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As we wrap up another school year, Cyndi and I are taking some time to reflect on the months ahead, sharing our plans to disconnect, recharge, and pursue creative projects both inside and outside of our professional lives. In this episode, we’ll also offer a preview of our upcoming summer Listen and Learn series, inspired by our new book, The Future Creative: 10 Actions for Fueling Creativity in Education.

In each short episode, we’ll explore one practical action educators can take to cultivate creativity in their classrooms, schools, and professional practice as they prepare for the year ahead

Summer music, Cyndi I can hear it and I can smell it, if that makes sense. I just love the smell of summer. See, I don’t like the smell of summer, so we’re clear. S- people with allergies, when you come out and you, and you smell the, the, you can just smell the pollen, and you immediately, like, tense up. But I do feel the heat.

So it’s less I can smell the summer, I can feel the summer. Oh, thanks for ruining that for me, Matt. I love the smell of cut grass, like freshly cut grass, and when the flowers open in, in my garden, I love going over to them and, like, smelling them to really, like, take it all in. Because living in Buffalo and it being so cold for so long, it’s just a totally different smell.

But I can understand you have allergies. All right, I have sympathy for that. W- we did a great example of shifting perspectives right there, because I was listening to you and I was like, I was freaking out, but at the same time, I could appreciate what you’re saying. Even the sounds of summer, like the hearing the lawnmowers go, and the birds outside, and all of those wonderful noises that you hear when summer hits.

It- do you know what’s actually funny is my, um, my middle son at the moment, when we’re going to school, he is into the new Shakira song for the World Cup, and he says that, “I don’t know what it is about this song, but it just makes me feel like the summer.” And so there, there are, right? Like sounds, smells, feelings And I think there’s also something about, like, the very beginning of summer, like where you just wanna take everything and put it on pause, and paint it all, and just, like, live in that beginning of summer.

Because once it starts, it feels like it’s over. So I, I don’t like that feeling of like, it’s July and you’re like, “Oh no, we’re halfway through.” But right at the start of summer, and when we’re recording this, it’s June 4th. So having that moment where you’re just taking it all in and saying, “Here we go.

Here’s what we’ve all been waiting for,” the smells, the sounds, the The, the sunshine on your face, you know, feeling, you know, really warm when you haven’t felt warm in a long time. It’s just exuberant It is. It is. I mean, there’s also a transitional period because there’s also that kind of like burnout, right?

Like, I, I know that I w- I’ve been burnt out the last couple of weeks. I, I don’t know what it is. Each semester… I don’t know if each semester is necessarily increasing in workload. It might actually just be to do with my age. The other thing I’ve been thinking about, it might be to do with the three, the three kids, and the fact that they’re at a particular time in their lives where they’re also demanding more and more.

Uh, but it does take me a while to recharge those batteries. Um, so where you’re at right now and where I’m at, it, it isn’t immediate. Like, school doesn’t end, and then suddenly I feel that. It’s almost like the first week I’m just like, “What the heck just happened? Mm-hmm. I can’t freaking feel anything.” And then one day you wake up and you’re like, “Oh.”

And it’s like now you can get to open… It’s actually, there’s a, there’s this, like, creativity aspect here, right? There’s a point at which we begin to settle down, and all of the kind of anxiety and stress that we have in our mind, we then suddenly become more open to our environment. And when become more open to our environment, that’s when we get to experience everything that you’re describing there

So with that, Matt, I think it would be fun if to kick off this Listen and Learn series, first we share what our goals are for the summer, maybe our creative goals, maybe our professional goals, and then we talk about what we’re gonna be doing for this summer’s 2026 Listen and Learn series. So, why don’t we start with you.

What’s something you’re doing this summer to rejuvenate yourself and get out of that burnout mode, and enjoy your creative life, and maybe something you’re doing professionally as well if- Yeah. I lo- I loved, I mean, I love, I love the idea of yourself, right? So what are you doing for yourself? And we, we just had James Kaufman on the show talking a little bit about creativity and meaning, and certainly, a- as you and I know, I think we do express a lot of our creativity within the professional context.

So yes, I could talk a little bit about this podcast and some other things relevant to that, but when I’m thinking about just myself, I find myself thinking about my journey with golf. This will be the kinda second or third year where I am, I keep saying trying to be deliberate in my efforts to become a better golf player.

And I have to say I, I, I really enjoy it, and let me explain why I enjoy it a little bit and how I’m connecting it to creativity. It, it seems to be, number one, something where I feel like there’s a really long road, that I can continue, you know, uh, fate, God willing, to keep playing golf for, you know, a number of decades.

And what’s great I’m learning about the game is there’s so many different aspects to playing golf from the grip of the club to the swing of the club to how you’re making contact with the ball. The, the different clubs that you’re using at different holes. There’s a little bit of strategy and, and everything I just said changes based on where you are on the course.

And you’re, you’re constantly learning that game. And so it’s, it’s … I’m finding it a really great way because it, it … Yes, technology’s involved in YouTube videos and, you know, I do sometimes use AI a little bit to tell me a little bit about the different clubs or what I should be hitting or not hitting.

But the point is, when I’m on that golf course, and it’s similar to camping, I feel very disconnected to everything else professional, everything else digital. And I think that I am deliberately trying to become more hyper-focused or even, shall I say, I’ve said to some people, I’m trying to channel my obsession or one of my obsessions into golf because it is so different from everything else I do.

It’s almost like I get to relax and de-stress from all the things that I associate with being highly productive, if that makes sense. So that’s what I’m trying to do. This summer I’m trying to play golf regularly Hmm. Matt, I love that. And I think, again, going back to different perspectives, when I, when I think of golf, I think, oh gosh, I just don’t have the, the tolerance to like go to 19 hole…

It’s 19 holes? It is 18 holes. 18 holes. Okay, 19 maybe is miniature golf, which is all I’ve really done. But I don’t really have the patience. But when I hear you talking about it, it makes me interested in learning more about how it really helps you hyperfocus and get into that moment, and sort of allow everything else to sort of fall by the side.

And I think those moments that we can have in the summer, especially in the summertime, and especially outdoors, whatever it might be, like camping or going for a walk or going to visit, you know, an outdoor gallery of some sort, festivals, where we can sort of take everything workewize and technology and put it into our bags and just forget about it, and just be living in these lives that we have, um, that we’re so blessed to have, and so many opportunities we have, and really to just live in that moment.

So I think, you know, one of my goals this summer is to have more time like that. Even like when I’m waking up now, instead of reaching for my phone and scrolling, which is typically what I do for the first half an hour, I’ve been waking up in the morning, I get my cup of coffee, and I just go sit out in nature.

Um, I have a special chair. I live right by the woods, and I just sit, and I set my alarm for 15 minutes, and I just sit there and I let my mind wander, which came from a conversation we had many seasons ago f- with Natalie Nixon about mind wandering. And so instead of having to meditate or focus or think about all the things, I just say, “I’m just gonna sit here with my coffee and h- listen to the birds and think about what might come out of the day.”

And it has been the most magical transformation, going from scrolling in the morning to sitting outside with my cup of coffee. So even thinking about small changes like that, um, is… can be so valuable It, it is. And, and, and the, the, the challenge as well, when you look at things like the culture in the US and you look at even like the LinkedIn f- uh, feed, it’s almost like you’re constantly under pressure- Mm-hmm

to always be doing something. Uh-huh. And you know, when you’re sharing your example there, my immediate thought was, “Oh, and you can listen to a podcast or read a book,” and that’s not what you’re saying. No. You’re saying to, again, be deliberate and every morning do nothing- Do nothing … and just allow your brain to wander, and not feel pressure that it has to wander about thinking about the podcast or wander about thinking about marketing the book or even what next book you might write.

Mm. It is simply just to wander wherever it wants to go. Yeah. And this is something that we, we need to teach our students as well. Mm. And it’s that, um, what, what was one of our guests talking just about breaks in the day, like, uh, mind-wandering breaks? Was… There was something similar I felt in the podcast that this has been discussed, maybe not 15 minutes or five minutes, but I’ve, I know there’s, are creativity practitioners that talk about having, um, you know, short holidays or short vacations- Mm-hmm

where you just let your brain wander. Yeah. And I, I think we just don’t build that in enough, you know? I think we, we put a lot… Even when people say, “Oh, well, I wanna meditate,” it’s like, okay, but meditation still has a purpose. You know what I mean? It’s just like to be in the present moment. But when you just say, “I’m just gonna let my mind wander, I’m just…

My only purpose is to just sit there That’s it. Hmm. And allowing yourself to sit there. Every- Like, the world slows down. It does. Like, my cup of coffee is, like, this glorious ti- has become this glorious time of the day where the world slows down and my brain slows down so that I can be more productive the rest of the day.

So it actually helps in the productivity side as well. You know what I mean? By slowing down, you’re going faster. I mean, it’s like thinking… What is it? What is that great book? Thinking Fast, Slow. You know which one I’m talking about? I, I, I, I, I don’t know what book you’re talking about, but I do get what you’re saying.

And then actually, I think one of the things that I was, I was like, “Huh,” w- when you said it, was this idea of when you, when you f- begin to sense that summer’s here, you sometimes… Not that you… I don’t think you said you get down, but you kind of feel like it’s almost gonna be over. Yeah. And I think that’s a, that’s a big, big part of it, right?

Is this, is if you, if you’ve suddenly got all this free time now and you, you feel a need to fill it up w- with something in the day, then yeah, the, the pace is gonna continue to move- Yeah … very, very quickly. Um, and I’ve actually been… Funny enough, I’ve actually been talking to my boys around this, particularly my eldest recently, because he’s, he’s, you know, uh, can have sometimes at his school 13 days in a row.

It’s in- incredibly intense. Hmm. And it takes time for us to make that transition because we’re always on the go. And so there’s a lot of discomfort associated with that as well. Mm-hmm. There is this, I think, innate desire for us to maintain the same pace and same stress levels. And unless we are deliberate in trying to say, “You know what?

I’m going to use the next week, the next few weeks, to actually teach myself what it is like to just sit and do nothing.” Yep. And I think 15 minutes with a wonderful, um, coffee cup in your hand- Mm … and a great scenery, great way of doing it. Yeah.

You know, Cyndi, we’ve just had some laughs about the idea of saying we need to do nothing and disconnect, but then we also do wanna set some professional goals. But hopefully we find the balance so they don’t consume the entire summer. So making the assumption that you’re gonna continue to take those 15 minutes, and there will be more than 15 minutes this summer that isn’t just about engaging in some professional endeavors, what would be those professional endeavors this summer?

If you choose to do them If I choose to do them in the midst of taking nice breaks and walking through my garden and taking dance classes, which I have recently started, I think I will be working on, uh, the Star Model book. So I wrote a model of how teachers can bring creativity into the classroom. It’s sort of five steps.

It’s what my website is based off of. And I’ve been working on this book, Matt, probably f- three and a half years with Luciane Vallis. And when we started our book, I put that other book on hold, so now my goal for the summer is to get that, that other book done. So hopefully the Star Model book will be done this summer.

And I wanna learn as much as I can about Claude. Now, I know we were just, you know, talking about mind wandering and doing nothing, but I wanna see what kind of tasks… And I w- I’ve been thinking a lot about what James Kaufman told us in our recent episode with him about, you know, how can we get AI to do the tasks that we don’t wanna do?

Like, it’s not gonna be able to do my laundry or empty my dishwasher, but what are the things that I have in my professional world that I can have it do, that can, that I can systematize so that it makes my work life better so I can spend more time writing and doing the things that I really enjoy doing.

So that’s my other secondary goal. What about you? Uh, it’s, it’s tough for me not to kinda like jump a little bit and ask you a bit about the dancing. So can we just, can we… I, I’ve got a question. I’ll come up with my question, uh, m- my response. But going back to dancing, that’s pretty cool. Well, you know, Matt, I used to be a professional musical theater dancer, and that was my first career, and I left it many, many years ago for all sorts of reasons.

But I am still a dancer at heart, so it, it is who I am at the core. And oftentimes when people ask me, like, “What should I do to get into my cre- like, how do I find my creative self or my creative sort of spirit of, of who I am as a creative person?” I say, “Look back to your childhood and what did you enjoy doing the most?”

And for me, it was always about dance. And my daughter, um, who is a dancer as well, a much better dancer than I ever was, uh, she recently tore her ACL, and so she hasn’t been dancing. And I have missed watching her so much that there’s this energy inside of me that says I s- I, if I can’t watch her, I have to be dancing.

So I found a class locally in Buffalo, and I signed up, and here I am back in dance class after 30 years, and it is absolutely joyful Um, and bringing back all sorts of wonderful memories because I have always felt my home was in the dance studio Oh, that’s wonderful. I love that story. I really love that story.

Um, and I hope you get to send me some pictures or videos of you dancing along the way. Um- That’s very inspirational, and hopefully some of our listeners can go away and r- think and reflect. It might not be dance, but rekindling something that, that you’ve done in your, your past. Um- Well, and I think, y- you know, Matt, I just wanna touch on that because I think so often when we look at our, the things that we loved in childhood, we think, you know, I just r- you know, I just turned 50, and I feel like, you know, I’m too old to be dancing.

I’m too old to take a dance class. I’m too old to X, Y, and Z. And it’s so easy to place ourself in those positions, but it’s like, says who? And if I’m teaching creativity, we’re always about breaking boundaries, so why can’t I break my own boundary of this age that, that sort of filters it? It’s like once I turned 25, I was like, I was, I’m too old to dance, which is why I stopped dancing 25 years ago, because I was like, “I’m too old to be dancing.

If I’m dancing, I’m only teaching.” Mm. And so now I, I think, you know, fortunately I follow a bunch of people on social media that are dancers in their 50s and 60s, and I’m like, “I can do that. I can absolutely do that.” And I think we just need to get out of our own heads that, you know, like you might look back at your childhood and say, “I loved playing soccer.”

That’s something you loved as a child, right? Yeah, no, I’m sitting here thinking I, I feel like why the hell am I doing golf? I mean, I might as just- … go be soccer. I mean, I, I have to say I’m not miles away from Ronaldo in age, right? So you’re right, like the, the door’s not closed. I have to go and see out where the local tryouts are happening in some of the, uh, MLS soccer teams.

I still may have it. Right. So why don’t, why aren’t you playing soccer? You know, like, do we, do you feel, and I’m just asking this ’cause it, you might not feel this way, but, you know, sometimes we feel like, well, golf is an appropriate thing for a, a man y- your age, and that’s what you should be doing. But it’s like if you love playing soccer and you love watching soccer and you love being the soccer game, you love the soccer game, which I know you do, then why wouldn’t you go play it, you know?

You know what, Cyndi? You’re– I’m gonna– I have, I have been thinking about it. I have, I have been thinking about it. I’ve been having some conversations about it. My, my meniscus injury is in a better place. Um, and I tell you, I have probably slightly gone back to it because I’ve become a lot more active taking the boys out and kicking a ball over the last couple of years.

I kinda stopped that, but I think I should be able to start doing that a little bit more. Particularly now my youngest is starting to get more into soccer, there’s an opportunity for all of us to get together. So we’ll see. Maybe I’ll, um, I’ll participate in some soccer matches when I’m away. Hmm. Um, one of these resorts, they usually did do, uh, parent and adult soccer matches.

Hmm. So I’ll think about it. Yeah. Um, all right, you asked me a question about professional piece. Oh, that’s fun. That’s fun. Um, you know, from, from a podcast perspective, you know, we’ve got our book coming out in September. I think there probably will be some stuff around that. I, I do think, I mean, knowing that we’ve, we’ve got our kinda, uh, virtual retreat, uh, today, I do think that we need to have a conversation, to your point, about how can we utilize AI to do some of the grunt work that exists within the process of putting on this podcast, and you and I have spoken about that, and I think that I’m gonna continue to explore that, uh- Mm-hmm

as well. But in terms of just professional growth, I think there, there is opportunity to engage in some, some kind of what, what they were calling like vibe coding, right? Um, where we can kinda use AI to, to generate some, some tools, and we’ll be doing that. Mm-hmm. But the other thing is, uh, I, I I am transitioning a little bit with the eye of creativity in the, in the business world, and I’ve actually got a, a white paper I think that will be coming out over the next couple of weeks around, around that, and kind of that, those high levels of creativity that we speak about in the book for the Future Creative.

How do we continue to safeguard and promote that high level of creativity knowing that we have some of the limitations that exist within AI? So yes, we are gonna integrate AI into our workflow, but how do we do it in a way that, to your point, helps us do the grunt work, hopefully makes us more productive, but at the same time we never offload that, that high level creative thinking, uh, to AI.

And, and I don’t know about you, but, you know, you and I continue to try and utilize AI to do intros or outros for our podcast, and we very rarely use them because we don’t like them. And so that’s an example, right? Is, is making sure that, that Cyndi and I, Cyndi and myself, you and me, stay at the, the heart of, of things like the podcast, um, uh, while being ultimately better and more productive in how it’s created.

And so I think that’s gonna be a big part of, of the professional work as well as a little bit of writing and, uh, and some, some consulting along the way. So yeah. Oh. And a little trip to Europe. Yeah, and a little trip to Europe. Um, and listen- … and, and the World Cup, you know, like, uh, I’m going to an England game and, uh, I’m gonna head out to a fan fest for another England match, and it’s hopefully gonna be an exciting tournament for us.

I am not blind. There’s gonna be incredible pain at some point. Oh, Matt, that sounds great. Well, we’ll have to do an update of how the, how the summer went at the end of summer. We should do that. We should do that, and whether or not we actually did. Hey, it might be that your coffee, 15-minute coffee break became five hours of you just chilling in the garden.

That’s okay. That’s okay. You know, that, that’s the wonderful thing about the summer. You can set the goals, but the key thing is you don’t have to feel the pressure to meet those goals. Right. Right. The one thing we do have to do though, we have to meet, is we have to produce this Listen and Learn series.

Yes. Yes. How about we talk about the Listen and Learn series after our next break?

So we’re really excited about this summer’s Listen and Learn series because Matt and I have actually published a book called The Future Creative: 10 Actions for Fueling Creativity in Education, that will be released on September 19th. And we’re going to be sharing the 10 actions, just little tiny tidbits, with all of you over the course of the summer.

Yeah, and one of the things that, that, in fact, Cyndi, you came up with this idea, and I, I think it’s a, it’s a great idea. It’s a fun idea. Scheduling can be difficult, um, as, as we know, and we can sometimes burn ourselves out when we produce lots and lots of episodes back to back. So one of the things Cyndi and I are gonna be doing is we’re actually gonna be taking on five actions each, and we’re, we’re gonna try a slightly different style to our podcast.

It’s gonna be more of those kind of like vlogs. Uh, so Cyndi and I will introduce and close out each episode, but the, the big chunk of each action will be presented by one of us, and, um, and that’s gonna be fun as well. And of course, as a reminder with these Listen and Learn episodes, it, it’s about, of course, it, it’s a fun way for us to kind of like experiment and play with, with different ways of, of putting together the podcast, hence why we…

Even to a certain extent in this one. You know, you ha- little small things like, oh, we’ll come back after the break, and we have the summer music to open up. But with these Listen and Learn episodes, um, you know, not only do we see this as content we’re creating to help promote the, the book, so there’s gonna be a video element that probably will get released in the summer.

We are focusing more on just the audio pieces of these recordings right now, though we are gonna go and experiment with some social media as well to make sure that we are embedding about a two to three-minute short when we’re recording these episodes that we can release on social media. But they are generally just short episodes.

And as we continue to reiterate, the reason why we see them a short episode is that we’re so grateful for many of you that continue to, to engage with us over the summer months. But we, we wanna make sure that, like, these are light, short sound bites of episodes where you can kind of keep thinking it supports your kind of professional learning over the summer, but it’s not kind of too in-depth and, and, uh, heavy And to make it extra fun, we have decided that we will give a letter out aft- at the end of each episode, and if you collect those letters and you rearrange them, you will find a phrase.

And if you send that phrase to us, then you will be up for a wonderful gift of a signed copy of The Future Creative as it comes out. So if you continue to learn to… If you continue to listen to all of the episodes, then you can collect those letters and send us y- the phrase, the key phrase. And we haven’t set a goal of when we’re gonna close down that, that challenge, but, uh, with- we’re envisioning sometime at the end of the summer.

Uh, so you have to send us that phrase to ideas@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com, or you can send us it via LinkedIn. I mean, it’s not necessarily a formal way of sharing it with us. And as I said, we will get you those signed copies of the book, hopefully sometime around October-ish, I would, I would assume. Um, and actually before we go, Cyndi, we should say we are still…

We’ve started recording some episodes of season 13, and there’s some really good… The last couple of conversations, woo. Oh, fantastic. Re- really good. Some of my favorites. Yeah. Yeah. Some really, really good, uh, episodes. But we are still taking bookings, so as always, if you… I mean, we know we’ve got some listeners that are listening to every single episode, because we meet you at conferences, you reach out to us on LinkedIn.

Um, if y- if you feel like you wanna have a conversation and share all of the wonderful things that you’re doing in your classroom or perhaps things that you’re doing within your scholarly research, then reach out to us at questions@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com, because we are still booking guests, and we would love to have you on the show.

And before we go, if you could make sure that you are subscribed to our newsletter, and we’ll link that in our show notes, and you are following us on YouTube, you’ll get to actually see the clips, please do so. And if you want an extra bonus, find a friend that you can do the Listen and Learn series with, and then you can win the books together maybe.

Yeah, I love that idea. Well, on behalf of Matt and myself, we hope you have a wonderful summer. My name is Dr. Cyndi Burnett. And my name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.