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

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

Matthew Worwood:
This is the Fuelling Creativity 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.

Cyndi Burnett:
Hey.

Matthew Worwood:
Happy New Year.

Cyndi Burnett:
Happy New Year. I like your hat.

Matthew Worwood:
Thank you so much. I like your hat as well. Listen, you know, I’m trying to be more fun. I’m trying, Cindy. All right, that. That. That’s my effort. A more quirky fun that.

Matthew Worwood:
That. So this is. This is the whole thing about, oh, look, I don’t even have it on straight, but if you’re listening just by audio, it doesn’t matter. But I’ve got a really cool Happy New Year hat on. Hmm.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I like the fact that you’re embracing the playful side that I encourage you to embrace.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes. And you’ve also got a nice hat. Is that a pink. Or is that.

Cyndi Burnett :
This is a pink hat. Yes. I was trying to find a fun hat to wear to our celebration, our new year celebration, and this is all I could find that would actually fit my big head.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I absolutely love that hat. And as I said, there’s a specific name for that type of pink, isn’t it?

Cyndi Burnett :
Hot pink.

Matthew Worwood:
Hot pink. That’s the one. Hot pink. Yes. I’ve actually got a hot pink shirt as well. So, Cindy, it is December 30th, and we are obviously going to be looking a little bit about our goals for 2025, but I thought I would put you on the spot and say, do you remember any goals that we set ourselves for 2024? Hmm.

Cyndi Burnett :
Do I remember if I had breakfast today? That’s the real question, Matt.

Matthew Worwood:
Very good point.

Cyndi Burnett:
So I would say at this time of year, I can’t remember anything. I’m trying to juggle a lot of balls, which I know that you are trying to juggle a lot of balls as well, with the end of the school year, the end of the year with the kids, and all the parties and holiday celebrations and getting things wrapped up so that you can go off on a nice break, which hopefully all of you who are listening are in the middle of a great break. And now we shift toward the future. But in terms of our goals for 20, 24. I think we wanted to update our cover art.

Matthew Worwood:
We did. We did want to update our cover art. And you’re being really sneaky because I asked you that question before we hit record. I said, when did we cover up our. But we did. It was one of our goals. And it looks like I went. It looks like we updated our cover art at the very beginning of the year.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think I like our cover art. I’m sure at some point in the next couple of years or maybe next couple of months, we’ll get bored with it. But we did update our cover art, so we succeeded in that goal.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right. And we wanted to build a website.

Matthew Worwood:
We did want to build a website, and we actually launched a website, a provisional website, in the spring, and we started to add some of our episodes to that. But we’ve really ramped up that website over the last couple of months, and I’m pretty proud with both the design. We continue to upload more content. But the biggest thing that I like about it, I know you like about it as well, is we’ve added on the website collection. So all of our episodes have been organized into different collections. We’re adding more collections. And please, if you think that there should be other collections on our website that we haven’t added. And when we’re talking about collections, we’re talking about things like gifted education.

Matthew Worwood:
And so all of the episodes that fit into gifted education, you can go and select that link and have all of the episodes that fall under that particular topic. So if you see a topic out there, make, please let us know and we’ll add it to one of our collections. But, yes, we did that. We met that goal as well.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. And we also reached a hundred guests, so we have had a hundred guests at this point in the podcast. And, Matt, did you get my holiday card?

Matthew Worwood:
I haven’t had your holiday card, no. And I can see you’re already excited about it, so.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, I am really excited about it because what we built on my holiday card really quick is each of us were given four words, and we built a connections game, like the New York Times connections game. And one of mine is 193. Do you know what that number represents?

Matthew Worwood:
193. I feel like we have to have quite a short episode today, so I’m gonna have to say I pass. I don’t know what it means.

Cyndi Burnett:
We’ve had 193 episodes.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, you spoiled it. I would have really enjoyed that. I didn’t know that. Oh, that’s Fantastic. Well, congratulations. That means we should set the goal of being over 200 episodes for 2025.

Cyndi Burnett:
Well, I think that’s a very reachable goal.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes.

Matthew Worwood:
Now, Cindy, there was one goal that we set out to do and we didn’t achieve it. Right. And that’s part of creativity. Right? You set a goal. We’ve had these conversations with Ron bigetto and Lisa McBain. Part of setting expectations is what sometimes contributes to failure. Maybe we were a little bit too ambitious with everything else that we had going on, but we did set the goal to finish our book.

Cyndi Burnett:
We started our book.

Matthew Worwood:
We did start it.

Cyndi Burnett:
We’ve got it in draft form.

Matthew Worwood:
We do have it in draft form. And actually there are reasons which we won’t kind of share too much about on why we’ve held off a little bit. But one of the things I would say is that we did really get in. We’ve written these chapters that represent all of our actions, and by going through that process, we have began to solidify those actions a little bit more. And I will say that we’ve added those actions on our website. And another goal that we had set ourselves was to do more presentations for 2024, talking about those actions. And that is something we did achieve. And we actually went a step higher when it comes to presentations, didn’t we?

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes, we did. We actually did those presentations. And then we also did live episodes, which was really exciting.

Matthew Worwood:
We did. I mean, that was super duper exciting. I mean, if you look at 2024, we recorded our first ever live episode at the Big Noise Summit, which I think we recorded in October and released during Thanksgiving. And then we went to association of Gifted Education in Seattle, which was just an incredible trip. But in terms of recording live episodes, we have recorded the first three episodes for season 10, which are starting, I think, last week of January, first week of February, and they were all recorded live at that conference, which was super duper exciting. And we also. We had mentioned this as well. We also had started to kind of produce these live episodes, these videos that we’re doing now.

Matthew Worwood:
I feel a little bit more comfortable now. I didn’t feel as comfortable the first time we were recording, but we now are getting on a point. A place where all of our debriefs are recorded on video and we share them on our YouTube channel, and they’re also available on our website. So even though they weren’t necessarily some of these things weren’t our goals, I think it also speaks a little bit to the fact that, yes, it’s great to have goals, but also being flexible so you can kind of like identify new goals as the opportunities emerge as the year unfolds.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. And I think that’s a great segue as we want to keep this relatively short into our 2025 goals and share May that we are looking at the conferences that we’re going to attend and present at this year. So we’re hoping to do one in person, one virtual, and both the fall and the spring. So we won’t, we won’t release which ones those are, but we have a plan. And if you have any recommendations for us and where you think we should be presenting, we would love to hear from you. And I just also want to mention, Matt, before we keep moving on with our goals, we have received a lot of great feedback so far on our survey that we sent out in building 2025 goals. And we are ext just by a week to January 7th. And we ask you, we’re going to put that survey link in the show notes to go and fill it out.

Cyndi Burnett:
It won’t take you more than two or three minutes. If you have enjoyed listening to our podcast, please, please, please take two to three minutes and just fill out that form for us.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes. And I think that’s, I think it will be setting a nice goal to use the information from that survey to inform some of the changes that we hope to make in 2025 to better our content, to better the experience that we’re offering our listeners. But that’s one of those situations where without that information, we can’t really CL clarify those goals too much.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right. And you also have a chance to win books and prizes and wonderful things that we will send you if you complete the form. So other 2025 goals.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I think we should finish the book, Cindy. I mean, I think we’ve got to set the goal of finishing the book, and I think hopefully we’ll have a framework to help us finish that book. And what we said was, we said we want to have a finished manuscript of the book in 2025. You know, if it comes out in 2025, fantastic. If not early 2026. But I would love to be in a situation when we have a finished manuscript at the end of 2025. So let’s do that. Let’s, let’s really aim for that.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right. That is a goal. And we are asking all of you to hold us accountable.

Matthew Worwood:
All right, now there’s one more final goal that I do want to make a mention because it kind of speaks a little bit to our next episodes during January. Hopefully, you know, you are disconnected at this time and you’re spending time with. With loved ones and those that you hold dear in your lives. But we know that January can be a little bit of a busy month for people as we’re starting to get back into the groove of the new year and for some of us, the new semester. So what we’ve done is we’ve created, as always, these kind of like off shows in between our seasons. So season 10 is gonna kick off, as I said, end of January, first week of February. And what we’ve done is we’ve created these four episodes where Cindy and I have gone back and identified our favorite, not necessarily our favorite, but like highlights from our season one and season two. So you’ve got two episodes, I’ve got two episodes, and we’re going to be releasing those.

Matthew Worwood:
But it’s part of a goal for us to kind of explore how our content might support professional learning experiences. And so, you know, we’re very familiar with this idea of professional learning communities coming from this idea of community of practice. Small groups of teachers coming together, identifying their goals for professional development for the upcoming year. And what we’re hoping is that we can try and produce some episodes that can support efforts for schools to kind of facilitate professional learning in these groups during one to two hour sessions that take place during the year. So that’s one of the goals that we’re setting. We will be building more of that on our website, but our first kind of effort to try and move towards that goal is the recording and release of these episodes that start next week.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. And if you have a friend or colleague or you have a department you work within, then we really encourage you to reach out to them to say, let’s plan some conversations in 2025 around creativity. And. And as Matt mentioned, we are going to have these short clips along with a little guide in terms of questions to guide the conversation. And if you don’t have any teachers to guide, join us on Facebook. Make sure you’re connecting with Matt and I on Facebook. I post every week on Mondays about the podcast. So I encourage you to get involved in those conversations.

Cyndi Burnett:
If you don’t have a community, you can join our community.

Matthew Worwood:
And you meant LinkedIn, not Facebook, right? Cause you mentioned Facebook.

Cyndi Burnett:
I meant LinkedIn. Did I say Facebook?

Matthew Worwood:
You said Facebook. I’m pretty sure you said Facebook. But as I said, we’re getting a lot more comfortable with these video episodes. We’re getting comfortable making mistakes it makes me feel normal because I make mistakes all the time. So I love it. So, Cindy, I’m wishing you a very happy New Year because this comes out on the day before Christmas Eve. I don’t know if we’ll connect, so I think you’re aware.

Cyndi Burnett:
No, we probably will.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett:
So happy New Year, Matt.

Matthew Worwood:
Happy New Year. And Happy New Year to all of our listeners, particularly those of you that are making, you know, finding time in the day to listen to our episodes week in, week out. We do appreciate. And one final shout out as you enter the new year, if you have time, please fill out that survey because it really is part of something that we need to continue to grow and have an impact in education. So My name is Dr. Matthew Worwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
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.