Colleen Kelly:
If you have a student who’s really intrinsically motivated to do something, but they struggle through one particular aspect of your domain, then why won’t you stop to really help them instead of saying, well, they couldn’t do it, so they can’t do know they can’t pursue that area.

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

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

Matthew Worwood:
This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast will 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 to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin. Hello and welcome to a debrief of season seven. It’s our second debrief, which means we are concluding the series, and this is where Cindy and I get to chat. We share a few things or a few takeaways that we’ve got from the last five episodes, which is our episodes with Anne RZA, Eric Booth, Colleen Kelly.

Cyndi Burnett:
Jim diamond, and Camille McHale. And guess what, Matt?

Matthew Worwood:
What, Cindy?

Cyndi Burnett:
We have reached 50,000 downloads of our podcast.

Matthew Worwood:
Yay. Q Celebration music to the editor. Yes, it’s really cool because I feel like it was only last year. I said, I can’t wait until we see the 100,000 download, and we’re kind of halfway there. We’re halfway there to getting 100,000 downloads.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. And I feel like that deserves a song, too, maybe. Oh, we’re halfway there.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, I like that song. I like that song along. I’m not going to sing it, but I think that’s a. You know what? I’m going to play it today. I’m gonna play it in celebration.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right.

Matthew Worwood:
And listen, we are halfway there. And we do have to thank everyone. Know, it’s hard to speculate. Cindy and I haven’t been able to find the time to really dig in and become experts at podcast Analytics. And the podcast analytics probably aren’t as great as some of the other analytical tools that exist online. But we get the feel that we’ve got a few hundred subscribers, and we’re really grateful to all of those subscribers listening to the show. And we do want to hear from you. We want to hear from you for a few different reasons.

Matthew Worwood:
The first one is we want to know what you’re liking about the show so we can make sure that we bring more of that into future seasons. The other thing that we would love to do, and we’re actually starting this next week, I’m kind of jumping ahead a little bit, but we want to kind of bring in some of our listeners to talk a little bit about how the shows help them, but more importantly, what they’re doing in the classroom, because what we figure is that people listening to the show are most likely doing some really cool things in the classroom because they have an innate interest in bringing creativity into their classroom environment. So please reach out to us at questions@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com. Because we want to interact with you more. Yes.

Cyndi Burnett:
And just remember, we post on LinkedIn each week, and if you want to join in the conversation or join the Creative Thinking network to have a more robust conversation with us online.

Matthew Worwood:
All right, Cindy, so it’s a debrief. Hit us up with your first takeaway of the second part of season seven.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay. My first takeaway comes from Colleen Kelly, who was the chemistry professor who has made chemistry books to help teach chemistry to children and adults alike in a fun and playful way. And the insight from Colleen’s episode comes from what she was talking about in terms of one of the courses that she taught in chemistry was a course that doctors, pre med students, would have to take in order to become a doctor. And it was sort of a sorting course where if students didn’t pass it, that meant that they didn’t get to become doctors. And she said, how unfortunate that was when things like that happened, that one course would stop someone from achieving their dreaMs. And I really sat with that for a long time because I was thinking about other domains where we stop people from doing something because they can’t do one little thing. And I’ve been thinking a lot about that in terms of my own children, in terms of my former graduate students, and where they might have a block in which they can’t move forward because of that block and how we help them through it and how we break it down so that they can move more swiftly through those challenges.

Matthew Worwood:
I think you’ve given me a takeaway. To tell you the truth, Cindy, I honestly don’t think I have a follow on because I haven’t thought about that. And I think it’s actually a really packed insight because I think it’s probably some equity pieces to, you know, I think that there are probably also some elements associated with maybe the system, a plan of study, a curriculum that says you need to do this, this and this. However, maybe that curriculum was written seven to ten years ago. It hasn’t been updated, and we have to question some of the value of these skills. But I need to go away and think about that one. But I think you’re completely right. I’ve done this a few times where I kind of put it onto the soccer field and we don’t do this.

Matthew Worwood:
Actually, soccer has evolved, but at the very beginning, you go back to kids soccer. Ten years ago, it was primarily dominated by the big kids, by the fast kids. The kids are a little bit more developed, so they could kick the ball harder. But what that meant was you were missing out on some of the kids that actually were really skillful with the ball, but they just hadn’t developed yet. And who knows how many of those kids eventually went away and gave up soccer because they wasn’t getting as much of the ball or they wasn’t playing enough game time by the time they were in the U Ten s and U Eleven s, U twelve s when it starts getting more competitive. But still there’s that gap in size and development, and then you get a game that’s primarily dominated by the fast kids and the big kids. Now, soccer has evolved since then, and the game itself has become a lot more skillful, probably because some of these kids have been able to stay in the game even if they weren’t necessarily big or fast. Now, of course, there might be people who are a lot more immersed in soccer and soccer coaching that maybe might push back a little bit.

Matthew Worwood:
But I do see some connection with what you’ve shared, because the real question is, do we say this isn’t for you a little bit too early? I wonder if that’s what you’re saying, and that’s kind of worrying. That’s kind of worrying a little bit.

Cyndi Burnett:
It is worrying because I think if you have a student who’s really intrinsically motivated to do something, but they struggle through one particular aspect of your domain, then why would you stop to really help them instead of saying, well, they couldn’t do it, so they can’t do that, they can’t pursue that area.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, and this is the issue when I haven’t really been able to think about something. I know I can go off on a tangent, but you’re making me now. I’m relating to myself, and I think I’ve shared this before. I somehow determined that I wasn’t a good writer at a very early age, and maybe it’s connected a little bit to dyslexia, and perhaps people had maybe made some phrases that, well, because you’re dyslexic, certain aspects of writing might be hard for you. And therefore I associate that with, well, I’m never going to be a writer. Right. But I love writing, and I really enjoy developing stories, primarily developing stories on the page. I’m working on a small documentary right now, and I’m back developing the script, and it’s the thing that I get so much joy from.

Matthew Worwood:
And it’s a shame that I suppose in some ways I found myself pursuing a different career path because I sometimes want to go back and say, I wish I had kind of pursued writing, and who knows what potential I could have had in writing. And now some people have kind of said, oh, Matt, you’re a really good writer. I’ve started to get compliments like that. Right? And I have to kind of fight and, you know, because I still kind of see myself as a bad writer. But the point that I’m going back in is that that was another avenue that I felt the door was closed to me. As I said, I’ve got to go away and think a lot more about this.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah. All right, let’s hear your first insight.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, before I do go to my takeaway, I do want to just quickly stick on Colleen for 1 minute, because I thought Colleen’s story was a great example of kind of moving from Mini C, Little C, and Pro C. Colleen identified an instructional challenge in her classroom environment, and then she went on this journey, and it was somewhat of a long journey to produce this product. The idea of taking a chemistry textbook and packaging it as a fun, interactive story that takes the form of comic books, I think that was just a wonderful story, a wonderful journey of creativity. So I did want to highlight that. Now, in terms of my takeaway, my first takeaway, it comes from Eric Booth, who spoke about artistry, and it was just a really wonderful conversation. I’ve really enjoyed a lot of our discussions around art this year. And the thing that I got from Eric Booth, I mean, I got a lot. But one of the things that I was really thinking about is the relationship between kind of like acting in the stage and being a teacher in a classroom environment.

Matthew Worwood:
Because if you remember at the beginning of the episode, we all kind of shared our experience with acting, and we spoke a little bit about why we transitioned out of acting. And to me, it felt a little bit connected to why some teachers might want to transition outside of the classroom environment because they maybe feel like they’ve lost their artistic connection, their artistry, and this idea of maybe at that point, it kind of comes a little bit more like a craft where it’s kind of very repetitive. And then as the conversation evolved a little bit, and this is the main connection, Eric said something interesting about how when you’re performing on the stage or performing in a classroom, there’s something about doing things for the first time. And he had spoken in his experience how students in the audience can tell when you’re doing something for the first time. There’s something kind of really engaging about the novelty that you’re bringing to the experience. It could be the excitement, the passion, we don’t know. But I directly connected that to my experience sometimes teaching multiple sections of the same class. And usually what I’ve been finding is that in the second section, it sometimes feels a little bit stale.

Matthew Worwood:
And I’m worried, despite my commitment, remains the same. I’m worried that there’s something about me is kind of impacting the students. And when I was kind of thinking more about it, usually in the first section, I like to engage discussion, and it’s very open. This is the theme, what do you think? And we have these kind of really interesting discussions. But in the second section, what happens is I get worried about not replicating exactly what the first section was because I fear that we might go off in two different directions. And I do worry about that. I worry about that for organization purposes. I worry about it because I want to make sure they’re both getting the same experiences and we’re ticking the same type of boxes.

Matthew Worwood:
And so what I do is I try, and even though I pose an open question, I actually find myself in the second section going and trying to replicate what was discussed before. And so my takeaway is trying to make sure I don’t lose the artistry when I’m kind of covering the same things in multiple sections. And I feel like there’s definitely a relationship in a K through twelve environment where teachers are teaching the same curriculum every year.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love that Matt and Eric Booth’s episode was also one of my key insights. And to build on what you just said, what really struck me about that particular area was how teachers are artists in the way they build lesson plans, in the ways that they build the environment. And it also brought me back to the conversation we had with Casey Lathrop, who was a designer who we talked to in season one of the podcast. And we talked to her about teachers as designers. And I think about that in relationship to teachers as artists or having this artistry of teaching and how important I think it is for teachers to have some sort of outlet like creative outlet, and I say creative in a sort of stereotypical way, that they enjoy doing some sort of cooking or sort of everyday creativity work and how that might impact their artistry in the classroom.

Matthew Worwood:
You know, Cindy, I love that connection. And just a quick follow up. I always think a little bit about this relationship between design and art, and I could be accused of overthinking it, but I actually don’t overthink it. It’s just how I like to think about context sometimes and whether or not there are certain contexts to where we are just engaging in pure art. And then there’s other contexts where perhaps we take a little bit more of a design approach. And when I’m talking about the design approach, it’s about maybe identifying a goal, a clearly defined goal. It’s about thinking about the students who are going to kind of interact with that in goal and making sure we’re designing an experience that meets certain objectives, whereas sometimes kind of like this idea of artistic characteristics maybe aren’t always bound by some of the rules or kind of approaches that we might see in a rigid design process. And so the connection that I’m making there is about the importance that even when you go and design something that meets all of the definitions of how we go about being creative, and you’re constantly engaging in the design process, I think what I like about what you’re saying is making sure you’re constantly thinking about how you can keep bringing originality.

Matthew Worwood:
And maybe tapping into your creativity that exists outside the classroom is one way to bring you as an artist into that process and continue to mix it up every day, every week, every month.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

Matthew Worwood:
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:
Curiosity to Create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out Curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. So that was my second insight and your first. So what is your second know?

Matthew Worwood:
My second insight was James Diamonds, which was the episode from Last Know. That episode was kind of split into two A as an instructional designer and as a technologist, Jim thinks a lot about technology and how we can kind of go about being creative with how we use technology. And I know Jim didn’t necessarily always use some of those words, but his work is very much focused on evaluating technology and evaluating the things that we do, which I would argue is something that’s important when we think about pro sea level creativity. We want to know what we’re doing is having an impact, why it’s having an impact, how it’s having an impact. I’d also argue it’s a big part of design thinking, because when you go about the iterative process, you want to make modifications based on information. You want to check your bias. So I think a lot of the things that James was talking about around technology evaluation speaks to some of the stuff we’ve spoken about when we’re talking about proceed creativity and also design thinking in education. What I enjoyed was the first part of the show where Jim was primarily talking about these different AI scenarios.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think it’s really important that we continue to interact with these generative AI tools and build different scenariOs. Jim’s scenario was thinking about how we can go and interact, almost like a discussion with AI and how it can kind of help us, maybe challenge us. We spoke about this idea of personalized AI, and each of us having a personalized AI Cobot, that is kind of like challenging us, but challenging us in a way that we need to be challenged as an individual student. And that concept of providing prompts to a student brought me back to the discussion we had about Yolo the robot and how YOLo the robot can actually provide prompts in the classroom to help student creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
And that was with Patricia Alvarez Alivera.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes. Okay. I did bottle the name a little bit. Patricia. Yes. And it was a wonderful episode. It was a great episode that I.

Cyndi Burnett:
Want to just build on that with my third one, Matt, with Jim Diamond’s episode, also with Anne Rza. And this is a conversation that Matt and I use something called Marco Polo to send each other videos after we’re done with our podcast episodes to sort of start to debrief together what we thought of each episode. And we got into this really interesting conversation around creative teaching and innovative teaching. And Matt, obviously, I’ve been in the creativity field for the last 25 years, and I could never really understand until just the last, I would say few years, but I could never really understand all these innovation summits and innovation techniques and innovate, because I’m like, okay, well, you can’t have innovation without creativity. But I think what our relationship and our conversations has taught me is that innovation is taking something new and useful, which is creativity, and applying it and testing to see whether or not is it effective in the classroom is sort of innovative teaching. And so I don’t think we have identified that in a past episode, but I think it’s a really important distinction because a lot of times, in the case of Anne Rza, who’s talking about innovative technology in the classroom, it’s technology that she identified a problem. She decided to use Canva. She applied it in her classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
She tested its effectiveness, and it was. So I think in those cases, that is innovative teaching. And often we associate innovative with technology because we’re trying out new technology in the classroom. So innovative technology. So we see these big, like ISTI is a very big conference where you have that innovation in there, and you look at these different things that talk about innovation in the classroom. There’s so much of it, but it is different than, I don’t want to say just creativity, but creativity is the upfront process and innovation is the implementation of that process. So when you’re talking about the work that you’ve done and you have brought in a number of guests from the Teachers Innovation studio that you’ve run, where you’ve helped these teachers identify a problem, using technology to help overcome that problem, and then check to see if that was effective. And I think that was the interesting thing about Jim Diamonds and something that you and I continuously talk about is that difference between innovation in the classroom and creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
And it can’t just be creativity, because we have to check and determine whether or not what those strategies that we’ve implemented have been effective. So whether it be in technology or just something else that you try in the classroom that you have to stop to assess.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, Cindy, I love the fact you brought that up. But here’s the problem. I feel like we’ve got to have a whole nother episode to discuss this because I’ve got so many different thoughts about this. I want to respond about technology being a catalyst for creativity, which is why I think it’s a helpful tool. I think we saw that during the pandemic, that the fact that we had to adopt new technological tools that went and showcased the creativity of the teaching profession. In my mind, I certainly think that over the last 10, 20, 30 years, since the World Wide Web, interactive whiteboards, I could go on and on. These new technological tools have challenged teachers to kind of have to reinvent how they go about delivering instruction, communicating with their students, getting them to express their knowledge through different types of products. All of that, I think, has been creativity.

Matthew Worwood:
And it’s one of the reasons why I think technology from a sociocultural perspective is one of these affordances we put in a classroom, and it can suddenly lead to creativity. But also, there’s a conversation to be had here about words, right? Like the use of innovation versus creativity. Is it the same thing? Is it not the same thing? It’s just too much for me to respond to, you know, what I’m like about going off on tangents. I do not want to go off on a tangent with this one. So we’ve got to have another episode, I think.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right, well, we better wrap up, Matt, it’s time to go.

Matthew Worwood:
All right, so before we go, we do have some exciting stuff to quickly share. Number one, next week we are doing a Thanksgiving episode, a Thanksgiving special where we are going to bring on a couple of guests, where we’re going to bring on a couple of our listeners, and we’re going to have a conversation about what we’re thankful for. And maybe we can center it around what we’re thankful for when it comes to innovations that have come in over the past twelve months. Maybe we can be thankful for innovations that have come into our classroom environment. Then we’ve got a couple of other special episodes, and we referenced it in the previous episode. We are prepping a mini listen and learn series centered primarily on AI. There will be small, short episodes similar to what we did over the summer months, so watch out for that as we gear up for the holidays.

Cyndi Burnett:
So stay tuned for next week. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

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