Why do neurodivergent individuals so often demonstrate remarkable creativity? And what can that teach us about learning? In this episode, Dr. Matt Zagreski takes us into the neuroscience of neurodiversity, helping us better understand the strengths, challenges, and unique ways neurodivergent minds interact with the world.

We explore the relationship between neurodiversity and creativity, discuss why traditional learning environments can sometimes miss the mark, and examine one challenge that Matt argues deserves far more attention, boredom. If boredom isn’t just an inconvenience, but a genuine barrier to learning for some neurodivergent students, how should that change the way we design educational experiences?

It’s a question that connects closely with build relationships, one of the 10 actions in our new book, The Future Creative, 10 Actions for Fueling Creativity in Education, which we are delighted to say is officially published this week and available to buy now on Amazon and through other book retailers.

Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood. And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field of education.

We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they faced, and exploring new perspectives of creativity. All with the 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.

So let’s begin. Today, we welcome to the show Matthew “Dr. Matt” Segresky, who is a high-energy creative clinical psychologist and professional speaker who utilizes an eclectic approach to meet the specific needs of his neurodivergent clients. He is proud to serve the neurodivergent community as a consultant, a professor, an author, and a researcher.

He has spoken over one thousand times all over the world about supporting neurodivergent clients, organizational wellness, and mental health. Dr. Segresky graduated from Widener University’s Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology in 2016. He is the co-founder of the Neurodiversity Collective LLC, co-host of the podcast Nerding Out on Neurodiversity, and the author of The Neurodiversity Playbook: How Neurodivergent People Can Crack the Code of Living in a Neurotypical World.

He was inducted into the New Jersey Gifted Education Hall of Fame in 2026. Congratulations, and welcome to the show, Matt. Oh, God, I hate my intro so much. I mean, I’m the one who sends it, too. I just, it, uh, it just feels like such a humble brag. Um, oh, yes. No, I do this thing and this thing. Uh, no, but thank- Oh, it’s not, don’t, don’t…

I think there’s not one person that, that likes their intro being read out. I, I, I quite often say, “Let’s not do an intro.” I, I you know, anyone’s interested, just Google it. Yeah. No, I, it’s the- But yours was an awesome intro. Thank you. I mean, to me, it’s the professional equivalent of when people sing Happy Birthday to you at a restaurant.

It’s like, they’re not giving us a hand. Yeah. No one really cares. I’m so happy we’re finally doing this. It took some rescheduling, but here we are. Yes, and today is the day. Because we have been intentionally expanding our coverage to include conversations we haven’t tackled before, and one of the most recent requested topics from our listeners is how creativity works for neurodiverse students.

So before we get begin, we want to start with definitions. So can you break down the distinction for our listeners between neurodiverse, neurodivergent, and neurotypical? Oh, and I love that you included all three. So a neurodivergent brain is a brain that is quantifiably different. So we can see that in terms of e- either fMRI scans and how the brain is working or CT scans and, like, the literally the number of objects in the brain and what they’re doing.

Um, about one in five people are neurodivergent, right? So that’s usually autism, ADHD, giftedness, uh, dyslexia, dysgraphia, OCD. You know, we can track those things pretty well, and all these things come with measurable brain differences. And then the other 80% of humans are neurotypical. That means their brain really sort of does what, more or less, we- what we’d expect a brain to do.

Uh, you know, there isn’t a pure definition of neurotypical. It’s more like that’s the average, right? That’s what we more or less would expect someone’s brain to do. And neurodiverse or neurodiversity is all the brains in all the land, right? So even if I was the only neurodivergent person on this podcast, which we know, you know, that’s not true.

But even if I was, we would all be neurodiversity ’cause it represents a diversity of brain types like we have a diversity of race or ethnicity or gender. You know, and, and just wanna follow up a little bit on that because i-it’s– I, I know that this is a field that continues to be emerging, and it was… You know, you’re referencing there that there is– Y- we can actually kind of go in and do a brain scan and see different parts of the brain lighting up.

First of all, couple of follow-up questions to that. Within that, do we see ADHD brains lighting up in a particular way that is different than someone who has OCD, that is different to someone who has dyslexia? Are we, are we at that point yet? We absolutely are. And, you know, I mean, actually one of my favorite slides when I do talks is this one scan of an ADHD brain versus neurotypical brain.

So, you know, we’re talking about our friend the prefrontal cortex right here in the front part of our head. That’s where executive functioning lives. And in this brain scan, you know, the warmer the colors, the better the brain is doing its job. The cooler the colors, the less well it’s working. And you can…

The, the difference between these two brains on a scan is like night and day. Like, if you asked a-an average layperson, pull somebody off the street, “Hey, which one of these brains is doing its job?” They’d be like, “Well, the one that it’s all the same color, not the one that has the giant blue cold spot in its forehead.”

Right? And so when their administrators or whatever say to me like, “I don’t know. Is ADHD really real? Isn’t it like too much TikTok or some nonsense?” Like- It’s a measurable brain difference, and it’s a neurodevelopmental disorder that we can measure in what the brain is doing, and vitally for this conversation, not doing.

And just to follow up though, would, would a dyslexic brain have a blue spot in one particular area and an ADHD brain have a blue spot in another area? Or do- when we’re talking about neurodivergent brains, are we seeing the blue spot in the same area? Dyslexia is a little bit more tricky because it’s the intersection of several different parts of your brain.

So you’ve got Broca’s area, which identifies words. You’ve got Wernicke’s area, which assigns meaning to words, and you’ve got the- your occipital lobe, which is tracking visual movement. So the intersection, the data exchange between those parts of the brain, so what you’d see there is you’d see a less efficient mapping of how the brain is processing that data.

So, like, there are some parts of the brain where the function is very lateralized. It’s like this is the part that does the thing, and then there are parts of the brain that are very systemic, like reading. Reading is an incredibly complex neurological task, and as such It’s less about the brain lighting up differently.

It’s more about the process of information as, as it’s seen. It, it, it looks less efficient. It looks like, um… It’s like a good analogy is like if you, like, pulled up your Google Maps and you saw, like, local highway, like the traffic is moving well versus like snarl rush hour. The, the– It’s that weird dark red color that’s like, “Oh my God, is it bleeding?”

Um, that’s kind of what it looks like in a dyslexic brain. And we, we tend to see a scale as well, right? Like, you know, people who, you know, have ADHD are sometimes s-seen as also having ADHD and dyslexic, and people with ADHD might have a little bit more of the hyperactivity and a little less of the attention deficit.

So in terms of the behaviors that are expressed as a consequence of these, these neurodivergent brains, th-there can be a lot of overlap, but also a lot of differences even within the same condition. Is, is that right? Absolutely. And, you know, one of the things, you know, like psychology was built on the medical model, right?

‘Cause in medical science, things are discreet. You break your ankle, your ankle is broken, right? You can see it on a scan. The brain doesn’t work that way. The brain doesn’t play nice. The brain is essentially quantum, right? It’s the most complex thing in the universe, and it lives between our ears, right? So for us to say things like, “ADHD is here and dyslexia is here and autism is here,” it is a good place to start the conversation.

But like everything– Like most things in life that are truly interesting, as soon as you leave the basic understanding of it, you just throw everything away that you know, and it’s like, okay, it’s actually much muddier. Um, one simple thing to think about is a neurodivergent brain is significantly more likely to be neurodivergent in many areas.

So if you’re gifted, you are over twenty percent more likely to have a mood disorder. If you’re ADHD, you’re sixty-six percent more likely to have Tourette’s. If you’re autistic, you are significantly more likely to have OCD. Some of these things, because the behaviors that are d- that define these conditions overlap, but some of it is that when the brain– that part of the brain stops doing its job or doesn’t do it as well, we call that dysfunction multiple different things, right?

The part of the brain that’s indicated in OCD is called the basal ganglia. It’s the reward circuit of our brain And in autistic and OCD individuals, that switch gets left open essentially. So it’s like, “Okay, I did the thing, I should feel better,” but you need to really do the thing to feel better, and if you can’t, your brain isn’t shutting that loop down, so you stay in an anxious, activated state.

And we can see this with autistic people when, when we don’t let them stim or don’t let them stack their toys. If we don’t let them do things in their routine, it’s activating the same part of the brain. It’s that reward circuit close that we also see in, sort of, your classic OCD symptom of I have to wash my hands 11 times before I leave the house.

That’s really helpful. I really appreciate that framing. I, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it framed that way, so thank you for that really useful explanation. I wanna talk a little bit about this relationship between neurodiversity and creativity. So can you explain the, the relationship between that? So one of the things we know about the neurodivergent brain is there’s significantly more neural connections, right?

So, uh, when Albert Einstein died, and there’s this whole story about it. It’s, if you wanna read the book, it’s called Driving Mr. Einstein. It’s very interesting. Basically, when Einstein died, the hospital was like, “Well, even though he said he didn’t want an autopsy, we’re gonna go do one because we think it’s important.”

Uh, not, not great, not ideal. Um, and d- but in the guy’s notes, he was like, “Huh, I’m surprised his brain isn’t bigger.” ‘Cause we’ve all heard the egg head thing, right? You’re smart, your head is bigger. What they- Mm … found is when they dug into it is that it was richer, it was deeper, it was significantly more connected.

And the, the neural connections we have allow us to b- bridge information that other people wouldn’t necessarily bridge. One of my favorite examples of a neurodivergent person is the celebrity chef Bobby Flay. So Bobby Flay is dyslexic and ADHD, and I, I would certainly argue he’s gifted as well, right?

But this is a guy who saw food in a very different way and made those connections that other people wouldn’t make. And now everybody, you know, you know, you know, apes what he does. But it’s… You know, if you look back in his early career, people were like, “Wait, you’re gonna put a fried egg on a burger? Are you insane?”

Right? ‘Cause he’s making connections other people can’t make. You know? So it’s not just, “Oh, let’s stick a clock radio in it,” it’s like, “Does a clock radio even need to exist?” And the more interconnected your brain is, the more your brain is able to ask those questions and theoretically, we hope, with enough support and structure, answer them.

You know, I, I’ve listened to enough of episodes of you guys… You know, you know the f- you know the famous quote, right? “Talent hits a, a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.” That’s what we’re talking about with those kind of connections, right? Because things didn’t exist and then they did, and if you follow the dots, that’s almost always a neurodivergent person who’s creating that thing.

When you’re talking about connections, you’re talking about the synapses. Yes. And I, I, I’m assuming… Yep. And so w- within that, uh, you know, it’s my understanding lo- the, there’s a, when we’re young, we’re developing a lot of these synapses. I don’t know if it’s synapses or synapses, but stick with me, right?

We’re, we’re developing a lot of these synapses and as we get older, some become strengthened and some then kind of fall away, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we struggle with, with learning new languages, right? And so to that point, is there a relationship there where we just got, A, the ability to generate a lot more synapses, or is it actually that some of them stay a lot more connected or hang around longer than we’re expecting?

I’m just wondering if there’s a relationship between cognitive development at a young age with some of these conditions as well, which obviously makes education and the learning environment particularly important. Well, and the, and the i- I never get to talk about this, so thank you for teeing this up for me.

The technical term for what you’re describing is pruning. The brain seeks to be efficient, right? So the brain’s like, “We’re gonna keep the pathways that work. We will keep these pathways that work because they work.” And then you can imagine i- and every different kind of brain prunes differently. We know the autistic brain has a significantly different pruning pattern than a neurotypical brain.

If you’re gifted, you have a third different pattern. It’s a higher high and a shorter pruning process to level out. And I often describe it as if a neurotypical person’s pruning process ends up with local roads, the gifted brain ends up with superhighways. And the ADHD brain ends up with superhighways that don’t always, that go past the city, and you have to sort of loop back around to it somehow.

Um, so you’re really, like, your brain is keeping these loops and these connections, and there are m- there, there end up being more of them that are stronger. So in, in psychology, we measure everything through what we call the big three: frequency, intensity, and duration. So these things fire more often, that’s the frequency.

They are stronger, that’s the intensity part. And the duration is that they are doing it more often, and the connections they make last longer. So these are things that we can look at that are quantifiably different, once again, than, uh, what we’d expect a typical brain to do. So do you think that students that are neurodivergent are more likely to be highly creative?

Definitely. And we can look at the parts of the brain that connect between those things. Um, you know, and when I do my talk on creativity, you know, I, like, here are the brain parts we’re talking about here. Like, you know, this is, these are things that we can point to on scans. Um, and it’s a bidirectional thing for why we are more creative, right?

Um, one of the things we know, right, is that neurodivergent people, especially gifted kids and ADHDers, often experience boredom as pain, right? It’s l- it’s, nobody likes to be bored, but, like, it’s, it’s significantly uncomfortable and dysregulating for the neurodivergent person, right? So things like, “Oh, do the damn worksheet,” for a neurotypical kid, it’s like, “Well, this sucks, but I can do it.”

For the gifted kid, it’s, “This sucks, and I can’t do it ’cause it’s painful. You’re asking me to touch a hot stove, and I can’t do it.” So we are drawn to creativity, not only ’cause it’s more reinforcing, ’cause it’s more creative, it’s more dopamine, but also it avoids these negative things. So it’s what we call in psychology, it’s doubly reinforced ’cause it’s a positive reinforcement for adding dopamine, and it’s negatively reinforced ’cause we’re avoiding this painful boredom stuff.

And do you think that’s the reason, uh, that creativity’s often housed in gifted education? Because we’ve had this conversation with a lot of the gifted specialists that have come on the show. Yeah. And Matt and I are not gifted specialists. We’re creativity specialists. But do you think that’s the reason why when we talk about creativity in education, so many people point to gifted education?

Yeah. I mean, I think that’s, I think that’s exactly it. And it’s, and, and it’s one of the biggest problems with gifted education is that anybody can be creative Right? Creativity isn’t just a thing for the intellectual elite. It’s not just a thing for the singers- Right … dancers, actors, singers, painters, right?

It’s not just that. You know, I love talking about the different kinds of creativity, right? ‘Cause, you know, I work with a lot of kids who are incredible STEM students, right? They’re like, “Well, Dr. Matt, I’m- Mm-hmm … I’m not creative. I can’t paint to save my life. I couldn’t dance my way out of a paper bag.” I’m like, “How’d you get in the paper bag in the first place?

We have to talk about that situation.” Um, but the idea here is the more we empower those kids to see themselves as creative within their areas of expertise, then, then it’s really creativity is for everyone. When we gatekeep it- Everybody’s education gets less rich, right? And this is where we, you know, we always talk about universal design, right?

The best practices in neurodivergent education are just the best practices in education. We should do that for everybody. Let kids paint more pictures and do more presentations and make mo- more posters. People don’t learn as well on a chapter test. They don’t learn as well writing a six-paragraph essay.

They learn better when they get to lean into the things that make their brain light up, and then not only do they have more fun and retain more information, but it facilitates that love of learning, right? So yeah, I mean, I want to de-nest creativity from gifted education and sprinkle it along all education, ’cause everybody would benefit from that more.

And forgive my naivety as, as Cindy kinda teed up, we’re not creativity- we’re not gifted specialists, we’re creativity specialists. So I just wanna go back to it, to something that you alluded to. So if you’re gifted, that is seen as, uh, something within neurodivergency? Yeah. And, you know, and we can look at, you know, s- the neural connections.

There’s prefrontal cortex functioning that we see. You know, I mean, these, you, you know, giftedness is perhaps one of the later arrivals at the table for neurodivergence. And I have colleagues who say giftedness can’t be a neurodivergence ’cause there’s no negative aspect to being gifted. To which I say, “Spend 10 minutes with one of my clients, and I will say otherwise to you, my friend.”

But one thing that we see with the gifted brain, right, is that it processes things so quickly that often it doesn’t leave what we call memory trace, right? So it doesn’t sit in your working memory, and thus get put down into your hippocampus. So if you’re a kid in the classroom and teacher says, “What’s 11 times 7?”

You don’t have to do the work on the piece of paper. You just know that’s 77. Let’s move on with our lives, right? Mm. And then the teacher asks, “Well, show me your work, Brian.” And Brian goes, “I can’t. I don’t know how I did it.” And Brian’s not lying. Brian is literally like, “My brain moves too fast to write that down.”

And it sounds arrogant, right? But ask Simone Biles how she does a triple flip seven, you know, 1080 in the air and lands on her toes. She can’t tell you how she does it. She just knows she can do it, right? And that’s the sort of thing, like your brain is moving so fast and so rich, you’re in A, you’re in a flow state that’s almost in- negatively impacting you because you’re just not, you don’t exist in time.

And this is part of the reason why gifted kids can struggle with time blindness, hyper-fixation, you know, trouble with, uh, ta- you know, switching between tasks or transitions. You know, because the brain locks into those things and really can’t let them go. So I, I, I’ve got a very quick funny story and, and this is gonna sound like I’m saying I’m gifted and, and trust me, m- my math scores do not suggest I’m gifted.

So but I want to tell you this funny story with math when I was young. I cannot explain it, but when I didn’t think about math, the answer would just come to me in my lessons. But it was like I couldn’t retain it, but, like, all I knew is I had to not think about it. If I thought about it, the answer would just emerge.

I never could work out how it would come, but I always used to think it was like that, you know, like when you’re, uh, you’re overthinking math and you start panicking and, and then it starts shutting down your brain. It was the best way of trying to explain it, is this idea of, like, just being at peace and it will come to you behind the scenes.

Now, it’s not necessarily that I’m trying to, like, make the connection with me being gifted, but that idea that within our brains things just come to us and we don’t even know where they come from. It, it makes me think of those eureka moments. Like, there’s these, these moments where ideas just come to us and we don’t even know how the connections are being made, and there’s something super fascinating- Yeah, yeah

about the idea that your brain is being highly creative when you’re not even engaging or trying to be creative. Well, so and the brain science on creativity backs that up. So, you know, when our brains are actively thinking it’s alpha waves, when they’re… our subconscious is delta waves. When you let a topic or a task you’re trying to solve go, the alpha and delta waves flip.

And literally you bring the subconscious into the conscious mind, and that’s how we solve it. When I do my creativity workshop, like I tell people, it’s like, it’s like fighting your way through a creativity problem is like trying to think of another song when a song is playing on the radio, right? So if you’re like, you know, if you’re like, you know, listening to Taylor Swift and you’re like, “Ah, what was that name of Bruce Springsteen’s new song?”

Your brain is actively processing information, and essentially the pipeline between our processing centers of our brain and our hippocampus is a one-way street. Traffic can only flow in one direction at a time. So I can’t pull up Bruce Springsteen’s new song while I’m listening to Taylor Swift. It isn’t until Taylor Swift- Mm-hmm

is over that, Matt, to your point, like, then I let my brain relax, the delta waves kick in, and then it’s like flies up from my hippocampus and it’s like, “Dude, it’s Streets of Minneapolis.” It’s like- Yeah … “There it is.” So, you know, if I was a betting man, I would bet you, uh, what are you, Matt? Uh, uh, you know, Tottenham, uh, Arsenal?

Uh, Crystal Palace- Crystal … funny enough. Very proud to be saying that at the moment. We’ve won a lot of trophies over the last 13 months. Yeah. Well, and you ruined Chris Richards’ ankle tendons. That screws up our- I think he’s gonna be okay. He- For those of you don’t, don’t know, Chris Richard is a player for the USA.

He got injured a couple of weeks ago, um, but we think he’s gonna be fit for the World Cup. He- You’re gonna be all right, Matt … he better be. I’m telling you. I, I was so happy for him. As I was happy… You know, anytime you see an American do well in European soccer, it’s like, “See, we can do this.” Uh, but- Wait, but listen, you know what?

Let’s keep, let’s keep with that- Yeah … for a moment, though. Let’s, let’s just keep with that. So soccer is h- we quite often talk about highly talented individuals. Mm-hmm. Is there, is, is, is talent and giftedness the same thing then? Like, just out of curiosity. From a brain neuro, neuro perspective. Ooh, that is a sh-

Okay. So let’s think about talent. So talent and giftedness have a lot in common, but they do branch off in some fundamental areas, because talent can come from biological advantages. So I always think about a kid I grew up playing basketball with, you know, his name was Adam, and he was just one of those kids, in fourth grade, he was 6’2″.

Genetics, right? He was just pure genetics. And so he was awesome at basketball. You’d just throw the ball up, he’d catch it, he’d turn around and lay it in. Nobody could stop him. He was 6’2″. But then everybody else hit puberty and caught up with Adam, and all of a sudden he’s not the tallest guy on the court anymore.

And what we found is that Adam then, it turns out he actually wasn’t good at basketball, right? Yeah. So for every person who has unique physical or psychological advantages that put them in a place to do a thing, the, at some point you have to connect grit or task commitment to that process to fulfill that talent development model.

This is why when Joe Renzulli talked about the tripartite model of giftedness, it’s above average ability, creativity was in there, and then the third part is task commitment. Because I might have the idea for the next Percy Jackson in my brain, but if I can’t follow through and write the damn thing, it doesn’t exist.

Therefore- Right … it’s inact- it’s unactualized giftedness or unactualized talent. So, you know, for every Michael Phelps whose body, you know, and we’ve measured this, right? He has a longer wingspan, his body somehow produces less lactic acid. We don’t know why. Those are biological, physical advantages. But Michael, Michael Phelps also lived in the pool for 18 years of his life.

So, like, at some point, biological mechanical advantage has to marry with real world grit and hard work. Mm-hmm.

I wanna talk about your book, and your book is around neurodivergent people cracking the code of living in a neurotypical world. Can you highlight the essence for us how a neurodivergent person can crack that code? So, it starts by understanding that you’re different. A well-worn metaphor in the gifted world is this idea that neurodivergent people are zebras, and they are being raised in horse farms.

Now, zebras and horses look a lot alike. They can do okay in some of the same environments, but a zebra can’t thrive unless it’s in the right environment for a zebra. But if you see zebra and you think horse, you’re going to cram it into an environment that is ill-suited for it, right? So- Mm … that’s why, you know, everyone says knowledge is power.

I like to say knowledge is empowerment because when you know more about yourself, you can do better, right? One of my other many neurodivergences is that I’m colorblind, right? Mm. And before I knew I was colorblind, or before I knew what colorblindness was, what did you… What do you guys think I thought I was?

I don’t think… You, you thought everyone looked like, like, looked at the world in the same way. Oh, boy. That, that would be a much more well-adjusted worldview, and I appreciate that. I thought I was stupid. I thought I… Like, ’cause the first thing they teach you in school is colors, and I couldn’t tell blue and purple apart.

Ah. So, like, I must be dumb if I can’t do this, right? What obviously ended up happening in this case was that I wasn’t dumb, it was my optic nerves don’t send the right information to my, to my brain. So, part of the reason we start with neuroscience is that when you understand that you have a measurable brain difference, the ways that you- Mm

show up in the world aren’t about what you can or, uh… They aren’t about you, the person, they’re about a thing your brain does or doesn’t do. And that is, that understanding that difference is probably the most important part of my job. And actually, just to follow up what you said, it, it’s less about my brain didn’t process the information the right way to what you just said.

There isn’t really, and what I’m hearing, there’s not really a right way. There’s an atypical way- Right … and then there’s a non-atypical way. Yeah, that’s why we use the word- And who says that that green is green, right? Like, it, it, it is a kinda fun conversation, right? It’s, it’s a construct invented by the majority of people who probably share the typical way of how that brain is processing the information.

Yeah. And fundamental to the neurodiversity movement is that differences aren’t deficits, right? So, if we’re all in a workshop together, and we all go to NAGC every year, right, if we’re all sitting in a workshop, like, I might be able to sit still and listen to the speaker, and, you know, Cindy might need to get up and pace in the back of the room to stay regulated enough to stay in the room, and that you might need to feverishly take notes to keep your brain engaged.

None of us is wrong. We’re all doing what we need to do to stay in the space and engage. The problem is, is the world expects a very neurotypical kind of performance, right? Because there’s a lot more of them than there are of us. So I like to say, like, the world is built for and by neurotypical people, which means the thing that we do, Cindy, to use your words, it makes us atypical, right?

We are out of, we’re out of the norm. Doesn’t make us wrong or bad. But, you know, if you’re somebody who needs to stim at a concert to get through that sensory experience, I would argue that is no better or worse than head banging or air guitaring or whatever that you need to do. But we view one thing as weird and the other two things as normative, and we’re trying to make a space for all behavior serves a function, and those functions are not bad.

To kind of talk a little bit more about the book and, you know, what is, is typical of non-typically diverse students, um, the, the follow through, the organization, so much is made around hyperfocus, and I’m, I’m gonna do a shout-out to Cindy, for example, around her. You know, she, she talks a lot about curiosity as, like, the superpower for creativity.

And her and I talk, you know, we, we, we geek out about this thing that we’re obsessed about, creativity, and, and we love it, and we’re curious about it. And that curiosity never stops us moving. It never stops us going. So my first piece is that there does– I’m assuming, is there a connection between curiosity and the desire and thirst for knowledge or information within something you’re really interested in, which is an incredible superpower.

Right. But similarly, that with, with where we talk about hyperfocus, there’s also the behavior of, oh, you struggle to finish tasks, and almost like there’s– They’re, they’re not, they’re two very different things, but we see ’em the same population. I mean, if there’s a thing that basically every neurodivergence has in common is that it’s weaker prefrontal cortex function, whether you, you know, obvi- whether it’s hitting the nail on the head like ADHD, but, you know, like giftedness comes with ex- you know, a lot of executive dysfunction.

I mean, like the, the, the concept of the absent-minded professor, that’s where– Like, not all gifted people are twice exceptional and have ADHD, but they almost all have some sort of executive functioning impairment, and that’s why we have time blindness, and that’s why we overcommit and forget things, and I mean, we could keep listing things, but I’m trying to be aware of the time that we have right now.

It’s, it’s about

It’s about honoring people’s individuality and saying like, “These are the things that you need to succeed, and we can give you these things by doing these other things.” Right? That’s why neurodivergent education is always a question of equity. Everybody should get what they need to survive, and if you need to learn particle physics as a third grader, that’s equity to me.

That isn’t like, only Johnny gets to go on the yacht because Johnny’s the best boy. No, that’s not equity, that’s bullshit. Right? Like, sorry, I don’t know if I’m allowed to cuss on this podcast. Uh- I’m a swearer outside of this podcast, so the fact that you’re, you’re bringing swearing in, I’ve never sworn before, but that was awesome.

I loved it. Thank you. Oh, man. I mean, you guys literally wrote the book on cursing, so, you know, I mean, that’s, uh- Yeah, from Southeast London, absolutely, yeah. Um, w- you know, we, uh, you know, not trying to… Uh, editor, if you wanna say, “I think that’s malarkey,” I’m fine with that, too. Um, but that’s really, you know…

God, in, in the American educational culture, we talk a- we talk way too much about executive functioning as like a moral imperative. Like, “Ah, Cindy can focus, and thus Cindy is a good student. The two Matts over here are looking out the window and doodling on their papers. They are bad students.” No, that is inaccurate.

You ask anybody in the world, they take shortcuts, they find ways to act like they’re paying attention when they’re not. When I do talks, I usually, I’ll, I’ll get to a point when I’m talking about executive functioning, I’m like, “All right, guys, real quick, just show of hands here, and I won’t… My, my feelings won’t be hurt.

Who’s checked their phone since I started talking?” And people look around and they’re like, “Me?” I’m like, “And it’s usually around two-thirds of the room.” I’m like, “Right, because you guys have lives that haven’t stopped just ’cause I’m talking.” Now, I think I’m pretty good at presenting, right? I am captivating.

But it doesn’t mean at some point your brain doesn’t go, “Ooh, I should check my phone,” or, “Oh, did I respond to that email?” Or, “Oh, God, let me check the, the nanny cam,” or whatever it is, right? Like, we are inundated with information and demands on our brain, and we just have limited bandwidth. We need to be- Mm

curious about what’s happening, right? ‘Cause when we’re curious, we can be compassionate, and to add another C here, creative, right? Yeah. ‘Cause if, if I’m curious about why Matt can’t pay attention, I can be creative in solving that. If I think that Matt’s inability to pay attention is a moral failing, I’m furious, and then I’m gonna punish you.

And we know punishing doesn’t work on neurodivergent kids, right? Because it only breaks relationships. So, you know, I mean, uh, literally I just had shirts made up that say this. It’s just, “Be curious, not furious.” Because yeah- Mm … you, you are, you are- That’s awesome. That is awesome. And speaking bumper stickers, right?

I’ll, I’ll send you a shirt. Yeah, everybody gets a shirt. Um-

Pain Matt, this has been an amazing conversation. I have learned so much. So thank you so much. It was well worth the wait, and I’m so glad we finally got you on the show. Now, before we go, we have a question for you that we’re going to start asking, um, and you are the first person to answer this question, and it came to me after I’d been talking endlessly to Matt Worwood about this final question of the show.

But here’s where we’re going. Can you think of an educator who has unlocked your creative potential? Who were they, and how did they unlock it, and what was the outcome? Uh, well, I mean, there are so many I could talk to. I mean, shouts to, uh, Boyd White at CTY, who taught me screenwriting. Uh, shouts to my high school art teacher, Ms.

Parmley, who taught… Look, th- actually, this is perfect about the talent development. I was so good art as, as a… I was so good at art as a kid that no one ever taught me art. They just were like, “Okay, do the thing.” So I never learned anything, I just did. And Ms. Parmley was the first teacher who was of like, “No, no.

Now you need to learn how to do shading and cross hatching and all that other crap.” But, you know, as a, as a theater kid, I have to, of course, say Ms. Suzanne Sweeney, my high school theater director. I showed up cold to an audition ’cause my buddy convinced me to do it, and she’s like, “Have you prepared a side?”

And I was like, “What’s a side?” And she looked, and she didn’t kick me out. She said, “Cool. We’re going to teach you everything you need to do.” And the more I did, she found very quickly that my strengths are in improv and physical comedy, and, you know, and I’m not a very strong singer. So she showed me the creative way to be creative.

Play to your strengths within this space. Not everyone can do everything, right? I’m never gonna be the leading man in a show, and I’ve made my peace with that. That’s what I go to therapy for. You know? But, like, Ms. Sweeney was really the first person to say, like, “This, this creative part, part of you deserves to shine, and I’m gonna create an environment where it can.”

I love that response so much. Well, Matt, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the Feeling Creativity in Education podcast. If you liked this episode and think the topic might be of interest to a friend or colleague, we hope that you will forward it on. And if you liked listening to Matt, as we did, go and check out his podcast, which is called Nerding Out on Neurodiversity.

My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. And my name is Dr. Matthew Worwood. This episode was produced by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our production assistant is Joanne Fernando.