Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Hello.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
It is our last episode of 2026. I did it again. Do you remember, Cindy, do you remember last year’s episode? I started it off by saying the wrong year.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Do you remember?

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
We did that and we said, wonder if anyone’s gonna notice.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
And Matt, I’m just telling you that I didn’t even notice you said the wrong year.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
I know. I did the same thing last year. Ah, listen, let’s just keep it going. This is kind of like a party. It’s a festive period party. So let’s just say it’s the end to 2025. It has been a wonderful year. I think we’ve done so much on the podcast this year.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
It’s been a really productive year, I think, for the two of us. Cindy, we set some goals for this year. We had our mini retreat, and we’ve done reasonably well in meeting those goals, haven’t we?

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
We have done well. I think in reviewing what we set out to do back In December of 2024, I think we have accomplished a good 75%. A good C plus. Matt.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Well, I think. I think we deserve a B plus.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Okay.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Just, you know, Cindy and I, we have a little bit of a background behind the scenes, talk code. We kind of recognize it’s difficult to produce an episode every single week at kind of like A level. And A minus were like, that’s an absolute mass. But I think probably many of you can relate to when you’ve just got so many different plates spinning, including things happening in your personal life that we kind of set the goal of B plus work. And I’m going to do a shout out to our friend and colleague Dr. James Kaufman as well, because I think I actually stole the B plus concept from him. But it’s very difficult to kind of perform at the A level in every single aspect of your life. So I don’t know, Cindy.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
I think we performed at the B plus level.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
All right, well, I’ll take a B plus. I’m very happy with a B plus.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Yeah. I mean, so let’s go over it.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
All right.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
We set the goal of launching our YouTube station now.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Yes, we did.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Maybe the content didn’t quite get to the B plus, but we met that goal.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Yeah.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
The goal was actually to produce every single one of our episodes in season 11 as a video episode. Release it. We didn’t always release it every single week like we do with the audio podcast, but we did release nine of the 12. And I think that was, you know.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Yeah, I think that’s a solid B plus in meeting that goal. And I also think having the shorts on both YouTube and Instagram. So if you’re not following us on Instagram and YouTube, please go and do that and you’ll get just like little bites of the feeling Creativity and Education podcast. So little bits of inspiration, which I think have been fantastic.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
They have. And we’ve been experimenting with them. I would definitely say that probably our execution of that is at the D level because they kind of come out randomly. Depends when my oldest son is available. But for the most part, I do. I agree with you. They’re really great clips and I think, you know, we hopefully will be sharing a lot more of those in 2026. What other goal did we set for ourselves for this year?

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
So, Matt, we met last NEGC conference in Seattle with one of the editors from Prufrock Press, and we received a contract with Prufrock Press and we managed to publish or write. We haven’t published it yet, but we have managed to write almost an entire manuscript for a book in pretty much the last eight months, which I think is kind of impressive.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
It was impressive. And I think that’s probably why you and I are sitting here thinking we struggled to get this Christmas cards out this year. We struggled to kind of like really absorb the, you know, the festive spirit because we have been so productive. And again, that’s always that challenge of finding the balance. But the book obviously has taken a lot of our time. But we did set the goal to complete that manual script. We are so close to finishing it. We’re just revising some of the latter chapters and I think we’re going to submit it by our deadline, which is December 30, 2025.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
So fingers crossed we’re going to meet that one as well. And I think. I think that’s a solid B plus. I mean, I have to say, I think the book itself. I think the book itself’s moving into the A’s.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
I mean, I definitely think the book is moving into a solid A minus. And the book for reference is called the future creative 10 actions for fueling Creativity and Education. And we have bridged the gap between research and practice. And we’ve given an overview of how we see the future creatives as well as research to back it all up and really easy strategies that you can adopt in your classroom. So I think that’s where we’re headed next. But we’re not going to get there yet. What else have we covered?

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
We have also completed our website.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Yes.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Yeah, we had like a website in 2024. It was okay, but we really said, all right, let’s finish this thing. Let’s get a website that we’re really proud of. It has the miniseries that we. The Listen and Learn series. We do section. It has the about section. I kind of really enjoy our about section because it’s captured our story over the last three to four years.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
And then, of course, it has every single episode now, Cindy. Of all of our past 11 seasons, 200 plus interviews, all available on our website. And also we’ve organized all of our collections as well. So we did actually spend a lot of time this year saying, all right, we don’t want to have lots and lots of collections. So what are the 10 collections we think and most relevant to our listeners? And we kind of organized all of those episodes by collection. So that was. Was something else that we did. And then you’ve been running that newsletter, right?

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Yeah. So we have released a newsletter every week since the start of the new year, aside from this last month, which has been a little bit tricky because we’re trying to get the book done and sometimes you just have to look at priorities. And so our priority has been the book this month. But we have, we still have. I think we released three different newsletters this month already, so I think we’re still in good shape. A solid B there, Matt.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Solid B. I will just jump out there and say, I think the newsletter actually, to me is a solid A minus. I think you’ve been doing an amazing job with the Extra. I get why you’re thinking the last month you haven’t got it out, but in terms of the product itself, I think the newsletter is absolutely fantastic. And I do want to do a shout out to our past guests as well, because you came up with that great idea, the concept of the Extra Fuel. What are our past guests up to? And we’ve had some great feedback from past guests saying, please include this. I’ve just published a book. Hey, can you check this out? I’ve just published a chapter.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Check this out. I’ve got submissions for this program coming up, and I think you particularly have done a really good job at making sure that we continue to stay connected to our past guests and sharing the amazing work that they’re doing. So that’s another added bonus to the Extra Fuel newsletter that gets it an A minus in my mind.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Matt, thanks so much for those kind words. So let’s shift into 2026, where we are headed. And on my sheet of paper I wrote call to Action 2027. Do we know what year it is? We don’t, but it is the end of 2025. So as we look toward 2026, do you have any big goals for us? What do you think?

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
You know what? I don’t know if I have goals for us. I mean, I think, look, we want to keep building our subscription list. I mean, ultimately, Cindy, everything’s going to center around the book, right? So we hope the book comes out in the summer of 2026, create kind of a little bit more of a higher production value piece of video content for the summer. Our Listen and Learn series, it’s five years of us celebrating the podcast as well. So given the fact it’s five years, I kind of been thinking a little bit about maybe there’s an opportunity for us to reflect on our journey with the podcast, what we’ve learned, the impact it’s had on our practice, and create some type of content around that during the summer. What about you? What kind of goals are you thinking about for us in the podcast?

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Matt, like you, I’m really excited about the book and I think I’m also interested in finding the gaps of conversations we haven’t had yet. So if you’re sitting there listening and you think you haven’t had a conversation about creativity education and this, then please let us know. So this is your call to action. And I just want to explain what our call to action will entail. We would love to hear from you and hear what you would like to hear from the podcast. Anything you’d like to see around the book. Would you like to see an online course to take? Would you like to see monthly meetups? So we’re looking at building out information around the book as well as future episodes. And if you complete the form that is in the show notes for this episode, you will be invited to our five year party where we will be.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Matt, tell em what we’ll be.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Well, Cindy, I know why you threw that to me because right now we’re having a little bit of back and forth about whether or not it’s a live episode or it’s a virtual party. I think ultimately we’re going to remain open to what it might be. But we do know that we want to celebrate our five year anniversary that’s going to be coming up in the spring, going into the summer, and we want to invite you to that. So these are going to be VIP tickets. It is going to be a stellar event. I don’t know if it’s a C or a B. Plus or an A minus type event, but we want you there. And so if you do reach out to us@questionsuelingcreativitypodcast.com or if you’d like to reach out to us on LinkedIn, just reaching out to us get you that invitation to this event, whatever it will be, it will be a virtual party.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
But in the event, Cindy and I are on the same location in a particular area of the United States. Hey, if close by would even welcome you to attend that as well. So that is us wanting to give back to those of you that are willing to just give back to us through that feedback that you’re going to share.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Wonderful, Matt. And is that it?

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
I think that’s it. I mean, I was going to. I was going to just throw out One other quick thing is I don’t know if you’ve had any kind of, like, new things that’s kind of emerged to you this year, you know, as you’ve been kind of going through and that’s kind of like changed your practice or some, you know, a thought or an idea that you suddenly got really kind of like focused and passionate about. But it just didn’t exist before 2025. And I know for me, when I’ve been kind of looking back on my change this year, and I think we always grow and change as we expand our knowledge and interact with different people, I’ve started to realize that for many, many years, I’ve really just been teaching about the person. And I think in some ways, Jonathan Guerra’s episode kind of st solidified what my practice, which is it’s about educating the person. It’s about educating them for the future. And it’s less about educating for a particular job or a particular field, you know, or a particular set of tasks that you think you will be doing, such as, I want to be a filmmaker.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
I want to work in post production. So I’m going to learn editing and you’re going to spend sometimes two, three years of your education learning to be the best possible editor. I think I’ve started to move away from that kind of like, vocational training aspect of particularly of higher education and even at the high school level. And I think I see an increasing need for us to just focus on educating our future generations. And that includes teaching them how to have better dialogue, teaching them how to deal with feeling discomfort when they’ve been called out because they’ve done something wrong, teaching them to recognize that they’re going to be interacting with people that don’t always share their Same views or ideas, but they still have to find a way of moving that group forward and moving it forward in a successful way where everyone feels heard, everyone feels supported, everyone feels valued. And I think I’ve always been practicing that. But now I feel like I’m on a mission now to do that. I want to educate the person and not educate for a career.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Hmm. I love that, Matt. And I think it’s funny that you bring that up because last night it was about 11:45 and I was having trouble sleeping. Cause I had lots of thoughts racing in my head about the book. And the thing that kept coming up was it’s not just about the jobs, like you said. It’s about being a well rounded human being. It’s about managing the stress. It’s about managing the emotions and collaborating with others and seeing things from different perspectives.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
And that sort of builds on my biggest insight this year, which is around transformational creativity. And it’s really actually come at from the chapter that you wrote in our book, around the future. Creative and transformational creativity. And really making sure that when we’re teaching our students how to think both creatively and critically, that we really need to be focused on making sure they’re doing it for the right reasons to make the world a better place, not just for the purpose of themselves and looking at our decisions and our thinking and teaching our students really how to focus in and hone in on that so that they can make the world a better place. So building on what you’re saying is not. It’s like it goes beyond education and jobs into the person and into the world that we live in to make the world a better place. And that sounds a little bit Hallmark Kardish, but in reality, that’s, in my opinion, what we need to be focusing in on. And I don’t think I recognize that.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
And now I feel like I’m on a personal mission like you said about that. I feel like I’m on a personal mission to say, why are we creating this and is it going to benefit our societies and our communities?

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Do you know why? I love just to bring it all together. It really feels that this year, us trying to like bring in all of the voices we’ve had on the podcast to produce this book has really contributed to that mission because you’re making me realize that. I think it was only writing that future creative chapter where you’re kind of like bringing it all together, that really made me realize, wow, this is kind of like the values that you are practicing the classroom and, you know, in the book, we emphasize that it’s not just. I don’t mean. I don’t know how much of the book we should talk about because we’re not quite in promotion mode yet. But it is about, you know, into making the world a better place. It can just be, you know, your school, your building, the local community. But it’s about making sure that you’re.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
You’re excelling experience, human experience forward in some way. And I think what you’ve just shared there, I think, as you know, I’ve got to Write the last 500 words to end the book. I think a lot of what you’ve just shared there is going to find its way into the. The final chapter, which I hope to finish by the end of the week.

Dr. Cindy Burnett:
Yay.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
All right, Cindy, I think this has been a great debrief and, you know, very heartfelt debrief. And I know you need a break, including a break from the podcast. We love it, we’re passionate about it, but we need a few weeks off of the podcast. It’s been a very busy 2025. It’s probably going to be an even busier 2026 for us, but we really are grateful for all of the messages, particularly the last few weeks we’ve received. It really is uplifting to know that we do have listeners that appreciate the work that we’re doing, and we hope to continue to not just bridge the gap between practice and research, but also bridge the gap between ourselves in this podcast and you out there. And that’s going to be something that we’re going to be thinking a lot more about in 2026. So until.

Dr. Matthew Warwood:
Wish you and your loved ones an opportunity to enjoy this, this holiday season, and hopefully you’re able to disconnect, and you have been able to disconnect over the last few days and really look forward to 2026 and perhaps set yourself some professional and personal goals as well. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

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