Colleen Kelley [00:00:00]:
Imagination is everything in my classroom, and I think it’s really important to understand that imagination supersedes just about every other skill in science, and we need to unlock that somehow. And when they haven’t been trained in a science class to be imaginative, it’s difficult. Right?

Matthew Worwood [00:00:22]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:25]:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:27]:
This is the fueling creativity in education. Podcast.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:30]:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:37]:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:45]:
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 [00:00:57]:
So let’s begin. Hello, and welcome to another episode. And on this episode, we welcome Dr. Colleen Kelly, who is the creator and founder of Kids Chemical Solutions, which is a comic book based curriculum for kids ages eight to 108. Her journey as a chemist began at the University of Richmond, where she received her BS in Chemistry. She fell in love with the world of discovery and research and wanted to continue to explore more chemistry. So she completed her PhD in chemistry at Penn State University at the age of 24. Fast forward 30 years to the tail end of her career teaching chemistry at the University of Arizona, colleen finds herself captivated by the question, why do my students think chemistry is so hard? What she has discovered is that learning chemistry is very much like learning how to read.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:51]:
And she created the term molecular literacy to describe how chemistry is best understood. Colleen, welcome to the show.

Colleen Kelley [00:01:59]:
Hi. Thank you. It’s so great to be here.

Matthew Worwood [00:02:02]:
So Cindy and I spend a lot of time on the show discussing and celebrating the tremendous creativity within the education profession. And I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your story, particularly writing chemistry comic books, a little bit about the problem that you were trying to address, and perhaps a little bit about your process as well.

Colleen Kelley [00:02:20]:
Great. Sure. Yeah. So I’ve been teaching for eons back in the 18 hundreds no, just kidding. But for 30 years, and I could not understand why my students were struggling to understand what I thought was so beautiful, simple, and elegant. And the language I was using was organic chemistry, which is based on symbols and shapes. And there’s what I see to be a fun storyline going through all of these molecular transitions into new molecules and synthesis. So I have brilliant students in my classroom year after year.

Colleen Kelley [00:03:00]:
They’re all going into medicine. They study hard. They’ve been trying to do science since they were a toddler. They’re ready for this. So it’s not a lack of motivation or a lack of interest or they have goals. They’re ready to go, and they’re eager. And yet when they get to organic chemistry, they still take a nosedive, and it becomes their biggest challenge. So I tried to figure out what was happening.

Colleen Kelley [00:03:29]:
What I realized is that I’m seeing a story in my brain that they’re not seeing. And so it’s really hard to communicate the unicorn when they can’t see the unicorn, there’s quite a bit of imagination that needs to be transmitted. So my creativity mode came on, and I started to tell stories about the molecules. I started to make the molecules into characters that had funny traits. And initially, I was a young mother, so I was watching a lot of Winnie the Pooh. So Fluorine would be like, Piglet, like, kind of needy and scared, and Bromine would be like Winnie the Pooh, kind of big, round and puffy and could wander off on his own. And that concept is true. And there’s something called a leaving group in organic chemistry, so they would understand what was a better leaving group, and, like, who’s more likely to leave, Bromine or Fluorine? And if they could say Piglet or Poo, they would know.

Colleen Kelley [00:04:25]:
Pooh is always wandering around in the 100 acre wood all by himself, not a care in the world. So I kept going with these stories, and they really did parallel my son’s age, because then they became very shrek based for a while, and we talked a lot about the age of shrek. And then eventually, I started just creating my own characters and my own stories. So right about 2015, my students were at the age where they could come back and tell me that the stories were sticking. My current students were saying, Dr. Kelly, you should write these. These are great stories. You really should get these out into the world.

Colleen Kelley [00:05:03]:
They’re super helpful. So I just began writing, and at first I thought, well, this is going to be such a good textbook. So I was writing the stories in a textbook content, and I thought, every textbook publisher in the world is going to want this. And, yeah, I got, like, 105 rejections. I don’t know, like, a million rejections. Nobody wanted it because this is a very serious course. I mean, how dare I bring characters into chemistry? Because it’s just so serious, and we don’t want everyone to understand that. I didn’t understand.

Colleen Kelley [00:05:39]:
But anyway, so one comment I did get was that my textbook was very dialogue rich. So a dialogue rich format is a comic book, right? So if you’re going to write something that’s very dialogue rich, a comic book fits that. There’s also a lot of opportunity for imagery. So the combination of imagery and dialogue led to me having to learn from YouTube and every other resource on the Internet how to write a comic book. So I just took it from there.

Cyndi Burnett [00:06:09]:
So, Colleen, how many comic books have you created at this point? And can you give us an example.

Colleen Kelley [00:06:14]:
Of one of them. Oh, great. Sure. Yeah. So right now, it’s a series of ten comic books that scaffold the learning objectives found in a 100 level chemistry course at a university or an AP course or just that first introductory course. There are four that are currently published and available for sale, and the other six are in the hopper coming soon. The art is really delicate, and I’m very appreciative of artists now because as long as it takes to write something, the art takes maybe six times that amount. So we have our third story is The Case of the Pillaging Pirates.

Colleen Kelley [00:06:56]:
Each is a mystery, so they’re all mysteries. I was a huge Encyclopedia Brown fan when I was growing up, so they’re always the case of something, and I like alliteration because who doesn’t? So The Pillaging Pirates is a parody on The Princess Bride, and so they’re looking for the six electron man, which is the six fingered man. If you’re a Princess Bride fan, you’ll get all the corny jokes in there. If you’re not, it’ll go over your head. And you should go watch The Princess Bride because there’s a lot of references. But, sir, Carbon is a six electron man, and carbon has six electrons. So that’s why he’s the six electron man. He’s also the man in black, because carbon is coal.

Colleen Kelley [00:07:36]:
So what I’ve done is I’ve created characters and storylines that bring the imagery of the actual element or molecule that they’re representing in the most accurate way possible so that I’m not promoting misconception. So the man in black, carbon is black. And so sir, Carbon is wearing a graphene suit, and graphene is carbon. So I really do bring out specific details in each of my characters so that as students are reading, they’re subliminally getting all kinds of other message about the element or the molecule as a character.

Cyndi Burnett [00:08:11]:
I think that’s incredible. And I have to say, as soon as we log off, I’m going to.

Colleen Kelley [00:08:15]:
Order these books because my son is.

Cyndi Burnett [00:08:17]:
Currently in chemistry, and The Princess Bride is his favorite movie.

Colleen Kelley [00:08:21]:
So I am so excited to actually.

Cyndi Burnett [00:08:23]:
Go through that literature with him and reference the fact that I actually know the author. So it sounds just amazing. Thank you.

Matthew Worwood [00:08:31]:
And, Cindy, just to follow up, I mean, first of all, it’s amazing to see you having so much fun. I mean, your face is really lighting up. So I’m making this connection to here you are as an educator identifying an instructional challenge, and then you’ve kind of gone on this creative journey on how to solve this challenge. And you’ve brought in humor, and you’ve brought this storytelling component, which I suspect was highly imaginative as well. And I sit here as well, and I think there’s some other examples out there. I’ve been so amazed at how much my six year old has mastered around math purely because he fell in love with number blocks. And so I don’t know how familiar you are with number blocks, but these kind of like, cartoon characters that come together. What do you think it is about this kind of, like, fun storytelling approach to instruction that makes it so appealing to students?

Colleen Kelley [00:09:21]:
Yeah, I think in the absence of characters, what I’ve realized is chemistry is invisible. Right. So I’m trying to describe something with stick figures on a whiteboard. I draw a lot, and without that connection, imagination is everything in my classroom. And I think it’s really important to understand that imagination supersedes just about every other skill in science, and we need to unlock that somehow. And when they haven’t been trained in the science class to be imaginative, it’s difficult. Right. So for me, I think the characters are appealing to students because it’s a portal to seeing the molecule in their brain, because without that, everybody is just memorized.

Colleen Kelley [00:10:11]:
They say a lot of times I hear I’ve heard this a zillion times, organic chemistry is just memorization. It is only because that’s the only neural pathway they have open to them to even try to get through the class. So if we open up the imagination about it and they can see the transformations and the action and the activity in their imagination, then the whole class is opened up to them and the discipline then becomes discipline, meaning subject matter becomes accessible.

Matthew Worwood [00:10:47]:
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 [00:10:55]:
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 [00:11:06]:
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 [00:11:21]:
To learn more, check out Curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. So, Colleen, the next thing we want to talk about is molecular literacy, which is a term that you framed, and I’m afraid to hear the definition because I’m afraid I’m going to say I’m molecularly illiterate, if that’s possible.

Colleen Kelley [00:11:42]:
It is possible, and you’re going to join the 300 premeds that I have in front of me every semester as also molecularly illiterate. And I made up this term because the world is afraid of the word chemistry, right? So if I want to be soft and gentle and accessible to the world and have everyone come on board with an understanding of chemistry, I have to get rid of the word chemistry, ironically, because it just wreaks fear into everybody. But if I say molecular literacy, literacy brings people in. Everyone wants to be literate, right there’s, that huge. Like, I want to be literate. What is this about? And then molecule or molecular is just a softer way to say chemistry, but really the definition is more of a description than a definition. If you consider the periodic table of elements the alphabet of science, right? So those are letters. We call them symbols.

Colleen Kelley [00:12:39]:
And if you put two of them together or three or four, you get a formula which becomes a word, right? So just like when you’re teaching kids how to read, they take two letters, three letters, put them together, and it becomes a word. So the foundations of reading are the same as the foundations of learning chemistry. The foundations of learning how to read. They parallel each other. And this is from my research. And then we go on from there, right? So now we have formulas, which are words, and we put those together to get a sentence. And that becomes a chemical equation. And a chemical equation does describe an event, just like a sentence describes an event.

Colleen Kelley [00:13:18]:
And we put more sentences together or more equations. We get a mechanism. A mechanism is like a paragraph, and we go on from there. But what we’re doing is when we’re not teaching it in that context, there’s this notion that it’s not important to spend time on the periodic table. And that would be like in kindergarten, not spending time on the alphabet. Like, yes, we spend time on the alphabet because I keep hearing, well, we can look that up or that’s available. Why would you have them memorize that? Well, that’s fine, so let’s not have our kindergartens memorize their letters then. There is some skill set that’s involved.

Colleen Kelley [00:13:57]:
And if we scaffold it gently and find that it parallels learning how to read, we’re all going to become molecularly literate. And I must say that I have a tongue twister on that one. I stumble over as much as anyone else.

Matthew Worwood [00:14:14]:
That’s why I had Cindy ask the question.

Colleen Kelley [00:14:18]:
So I think what I’ve realized is I taught fourth grade with this curriculum for 14 weeks. And right about the age nine, students transition from learning how to read to using reading to learn, right? There’s that transition where they can now read to learn new things as opposed to just learning how to read. And so that neural pathway is open to them. So I went right into that age group and realized that they know how to learn how to read. They just mastered that. So I’m going to show them how to read with chemical symbols and go through that same progression. And it’s very easy for them, especially when all their peers aren’t saying to them, oh, dude, you’re in chemistry, you’re going to fail that. Nobody in fourth grade is saying that to them.

Colleen Kelley [00:15:05]:
So they’ve got an open mind and they go through that natural progression. So earlier, Matt mentioned eight to 108. I think most of the world has, if they’re not chemists, has somehow or another, for lack of a better word, faked their way through chemistry and got to the other end. I hear parents all the time. The advice they give to their children is just get through it. What is that? We need to understand our world. When I mention a carbon footprint and my students look down at the ground to try and find a black footprint, I’m like, no, that’s not what we’re talking about with a carbon footprint. It literally is not a footprint in the ground, guys.

Colleen Kelley [00:15:50]:
It’s a lot more than that. So I really think our world’s problems need to be solved with them molecular literacy. And it’s okay to say that you don’t have that. We’re all beginners, and let’s bring our beginner mindset into the comic books and start because I think we’ve lost most of our population on this topic.

Matthew Worwood [00:16:12]:
Have you considered how you could make your textbooks available for an audience that is perhaps post college, such as parents like Cindy was referencing?

Colleen Kelley [00:16:21]:
Oh, yeah, I mean, they’re available for know they’re like a normal book you would buy on a website. I’m on a mission right now to have them donated to as many libraries as possible just for that reason. The dream, right, is when parents are reading the comic books like Matt, if you would read it with your six year old, you then become there’s molecularly literate as well. And so it’s just like if you wanted to learn how to play the guitar and you didn’t know how to play the guitar and your kid wanted to do it too, you do it together. Intergenerational learning is incredibly powerful, so I think there’s accessibility to all age groups with this platform.

Matthew Worwood [00:17:03]:
I’m really pumped about this idea. I have no question. I have no question at all. But I do want to quickly say, wow, I’m pumped in so much. In my work, I try and promote this concept of teacher creativity. And we’ve had people like James Kaufman come on and talk about the four C model of creativity, which kind of breaks creativity down to mini C, little C, Pro C, and Big C. And Big C is less of a conversation because it’s the type of creative outcomes that endure beyond the lifetime of the individual. But when we look at mini C, little C, and Pro C, really it’s about the kind of impact that those outcomes have within their immediate environment.

Matthew Worwood [00:17:39]:
And quite often I talk about this idea of mini C from a teaching perspective. It’s about those discoveries that we make, including identifying problems and generating ideas on how we can address those problems. Little sees when we begin to go and enact those ideas and perhaps have an impact in our immediate classroom environment, and maybe other people kind of come in and say, oh, this is a really great idea. I quite often talk to teachers about this idea of promoting change at the grassroots level involve you going out and sharing the success that you’ve had when you know you’ve kind of got a solution to an instructional problem, an instructional problem that might be impacting other educators, that you find a way of getting it out there. And to me, I think this story is a great example of that proceed creativity, because you’ve kind of identified a problem. You’ve identified about how this problem is impacting so many people and why it’s important to address. And then you’ve gone on this journey, which I’m assuming has taken a significant time, as you referenced, even putting together the artwork, and now you’ve got this outcome, and this outcome is incredible, and it’s expanding beyond the school. We’re talking about parents purchasing it and interacting with their children.

Matthew Worwood [00:18:45]:
So I have absolutely no question, and hopefully Cindy can come up and follow up with a question. But what I do want to do is take this moment and say congratulations on such a wonderful creative journey as an educator.

Colleen Kelley [00:18:56]:
Thank you, Matt.

Cyndi Burnett [00:18:57]:
I completely agree with you. I feel so inspired, especially about the intergenerational because I was just thinking about sitting there reading the comic books with my 15 year old son and how much fun that would be and how I’m always looking for ways in which I can continue learning about things I don’t know about. And I think there are probably a lot of people out there listening that are like myself, that are feeling molecularly illiterate and thinking, yes, you’re right. I need to understand the world and how it works, and I need to go back to school. And I think one of the things that’s great about being a parent is you sort of get to relive these opportunities to learn things that you learned for me 25, 30 years ago, and now I get to do it with my son. But even if I didn’t have children, that I would still be able to have this opportunity to learn it in a fun way this time and an engaging way, and something that’s more than just memorizing and identifying things, because they are. So that’s how it’s always been. So one of the things that I particularly like about what you’ve done is, as Matt said, identifying this problem, but then also saying, I want to improve on this, and I have the knowledge to do that.

Cyndi Burnett [00:20:08]:
So I think for our teachers back.

Colleen Kelley [00:20:10]:
At home to think about those things.

Cyndi Burnett [00:20:12]:
That just aren’t working and to break that paradigm of like, well, we’ve always taught chemistry this way, so we always have to continue, like, no, you don’t. You can change what you’ve done, especially if it didn’t work. Right. Because I think we get so caught up in these constraints of, like, this is how I taught, this is how I was taught, therefore, this is how I will teach. And we don’t have to do that. We can shake things up and move things around and find ways in which we can engage our students in meaningful ways.

Colleen Kelley [00:20:40]:
I agree.

Cyndi Burnett [00:20:41]:
Also wasn’t a question, but I am going to get into a question now. Here’s my next question for you. So what advice would you have for science educators who are feeling constrained by the curriculum and looking to add some new approaches to their practice that can promote creativity or different ways of teaching?

Colleen Kelley [00:20:59]:
The biggest thing for me would be to recognize that when you are a scientist and are teaching science, you may have a level of understanding that’s not going to intersect with your students unless you create an onboarding ramp. And not to be afraid to create some kind of onboarding ramp that may seem less rigorous, for lack of a better word. I have been told sometimes that my approach is not rigorous, which if you look at the comic books I did scaffold the learning objectives, found my poppy’s puzzles are a test I would give in November in freshman chem. I mean they’re not any different. I have not diluted the curriculum at all. But I would just suggest that to be gracious with your students to allow for an onboarding ramp for the 20 plus years you may have had over them for catching up right. Because what seems easy to us is not easy to them and they want to do well and they’re going to look for workarounds if you don’t provide that onboarding ramp. And in chemistry and in most sciences, physical sciences, the onboarding ramp is math.

Colleen Kelley [00:22:14]:
So they’ll use math because that’s all they have and that’s not really what it’s about. Math is one tool. It’s like, again, using the hammer for everything. It’s not going to work the whole way through.

Matthew Worwood [00:22:25]:
And I feel in your story you’ve addressed this kind of preconceived notion of what students may have before they enter a classroom. This attitude, just get through it, I’m not good at it, which is in some ways similar to past conversations we’ve had around math. And it seems to me that you’re also thinking about how you can address that because of course, if you walk into a classroom with the attitude that I just need to get through this or you walk into the classroom saying I’m not good at this, that’s going to impact your capacity to learn as well.

Colleen Kelley [00:22:55]:
It. Yes, I agree. Yeah. I think when I walk into an auditorium with 300 students at the beginning of the semester, every one of them has heard that they will not go to medical school directly because of my class. So welcome me. Yeah, I always tell I’m like improv. You guys have nothing on trying to teach organic chemistry to get them engaged because they walk in at 08:00 a.m., there’s no alcohol, there’s nothing engaging and they’re ready to despise the class, despise you. All things are stacked against you and I’ve got to win their trust first and then their confidence and then expand their minds and it’s a process.

Colleen Kelley [00:23:39]:
And if I could just get rid of that, because I spend months trying to establish that in a classroom, and I wish that that was stopped. I wish no longer was there such a thing as a weed out course. That seems like for me, the concept of a weed out course is an issue of civil rights, right? Like, if we have one course that prohibits people from becoming a physician, why aren’t we questioning that? Why do we say, oh, it’s a weed out course? That’s not right. There should not be a class in college that is do or die. You’re paying for it.

Matthew Worwood [00:24:17]:
Out of curiosity, when do they take it as well? Because this is something that I’ve noticed, is that I sometimes wonder if some of these classes come a little bit earlier in the plan of study. Some of these students are just transitioning into college. They’re having to acquire a whole bunch of additional skills in order to succeed just as new adult learners. And sometimes we find ourselves in a class that could potentially be perceived as a weed out class, and we’re not even really doing justification to those students because some of the reasons why they might be struggling is simply because they haven’t acquired the skills they need to succeed in higher education yet.

Colleen Kelley [00:24:52]:
Yeah, I would agree, except for I would say developmentally, we introduced this way too late. Developmentally, this is more appropriate at ages 8910 eleven, when the neural pathways are available for this kind of shape based learning, three dimensional assessment, because there’s so much imagination required for it. So developmentally, it’s too late. So, again, I use music as another analogy. If I had a bunch of students in front of me and I was a music teacher, say an orchestra or something like that, and they had never picked up a violin at 19, right? And I said, okay, you have one semester to master the violin and then apply for violin school, and you need to get an A. You can’t do that at 19, right. If you want to master the violin, you start at like six, right? So if you want to become molecularly literate, you need to start at around age eight. And I use eight as the transition or the age because of reading, because it directly sits on reading.

Colleen Kelley [00:25:58]:
So I think we’re introducing it too late. But to your point, Matt, without that early introduction, there are all these other challenges of being a first year college student that also detract from the skills. But we’ve addressed all know I’ve been on so many committees, and I’ve been on so many National Science Foundation grants where we’ve done this, that, and the other, and interventions and extra time, and none of that works. Again, if you come to college to be a music major and you’ve never picked up a musical instrument, it’s not going to happen. So we need to talk about mastery and the slow development of mastery over time, as opposed to throwing them at them when they’re in the heat of the fire.

Matthew Worwood [00:26:41]:
I’m trying to resist the temptation to not expand this piece too much, but I wonder if you could talk about this. Chemistry seems to be so connected to so many other disciplines. So I’ve noticed students, for example, in my university, that they’re interacting or taking chemistry classes. They might be in the school of engineering, for example. And so what I’m going away and thinking about is you’re completely right. If this is the first time they’re interacting in a chem lab and it’s their first or second year in higher education, but then maybe they’re looking at pursuing something around computer science. I’ll be honest with you, I’m not directly sure of the connection. But if they had chemistry at an earlier age, they’re probably in a much better position to take on those classes and therefore pursue their dream in computer science.

Matthew Worwood [00:27:30]:
But I interact with some students that just don’t do well in chemistry, and they’re not even in premed, but they have to change their plan of study.

Colleen Kelley [00:27:39]:
Yeah. There are over 50 majors on a college campus that require chemistry as a prerequisite. So you’re completely right. It’s 50 majors. I counted. I went through our catalog. Our freshman chemistry, our first year chemistry program is 5000 students a semester. We service huge amounts of students per semester, and we have 40 of those are chemistry majors.

Colleen Kelley [00:28:05]:
So less than 1% are chemistry majors. So we’re a big service course for that reason, because molecular literacy is the foundation for 50 other majors. And yet that foundation is lost. It just becomes a box to check, and you got through it. So I think, to your point, Matt, you’re correct.

Cyndi Burnett [00:28:27]:
Well, Colleen, we do have to wrap up this episode. But I have to say I have the biggest smile both on my face and in my heart in the work that you’re doing. I just have learned so much in this last half hour with you about chemistry and the need and changes, and just know that I am here to support you in whatever you’re doing because I absolutely love it. So we end every episode with a question, which is, what are three tips you would give to educators who want to bring creativity into their classrooms?

Colleen Kelley [00:28:58]:
So what three tips would you provide? I would say to explore a different discipline outside of your comfort zone yourself, so you could see how that feels and how you creatively were able to learn something new, whether it’s baking or guitar playing or sewing. Pick up a creative habit that’s unrelated to your discipline, to kind of just start getting that flowing so that you can reexamine the learning process of a skill set, and then you’re going to be more connected to be able to do that. Beyond that, for me, storytelling really works, but stories come from consuming content. So. Read books, read fiction, have some fun. My son is now 23, but I’m back to watching Bluey because I just love Bluey. So watch some things that are fun and engaging and don’t take yourself too seriously. Nobody needs know, nobody needs the professor in the front of the room that wants to elevate him or herself so much that you’re not connected.

Colleen Kelley [00:30:05]:
So have fun while you’re there and the creativity will come out of that. Brilliant.

Matthew Worwood [00:30:11]:
Well, Colleen, thank you so much and we certainly will be posting a link on the show notes to your website and where our listeners can access the textbooks and buy the textbooks in terms of next steps. I don’t know about you, Cindy, but I think this is a great episode. So if you’re listening to this and you’ve got a colleague in the sciences either at K through twelve or higher education, what we’re asking you to do is take a link to this episode and email it to them because I think there’s a lot in here that all science educators have something to take away from. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:30:42]:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Matthew Warwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is Curiosity to Create and our editor is Sam Atkinson.