Mark Frank:
It’s just a matter of engagement. That’s what I kept reading. Engage students. Engage students. Make it more interesting for them to be in school. So instead of classroom management where I’m being rigid and I’m getting them in trouble, I look for ways to make my students like my class and enjoy it, and I speak to them in a more personal level and find out what their interests are and try to cater my classes towards them.

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

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

Matthew Worwood:
This is the fueling creativity in education. Podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the 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:
Hello, and welcome back to a very special episode of the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast. On this episode, we welcome two educators who are the grand prize winners of our summer Listen and Learn series, laura Winkler and Mark Frank.

Matthew Worwood:
Laura has been a gifted education specialist at Captain Elementary School in Clayton, Mississaugi. Since 2010. Prior to that, she was a fifth grade teacher at Kelson Elementary School. Laura has had her own classroom since the age of five.

Laura Winkler:
Wow.

Cyndi Burnett:
And Mark Frank has been a Stem educator, science, computer science, robotics, and coach at is 93 in Ridgewood, Queens since 2008. Prior to that, he was a computer programmer in Wilton, Connecticut. Mark has always dreamed of making a difference in the lives of others, teachers and students alike. Welcome to the show, Mark and Laura.

Matthew Worwood:
So a little bit of background to why Cindy and I are so excited to have Mark and Laura on the show. Now, for our regular listeners, you will know during the summer. Last summer we tried something new. We introduced something called the Listen and Learn series, and I’m going to do a plug. We’ve got another Listen and Learn series coming up next week that’s going to be around generative AI. But over the summer, we went and provided a Listen and Learn series, which are kind of like these short microburst episodes where we talked about one of the tips that Cindy and I have come up with based on all of the amazing guests that we’ve had on the show. And then we invited listeners to kind of think about how they might integrate these tips into their classroom for the upcoming school year. And we kind of packaged that as part of a challenge.

Matthew Worwood:
So we thank everyone who responded to the show so positively during the summer. And Mark and Laura are two of our winners who submitted the requirements in the time that allowed. And so we’re really kind of excited because we said, you know what, we’re going to go and give them some grand prizes. But then Sydney came up with this wonderful idea to invite them onto the show to have a coffee conversation about how they might be fueling creativity in the classroom, which I thought was an absolute awesome idea.

Cyndi Burnett:
So we’re going to start with Laura. Laura, can you tell us a bit about your role as a gifted educator and how you bring creativity into the classroom?

Laura Winkler:
Yes. I began my teaching career as a classroom teacher to taught fifth graders for 15 years and then transitioned into this role kind of serendipitously. I wasn’t applying to be the gifted specialist, but I appreciate that in my current district. Our program identifies and serves intellectually gifted students grades two through twelve, which means we don’t really focus on academic content. Our focus is basically in these three main endeavors. One is just self actualization, like helping students develop their sense of identity, their strengths, their passions. We do a lot of social and emotional learning around all their self understanding, around their pecadillos, and all their angst, and all the things that kind of are hard, the hard parts about being gifted and the stuff that is burdensome. So that’s one part of it.

Laura Winkler:
The other part is developing their critical thinking and utilizing their critical thinking through different problem solving endeavors. And then of course, developing and utilizing their creative thinking. So our curriculum is really about immersing kind of students into these situations where they have to use critical and creative thinking in order to grapple with ideas and scenarios and tasks that kind of put them in a position that evokes kind of the various types of identity crisis issues that all people but are very common among gifted individuals. Perfectionism, anxiety, impostor syndrome, fixed mindset, emotional dysregulation. And so by putting them in these creative kind of tasks and situations that also are not easy or it may be ambiguous open ended, it causes them to kind of have to face some of those situations and then allows an entry point for teaching them strategies for self understanding, regulation, and self compassion. So that’s kind of my role and then how I bring creativity into the classroom. Honestly, it’s like my favorite, favorite, favorite thing about teaching. It’s why I’ve been a teacher since age five.

Laura Winkler:
I had the classroom in the basement. I literally had chalkboard and I had the old tiny desks. And I would teach dance would to the neighbor kids. We would dance to disco, Mickey Mouse. The record in my like it’s just always been something fun that I’ve enjoyed doing is thinking of creative ways to kind of teach and engage with people. And so that’s been my favorite thing about teaching. Also the most frustrating thing because you’ve never arrived. There’s always more, there’s always different.

Laura Winkler:
It’s just ever changing. So how I bring it to the classroom. I basically love and feel like I’ve become pretty good at taking the what that I’m responsible for teaching and finding playful, provocative, novel ways in which to kind of invite my students into the learning in a way that I try to make as irresistible as possible, which I recognize as a gifted specialist. I am not beholden to all of the things that a classroom teacher is, but I feel like I did this as a classroom teacher. It just didn’t present itself as many opportunities to be as novel and creative. For example, when I was a fifth grade teacher, teaching social studies was just kind of dry for the way I was taught it. I would find ways. So, for example, teaching explorers, I loved thinking about it as a story.

Laura Winkler:
Students love stories, and fifth graders love stories. So let’s look at the story of the explorer. We learn about story plot, diagram and all that. But even more than that, instead of just all these facts, I would make these collage posters and have weird things that you would be like, what does that have to do with this explorer? Like, a leather shoe was on one of the posters, and each like, there would be maybe six things per explorer we were going to learn about that meant something important about that explorer that then they’re like, well, why is there this leather shoe? And then they learn, oh, wow. They ran out of food on their journey, and they started eating shoes and wraps. And that kind of emotionally attached. I don’t know. Maybe that’s not the right word, but they remember that, and so they’ll remember, oh, yeah, their journey did not make it all the way around anyway.

Laura Winkler:
So I loved finding things like that. It also takes a lot of time and thought, but it’s so fun. And so I feel like in my gifted role, I feel like if you’ve done the strengths finder and know about the strengths finder, I’m definitely an input. I am a collector of things because whimsical little club like, anything that might be fodder for something. And so now that I don’t really have a curriculum, like critical and creative thinking, it’s very overwhelming because it could be anything. But also, what’s fun about it is I’ll seek out things like, there’s I don’t know if you’ve heard of the book Maze, the world’s most challenging puzzle. It was like this big worldwide contest in the 80s. It’s not literally like a jigsaw puzzle, but like a puzzle of the book.

Laura Winkler:
Each page is a different room and has all these clues, and you have to try to figure out the shortest path. And when I found that, I’m like, oh, my kids are going to be like, challenge accepted, because no one was unsolved. And so I’d like to find things like that and just kind of schoolify them a little bit. Like, things that aren’t necessarily intended to be like a curriculum and that aren’t scripted. I love the challenge of figuring out how to kind of pull out the skills and content that I want to expose my students to through those things do.

Matthew Worwood:
I love a lot from that story, Laura, is that there’s aspects of your classroom environment that sound to me very similar to the five year old basement. And I think there’s something special about the fact that you’ve continued to stay connected to that fun, creative effort that we quite often associate with younger children, and you’re bringing that into your classroom environment. So I do encourage you, and I’m not saying that you will, but just make sure you never lose that because it’s inspiring and very special. What about you, Mark? What do you do to bring creativity into your classroom as a Stem educator?

Mark Frank:
Okay, in 2005, I made the life changing decision to be an educator. So I was a programmer before I became an educator, and something was definitely missing, and a lot of it was wanting to help others and make life interesting for students through creative activities. I started first with struggling, and I learned through grit and support from others and a lot of books. Over time, though, I got better, and I wanted to ensure that struggling teachers had somebody on their side to support them. In 2011, I participated in this internship, which really changed my trajectory of my career. I worked in NYU over the summer, and I worked with a lot of modern robots and a lot of modern technology. I worked with different professors. It was really cool.

Mark Frank:
My principal visited me during that time to see the projects I was working on and asked me if I’d be interested in teaching robotics. So I became a robotics teacher along with my science. And in robotics these days, I give students a lot of opportunities to actually play with the robots. I don’t give projects all the time. I give them little quick projects, and then I say, okay, you can use the rest of the week, once you complete that project, to actually play with the robots and learn the code on your own and build. And the overall goal is to get them to have a sumo challenge where they’re knocking each other’s robots out of the ring, and they really love it. Unfortunately, I have a lot of boys in my classes, so I’m trying to entice girls to join the classes. I also teach computer science, where I give students an opportunity to choose whatever computer languages they want to learn because I feel like choice in education is important, and they don’t get a lot of that in these structured, scripted lessons that they do all day.

Mark Frank:
So, like, I have a group that’s working on Python, I have another group working on JavaScript coding, and then I even have a group of students that didn’t choose me as their first talent. They were art students and I give them an opportunity to use a program called Blender where they can create their own art, and then I’m having them share it. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Jamboard, but there’s this new program called Figma, and I’m having them share it with each other and providing feedback to each other on it. As a science teacher, I’ve also explored because I have six periods with my science class. I try to leave one period to have fun with the students. So I bring out my Legos for my robotics class, and I allow the kids to build different projects related to what we’re learning in class. So I try to foster a sense of creativity throughout my day, and I want my students to enjoy my classes.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love the way in which you’re talking about the enjoyment of teaching and learning and how you’re giving that choice and flexibility to explore ideas in the classroom that you’re meeting those objectives, and at the same time you’re saying once you’ve met those objectives, you can go and play with the robots. Because I think that’s such an interesting way to approach it. And wouldn’t it be great if all education was like that?

Matthew Worwood:
I do want to come in and do a follow up, though, because you’re talking a little bit about your personal story of struggle, right? And I’m just wondering about how does that come into some of these projects and those assignments?

Mark Frank:
I always felt the need to want to help others, but I also needed to help myself. So I would spend hours upon hours, and I still do, reading lots of books on education. I read your book and I thought it was amazing. It’s just a matter of engagement. That’s what I kept reading. Engage students. Engage students. Make it more interesting for them to be in school.

Mark Frank:
So instead of classroom management where I’m being rigid and I’m getting them in trouble, I look for ways to make my students like my class and enjoy it, and I speak to them in a more personal level and find out what their interests are and try to cater my classes towards them.

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 now we’re going to turn the tables around, and we’re going to give Mark and Laura an opportunity to ask us a few questions that they might have. So Mark would you like to start us off on this one?

Mark Frank:
Okay. How can creativity be incorporated in scripted lessons? Because I have an issue with trying to incorporate it. And so many lessons these days, they tell us what we’re supposed to be teaching these corporations. And I would like to incorporate more creativity in that.

Cyndi Burnett:
So my recommendation would be to think about the environment, the environment in which you’re creating in your classroom. So if you have a script that you’re using and you have to stick to the script and you can’t veer away from the script and I’ve talked to a lot of teachers about this. Think about ways in which you might create psychological safety in your classroom for students to share new ideas, to create that dynamism and liveliness that you’re talking about, to allow, if you have time, for idea time and idea support. So when you have those scripted moments, think more about how can I model those creative behaviors I want them to have and how can I set a space up for my students to feel comfortable sharing their own ideas in the classroom?

Mark Frank:
I actually like one of the suggestions from the book about Yoda, what would Yoda say? And I think that’s an awesome little end of the lesson type of strategy that you can have the kids do. They could look up Yoda isms and then try to relate that to the.

Matthew Worwood:
Content and listen for know like Cindy, I’ve certainly run into similar questions with teachers that I’ve worked with. And I actually remember during my dissertation study, I was probably a little bit naive with one of the schools that I worked with because I wasn’t as familiar with some of the teachers that were experiencing this rigid curriculum piece and what I would say. And it’s kind of like, connected to one of the tips Cindy and I have come up with, because many teachers have highlighted this. Start small. Look for these small wins that exist, because you might not have a lot of time in the day, but there probably are small opportunities to do something different, to change it up, to get that sense of creativity in the space. The other thing that I think is really important and I talk to teachers a lot about this, is that there’s probably certain times during the academic year where you’re more willing to take on risks. And one of the things that you both know with the Listen and Learn series is that we were hoping to kind of get teachers at a time where they were potentially more receptive to thinking about the future and identifying a creativity goal for the upcoming semester. I wouldn’t go in during the month of November, December, January, February, or March and say, hey, go and try and do something new and different in your classroom environment.

Matthew Worwood:
I’m not saying that know don’t do that, but it is a little bit more of a challenging time of the semester to mix things up. So look for those small wins and try and plan those small wins out at the beginning of the academic year before you completely get burnt out.

Cyndi Burnett:
Great question. All right, let’s bounce it over to Laura. Laura, do you have a question?

Laura Winkler:
I struggle with how to best provide feedback, assessment kind of evaluative information around a student’s creative thinking in a way that isn’t squashing. You can focus on all the behaviors around, like, you took risks, you kept open, things like that. But I struggle with that and wondered if you have advice or suggestions or tools or wisdom.

Matthew Worwood:
Just out of curiosity, before we jump in and answer that, could you tell me a little bit more about what you meant by squashing? I’m just curious.

Laura Winkler:
I feel like, and this is especially true for gifted students, anything less than like, whatever the highest mark I could get for something, might as well just I failed. And so even making progress towards something, we talk about it and they hear it, they cognitively know it, but they emotionally, they’re like, I’m lucky in that I don’t really have to give grades. I just feel sometimes like I maybe don’t give enough feedback for growth because I’m so fearful of getting in the way of their progress creatively.

Cyndi Burnett:
So I think this is a wonderful opportunity to do 360 feedback on creative projects. So I always find, okay, let’s look at it from these criteria. So let’s just say we’re looking at something original. Is this your best effort put forward? And having the student, first of all, reflect on their own and rate themselves? Because I always find that students are much harsher on themselves than I would be on them. And sometimes I’ve said to students, whatever grade you give yourself is what I’m going to put in my book. If I have to give a grade just because I want them to take ownership and justify why they have given themselves that grade and typically 99% of the time they have given themselves a lower grade than I would give them. Then to add another layer to that, I give them feedback without them seeing what they’ve given themselves and then have peers. So you have three peers rated, and then you talk about, why are you rating it in this way? How do you look at this? How can you tell about this? So they see a full perspective, not just like the teacher saying, this wasn’t really good work.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, why wasn’t it good work? It doesn’t look like you put a lot of effort in. Effort is always a big piece of it. And when you think about creativity and assessment, which is a huge topic, that always comes up when Matt and I are talking with much, it is so subjective. But if we look at theories that are out there in terms of how to rate a creative product, we could look at, say, Teresa Mobley’s consensual assessment technique, which know, you bring in experts to evaluate the product. But if you think about the other students in the classroom being those experts and saying, okay, want you to evaluate this. Why is it original? How would you justify that? How is this something that’s useful? How would you justify that? Is this a reflection of hard work and effort? How would you rate that? And then you have the student compare their own rating with the teacher’s rating and their peers rating, and you’ve got a beautiful portfolio of what it might actually look like instead of just the teacher saying, it was, okay, I love.

Laura Winkler:
This, I’m taking notes. This is definitely self evaluation, I think, but deeper than justifying it and really thinking about it through all the feedback of all the different perspectives and really having to think about and really it’s really not about the grade or the out. It’s just the learning as a result of even that discussion, might not even have to write a number down or a score or anything. It’s really about just taking away, like, okay, this is what I did really well. And from hearing all this and seeing all this, this is what I could do to improve. Thank you.

Matthew Worwood:
And just to build a little bit off what Cindy shared, the field sometimes talks about quasi experts and this idea that there’s opportunities to train people so they’re in a position, a better position to identify certain acts of creativity within a product, something that’s been produced. And so I think that what you’re setting yourself up to in some ways is almost like training this group of students to be quasi experts in terms of assessing and evaluating creativity. So maybe it’s a case of every semester you identify two or three creative thinking skills. This is definitely tapping into Cindy’s area of expertise, but you identify one or two creative thinking skills, you have a conversation about what those skills might look like, what they might sound like in a classroom space, and then you teach those students on how they can look for that and provide feedback around that. The other thing, and the reason why I asked the question about squash them at the very beginning was because you were talking about gifted students. I certainly can relate. Some of the students, for example, that I work with that are in our honors program, so I’m also the honors advisor. Quite often you see those students that somewhat set the bar that they should get an A grade at the end of the semester, and grading is very important to them, obviously, Carol Duwick’s work around growth mindset, and we’ve spoken a little bit about growth mindset on the show is a really important part of that.

Matthew Worwood:
You don’t necessarily have to go into the weeds of growth mindset. You’re nodding here. I can see you’re familiar with it. But I think the key point is trying to get students to shift sometimes away from the product and toward the process. There are, to a certain extent, limitations when evaluating products in a classroom environment. I mean, I’m coming from a design world, but realistically there’s not lots of opportunities for you to take your products and have it interact outside the classroom environment, though I think that does potentially create some really fun possibilities if you do go and pursue that effort. But when you recognize that you don’t have a chance sometimes to test the product with other people, then really the big part of it is the process. The product can be okay, this is representative of you meeting a certain set of criteria, learning objectives, and therefore I’m going to give this grade.

Matthew Worwood:
But when you really focus on the process itself and you build opportunities where you’re kind of like doing checkpoints. So in my class, I often have progress reports and I’m really interested in students developing their creative narrative. What is their story that led to this creative outcome? And really when you get them to start being in a position where they can articulate that story, obviously it’s great to be an audience member of that because you can see the learning, whether you’re a fellow student or you’re a teacher, you can see that learning taking place. But also as you’re building that creative narrative, you’re challenging yourself to actually recognize the creativity within the process. Sometimes it might be about failure, but then other times it’s recognizing when you made a connection or made a discovery that then led to the next step in the project. So process is also another thing to focus on away from product.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay, so as you both know, we wrap up every episode by asking our guests what three tips would you give to educators to help them bring creativity into their classrooms.

Laura Winkler:
Mark, would you like to start?

Mark Frank:
Sure. I would say listen to your podcast, read your book and get a spoon. No, I’m kidding. I do think, though, your podcast has so many cool episodes in it, such as the Improv podcast. That was one of my favorites. I think that’s a great opportunity with students to just get them in the front and start acting. I love the chemistry comics, I love the canva, the magical part and modeling. All these podcast episodes are amazing.

Mark Frank:
So I think there’s just so many tips you can get from it and just excellent.

Laura Winkler:
Wonderful.

Cyndi Burnett:
Thank you.

Laura Winkler:
It’s funny.

Cyndi Burnett:
I was going to ask the question, what was your favorite episode? So was the improv episode with Izzy Giselle your favorite?

Mark Frank:
I liked it a lot. I know that you guys took a long time to do that and you cut a lot of so, but I thought it was just funny how it went and I just want to try that with my students.

Cyndi Burnett:
Fantastic.

Laura Winkler:
Thanks. Mark.

Cyndi Burnett:
What about you, Laura?

Laura Winkler:
I love that I mean, it’s not one of my three tips that I put on here because I figure if they’re listening to this podcast, I’m hoping they get it. But that’s a good one, Mark. The podcast, and I had a hard time thinking about a favorite podcast, or I was really thinking like, what is it about this podcast that fuels me? And I think that a couple of things, really, in essence, what I appreciate about it is it’s creativity from all these different lenses and aspects and experts that causes me to it really provokes my thinking about creative thinking and about teaching creatively in so many different ways. And my favorite really is when you guys kind of debrief it. And really what I appreciate about that is you bring up things that point out layered takeaways that I hadn’t taken away, and so I really do get a lot out of it. So, yes, for sure, that would be a tip.

Mark Frank:
Good one, Mark.

Matthew Worwood:
You get four tips. You got three more.

Laura Winkler:
Yay. Okay. So I would say one is to always keep mindful that creativity requires vulnerability, which requires a safe place in your classroom. So just making it a priority to cultivate a classroom where it fosters connection and relationships and rigorous whimsy, where kids know that they’re going to work hard, but also they’re going to have fun doing it, which requires getting to know the humans very well that you work with. And I would say tip number two is to be a curator. Like, really be a collector of thought provoking stuff, objects of whimsy and intrigue. It’s a great excuse to shop and just look at etsy or go to fun little stores that it’s not an education store, but you just find little treasures and things in unexpected places that can really just provide novel ways to invite students into the learning. And my third tip would be I went back and forth on this one, but really, for me, this was a big tip.

Laura Winkler:
Like setting up an intentional time and routine for students to be able to play with ideas, to play with thinking, to take risks, to wonder and explore. I have two routines that I really love that do that, and it’s taken a while to develop them and there’s still room to grow with them, but I think it has made me very intentional about making sure that time is a part of their learning journey.

Cyndi Burnett:
Love it. Well, Laura and Mark, thank you so much for joining us on this special episode. And we really appreciate all of our listeners out there, but we really appreciate the fact that you worked hard this summer to uncover it was a magic word. That was one of the things.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, yes, it was. How can we forget that? You’re right. We need to provide a little bit more context. I know we want to get off the show, but yes, at the end of every single. Episode, we provided a letter, and you had to go and obviously listen to the episodes and work out what all of these letters came to. And that magic word was possibility. Possibility. That’s right.

Matthew Worwood:
Possibility. And one of the things you mentioned just before we go, Laura, is the fact that you’d mentioned the guests. And I think we have been so fortunate with all of the guests that we’ve had. And Cindy and I work so hard to bring on, obviously, the researchers, practitioners, but also the teachers. And we talk about this idea of trying to bridge the gap between the research and the practice. But I think getting the voices of teachers who are practicing this effort, that what the two of you shared today, is such an important part of the podcast. So thank you so much for engaging in our Listener Learn series over the summer. Thank you for you coming up with new possibilities in your classroom.

Matthew Worwood:
And again, thank you for being listeners and coming on the show.

Laura Winkler:
Thank you.

Matthew Worwood:
Thank you.

Cyndi Burnett:
So don’t forget, we have a very special Listen and Learn series coming up next week around artificial intelligence and creativity and education. So be sure to listen. And maybe if you are one of our special winners of that series, you can be a future guest on our show. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

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

Cyndi Burnett:
This episode was produced by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is Curiosity to Create, and our editor is Sam Atkinson.