Matthew Worwood:
Hello, everyone. My name is Doctor Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Doctor Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
This is the fuelling creativity in education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Matthew Worwood:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging 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 debrief of the fueling creativity and education podcast. This is season nine, and this is our second debrief of the season. My name is Doctor Matthew Werwood. We never really introduced ourselves at the beginning of the podcast, Cindy, this could be, someone could be watching this for the first time.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. So I will also introduce myself. I’m Doctor Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
Great introduction there, Cindy. And we’re the co host of the Fueling Creativity and education podcast. All right. Okay, we’re going to keep going, Cindy. We’re keeping rolling. That was totally ad lib. But as you know, we’re here to debrief the past three episodes that we’ve had on our show. We’re now on to episode six.

Matthew Worwood:
We’re about halfway through season nine. And why don’t you share with us the three guests? Because as we know, I’m not great with pronouncing names. Sure.

Cyndi Burnett:
So our three guests that we’ve recently had are the Marcie Klein, Doctor Marcie Klein, who was a pediatrician and entrepreneur of three ducks design. And then we had Raya Vidari, who is the director of the School of Humanity. And then we have Will Richardson, who was a former educator and now runs the big Questions Institute.

Matthew Worwood:
And there were three amazing guests offering three different perspectives. But we should probably start with Will Richardson and then move on to Rya because they were both kind of connected to the model of schooling. Right. So what was your takeaway with Will Richardson?

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, I think it was really interesting with Will because we had a lot of big, big, big questions in that episode, like, lots of things that were really, you know, what does the future of education look like? Do we need a revolution or evolution? But I think the really interesting thing that he said is schools right now are designed for schooling and not learning. And that’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about, is what if we were to design a school that focused on learning and not on schooling? So what would you consider a school that you would learn at. I’ll ask you that question.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, the first thing I need to do is put that academic hat on that I kind of, like, resist the fact that I’m an academic cause I don’t do traditional research, but I have to better understand what do we mean? And what does will richardson mean when we say that it’s built for schooling and not learning? Like, what’s the difference between the two?

Cyndi Burnett:
I think that’s a really interesting question, and I don’t think he answered that because we didn’t ask that question. So, boo. But I’m gonna guess, based on the rest of his response, that schooling was focused on, you learn something, you take a test, you show that you know it, you move on to the next thing. And I think that’s different from learning because it learning sort of, I think, implies a more intrinsic view that there’s something that you just enjoy learning about. So I’m going to say let’s go with that. So let’s say if you really want to learn something and have it stick with you and you’re able to put it into context, what does that look like?

Matthew Worwood:
First of all, I really like, you know, and I’m not going to think too much about this because I might come up with different interpretations of schooling v learning. But what I like about what you’re sharing there is that idea of schooling. It’s almost like the word schooling sounds like scolding, right? Like, and there is this kind of, like, it’s an extrinsic thing that you’re being forced to do. I think that word kind of implies that. Whereas what I like what you’re sharing is the word learning is intrinsic. We’re always committed to learn. We always want to learn, and we don’t want to be schooled on what we should learn. So I really like that approach to this conversation.

Matthew Worwood:
It’s a good question. I think the argument was we can learn in lots of different environments, lots of different situations can initiate learning. But to your point, we probably choose to commit to a learning experience, whereas perhaps we don’t always choose to commit to a schooling experience. So then I suppose we’ll be back to personalized learning and making sure that the, whatever it is that we’re designing within the classroom environment is facilitating learning and not interpreted as a schooling action.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right. Right. And I also think about schooling as you go to school to do something, whereas learning is something that can happen anywhere. So I think that’s interesting about that perspective that you just brought in as well. And I also think about the personalized learning, which also came out of the Raya episode, who has started her own school. But we’ll get to that in a minute. First, I want to hear what was your big takeaway from Will Richardson’s.

Matthew Worwood:
There’s two things. There’s this bigger question, because you brought up the evolution versus a revolution, and I was actually going to propose, let’s not talk about that now. But I was thinking maybe we should make a commitment to having a larger conversation about that in one of our specials during the winter interbreak. So I want to invite you to have that conversation because I think it keeps coming up. And I think with Will Richardson’s episode, I went away, and there were parts of the episode I thought, you know, this continues to be a narrative that we keep seeing over the last 1020 years of education, the idea of, you know, educating for a future that we don’t fully understand or appreciate, jobs that don’t yet exist, the idea of tests and examinations. And so I’ve got lots of different thoughts about that that I think maybe we could explore in a special. You know, maybe we call it do we need an evolution or a revolution? And we could go back and cite some of the stuff that you contain in your article. So, first of all, do you like that idea, doing a special around that? Yeah.

Matthew Worwood:
In terms of a more kind of like, quick takeaway, I liked some of the references will was talking about. In school, we don’t always think about the long term consequences of what we’re doing in the classroom. Perhaps maybe at times it’s reactionary. Right. So if you think about social emotional learning, I love it. There’s so many upsides to it. But it felt like, to a certain extent, that that was the trend that was currently existing at the time. And so schools were suddenly rushing to react to the need to integrate that trend within their learning experience.

Matthew Worwood:
And I feel like quite often we are having to work reactionary. And I think the idea of maybe looking at a collective vision of the future was something that Will Richardson referenced. And I keep thinking about that because, you know, we talk a lot about the future creative, but how do we collectively come together to try and imagine what a future school experience might be like? As you also know, I’ve got the class of 2032 project where I kind of made an effort to do that. But I also think that’s all part of being a good ancestor, that even if we can’t necessarily. And just so you know, if we’re talking about good ancestors that’s been a topic in our past podcasts that, you know, even if we aren’t at a point where we can realize that future, if we can at least collectively put together some type of vision that we can move towards within our career or as a district or a building or even just as the education community, particularly in the world of generative AI, I think that would be super helpful for us. And ideally, to reference, again, a collective vision and how we might go about putting that together.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love that collective vision, and I think it’s a yes. And so I know we’ve done some Marco Polos offline about, you know, there is a lot of change that’s happened in education. To say that we haven’t had change in education is wrong. But have we had enough change? Do some students thrive in the current educational setting? I don’t know, is the answer. And I have two very different children, as you know, Matt, that are teenagers. And I know both of them are struggling right now with some of their classes because they’re just sitting there. In fact, one of them came home, and she was a bit down because her one teacher was just having her copy word for word all the notes on her slideshow. And this, to me, is not a great learning environment.

Cyndi Burnett:
This isn’t going to be information that sticks. It’s just a repetitive piece. And I think we need to get away from there. But I think there are a lot of environments and learning experiences and even schools as we get into Raya’s work. And maybe that’s a good segue to really look at different ways to teach and different modalities, but I think there’s so much of that happening out there.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. And so let’s talk about Raya’s episode, because you referenced, there’s so much of that happening out there. And I think Rayade gave a really good example of how she’s trying to make an effort to do that. And a couple of quick takeaways I think I referenced in the episode, I think was my final question to Raya. Within my professional community, I’ve got a lot of teachers that have expressed an interest in wanting to create their own school. Whether they do or don’t, I don’t know what their future holds. But Raya is obviously someone who said, I want to go and create a school. And one of the things that I liked a lot about it was I got a sense that there was an effort to establish objectives for what they want to accomplish within this school and the learning experiences that they offer there.

Matthew Worwood:
Was very much a business and entrepreneurial mindset that I felt Raya expressed as she was sharing the story about how she put the school together, as well as how she continues to facilitate and manage that school. And then the other piece that I liked a lot about it is that with, in this framework of kind of like, continuing to further grow the school, develop the school, it seemed like it was about identifying problems and working closely with parents and educators to see how are we doing and how can we mix it up and what might we be doing next. And so I really got a sense of Raya not just building curriculum and developing a school, but developing a community and having lots of stakeholders within that community contributing to the long term vision of where they’re heading.

Cyndi Burnett:
And one of the things I loved about her work is that she’s having the students focus on global issues and working on project based learning based on those global issues and really problem solving things. And I really think that when we look at this type of learning and it’s an online program, it’s an online high school, I don’t know if you remember that, but this online high school, that’s all project based learning and really focused in on what the students want to learn about. I think that’s really exciting.

Matthew Worwood:
No, no, it is. And again, it ties back to what we said. I mean, I don’t want to kind of keep harpering on around these discussions around Will Richardson, but I think it’s connected, this personalized learning piece. It’s like, all right, I’m interested in this, so I’m more intrinsically motivated to learn this particular topic. I’m less interested in this, but I’m being forced to learn that topic. So based on what we said earlier, is that now, am I now experiencing schooling because schooling says I have to learn this topic. But what I’ve been kind of reflecting on over the last few weeks is that there are things that I’ve learned during my time at school that have stayed with me, and I continue to leverage, and it’s knowledge that I continue to build upon to be the person I am today, both personally and professionally. There’s other learning experiences, quite often things like math, if I’m brutally honest with you, that I’m not utilizing enough and therefore I have forgotten about.

Matthew Worwood:
But at an early age, how would I know which piece of information I’m going to need and not need for a future? I don’t know. So maybe there is a need of a balance between schooling and learning. And I will say, and I brought this up to RyA that within her model, they constantly have systems of assessment, less rigorous, the stakes are lower, but they still got systems of assessment to make sure that students are learning what they need to know. And then when they’re falling short and that the students aren’t learning the content that they’re communicating, that’s when they’re then trying to, like, revise how they can improve those. I don’t want to use the word test scores, but improve that learning outcomes of those students.

Cyndi Burnett :
Right. And I think that’s a great way to approach it is really making sure you’re still meeting those objectives and not just out there in a random, chaotic sort of way, but really being deliberate about meeting those objectives and how to meet those objectives and then going on this journey of learning. I think that’s much richer than the sort of schooling that we were referring to earlier. I also wonder, Matt, and this sort of builds on what you were just saying in terms of schooling, and you and I have had the conversation many times around knowledge and how much students need knowledge. So just because we can have access to knowledge at our fingertips through our phone and our Internet and Google doesn’t mean knowledge isn’t important. Knowledge is important. So we want to make sure we frame that up front. I believe in academics, and I like the academic journey because, well, we are academics, let’s face it.

Cyndi Burnett:
So we like the rigor of learning something new and opening up a book and having to study it. But I do think that there is this balance that needs to be met, and I don’t think that educators are necessarily aware of that balance that needs to be met and how they might meet it. And I think some teachers are doing a really great job in that, and other teachers might be falling short.

Matthew Worwood:
I love it, and I think there’s something that you said in there that’s just starting to make a few things click for me. It’s that concept is that constructivist concept is that only we can construct knowledge. Everything else is just information. So I suppose schooling is deciding the effective ways. It’s one, deciding what information we’re going to administer, and two, teachers deciding how they’re going to best administer that information. But also the learning aspect is when the students are constructing knowledge from that experience. And so if knowledge construction is not happening, then learning is not happening. So maybe schooling is information delivery.

Matthew Worwood:
Knowledge is the learning piece. Knowledge acquisition or knowledge construction, shall I say, is the learning piece. And the connection that was making with what you said is that if I’m reciting information or if I am having knowledge imposed on me, I must think this or I must do it in this way. It’s not really my knowledge. It’s stuff that I could just Google. So I haven’t learned. But the things that, whether it’s the learning experience is effective or perhaps I’ve got an intrinsic motivation towards it, it clicks, right? And now I start seeing things in a unique way. I start making unique connections, and it now has more meaning to me.

Matthew Worwood:
This information you’ve given me has more meaning to me. And now I can see exactly how I can apply it in my world or in the future. And this might be people now I’ve shared that might be people listening. Yeah, duh. You know, but this back and forth has really helped assist me in doing that. And I suppose that’s what Raya’s doing, right? She’s focusing on knowledge construction.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I think it’s a great example of miniseq creativity that James Kaufman and Ron McGhetto talked about, you know, having those moments of like, oh, okay, so this is how this works and this is how I might apply it in my life.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes, good point. Because Mini C does capture all of those discoveries. So if we’re not discovering any uniqueness, any novelty, any usefulness within that information, we’re falling short of learning and falling short of mini seat.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love this.

Matthew Worwood:
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Cyndi Burnett:
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Matthew Worwood:
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Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org, comma, or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. Okay, Matt, what did you think of Marcie Klein? What insight did you walk away from with our Marcie Klein episode?

Matthew Worwood:
So, first of all, I thought it was great having a pediatrician on the show and very inspired by her story. Yes, the parent envy piece, which you brought up early on in the show. Yes, I have parent envy. I mean, the fact that she’s created a company with her children and a company that’s kind of like just really cool, you know, and doing things around boxes. I mean, you know, just, it’s just awesome. And again, it’s one of those examples of like, I don’t know, probably something that turned a mini c, dare I say a mini c idea that suddenly transitions to pro c because of all of the additional things that an individual can bring, the business model, the marketing, the commitment, the motivation for it. Just very inspiring. And then, to a certain extent, a little envious at the same time.

Matthew Worwood:
And I wish you very much luck on that journey. But you know what I think, for me, I like talking a little bit about her work as a pediatrician, but from a learning perspective, I love the community centered design piece, like the concept of bettering the community and involving the community in the design of something. And particularly when I felt in many ways, Marcie was kind of suggesting, look, just using a 3d printer to go and create something from a website isn’t really about community design and solving problems. And I thought it was a valid point and an inciting conversation around that point.

Cyndi Burnett:
So that’s really interesting, Matt, because the thing that came out of Marcy Klein’s for me, actually was an insight when I was writing up and putting together the show notes, which was going beyond technology and looking at things that we could bring into the classroom that aren’t technology related. And I’ve been thinking a lot in the last few weeks, and you and I have referenced the anxious generation, which we both read about technology and our children, and when is it too much? And just recently, I asked my daughter, I said, how would you know that you’ve had too much technology? And she said, well, when you know, you know. And I think I know. And I’m like, that’s not a good enough answer for your mother. But when we bring these technologies into the classroom, what is their purpose? When is it too much? And what are the long term impacts of technology inside the classroom and at home? Because let’s face it, right before the pandemic hit, I used to have a device in my house where our kids could only have 1 hour on their devices, 1 hour a day. And then it just turned everything off. But then the pandemic happened, and then they were online all day for, you know, a year and a half, and then they were communicating with their friends through the Internet. And it sort of just became, like the way you communicate.

Cyndi Burnett :
And I think so much of what I’m looking at, and my kids are both in high school now, what I’m looking at with their friends is they really don’t communicate as much in person as the younger generations. And I do worry about the technology piece and it being too much. And that’s why I found it really refreshing to interview Marcy because she was talking about, you know, sort of thinking with your hands, as my Barney, my friend Barney Sulzberg would say, like, really thinking with your hands and building and, and getting off the devices to create stuff. And I, I want more of those experiences for our students in education. So I get much more excited about, like, her product and what she brings to education versus, like, the latest technology, because we have a lot of technology, and I just worry, is it too much? What do you think?

Matthew Worwood:
You’ve actually challenged me to identify a new perspective to this conversation that I’ve thought about before, because initially, what I was going to say is totally agree with you, and I do agree with you, and I’m not going to kind of repeat what you’ve said, but we’ve taken away the tablet devices from our three boys over the last couple of weeks for a variety of different reasons, but some of it disciplinary reasons. But what was interesting a couple of weeks ago is my three boys, I think primarily initiated by my seven year old, who’s the youngest, found themselves turning our upstairs into a school. And each of the bedrooms was a classroom, and they had all their cuddly toys out, and they were kind of going and teaching each other’s classes. They had a wonderful day just playing. And the same thing happened this week. My two, my middle son and youngest son, they, you know, what were those, those sticky things that you gave me when I came up to Buffalo? It was in a box. There’s like these connector things. It was in plastic blocks.

Matthew Worwood:
They’re blue, red. You gave me some toys, some kid toys.

Cyndi Burnett:
Oh, were they noobs?

Matthew Worwood:
Noobs. Maybe it was noobs. I’m going to go with noobs because I don’t know what they’re called, but I’m sure they were. Yes, yes, yes.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love her.

Matthew Worwood:
Right. So they went and started playing with the noobs together, right. And they’ve had this wonderful game. And my youngest has always enjoyed playing with the noobs and makes robots and things like that. But I’m not quite sure what they were playing. But I do know that it was tough getting my middle son to soccer on Monday because he said he wanted to play with his youngest brother. That never happens, and it’s happened because we’ve taken the technology away. So that was my initial response.

Matthew Worwood:
I wanted to share that story, but then you challenged me to think about that context in a classroom environment. And let’s. I don’t know if this is the case but let’s go. At the potential risk of what may have happened, we’ve gone from doing fun freeze frames and home corners and, you know, coming up with plays using puppets, and we’ve replaced it with let’s make movies with the tablet phone or let’s make stop motion projects. And I’m not saying that these are valid learning experiences as well, but have we gone a little bit too fast? It’s about the technology, having to teach what button how to open the app. And it’s at a detriment to when you just get up and invent a freeze frame or you just invent an imaginary play. Hey, everyone. Hey, first graders.

Matthew Worwood:
Everyone has to invent a new ending. In fact, I did this to my youngest when I went to the kindergartner class. We read three Billy goats Gruff, and I simply had each table, after reading the book, come up with a different ending to the book, and then they had to act out the ending. Now, like that might are we potentially replacing those types of experiences with technological experiences? And therefore, what is the impact of that? And I haven’t really thought about that, but with all the technology we have in the classroom, what is the non technological learning experiences that we’re taking away? And do we know the long term consequence of that? You’ve got me raising that question based on what you just said, and it’s a really good point.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, Matt, I would love to hear from our audience, so we will make sure that we post this in our LinkedIn fueling creativity education podcast group. So if you’re not part of that group, join us in this conversation. We would love to hear from you, and thank you so much for joining us on this special debrief episode.

Matthew Worwood:
My name is Doctor Matthew Werner.

Cyndi Burnett:
My name is Doctor Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Matthew Warwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is curiosity to create, and our editor is Sam Atkinson.