burnett:
I agree. We shouldn’t be celebrating sleep and we shouldn’t be celebrating busyness. Ooh, yeah, I hate that word. I hate the word busy. So mine really builds on that. Matt. I, I think mine focused, my key takeaway focused more on working with students who are dealing with trauma in their lives. And I was thinking about how do you build a safe environment? So if we think about, you know, many seasons ago, might have been season one or season two, we had Scott Barry Kaufman on talking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how he modified that.

Cyndi Burnett:
But at the core of our needs are sleep and safety and psychological safety. And when you, you’re dealing with students who lack sleep and lack psychological safety. It’s really hard to build any sort of creativity in because, you know, they’re too tired to really think and they’re too tired or, or they’re. They’re too afraid to share because of. Of some sort of trauma that might have happened in their lives. So how do we manage those things? So I thought it was really interesting hearing his perspective of being in the classroom. And. And John’s been in different types of classrooms, and they’re just.

Cyndi Burnett:
It’s so different. So context going back to something we’ve talked about over the seasons is context matters. And really, when you bring creativity in, are students ready for it in every capacity, Are they ready for it? Are they emotionally ready for, you know, thinking of new ideas? Can they even do that before they’ve had a good night of sleep or they’ve worked through maybe some trauma or even like, building those connections going back to that mentorship piece? Like, how do we build those connections so students feel safe with us to share when they might not have felt safe in the past?

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, I don’t remember as well a lot of what you just shared and you had said we spoken about in the past, but Bahamid Isa’s episode in season one where he was talking about the teaching of creativity and all the great ideas and wonderful practices that exist in the US for example, and thinking about how Muhammad might bring that back to Palestine and cultivate and facilitate innovation and creativity and young people there. But a lot of the conversation was around the context and the trauma to which a lot of the young people in Palestine have experienced. That was something that, you know, was relevant and, you know, continues to challenge us to think about the context. You’re right. You know, we. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for someone else. And to your point, the same can be applied in the US as well, because there are.

Matthew Worwood:
Are different communities who have different needs and had different experiences, and some of that is obviously traumatic, and that’s going to impact how they not just engage in creativity, but engage in learning. So thanks for bringing that up. And I thought. I agree with you. I thought John Garra did a really good job of sharing his story and his passion as he kind of like what I feel is a lifelong mission to kind of serve that population of students well.

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt, I think this concludes another debrief episode of the Feeling Creativity and Education podcast. If you have any interest in innovation or, you know, a math teacher who might benefit from listening to Joe Bowler’s episode. Forward those onto them and forward on this debrief and if you have any questions or ideas. We are Now Building Season 11 of the podcast which will come out in August. And we’ve got a really exciting Listen and learn series coming for you. Should we tell them what it is, Matt?

Matthew Worwood:
No, we leave it to the end. We’ve got so many exciting things we’ve been working on. We should say that I, I think we’re going to be doing a virtual conference at sou so we should say we’ve got some conference stuff that’s coming up but we’ll, we’ll finish the season and we’ll do the heightened anticipation, you know.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
And my name is Dr. Matthew.

Cyndi Burnett:
Foreign. You’ve been listening to the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast hosted by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our creative producer is Catherine Fu and this episode was made possible thanks to our sponsor, Curiosity to create.