S12 Emma Widmer AUDIO

Matthew Worwood: What does it look like when an educator channels her own creativity into building something truly immersive for students? In this episode, we talk with Emma Wimer about how she created the Wonder Museum within her school walls, transforming familiar spaces into experiences filled with curiosity and.

Matthew Worwood: We will also explore how she expressed her own creativity as part of this effort while supporting creativity across her school community. And more importantly, we will ask her the question about why or how more schools can consider bringing the immersive power of museums directly into their own buildings.

Matthew Worwood: Hello everyone.

Matthew Worwood: My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood,

Cyndi Burnett: and my name is Dr. Cyndi 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 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.

Cyndi Burnett: Today we welcome to the show Emma Widmer. Emma is an educator in Western New York and has been teaching for over 10 years in previous teaching roles.

Cyndi Burnett: She has served as a general education classroom teacher and a reading interventionist. For the last five years, Emma has been the gifted programming specialist at Dodge Elementary School, which is actually the school she went to for elementary school. So that’s fun.

Emma Widmer: Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett: Gifted programming is not state mandated in New York, but few districts still offer programming.

Cyndi Burnett: She collaborates with many teachers in the school to run special learning opportunities, events, and extracurricular clubs. She also teaches college level courses at night at the local college, and she enjoys teaching and being a learner herself. Welcome to the show, Emma.

Emma Widmer: Yes. Thank you for having me.

Cyndi Burnett: So in season six of the show, we interviewed Steam educator, Andrea Mango, who is the most creative educator I know, and she is also a very close friend of mine.

Cyndi Burnett: So in this season, I went back to Andrea and I asked what teacher she would recommend to be on the show, and the first thing she said was, you need to interview Emma. She said, wait till you see all the wonderful things she’s doing in her classroom. So we’re very excited to talk with you about some of the things that you’re doing, and I’d love to start with your sweatshirt, which Matt noticed as soon as we came on, which says Wonder Museum.

Cyndi Burnett: Tell us about the Wonder Museum.

Emma Widmer: Okay. Just to speak on Andrea really quick, her and I love to collaborate together. She runs a program over at our elementary school, so we have the unique opportunity to work together often which is what inspired the Wonder Museum. So when I inherited the program five years ago I was approached with, we have to do.

Emma Widmer: Building wide services and we will service, certain things for the whole entire school and how is that going to look. And I remember from my time at Dodge Elementary School what that kind of looked like. And it was a nighttime event where we got to go in and explore. Like at a Dino dig, it was like really special.

Emma Widmer: And we got to dig for fossils and have a really cool kind of immersive experience. So I’m like, okay, how can I. Bring that to our building, but I wanna do it during the school day. I want all students to have access to this programming. And what better way to do that with the curriculum extension teachers because they have access to the whole school.

Emma Widmer: And they see those students once a week on a very structured schedule. So I collaborated with, our curriculum extension teachers, so our gym teachers, our steam teachers our art teachers and our music educators. And three times a year I bring the Wonder Museum to specials. And so what that looks like is for the week my programming is specifically in a curriculum extension area.

Emma Widmer: So I might be in the library for the full week and I bring an immersive museum experience, and the theme changes three times a year. So that the kids have a different experience every single time and we’ve done tons of themes. Actually before we hopped on, I sat down, I’m like, can I remember them all?

Emma Widmer: Because there’s been quite a few over the years. But one of the most recent that I did in the library, with Andrea actually in the STEAM lab was inventors and innovators. So we brought in exhibits, we do virtual reality experiences infographics, videos. Just any way that the students can engage with and learn about that topic so that we can foster curiosity and get them to wonder.

Emma Widmer: I think the world moves so fast sometimes that it’s really hard to get kids to slow down and really think about things in a new and different way. So that’s what the Wonder Museum’s all about. It’s a immersive museum experience with some real exhibits, some virtual reality exhibits, and just changing things to get kids to engage in whatever that topic is.

Emma Widmer: Sometimes we centered it around. Around, like what’s happening in the world. Right around the solar eclipse, we did an outer space museum. And then we’ve done, all kinds of different things. Robotics under the sea, rocks and gems. So it’s a really special way to get the kids to slow down and think of it.

Emma Widmer: Cool.

Matthew Worwood: So Emma, I just wanna follow up on that because so often I’m at a museum and I’m like, this is a really wonderful learning experience. There was something about museums. I find myself consistently saying, why isn’t schooling like this? Because at the end the day museums. Structured learning experience that certainly has embedded learning objectives. This is the goal of the experience. And I’m just curious, was it a conscious decision that you had to say, look, this isn’t about an innovation space. It’s not about us building a program or it, we want to create a museum.

Matthew Worwood: We want bring the culture that exists in a museum to the school. Because when I go to a museum, particularly a good museum. I’m like sitting there and I’m like, wow, I am immersed in this learning experience right now. And I walk away and I’m like, why can’t we bring in or integrate more of this type of experience into our schools?

Matthew Worwood: Because museums are institutions of education. If you think about it. They’re strategically planned exhibits with learning objectives, but. They feel so different to school. So I was just wondering the idea of a museum as opposed to a program or a club or a, an innovation space, did that drive your decision a little bit around creating a museum and of course branding it as its own thing within the school.

Emma Widmer: Yeah, I think it’s like being a museum visitor that kind of inspired that experience. And I’ll say it’s evolved over time. My first Wonder Museum, we did like stations and the kids got a few minutes at each station and they traveled around and it was very structured and it took me some time to release that structure because it should be that immersive kind of free explore experience.

Emma Widmer: And now the kids really know, and we’ve been doing it for years, so they know. What to expect in terms of I get to move around and navigate the room and explore and engage with the things that I’m most curious in. And really like their wealth of knowledge is what drives their curiosity.

Emma Widmer: So if there’s a real exhibit and they see something like, oh, my grandma used to have that. I wanna go explore that more, they’re driven to that station versus someone who may be a more hands-on learner, wants to go and do the building station or the more hands-on experience thing. So really. It took me some time to release that structure.

Emma Widmer: I think a lot of teachers can relate with I need to control how much time they have at each station and what they get to do at each station. And now it’s okay, we sit down, we spend five minutes going over, here’s all the exhibits in the museum today. Off you go. And they just, they go and they spend time as much or as little at each exhibit as they wanna, and it’s really amazing to see.

Emma Widmer: And now, the teacher that I’m collaborating with, and I can really go and push the thinking and push the learning and help kids make connections at the exhibits versus okay, here’s your five minutes. You have to do this. And like too much structure was taking away from that experience, so took some time to release that, but it’s really powerful to see what kinds of things that they do and what kinds of questions that they ask.

Cyndi Burnett: And I’m sure there’s a lot of teachers listening that are thinking, oh, that sounds like great fun. I just don’t have time for that. So for those teachers, what would you recommend?

Emma Widmer: So I think collaboration is what gives you the time and ability to do things like this. And of course in my program, I have the ability to shift my levels of service a bit and work with a curriculum extension teacher and have access to all students in that way, but it doesn’t have to be this big grand scale.

Emma Widmer: I have teachers in our school who. On Fridays, they call it Fun Friday, but it’s really a learning exhibition day in a similar way where they have a theme or a topic and the reading that they do that day might relate to that topic. The math that they might do might be more real life experiences with that topic.

Emma Widmer: And it’s can still do the same thing of fostering creativity and curiosity and engaging with things in a different way. So I think just figuring out how it might look for you is obviously can be different for what. Capacity you have in your school or in your classroom. But collaborating with other people is what makes it possible because, they have a wealth of knowledge in their special areas too, that I don’t have.

Emma Widmer: We get to build those things together and build experiences for students together and just be willing to try it. ‘Cause you don’t know till you try. I never thought the Wonder Museum would be what it is, but now when I put the bulletin board out in the hallway and the kids like, see what the theme is for the next one, they’re like so excited to go to the library and they get books out before the Wonder Museum for that topic so they can start thinking about it.

Emma Widmer: And just like it’s become something so special because I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with. People in my school who are willing to just give it a try.

Matthew Worwood: So Emma I might find myself bringing this up on the debrief, but I can’t help but be really excited about everything that you are doing and listening to your passion. And, you said something earlier, I have a little bit more free time. And I’m sitting here and I’m like, the teaching profession, as we argue we write in our book, is a highly creative profession. We had a prior guest that we’re speaking about time and money, and ultimately that money can buy time, you can employ more people.

Matthew Worwood: How much do you think some of your creativity is simply connected to the fact that you as given time as an educator to be creative?

Emma Widmer: I think the time piece is super important. Part of my curiosity and my ideas honestly come from my own experiences outside of the classroom and how can I bring those into the classroom?

Emma Widmer: Even the whole idea of the Wonder Museum was founded on, like, I was in Colorado just visiting a history museum and I’m like, I want this for the students at our school. So it’s like the pockets of time and inspiration that I think really drive a lot of the work. It probably wasn’t best for me to say.

Emma Widmer: I have a lot of that free time because I have the same planning and lunch period as the other teachers in my building. The difference is, I service in small groups and so I’m able to drive my time and my instruction a little bit more tailored to the specific students in small groups. And then I really have freedom to.

Emma Widmer: Collaborate with other teachers to do different levels of service. And then a lot of the work that I do is outside of the regular school day in terms of afterschool curriculum clubs where these are things that students are really interested in. Let me bring more of this to them so that they can do it actually outside of our class time because.

Emma Widmer: When you have gifted learners and when you have all students who are just curious about one thing, they need access to do that on their own time, really. Because the class day and the school day is limited. And so how can we bring those experiences to students outside of the traditional school time?

Emma Widmer: Because really that’s where my time comes from too, to inspire the Wonder Museum and inspire projects and see something and be like, let’s bring this to the students. Like they would love that.

Cyndi Burnett: So how do you go about finding the students that are interested in a specific topic to say, let’s do an afterschool enrichment.

Cyndi Burnett: What does that look like in terms of the process of finding those students the topic they’re interested in? And then how do you go about designing those extracurricular clubs and exercises?

Emma Widmer: I think relationships with students are super important and knowing what kids are interested in right now and just fostering that and driving that, and also knowing your own community too.

Emma Widmer: I’m in Buffalo, New York. The Bills are our number one football team here and we do pep rallies on Fridays before big playoff game. Like the bills drive the culture of our school a bit. And so another colleague of mine runs a fantasy football league and I’m like, okay, lets school.

Emma Widmer: Like, What a great idea um, to give students. To do. So they’re interested in, they’re already talking about at home. Their families are probably in a fantasy football league of their own. Like how can I make this a learning experience? So we have a Dodge Fantasy Football League and the fourth graders are able to opt into doing this extra league.

Emma Widmer: They have to draft their team, but they also have to do the math of how many points their players got and track the data and enter their scores and keep track of their own. Players and everything too. So it creates a level of independence for them and interest in something they’re already talking about in the community.

Emma Widmer: And we posted our scores at the end of the hall so the kids would meet up and check their scores and talk about strategy. And secretly they’re doing math and they don’t even realize that they’re doing this like enrichment work at home. But it’s just. Something that they’re already interested in.

Emma Widmer: Just to go back to the club idea, that’s something that a lot of students gravitated towards this year. So next year I’ll plan to do a fantasy football commissioner’s club. And they’re the kids that will have to generate the matchups and they will calculate and check the tops. Top scores points to make sure that they’re accurate and post them so that level of ownership can be even more released to the students.

Emma Widmer: And I have only so much time during the day, so how can I use that afterschool time to get students in who are like already interested in something?

Matthew Worwood: But again, I have to point out there’s a lot of creativity again that you’re expressing within your practice. We’ve spoken so much and written so much about the importance of connecting interests to, the learning experience and you are doing that and then you are seeing it’s working.

Matthew Worwood: And you’ve got the engagement. So now you are thinking what additional learning objectives can I bring in? How can I expand this learning experience further? And, is this something that you feel is unique to you? Do you think it’s come from somewhere specific? Does it come from your passion and love for learning or is it something that you think is shared by everyone in your school?

Emma Widmer: I think I do have a lot of like-minded colleagues that I get to collaborate with, and when they hear a great idea, they wanna run with it, or sometimes they’re bringing a great idea to me, I’m like, how can I bring this to my classroom? I think talking about your ideas is super important. It probably is my own lifelong love for learning when I was very little.

Emma Widmer: I’m one of five kids and my siblings and I would play school in the basement. And of course I was the teacher and I would make all my siblings sit down at their desks and, we had a chalkboard in the basement. Like I always knew this is something that I wanted to do. And, when I was in the classroom as a general education teacher, it was, it felt a little bit more limited in terms of, here’s the curriculum that you have.

Emma Widmer: You have to meet these certain targets and objectives every single day, and your time to do that creative piece was more limited and really had to be. Creative on how to squeeze it in. I shared the idea of a fun Friday where all the learning is centered around one topic. But in the role that I have, that’s my whole day.

Emma Widmer: I get to do that all day long, and I think the freedom and ability to create learning experiences for kids all day long, like gives me the power and passion to wanna keep going and doing more of that. So sometimes I’m like, can I shut that part of my brain off? I’m not always thinking about other ideas and I can just live and let be.

Emma Widmer: But also those are the moments where like I get the best inspiration and I’m like, oh, that would be such a cool project to bring to kids or a cool afterschool club to do. So it’s, it feels almost like a little superpower.

Matthew Worwood: I just wanna quickly transition to gifted education for a moment and just get your perspective on this.

Matthew Worwood: Do you feel that some of that freedom is coming about because of this role that you have as a gifted education coordinator? And if so, do you think that actually this experience, maybe, some students are getting it more than others, and how do you feel about that?

Emma Widmer: In terms of having the freedom within that role for gifted education, we’re lucky to have the program.

Emma Widmer: It’s not state mandated everywhere, and so I am blessed to have been raised in a district and now teach in the district where we still see the importance of it. And we have a community of people who would advocate for the program because there are. Students who are gifted in many ways, a lot of my colleagues argue that the term gifted isn’t the best term because all students are gifted in some ways in a lot of different ways too.

Emma Widmer: And so my job is to find those. Moments where students are showing their creativity and their curiosity and their enthusiasm in a specific area, and foster that the levels of service that we use. A lot of schools adapt this model from Donald Tinger and it’s basically a four level of service program where there’s different levels for all students.

Emma Widmer: So some are all students. Receive this programming. Some students receive specific programming and then many students receive just depending on what their interests are and what their strengths are. So what’s tricky is, I use assessments and I use teacher recommendation and family recommendation to qualify students for servicing.

Emma Widmer: And my biggest worry is am I reaching all of the students that deserve this programming? And I think speaking to your colleagues is so important and just having different ways to check in and see what the student’s strengths are so important. Like not just using one. Assessment to qualify kids, but really looking at the whole big picture of, they might be a struggling math student, but they are an amazing creative writer.

Emma Widmer: They need to come to me for a writing group, and they deserve math intervention too. And you have to be willing to be creative with scheduling and collaborate with your colleagues to make sure this child’s getting services that they need here and they’re getting services that they need in gifted programming.

Cyndi Burnett: I appreciate that holistic view, and one of the chapters we wrote in our upcoming book is called Spot Creative Potential because it is challenging and a lot of teachers aren’t trained in how to spot creative potential in students. So I think it’s fantastic that you really look at and talk with the different teachers and, and look for even just that interest because sometimes it’s just a really strong interest in something that could lead to something great later on.

Cyndi Burnett: So Emma, you mentioned being at the school, teaching at the school that you grew up in, so I would love to know, we’ve never talked with anyone that’s been in that situation. How have things changed and do you think they’re changing in the right direction?

Emma Widmer: So being a student at a school, I think, and then working in a school is a very different experience and I’ve worked in other schools too.

Emma Widmer: So it’s nice to be able to, compare and just think about, is this just this place or is this the norm everywhere? It is still a fun, loving, happy place and I still feel like the hallways are buzzing that the way that they were when I was there. Some programming has changed over time and even the program that I now run has changed since I was a student there.

Emma Widmer: I think some of the change is good change. When I was a student at Dodge, it was very hard to get into gifted programming and you had to qualify by taking one specific test. And my kind of mentality for the program and a lot of my colleagues, and of course my administration would agree that we want it to be a revolving door.

Emma Widmer: We want it to be let’s get the kids in when. When and if it’s the best and most appropriate time for them, and it’s something that they’re curious about. Even if it’s just the Wonder Museum, three times a year they get to visit that special place and have a learning experience that feels rich and feels hands-on and engaging. I think sometimes being a teacher can be very challenging and there’s a lot that behind the scenes makes it, a challenging profession.

Emma Widmer: And of course as a student you don’t see those things and that’s a good thing. You know, I don’t remember my teachers. Closing the door during lunch and just venting about what’s going on and how is the curriculum changing and we’re piloting a new program and what’s that and is there too much during our literacy blocks that we can’t really focus on the instruction that we need?

Emma Widmer: And those are also the conversations that I think. Needs to be had behind closed doors so we can do what’s best for kids and decide what’s the practice that we’re going to use and what part of the curriculum can we focus on that’s really strong. And what part do we need to supplement to make sure kids are getting the learning that they need.

Emma Widmer: Of course as a student there, it, the hallways feel the same way as they always did. I think that’s a great thing because it was such an amazing place to go to school. Hallway experience. We want kids to have in classroom experience. We want kids to have, but it’s still a profession that has its challenges too.

Matthew Worwood: The fact that you’ve got the Wonder Museum on your sweater, and as I said, that was the first thing that I noticed we started our call and. You’ve got so much pride in this thing that you’ve developed and again, I think it speaks to the opportunity of creativity that you’ve had at your school when it’s something that we should celebrate.

Matthew Worwood: Where might this go? Like I’m just inviting you right now to engage the divergent thing. Do you have any ideas of oh, these are like the grand plans. Are we gonna go national with this? Is there gonna be a Wonder Museum is in every single school? I just curious about your creativity and if you’ve even thought beyond , the hearing now.

Emma Widmer: Being able to share with other schools what I do would be amazing. The challenge is I really don’t have the opportunity to market it or sell it as a product, as the district owns my rights to everything creative that I do, which is why I get to do it in my school in such a large way, but I don’t necessarily plan to take it outside of my school. I think if someone else wanted to do the Wonder Museum, if you wanna use the name, if you wanna change the name, if you wanna, put your own school’s name into it. It’s really just the idea of an immersive museum experience. For students. What I would love to do for my school it’s been five years, so every single year our kids are, we’re a K to four building, so every single year they’ve had a different Wonder Museum three times.

Emma Widmer: And so next year I finally get to cycle back to our first year of museums, which for me is exciting because I’m not reinventing the wheel, but I can take my first museum and kind of deepen the wealth of knowledge. Push things a little bit differently. What I would love to do is develop a website where our students have access to, and there’s almost a platform for each Wonder Museum that they can open up and see videos and maybe read alouds from teachers in our school or just databases and articles and things that they can engage with further.

Emma Widmer: So that. If this is something that they’re into, like here’s a wealth of more knowledge that you can go and explore that on your own. And it’s all built within the school district. So a family shouldn’t have a problem saying go check out the Wonder Museum site. And like any video or link or resources safe.

Emma Widmer: And I think technology can be a scary place for families, but if we build something within our school community that parents would love to share with their kids and families would feel comfortable exploring the students exploring independently I think would be really cool.

Cyndi Burnett: Emma, our time is almost up, but I have loved this conversation and it just, it makes me feel good about education and what’s happening because obviously I’m here in Buffalo with you. So we wrap up every episode with a question. What was your most creative educational experience and why, and what impact did it have on you?

Emma Widmer: Okay in middle school we did this Titanic experience. It was a very immersive experience where each student got a person, a mock person that would be on the Titanic, and you got your class and then you got a little back. Ground knowledge of that person and you studied up on them a bit.

Emma Widmer: And everyone would dress to be the class of their person on the day of our Titanic experience. And we went into the library and there were icebergs and there was a place for us to all be stationed and the teachers in library and would take us through this immersive experience where certain things would happen and we would’ve to answer history questions at once.

Emma Widmer: Thought. And if depending on what was going on or if you got the question right, you would get to move on or your lifeboat might sink. And so it was like a secret learning experience. And I think that’s what I try to do every single day as a teacher. Hide the fact that we’re learning in such an immersive experience that the kids just don’t even realize that they’re applying skills that they’ve had in different ways.

Emma Widmer: And I think that. Inspired me to just be like, how can I do that in my classroom every single day? So the Titanic, they actually still do it at the middle school, which I think is really cool. And a lot of my colleagues who have kids in the district talk about it too. like, well, That was me when I was little.

Emma Widmer: And it’s really special to be like, kids are still having that experience from something that, a lot of people are interested in.

Cyndi Burnett: Love it.

Matthew Worwood: So Emma, thank you so much. It really has been wonderful having you on the show. Cyndi and I, we have incredible guests and we never try and, categorize those that are better than one because we get so much from all of our conversations, but we certainly do.

Matthew Worwood: Enjoy and have a special place in our heart for educators who come on the show, particularly those that are passionate and are expressing and sharing their own creativity and how they’re facilitating creativity within their students. So thank you for sharing this wonderful story and I look forward to following the Wonder Museum.

Matthew Worwood: And hopefully when you get that website, this episode will be on it as well. But until then, if you’re a gifted education teacher or even a media lab. Specialists looking to design more immersive learning experiences in your school, then we do think that this episode is for you and perhaps a colleague who shares similar objectives.

Matthew Worwood: And don’t forget, and we keep saying this, all right, so if you’re listening right now, we really want you to subscribe to the Extra Fuel. Newsletter. So you just need to go to our website, fueling creativity podcast com. And we’ve got one of those really annoying popups that come up. We did change the popups so it doesn’t come up after 60 seconds.

Matthew Worwood: I think it’s 90 seconds, but that’s the easiest way I think, to subscribe to our newsletter. So if you’re listening to this right now, you’ve listened to a few of our episodes, seriously check out our Extra Fuel newsletter because we really think that it allows you to be part of this wonderful community that, that has all these amazing guests that we’ve had on the show.

Matthew Worwood: So my name is Dr. Matthew Worwood,

Cyndi Burnett: and my name is Dr. Cyndi Burnett. This episode was produced by Cyndi Burnett and Matthew Worwood. Our podcast assistant is Ann Fernando, and our editor is Sheik Ahmed.