Matthew Worwood:
Sharpen those pencils, dust off the whiteboard markers and get ready because season 11 of the fueling Creativity in Education podcast is here. As you head back into the classroom, we are bringing you in this episode a burst of fresh ideas to spark creativity in your students from day one. So if you want to kick off the school year with some imagination, inspiration, and a little bit of fun, then this episode is for you. Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

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

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

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field 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. So, Cindy, we are back getting ready for the new academic year and kickstarting season 11 of the podcast. Are you excited?

Cyndi Burnett:
I am very excited because I am thrilled about some of the wonderful guests that we’ve already secured and have interviewed. So I really can’t wait to share these episodes with our listeners.

Matthew Worwood:
And we’re sharing them not just via audio, they’re also going to be video episodes. I mean, this is a video episode as well. So, you know, we’ve been experimenting with this kind of new format, but now we’re really going for it. We’re trying to make a commitment for every episode, so long as the guests are comfortable with it, that it’s going to be released as an audio version on your, on your normal kind of favorite preferred podcasting channels. But also it’s going to be available on YouTube as well.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. So if you haven’t already subscribed, go to YouTube and find us. Fueling Creativity Podcast. Fueling Creativity and Education Podcast. And make sure you subscribe and click the bell. You can receive notifications and you can listen to us in the car. You can watch us while you’re making dinner, but we promise that all of our episodes will give you strategies and background to how to bring creativity into education.

Matthew Worwood:
Now, Cindy, before we get into the weeds of our episode, and it is an opening episode, so they tend to be on the shorter side. But what have you been doing over the last summer? Because we, we’ve kind of shaped the show where we do get a few weeks where we were able to disconnect pre recorded some shows, had some throwbacks and I’m interested, what have you been doing perhaps to kind of fue your creativity over the summer?

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, Matt, as you know, my daughter who is now 15, she is a dancer and I was a dancer. So I have spent the summer watching her dance and was able to go back to New York City, which is one of my favorite places and is sort of a place of inspiration in terms of dance and excitement for me. So I was able to. What she did was a two week summer institute at Broadway Dance center. And I had the opportun to watch her grow as a dancer. And even though I am now a little bit older to be dancing professionally, I still enjoy dancing and watching my daughter dance and watching professional theater and dance. And I had a lot of opportunities to do that in New York City. So that was sort of how I fueled my creativity this summer.

Cyndi Burnett:
What about you?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I do want to build up on the dance piece a little bit because there’s this kind of like, what’s that dance move that’s kind of like been trending on YouTube and TikTok. It’s kind of like, I don’t know what it is. It’s almost like the old style Running man, but it has some other variations in it. You’re giving me a puzzled face. I feel like some people know what I’m talking about because I’m kind of like finding myself almost, I’m going to say it like to a certain extent you’re reliving or rekindling some of that, that youthful spirit or memories of your youth. And so, you know, he really likes to dance. And there’s this move, right? And I’m sitting there and I’m like, all the kids are doing it at the eighth school dance. And the reason why is that I actually have set my goal to actually have some cool dance moves.

Matthew Worwood:
So by, by the next kind of like dance I go to, I want to get on the dance floor. Whether it’s a wedding, whether it’s kind of like, you know, an eighth grade dance that the parents kind of like join in and join in with at the end, I want to be able to do this move.

Cyndi Burnett:
Okay, well, Matt, since you said that, I don’t know what move you’re talking about. So clearly it’s not on my Instagram feed. And I would say most dancing it. If you scroll my Instagram feed, it is mostly about dance. But I’m not famil with this move, so you’ll need to send it to me. And I think because you brought it up and that goal of being able to do it by the end of the year, I think by the end of season 11, we should do a little video. Maybe when we’re in Pittsburgh together at the NAGC conference, we should do a video of us doing that dance together.

Matthew Worwood:
All right, I like that. With the caveat, depending on how my knee’s responding.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah, yeah, me.

Matthew Worwood:
But I like that. I do like that, Cindy. And I’ll skip my summer story because mostly it’s been centered around me trying to get my head down and writing this book that we said we’ll get the manuscript into the publisher by early November. So head down. That’s taken up a lot of my time, as well as some vacations as well. So that’s been my summer. All right. So I think we’ve got some things planned, haven’t we, for this episode in terms of going back to the new school year.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. So we thought we would give you three tips based on all the episodes we’ve done. Three tips each on ways you can bring creativity into your classroom to kick off the new school year.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. And, and you know, I, I, I, I mean, they are tips, absolutely, but they’re also kind of, you know, I took it and I think you, you would have done it the same way as these are things that I do and they’ve kind of found their way into my practice. And to a certain extent, they probably are a little routine based. So, you know, I’m probably guilty of getting into my own comforts to a certain extent, but I would argue that, that I still consider them very effective. So I’ll give you my first one, and that is I’ve been doing the Marshmallow Challenge with new students for probably 12, 13 years. And I do have a blog article about this, and I will share it in the show notes below. But the thing that I like about the Marshmallow Challenge, and it might be that some people know it, but for me, I’ve always been able to facilitate different conversations with my students after they participate with it. So I kind of like for that first lesson, all of the, the equipment’s laid out.

Matthew Worwood:
And as a reminder, it’s, I think it’s 20 pieces of spaghetti, one marshmallow, one yard of string, one, you know, masking tape. I think it’s got another name in, in the US and then you, I would tell you everyone should have their own scissors and it’s laid out and they have to build the tooling, tallest, freestanding structure in no more than 18 minutes. So they come in organize them in groups and I set them off and I get that 18 minute countdown. And it’s weird because I think what I’m doing in that moment is I kind of respond to the energy in the room. What I’m observing, I’m very open. I never kind of have predetermined things that I want to talk about in after this activity. What I’m observing is that participating in this challenge is usually what I bring up to facilitate the conversation at the end. And so it’s a great icebreaker you’re getting folks collaborating immediately.

Matthew Worwood:
You usually get into a conversation a little bit about failure, but and, and, and obviously iterative design, but there’s so many other things that always come up year after year. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be the marshmallow challenge, but those short type of creative challenges, I’m a big fan of doing those in the first day or week of the new school year.

Cyndi Burnett:
Hmm. I love that, Matt. Uh, I just want to build on that that if you’re looking for additional creative thinking exercises, we’ll link also my creativity videos in the show notes as well, which is on YouTube and has 40 creative thinking challenges you can do with your students. So. And there’s some great opening exercises as well, and we demonstrate them. So there are several options to a really easy way to kick off the school year. Okay. My first one actually comes from writing the book.

Cyndi Burnett:
So Matt mentioned that we’re in the deep waters of writing our book based on the podcast. And it’s really interesting because right now I’m writing a chapter on initiating discussions, and it’s not something that it was ever really at the forefront of my own practice as an educator. But after listening to so many of our guests talk about the importance of initiating discussions, and now that I’ve gotten into the research, I think a great way to kick off the school year with your teachers, with your administration, with your students is to talk about creativity. What is it? What are the benefits? Who deserves to be learning about creativity? How does creativity make us feel? Can we come up with a singular definition of creativity as a class, as a group of teachers? We also have on our podcast page, on feelingcreativitypodcast.com, we have a bunch of professional learning community episodes that you can take, and there’s a great handout with each of them and bring them to your professional learning communities. So if you want to bring creativity into your classroom, I strongly urge you to have the conversation with whatever groups you’re working with and feel Free to use those handouts. They’re free. They’re lovely. We did a lot of work on those to offer those to you.

Cyndi Burnett:
And it’s just a great way to kick off the school year and just.

Matthew Worwood:
To build on that as well. Even though we talk a little bit about some of our other actions. And as a reminder, these actions are things that we’ve come up with after our 200 episodes of the podcast, themes that keep coming up on the show. But we did, for the most part, see those episodes as opportunities to facilitate those conversations in those PLCs. And even though those handouts do have other activities, a lot of it is us talking and posing a question along with a quote from one of our past guests to help facilitate that. I love that, Cindy. And I’m a big. I’m a big advocate for learning through dialogue with colleagues.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right, what’s your number two?

Matthew Worwood:
My number two is this, and this is a very simple one. Last few years, I have, in fact, maybe about five, six years now. Maybe it’s a little bit bringing in the design thinking piece, challenging my assumptions. But I survey my students, so I put together a survey. It’s fun. There’s some kind of, like, some fun questions about it. But I. What, what it actually allows me to do is sometimes get a sense of, you know, what’s the most pop social media platforms with this particular class more recently? What’s their preferred AI tools? How are they using those AI tools? How do they think and feel about some of the technologies that we’re going to be exploring in the class? What’s their comfort level with group work? What’s their comfort level with public speaking? And, you know, there are some things that I kind of see as being consistent from, from one group to another group year after year.

Matthew Worwood:
But there are other things that actually can change. And so those surveys provide me a really good kind of summary of the new cohort that I’m working with in the new year. And I’ll add an additional thing that I do is that I actually then share with them the results, and I let them know how I’m planning to maybe modify or tweak my plans for the new year based on the information that they’ve shared with me. And also sometimes I invite them to think about what should I consider. If I’m looking at this and I see that everyone, you know, uses AI to generate ideas, for example, I might ask them, so what is some of the things that I should consider when I’m going and initiating an ideation session? In my class. And so I’m inviting them to help me make connections with the data that I’m seeing as well, and that sometimes provides some additional insights as well. So maybe that’s a little bit to do with past conversations we’ve had and things we’ve written. Written about in our book about the need to get to know your students, because then you’re in a better position of tailoring, you know, some of the learning experiences to interests, needs, wants, preferences.

Cyndi Burnett:
So, man, it’s really interesting that you say that, because even though we didn’t plan this, my second actually builds on your second, because your second seems like it was a survey that looks at a broad view of the class. What are the AI tools that you like? What are your preferences? What do you like to learn about? But mine gets more specific to the individual. So one of the things I really like to do with students at the beginning of the year, and there’s been so much talk about, you know, interests and what are you passionate about and things that we might need to know about our students, is to ask them these questions. What’s something about you that you would like me to know? Or here’s another one I really like. And this is a shout out to my son’s advisor, Mrs. O’, Keefe, who said during one of the parent meetings, she said, I asked my students, what does it look like when you are engaged? And I thought that was a really interesting question, because for some students, engagement looks like, you know, they’re paying attention, they’re excited. What is it? What does it look like when you’re not engaged? And bringing that up, like, I see that you’re not engaged in class as the time goes on, and how can we address that? But I think finding out, you know, how do you spend your free time? What’s your favorite thing to do on the weekends? Things like that that aren’t too personal, but will give you insight into the individual person, and that you can actually look at those individual surveys to say, oh, wow, this student really loves soccer. Or they’re playing in the Division 1 soccer team at the university level, or maybe at the elementary school level, they just got a new puppy.

Cyndi Burnett:
And you can say, I heard you got a new puppy. Tell me about your puppy. Would you like to bring in a picture of your puppy and share your puppy? Maybe we could have a puppy day in class. Those sorts of little things help build that creative culture that we’re always after. So that was my build on what you just said.

Matthew Worwood:
I love that. And you Know what? You reminded me a little bit. I mean, we have a, you know, on our website, we’ve. We’ve kind of organized our episodes by topics, and one of them is the art of teaching. And I think within the art of teaching, we do have those practitioners who are sharing kind of some very specific activities. And you are making me think a little bit about John Guerra, who spoke a little bit about providing those questions, really targeting individuals to, to better understand them. We’ve got the ghetto and McBain. Actually, we did a throwback to them last week, and that was about starting off the class with what was, what was your favorite fail, talking about your favorite failure, but then getting the individual.

Matthew Worwood:
So the idea of using those questions to go and better understand individuals, I agree with you. It is. It’s similar, but different. You know, I am getting that broad view of the class and how that might change and shape some of the kind of, like, bigger activities that I’m doing. But we also want to know students at the individual level. And I will say we’ve got Emily Jameson in our first three episodes of the podcast, and I love the way that she uses those kind of summer diaries, getting them to do those diaries in their first week, reflecting on the summer as an, as a tool to get a better understanding. Oh, this student played some soccer and, oh, this student went sailing. This student played golf.

Matthew Worwood:
I think that I love this, Absolutely love it. And I’m going to stop there.

Cyndi Burnett:
And what’s your last one, Matt?

Matthew Worwood:
So my last one, and this is something that I’ve built into my practice. I’m not going to sit here and say, it’s easy. I’m not going to sit here and say that. I always keep to it. I am, I think, very similar to probably many of the educators listening, saying, yeah, right. But every year I start with the intention of carving out time each week for myself. And so I look at the schedule, my teaching schedule. I go all the way into the October with the advising appointments.

Matthew Worwood:
I’m just kind of like. Because, you know, particularly if you’re an experienced educator, you’ll get. You’re familiar with the new year. And so it’s a case of identifying that time. Sometimes it’s just two hours and it’s not prep. You know, I also carve out prep time as well, but it’s not prep. It’s about me and opportunities for me to investigate kind of my own curiosities, opportunities for me to maybe find ways of connecting my creativity to my practice. It might be that I’m going To read an article during that time, playing around with the news technology, you know, or, you know, work on a six week project.

Matthew Worwood:
And every week I’m going to spend those two hours at that allotted spot. But, but that’s one of the things that I try and do. And I think the key point is starting off with the intention to do it. And that is simply about looking at that week and actually saying between 9:30 and 11 I’m able to do something for me and perhaps for our listeners that might be that you could be on the podcast. That could be a time where we interview you on the podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt, I think that’s a great idea. I really think the teachers need to find that time for themselves and their creativity. Now I want to finalize this with one other tip to start off the new year, which is to have conversations. We talked about initiating conversations about creativity, but also talking about keeping open and delaying judgment. And this can be done in all sorts of ways. So you can do some sort of divergent thinking exerc exercise where you give students, you know, all the ways. We could use a Sharpie marker. On my website, I have one on using a tube and all the things it can turn into.

Cyndi Burnett:
But practicing delaying our judgment and keeping open to new ideas right from the first day of class. And even it could be done with your marshmallow challenge. So we’ll circle right back to our first tip if we can do that. You know, you’re coming up with ideas for this marshmallow challenge and you might hear an idea that’s really unusual. Like, what’s a really unusual thing that students have done with your marshmallow challenge?

Matthew Worwood:
Matt, I was going to crack a joke there and say, don’t be messing around with my marshmallow challenge. I’m not actually open to that.

Cyndi Burnett:
But.

Matthew Worwood:
What I would say is, you know, you really. Good question, Cindy. You do get questions about the marshmallow challenge. Can I stick the spaghetti to the floor? Can I stick the spaghetti to the table? Can I stick it to the floor? Can I turn the table upside down to give me more height? Will that count? And some years I’ll say go for it. And other years because of experience, I say no. But I do try and delay judgment as, as much as I can while trying to maintain the constraints to the challenge. So absolutely, I get weird. Can we, can we, can we rip up the marshmallow? Right, like all the time clarifying questions.

Matthew Worwood:
And you do have to kind of be open to them, particularly when it’s a new question. You haven’t thought about before.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right. And I think actually it’s a great opportunity to practice keeping open. So if a student says, well, I want to chew up the marshmallow and spit it out, the initial reaction. And you also want to say, well, let’s. Is there a way we could do that without actually putting it into our mouth? Because we don’t want to spread germs. So really looking at it as a yes. And now there is a piece of this that I think is really important that we need to teach our students. And we talk about this in the book because I wrote about it in the chapter around keeping open, which is making sure that the ideas that the students generate are appropriate and they don’t do anyone harm.

Cyndi Burnett:
Because we always want to focus on supporting one another and coming up with an idea that might hurt someone. So taking the marshmallow and pushing it into someone’s eyeball, not, you know, that’s not appropriate, but chewing it up and, you know, putting it into a plastic bag to extend the life of it may be worthwhile. So really focusing on initiating those discussions and really teaching students how to keep open from day one. So as they go on through the semester, as she students share new ideas, they are listened to and explored.

Matthew Worwood:
Cindy, I absolutely love it. I’ve actually enjoyed this episode. I mean, I always enjoy recording episodes with you, Cindy, but I think we did a really good job today in terms of identifying more specific things. Maybe it’s coming from the fact that we are fresh from writing these chapters, because it’s amazing how many things do connect to the chapters. Cindy and I. Cindy is absolutely brilliant at connecting on LinkedIn. So as the new academic year starts, please, you know, think about participating in the conversations that typically occur on Mondays. I say Cindy’s great.

Matthew Worwood:
I’m trying to get better every year. I’m saying I’m getting better. But I would say I usually am part of a conversation at least once or twice a month. And as I said, we have our YouTube channel. Any other ideas concerns that you have for the podcast, you can reach out to us at Ideas at fueling creativity podcast.com a little bit different change this time. Ideas not questions. Ideas@folding creativitypodcast.com we look forward to hearing from you. And as always, if you’ve got something you want to share about fueling creativity and education and you want to be on the show, please reach out to Cindy and I because we absolutely love it when our listeners want to be on the show and share something that they’re doing in their classroom or within their research.

Matthew Worwood:
My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.

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