Matthew Worwood:
There probably are lots of these experiences that we could have that we’re not having. And so we end up learning it from a book or we end up learning it from a YouTube video. And that’s something AI can’t deliver, right? Like that I’m in that space. I’m looking up the stars in the science museum, or I’m picking up a cannonball from a battlefield from the Civil War. And those types of experiences, interacting with those types of objects bring learning to life. It’s that it’s about making learning more physical, more real, particularly in an age where we’re surrounded and immersed in digital technology. Hello, everyone. My name is Dr.

Matthew Worwood:
Matthew Worwood.

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

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

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the 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 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 Celebration. Q. Celebration Music.

Cyndi Burnett:
That’S a lot.

Matthew Worwood:
It was a lot. It was a lot. We’re celebrating it. You listen. Number one, you told me to have fun. And number two, you said, open it up and say we’re celebrating. So we’re not cutting this. We’re going to continue to celebrate it.

Cyndi Burnett:
We are celebrating. It’s the end of the year. We have made it to June of 2025.

Matthew Worwood:
We have. And listen, we’re thinking of everyone, some of you were well aware might have another week when this episode’s coming out. Some of you might be fortunate in that you’re already chilling and could be even at the beach. Though you might not be listening to the podcast. We won’t take offense if you’re not listening to the podcast while you’re at the beach. We’ve been doing the podcast for four years. Cindy corrected me earlier when I was saying three to four years, four years of the podcast. And we’ve kind of fallen in this habit of doing the kind of final episode of academic year, somewhat reflective, not so much of a debrief, because there’s been a lot of debriefs over the last few weeks.

Matthew Worwood:
But this is about kind of looking back, right, Cindy, over the academic year and what we’ve kind of learned and where we think we are in terms of education at the moment. Because there’s a lot we had the pandemic, but now there’s even, you could argue there’s even more disruption happening at the moment in terms of public schooling, or rather the just formal learning in general. And Cindy, you already reached out, you said, let’s have a conversation about this topic. So why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what we’d be talking about.

Cyndi Burnett:
So recently Matt and I were having, we have a lot of offline conversations on an app called Marco Polo, and we were talking about what’s happening right now in education. And there are so many conversations going on in the field right now, not only in the creativity field, but also in education with regard to artificial intelligence, which is a part of this. But really what are we trying to teach our students? What are the skills and abilities that we want them to walk away with in education? And this is something that Matt and I have been going back and forth with. And I said to him, you know, we should bring this into the podcast and we should do this as part of our final episode, because as Matt mentioned, we have been doing the podcast for the last four years. So Matt and I have seen this conversation around education, change, change, evolve over the last four years. And now it was like, started out as like this quiet murmur of like, what do our students need? And I think we need change. And, you know, you probably, if you’ve been listening to the podcast since we started, we’ve had a lot of conversations around do we need a revolution or an evolution of education? And my, my stance was always evolution. Like, let’s make small changes.

Cyndi Burnett:
Small changes make a big impact, which is a great phrase to say. But now with the onset of AI and now that, you know, in the last two years, AI has sort of infiltrated all of a lot of education. I say I shouldn’t say all of it, but a lot of education and the work that we’re doing and how we’re seeing jobs shift and what’s happening politically and all of these changes, I would say in the last six months and coming off of the pandemic on top of all of that is like, so what are we doing with our students? And what should a typical day for a 10 year old look like? What should a typical day for a 15 year old look like? Do they still need to be learning content? And this was a conversation Matt and I had the other day around doors opening, and Matt talked a little bit about how we want to give them enough information to keep the doors open if they want to go into a particular area. So Matt, I don’t know if you remember, we interviewed Dr. Colleen Kelly, who was absolutely brilliant, talking about chemistry. And if chemistry wasn’t taught at an early age and developed as a child, got older, then it made it increasingly more challenging as they went into college to do well in chemistry and then to become a doctor. So we might be losing doctors because they can’t gain that access to knowledge in chemistry at an older age. On the flip side of that, if we look at a student.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right, I’ll give my daughter as an example, who, as Matt knows, is much a. A dancer. She’s an artistic person. She’s expressive. She loves musical theater. She’s taking physics this year. She doesn’t enjoy science. Does she need to know physics going forward? Now, I have always been under the stance that students should have at least what I would call a minimum viable knowledge base around all subjects.

Cyndi Burnett:
But recently, with the onset of AI and having access to so many domains, what do they actually need to know? Do they need to have a foundation in math that goes into algebra and geometry and statistics? Do they need to know that? Do they need to know chemistry? If they know that, there’s no chance they’re going to go on to become a doctor. So what are those things that we need to know and what we need to be teaching our students at this point to help them thrive in the future? So I think that is the starting point for our discussion today. So, Matt, I’d love to hear from you. What do you think about these skills that we need to be teaching our students?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, you know what I think. I mean, it’s going to look different through the grades. Number one, two. I liked the question you were posing earlier on when you said, what does a day in the life of a student look like when they’re 10 years old versus what they’re 15 years old? And, you know, it’s interesting because it centers around content and my 10 year old. You know, we went on a field trip yesterday to stir Sturbridge. I can’t remember. I should know it. It was just yesterday.

Matthew Worwood:
Sturbridge Village. Sturbridge Village in Connecticut. And it’s, it’s where you’ve got this, this kind of, you know, late early 19 19th century village, 1830 is where it’s set. And you’ve got actors playing the characters of that period and you’ve got the mills and the working mills. So you actually can go into the mills and you can see. We went into, for example, the sawmill and we saw the, the saw cutting the log and the timber and was able to have conversations with the, the kids around, you know, why they might need timber and things like that. And I, I kind of found myself reflecting, probably because of the conversation about why do we always cram these, these incredible field trips at the end of the academic year? You know, it’s like, if you’ve got time for it, let’s do it right? And then I think about the fact when I was teaching, if I’m honest with you, like, I. I think we had to make a commitment of one or two school trips a year.

Matthew Worwood:
I can’t remember, but I remember, like, if I’m brutally honest, I was so tired, it was very difficult for me to think more creative. I just went on the default school trip that the school always goes on and everyone’s familiar with. And it was, it was a good a trip and the kids enjoyed it. But it’s not as if I really, you know, had identified a purpose for that field trip. You know, what was the experience I was giving those six or seven year olds at the time that they were getting that they couldn’t get in the classroom? And I’m sitting there and I’m like, we spend all this time talking about student engagement and we spend all this time talking about students being able to get curious and explore their interests. And there I was on this field trip and you could see it like the kids were completely immersed in learning about the sawmill and the wood and thinking about the food that they would be eating during this time. They were really understanding that they wouldn’t have electronics, they wouldn’t have electricity. They were looking at the games that the kids at the time would be playing with.

Matthew Worwood:
They would thinking they were having conversations about the horse. And you know, one of the characters said that I’ve never seen the ocean before. And, you know, the kids were reflecting on why can’t you see the ocean? They were saying, because it’s a long way from here, I can’t walk there, so I need a horse. And not many people have horses. This village and the discussions that we were having were the type of conversations that we have been talking about on this show for the last few years that we want to cultivate and facilitate in our teaching and learning environments. And I sat down, I’m like, I’m sure we could do it in the classroom, but we know, I believe we know we definitely can do it when we go and have these types of extracurricular activities, these types of field trips, the museums, et cetera. So. And I know there are Logistical reasons.

Matthew Worwood:
And I know that there are budgetary reasons why they’re not having a lot of them, but when you were asking me what that question about a 10 year old, I’m like, content, yes. But what if you’re learning content, building up to a field trip, and then the field trip then facilitates the next four or five weeks of content and then you go on another field trip and it facilitates the next four or five weeks of content and that we, we’re sprinkling in more of these kind of like these field trips, whether they’re museum or other cultural institutions, going to the state capitals, going to libraries, just having the conversations about an old library and kids going in. And there’s probably lots of different things that we can do within our community that are field trips that could facilitate great learning. We spoke about nature reserves in one of, in our final debrief, like go on nature reserves, all those different things. I could be wrong. I just don’t see that happening. I mean, I just feel like everything’s squeezed at the end and it doesn’t have the same purpose anymore. So that’s what I see as a 10 year old experience.

Cyndi Burnett:
I think the key point there, Matt, is purpose and intent. Because I think you can go on these great field trips and see these wonderful things. First of all, you should probably remember the name.

Matthew Worwood:
Stourbridge Village. It’s Sturbridge Village. Shout out to Sturbridge Village.

Cyndi Burnett:
You should probably remember the name. But I think one of the important things about field trips is purpose. So for example, my daughter recently went to a big art gallery in town and she came back after with a group of her friends and they were talking about. I said, well, how was the art gallery? And they said it was bad. And I said, what do you mean it was bad? And they said, well, we just went and we were just in this room with all this art. We had a tour guide, but the tour guide didn’t explain anything. And then we went to the next room and it was like this person was just moving us around. But we didn’t really do anything, we didn’t learn anything.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I think when you go into an experience like that, you have to have some sort of setup. What is it that you want students to gain from attending whatever this place is and how can you get them there? And one of the ways we can do this is through heightening anticipation, which is, as you know, Matt, I’m a big Torrance incubation model person, written a book about it and really getting students excited about going to this place. So what I would recommend, let’s just take this art gallery, and then we’ll. I’ll shoot it back to you around this wonderful space that you went to yesterday. But if you know you’re going to an exhibit to show students maybe a short video and say, okay, I want you to see what you can identify when you go into the art gallery of this artist’s work. And what does this artist’s work mean? And then really to extend that learning, to say, how has this artist’s work influenced your life? So if you were going back to that. What is the name of the place that you went to yesterday?

Matthew Worwood:
Sturbridge Village.

Cyndi Burnett:
Sturbridge Village. What could you do with those students to really heighten their anticipation before they even go? What would you say?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, and to your point, I think the teacher, who is a brilliant teacher, I’m having to bring on the show this particular trip. They’ve been studying that period of time. And so I suppose it comes down to the focus to which you, as the teacher, wanted to explore. I probably would be interested in the sciences and probably power and energy, and that might make the meals fascinating, you know, maybe posing the question, how do they get energy? What’s their main source of. Of energy? But I. I think probably playing games, you know, like, you know, getting them to make connections about. Imagine if you didn’t have an iPad or any electronics, would you get to play games? And what about if there was no lights? Go home tonight, turn on the lights off and see if you can navigate your way to your bedroom. How would you do that? And I think that might be a nice to kind of, like, set them up for something like that.

Matthew Worwood:
And I think what you’re. You’re highlighting there is. Is how you’re integrating that experience outside the classroom into the curriculum. And I think that that kind of, like, brings me back to that point, is there probably are lots of these experiences that we could have that we’re not having. And so we end up, you know, learning it from a book or we end up learning it from a YouTube video.

Cyndi Burnett:
And.

Matthew Worwood:
And that’s something AI can’t deliver, right? Like that I’m in that space. I’m looking up the stars in the science museum, or I’m picking up a cannonball from a battlefield from the Civil war. And those types of experiences, interacting with those types of objects bring learning to life. I think Jonathan Nalda spoke a lot about objects and how I think he brought. I want to say, did he bring a space rock or a meteorite into class and had everyone hold it. But it’s that it’s about making learning more physical, more real. And that for me, when going back to your initial question, what should a school experience or a learning experience, formal learning experience, look like for a 10 year old? I say more field trips. That’s my response to that question.

Matthew Worwood:
More field trips. Particularly in an age where we’re surrounded and immersed in digital technology.

Cyndi Burnett:
Love it. And I think to flip that around just for a moment, we could also think about what Billy Allman told us, which is if you can’t go on field trips of budgets, how do you bring field trips into the classroom? So if you haven’t listened to that episode, make sure you do, because that’s a really fun one.

Matthew Worwood:
Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, Curiosity to Create.

Cyndi Burnett:
Curiosity to Create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community, all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. So Matt, we’ve looked at the younger ages, maybe 10 and elementary school. Let’s get a little bit older, but let’s not go to high school just yet. Let’s think about that sweet spot of like 8th to 9th grade, which I know you have a son who is going to be going into ninth grade in the fall. What are the things they should be learning now? Do they need to still have all of that content like earth science and poetry? Do they need to be learning all of these things at in 8th and 9th grade or should there be a different focus? What do you think?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, it’s a tough one because you spoke earlier on about the idea of having doors open. And you know, as a college professor and also obviously I advise undergraduate students, one of the things I’m always telling parents and undergraduate students is that it’s really tough for you to come in and say this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. You know, I don’t want to talk about that. The world changing and we don’t know what the future jobs will look like just just to interact with an 18 year old, let alone a 14 year old, and have them think that they know what they want to do when they don’t know half of the things that they could do.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right, right.

Matthew Worwood:
It’s too tough. So I think trying to find ways to expose them to the world, to life, is one of the things that I think is important so they can continue to expand that. But what it does mean, and this. This is where I recognize there’s the challenge. It means that you do kind of need to be in a scenario where that includes exposing them to the content, to the disciplines, to the subjects, so they can develop that foundational knowledge in all of these different areas. Now, I think it’s a completely different discussion when you’re talking about the method of instruction. You could potentially argue. I mean, I would argue the field trip piece that I just spoke about, yes, it does fit under the category of method of instruction, But I would also say that the experience itself is something that expands learning far beyond the classroom environment.

Matthew Worwood:
And I say it adds more value than just learning content. So I think that I have to say yes to continuing to learn about the earth sciences because you don’t know. You don’t want to close that door. They might. It might not be the earth science they fall in love with, but it might be that the knowledge they acquire from earth sciences allows them to unlock an understanding for something else that then leads to that passion that then goes on to pursue a career. Had they not had that foundational knowledge in earth science, they may not have been able to have unlocked that understanding, that. That then ignited the passion. So it really is a conundrum, and it’s super duper hard to answer that.

Matthew Worwood:
I haven’t been able to answer it, but what I would say is, and this is the thing where I have conversations with educators, they say, but we’re cramming so much stuff in. We’re cramming so much stuff in, we may have to kind of like, accept that we can’t teach everything, you know, and that’s where maybe we go back to people like Todd Lubart, and maybe there’s opportunities for us to find ways of measuring the creative potential in different domains, and we come up with better strategies of helping students select. I don’t want to use the word tracks, but learning experiences that support where they’ve been identified as having creative potential, but also some type of curiosity. I don’t want to use the word interest because there’s still interests that they may discover, but some level of curiosity. And perhaps what it is, Cindy, is we simply say to. It could be one of those scenarios where we say, look, how about we do four or five things really well and accept that that’s better than doing 15 things not very well. And so if we’re fortunate, we get some of those kids that really get to take a deep dive into some things that they’re really passionate about and they have a lot of creative potential in. And there is that risk that some students won’t ever get to find that creative potential because they don’t get to explore the things that maybe they were destined to do great in.

Matthew Worwood:
But I would argue at this current time, it’s not as if we’re satisfying that anyway for some of those students.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right.

Matthew Worwood:
So that, that’s, I think that’s, I mean, I’ve got some other follow ups, the idea of learning to cook and things like that and bringing back home economics, but I think I’ll stop there. For me, as a 13 year old, it is a case of yes, we do need to cover content, but maybe it’s a case of giving up and saying we can’t cover everything. So let’s, let’s choose and do things really, really well. And maybe the conversation is, how do we choose?

Cyndi Burnett:
So there’s a lot of things I liked about what you said. I like the fact, and I know you didn’t use tracks, but I do sort of like tracks a little bit because it gives you this opportunity to say, I’d like to go play around in this area, whether it be engineering or writing or performing arts. Right. So you have sort of this track that you could spend more of your time, not all of your time, but more of your time each day working on that track. As you start to head into high school and start to close a few doors, not close all the doors. So I really like this door metaphor because I like this idea of being in, you know, you sort of start life and all these doors are open and then they just start shutting as you get older and you start to narrow down what you want to do. And knowing that you might go through a door and then realize, you know, as we both did, I mean, we both had careers in acting and then we got out of that door, we had careers in education and then we got out of that, you know, and it’s like you sort of go through, it’s like a journey instead of just shutting all the doors and you’re locked in a room. You’re never really locked in a room.

Cyndi Burnett:
There’s always more doors you could open or find. But sometimes it takes time to discover those doors. But I think that having more experiences for students to take dives into the things that they’re interested in and to eliminate some of the content and knowledge that we’re expecting of students. And I want to go to that point about sort of life skills, because I think this, as I see this generation and Gen Z, you know, emerging into the workforce, you’re seeing students who really don’t know how to communicate with each other. And I’ve had a lot of conversations with high school parents and teachers who are just saying, you know, the students, they don’t know how to communicate together, they don’t know how to collaborate together, they don’t know how to work together, and even just on their devices all the time. So they don’t really know how to sit and have a conversation in real life with each other. And I think we need to bring some of that back. And I think especially with the onset of AI, we’re going to need those relationships as we continue to head into the future.

Cyndi Burnett:
I mean, if we look at relationships, there’s so much of a. A base of what makes us happy in life. So I think going beyond like making money and having a good career, it’s like, what kind of life do you want to live? And I think I want to live a life and I want my children to have a life where they’re able to connect with other human beings. And I feel like there is, in my opinion, and I’m curious what you think, and I’m really curious what our listeners think as well. Do you think this new generation, this Gen Z, and the generation after which is Gen A?

Matthew Worwood:
I do not know and I’m not going to try and guess, okay, where.

Cyndi Burnett:
This new generation is emerging and are they lacking this ability to really communicate and work with others and play with others and think with others and enjoy life with other people, or is there this disconnect? What do you think?

Matthew Worwood:
So, Cindy, I actually just realized, I think it’s actually called Gen Alpha because my eldest always talks about the fact that he’s just missed out one year on being Gen Alpha, I believe. So I think, I mean, ultimately we’re not going to do that now, but a lot of this comes down to what’s the goal of education? Or you could even say what’s the goal of public schooling. And then that probably helps clarify this conversation a little bit more. But I really enjoy the fact that we’re kind of bouncing around a little bit. But I want to pull up something you said around relationships and it kind of brings up this Idea of communication and not being able to talk to each other. To play devil’s advocate, there is probably an argument to be had that they do know how to talk to each other. They just know how to do it through a screen. Because I don’t know how you feel about this, but I cannot follow all of the letters, acronyms, emojis, you know, this means this, this means that.

Matthew Worwood:
And then there’s even comments. In fact, I think that the, the movie there was that Netflix TV show, I’ve forgotten the name of it, but it was, it was doing the Rounds of Adolescence, I believe that touched on this theme a little bit as well, about even how people respond to comments in a thread. There’s, I don’t use the word code, but it’s expressive of something. And so I don’t, I don’t understand that communication. So you gen Alpha might be looking and saying, wow, you know, our parents, they just don’t know how to communicate. And it could be the fact that obviously we’re communicating in two different environments now. One of the things that I think is fascinating about that conversation is that it is, I would say it’s emerging right now. And you would argue that obviously we should have more wisdom and experience to provide guidance for that, this new world.

Matthew Worwood:
And we’re probably not doing it because it’s moving so quickly because we don’t understand it.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right.

Matthew Worwood:
So what it relates to is if you fast forward 20 years, is this going to be the primary means of communication? My gut feeling and hope is it’s not. So when you start saying, well, to your point, Cindy, well, you’re going to have to go and know how to sit down and have a difficult conversation with someone, whether it’s a case of asking them for $500,000 to fund your project, letting them go, because you know, you’ve run into kind of fiscal challenges. If it’s a case of letting them know that, that their behavior was unacceptable or simply providing them feedback so they could be better people, I think that’s going to. Primarily, I’d like to think, one, it continues to be something that we do as people. We don’t kind of like outsource it to AI and B, that it happens in person. When you assume that that’s going to continue, then to your point, you need those skills. Whether or not we’re collaborating in real time in professional environments, I don’t know. But I, I think that even that scenario, there is a professional reason as to why we need to collaborate and communicate and interact with each Other, I certainly would assume that parenting, please.

Matthew Worwood:
Parenting is about human relationships. You know, romantic relationships is about human relationships. So life will continue to require all of the things that you’re seeing as a challenge, a problem. And so I think we as adults need to find a way of stepping in and providing support for that. And I think it should come at the earlier years. And it’s difficult not to get into the electronics piece here, but I, I think it’s just a case of if we hold back from the electronics a little later, they probably have already developed the skills. If you’ve already developed the interpersonal relationships, the interactions, being able to deal with arguments and fights, and you’re in a situation where introduce the technology, allow them to go on social media, but they probably now have both sets of skills. What’s happening is we’re allowing so much of the relationships to develop through these electronic devices at an early age that they’re not developing all of the other skills that you’re talking about.

Matthew Worwood:
So now they’re suddenly going and having to develop them into the workforce. And I think that’s where we’re going wrong in terms of that particular problem. And the question is, is that something that schools should be in charge of? Because I would argue that probably schools, they are focused on content and they may not have always seen that as their role because that’s happening as why they’re bike riding at home or through imaginative play.

Cyndi Burnett:
Right.

Matthew Worwood:
And all of that is going away because of these highly structured extracurricular activities and the technology.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yeah.

Matthew Worwood:
So now what we could do, we’re going to throw another thing at schools to do. Hey, you must, you must teach children how to look at each other in the eyes when they’re talking. And you must. It’s like we keep throwing more and more things at schools and it’s like it’s not realistic. It’s not that many hours in the day. The schools need support from the community, from the families.

Cyndi Burnett:
And Matt, I just want to point out, you talked about how do you let someone go, how do you have that communication? But the interesting thing is, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but I had to have a difficult conversation with someone and send them an email that was challenging. And I didn’t want to come across as snarky or mean. So what did I do? I put it into generative AI chatgpt and I said, can you make this sound kind and make sure there’s nothing, is there anything in it that makes it sound negative or mean? Or, you know, that might be misinterpreted. And then it rewrote the email. It pointed out some significant areas where I needed to improve it. It gave me some suggestions on how to improve it, and then I conveyed it. But I don’t think I could have done it if I didn’t have generative AI. So in some ways it might be able to help in the future, really be able to communicate in more effective ways, at least online.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I was gonna say at least online. I, I would push back and say my, my fear would be that you don’t even ask AI that AI just, I need this email to go out, you know, my personality. Here’s the situation. AI does it for you. Y. I received that email and I think even to this day I get an email like that, I’m gonna be like, oh, what, you’re AI ing me? You’re chatgpt me? Why don’t you pick up the phone and have a conversation with me? I mean, and then, because then now I feel more dismissed. May have used all of the great wonderful words, but I actually feel more dismissed now. I granted, I’m, I’m more aware of AI and I’m a lot more sensitive to AI language at the moment, but my gut feeling is five, six years when everyone is like, you just AIed me or, you know, you just chat.

Cyndi Burnett:
GP but will you even know that you, I mean, we were just talking about, once it learns your voice and it’s becoming more and more sophisticated, will someone even, I mean, we can tell now. And I actually got an administrator had emailed me and I knew it was generated by ChatGPT. And I read it to my family and they all laughed and said, oh, is it going to give you a recipe for cupcakes as well? And I thought, why are they AI ing me? But in the future that’s not going to be the case. It’s going to be able to replicate our tone, our voice. So then you won’t really know.

Matthew Worwood:
But that’s why I say pick up the phone. You know, we’re like, I mean, obviously I’m becoming more traditional. But you know what, you know what, it goes back to my first point though, right? So maybe it’s a case of that isn’t important in the future. Maybe those interpersonal skills, like, let’s go extreme, maybe based on what you’re saying is 20 years from now, the face to face interactions are minimal and therefore, hey, maybe the young kids should be learning to just communicate online and everything. You said the Concerns you just expressed. It’s like, dare I say, and I’m an advocate for handwriting, though I once wasn’t. I am. And now maybe it’s a case of the whole conversation about hat and of handwriting, you know, and.

Matthew Worwood:
And more recently, people complaining that people don’t know typing skills because they’re all on the list. Do they need it. Right. But that would be a heartbreaking future for me, you know? Yeah, that. That. That might be time for me to go and find somewhere where there’s no electronics. I. It could just be my age.

Cyndi Burnett:
I. I think we’re sounding very old here, because I will tell you, it cracked me up when you just said, maybe we just need to pick up the phone. Because I will literally say to my kids, kids, why don’t you just, like, we’re at the mall. Why don’t you just call your friend to find out where they are? Nope, I’m not doing it. I will not use the phone. Like, they will not use the phone.

Matthew Worwood:
He doesn’t know how to use it. We call him. He does not. How to. He doesn’t know how to use it. We’re trying to get him to teach him that you’re meant to put it up.

Cyndi Burnett:
I love the fact if. If you’re just listening, Matt just put up his pinky and his thumb like he’s the phone now. That’s not what a phone looks like. The phone looks like this van.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. No, they don’t. They don’t. They. They don’t. They don’t. They don’t know how to communicate.

Cyndi Burnett:
But it could come back. I mean, who knows, right? But I think it. It’s really interesting having this conversation. It’s. It’s almost the beginning of June of 2025. To see where we’re going to be at in a couple years. If. If we still have the podcast, we can revisit this episode.

Matthew Worwood:
Before we go, though, what I would say is, what’s interesting is that one of the things you’re making me think about as I reflect on the year and I think about my practice, and we had this with John Garretta this year. We were speaking about, like, the role of the teacher is more about being the mentor and in fact, the film. Last week, my colleague John Murphy also was talking about this. Right. What’s the future role of the teacher? Because it’s not just AI, Even before AI, the idea of accessing content through the teacher. Right. It feels a little like there’s a lot more effective ways to access content. And so I Think the teacher is providing that mentorship, that real world life experience.

Matthew Worwood:
But the word real world now looks in my mind very different. Yeah, real world is everything we just spoke about. From the field trips to being able to look and interact with people, to have hard conversations, being able to interact with objects and talk about your feelings and what you think and feel and shifting perspectives, being able to, you know, we’re getting into AI literacy, but being able to recognize maybe when AI, when it’s appropriate to engage in electronics form of communication versus when it’s more appropriate to do something in person, I think that’s something that’s going to be particularly applicable. You think Just, just that last piece, Doctors, you know, like when, when should they be having those difficult conversations face to face or when can it be done electronically? Teachers, difficult conversations face to face, bosses, administrators, all these different things. And I think all of that comes down to facilitating real world experiences in our classroom and us as teachers modeling that behavior and being able to kind of provide that mentorship and guidance as our children and students learn to interact and navigate this new world with AI. I think that’s going to become more and more important. And it’s something that I’ve recognized is probably was one of the main focuses of my teaching this semester. Less content, more about real world stuff.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. So, Matt, we are out of time. I mean, it’s been, it’s. We’ve been recording for 35 minutes and we tried to do it under 30. So let’s continue this conversation on our LinkedIn group, which is the Feeling Creativity and Education podcast group. And let’s talk with the members of this group about what they think are the skills for high schoolers. What are the skills and abilities we want our high schoolers to walk away with? How do we need to make some switches? So if you’re listening to this episode, come and join us over on the LinkedIn page at feeling Creativity and Education podcast. It’s been a great year, Matt, and I am looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen in season 11.

Cyndi Burnett:
And we’ve got a great Listen and Learn series which we’ll tell you about. Do you want to talk about it? You want me to talk about it?

Matthew Worwood:
Well, it was your brilliant idea. I think you should be talking about it.

Cyndi Burnett:
So this summer we’re going to have a Listen and Learn series where we bring in some current books around creativity and education and we ask, ask the authors to share some tidbits about the book so it can give you some ideas for what you might want to read while you’re at the beach this.

Matthew Worwood:
Summer and not listening to our podcast? Possibly. Possibly.

Cyndi Burnett:
All right. Well, Matt, it’s been a great season. Thanks for joining us.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes, wishing everyone a really happy summer. I hope you get to disconnect from electronics and get to be human with the people that you care deeply about. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. You’ve been listening to the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast hosted by Matthew Worwood and Cindy Burnett. Our creative producer is Catherine Fu. Our editor is Sam Atkins. And this episode was made possible thanks to our sponsor, Curiosity to create Sam.