Colin Seale:
And if you think about how infants come out of the womb, they’re so curious. They’re exploring the whole universe. They’re asking questions nonstop. And at a certain point, that all stops because we kill it. We beat it out of them. And I’m like, what happens when we create the space where, like, my curiosity never actually stops, My ability to wonder and to imagine never actually stops. When I think about my hopes and dreams for my children, Rose and Oliver, one of my biggest dreams for them is that no one ever steals that fire from their eyes. Nobody takes that, like, that level of desire to know more or ask, wait, what? Huh? Like, I want them to always have that spark.

Colin Seale:
But I don’t know that it’s going to survive high school. I don’t know that it’s going to survive middle school, even.

Matthew Worwood:
Hello, everyone, My name is Dr. 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 fields of education, be talking.

Matthew Worwood:
With scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity, all with a.

Cyndi Burnett:
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:
If you are interested in the relationship between creativity and educational equity or you are interested in building critical thinking skills in your students, this next episode is for you.

Matthew Worwood:
Yes. Because today on this episode, we welcome Colin Seale, who is born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, where struggles in his upbringing gave birth to his passion for educational equity. Recognized early for his potential, he was placed in gifted and talented programs, gaining access to opportunities his neighborhood friends couldn’t reach. With a career that spans roles as a math teacher, an attorney, keynote speaker, and author, Colin has dedicated his life to leveling the playing field in education. His books, Thinking Like a Lawyer, A Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students, and Tangible Equity, A Guide for leveraging student identity, culture and power to unlock excellence in and beyond the classroom reflect his mission. Colin founded Think Law, an award winning organization designed to help educators harness inquiry based instructional methods. Think Law equips teachers to bridge the critical thinking gap, empowering them to engage and uplift every student, regardless of their background. Colin, welcome to the show.

Colin Seale:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, we’re excited because you’re actually at the booth next to our sponsor, Curiosity to Create. So we actually, we’re always excited when we have guests on the show who we’ve actually met in person, particularly when we’ve met them in person before recording this the show. So we really enjoyed our back and forth in those first few minutes. We saw your book, we got really excited about Think Law. And that’s really our first question is for you to kind of like revisit that conversation. What made you come up with the concept of Think Law?

Colin Seale :
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I am a math teacher by trade, you know, started teaching math honestly when I was 13 years old because although I was a kid that qualified for free and reduced lunch, I had a much more refined taste buds. I wasn’t eating that stuff. I. I needed money, and the way I got money was through tutoring math in my neighborhood. So I taught middle school and high school math in Washington, D.C. and Las Vegas. But when I was in Vegas, I went to law school at night while teaching during the day, which I would not recommend to anybody.

Colin Seale:
It was not the best work life decision in terms of balance, but it sparked something very special in me because I’d always been this identified gifted child that never really did well academically in K12 education. But when I got to law school, I graduated top of my class because it was the first time ever where school wasn’t about just memorizing stuff. It wasn’t about regurgitating information. School was about digging all your toes, playing all the angles. It was an academic space where the set of skills we tend to call street smart finally had value. Is an academic space where being neurodivergent, thinking about things differently, having creative solutions for commonplace kinds of problems actually mattered. And it lit me on fire. And I started using same exact strategies with my kids in their classrooms, and it lit them on fire.

Colin Seale:
So after practicing law for a few years, I recognized there’s no reason that kids should be waiting until law school to experience this kind of stuff. We got to start earlier. So I found that Think Law about nine years ago with this construct of if we can put this kind of stuff in front of kids, this thinking like a Lori method in front of kids where they’re learning how to, like, make claims and backing up with evidence, they’re learning how to, like, be in a math class where instead of doing equations all day till my hand starts hurting, they’re looking at two equations that are both wrong. They’re debating which wrong is more right. That level of funk, that level of fire, can really inspire our kids to be the critical thinkers our World actually needs right now. We do it through professional learning for our educators. We do it through a curriculum that we have that uses real life legal cases and upper grades and fairy tales and nursery rhymes and children’s stories and lower grades. But this idea being that critical thinking should not be a luxury good.

Colin Seale:
It can’t be just for gifted kids. It can’t be just for kids in advanced classes or honors classes, because it shouldn’t be an honor to have this essential set of skills. So that’s really what the work we’ve been leading for the last nine years with Think Law. And I’m super excited to talk more about it.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, I do want to talk more about it, but there’s one thing I have to do because I just suddenly got your energy right. There’s incredible passion. And my initial thought, I first want to talk a little bit about your gifted and talented background and how you identified. So I don’t know if you can somehow fit that into this response as well because you said you were gifted and talented, but then you spoke about the fact that K through 12 education wasn’t necessarily a fit. So given the fact we’ve had some recent episodes on a similar conversation, you having that student perspective would be great. But before I do that, I just have to point out one thing. It sounds to me that you went and had this amazing experience in grad school where you just got passionate and excited about something and you were in this scenario where you’re like, I gotta share this with the world. I gotta share that with all students.

Matthew Worwood:
Because it was almost like you uncovered something that you wish you had had access to earlier but you didn’t. And therefore you almost just become part of your mission to make this available to people beforehand. And I share that because I can certainly relate to that, that you know, when you suddenly uncover a passion that you’re excited about, you want to just share it with the world. I don’t even know if I’ve got a question in there now, but if you can make sense of what I just said, Colin, it would be greatly appreciate it. Otherwise I’m look completely silly.

Colin Seale :
You’re definitely tapping into a certain kind of energy. It does feel like you’re uncovering somehow of like some mystery of the universe, some fountain of youth or something. Of like, hey, like I can’t hoard this. This needs to be something that’s shared like really wildly, broadly. And I think one of the things that really stood out to me was in this moment sitting in law school and learning about contracts okay, contracts is two semesters in law school. And what really, really got me going is like the whole class of contracts, literally, is how to get out of a contract. The whole thing, how to get out of a contract. And I thought to myself, how many classrooms do we know right now? How many kids or even adults can we think of that walk around all day being like, well, what happened was oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah, no, no, what happened was oh, oh, oh, oh, here’s why I didn’t do my homework.

Colin Seale :
Or so like you think about all these things and I’m like, literally that’s the whole concept of thinking like a lawyer. Like, how do I find these angles? How do I find these creative ways to get past stuff? And the thing about it is when you start taking in real life examples, okay, so like there was a dude in New Jersey who in 2013 decided to have 150 foot long subways from Subway. Like foot long sandwiches from Subway, meatball subs from Subway. Okay, so there’s an interesting choice in Life to have 150 of those in one year. But he got really upset when he recognized that the actual $5 foot long that he was buying wasn’t actually 12 inches long. So he became part of a class action lawsuit against Subway. And the thing about this is when kids go in math class, they need to learn about the median, the mode, the mean, all the different ways to look at statistical ways of measuring things. And there’s this whole thing where if I’m thinking about it as Subway, how might I creatively think about the ways to explain the way that my bread is distributed so that it makes more sense? How might I come up with a settlement negotiation strategy to say, like, hey, you know what? You know what? I’m not sure those cards are really good for you.

Colin Seale :
Anyhow. You should be lucky I take some bread off of there because, you know, whatever. And like, and maybe depending on where you’re at elevation wise, like the bread breaks to a different level, who knows? But that kind of creative thinking about what happened was actually brings out a certain kind of energy from a kid. Where to go even further to your point, Matt. When I first started doing this work, just thinking about that connection with gifted and talented and high achieving students, a lot of my straight A, high flying kids struggled with this. They struggled. Teachers around the country tell me all the time, Colin, it’s so weird that my straight A, high flying kids struggle with this kind of model, but they’re so used to just giving you a right answer, they’re so used to regurgitating information. A lot of my kids with academic struggles, right? The kids who, despite their best effort, have a hard time earning a C minus or a B minus.

Colin Seale:
A lot of those kids did better than you would expect in these kinds of settings because they feel much more psychologically safe when they don’t have to worry about, like, having a wrong answer. They’re really familiar with the process of learning how to learn. They’re actually experts at learning how to learn. So what sounds like a deficit in most standard K12 settings is now an asset. And then my behavior kids, which I relate to because when I was not identified gifted, I was in a classroom where I was getting in trouble at least once a week. I was getting in trouble all the time. But it turns out a lot of my challenges came from a lack of being challenged. And think about this for everyone that’s listening, like, how many kids do you know that have that experience right now? How many adults do you know that come from that growing up? Like, yeah, like if they just would have gotten more challenged, they wouldn’t have been so distracted if they just got more challenged.

Colin Seale:
If you looked at the kids that are in juvenile detention or even the adults that end up in adult incarceration, how many of those kids are undiscovered talents that we just never were able to figure out? Square peg round whole kind of kids. So that’s a big part of why it’s such an important mission for me, because I know we are leaving genius on the table and we’ve got to stop. And we can stop concretely by giving access to critical thinking, regardless of the kind of school that kids go to, regardless of the kind of class that kids are in.

Cyndi Burnett :
So I want to talk about this relationship between creative and critical thinking, which we have talked about on the show before in an episode with Katie Trowbridge. But I want to understand how you view creative thinking and critical thinking. How do you see them as different? How do you see them as the same? And how does what you do in Think Law provide opportunities for students to think creatively and to think critically?

Colin Seale:
I think whether you’re talking about creative thinking or critical thinking, one common thread is really rethinking the way we talk about power, particularly power dynamics in the classroom. One of the phrases you hear a lot in education nowadays is like, oh, we gotta empower students, we gotta empower students, we gotta empower students. But in my book Tangible Equity, I talk a lot about how that phrase is inherently problematic. Like, empower suggests that kids don’t already have power. Kids already have power. They show power all the time. The question is, are we willing to share power? Are we willing to allow them to use that power for any way, like in that classroom to really make sense? And I think when we decide that power is allowed, when we decide that I don’t need to hold all the power as an educator, and I feel safe enough as an educator to take on the risks that come with distributing that power, it changes my dynamic. And the biggest part of either critical or creative thinking is the feeling that, like, you do not need to actually be the greatest critical thinker in the world to create spaces for critical thinking in your classroom.

Colin Seale :
You don’t need to be the most creative educated in the world to come up with those really innovative spaces in the classroom. In fact, I would argue that in a lot of our classrooms where you’re kind of being pegged as a creative teacher, we see them, they got the best bulletin boards, whatever. I would actually argue that a lot of times those things are so teacher driven that I’m not even sure that kids are really being able to truly tap into these creative sort of sets. So from thinking about one of the examples I bring up in Tangible Equity, and I think this is where you see a lot of convergence between creative and critical thinking. Kids need to know about all the different continents, and a lot of times they learn about different geographical areas. They’re learning about like food, shelter, and transportation. So in this one unit, that school is looking at Antarctica and we’re in Phoenix, Arizona. They got to look at Antarctica and they got to figure out food, shelf and transportation.

Colin Seale:
It’s this idea that says my kids might not know anything about Antarctica. They might not know, but they might know something about where they’re at, right? So there’s an asset based framework to say, like, hey, you know what? My kids are experts in something. So if I had a friend that was coming from like Alaska and they were coming to move to Phoenix in July, what advice would you have for them? Because from the jump, I got things that I already have in my head. Like, I know that when it’s really hot, I might need to have a lot of water. I might need to avoid being outside between this time and this time. And I could be in third grade giving, giving really solid advice about how to survive. But now this lesson, this lesson plan, this whole idea is like, hey, we gotta take the school, we’re moving this whole entire school community to Antarctica for a year. What other things you gotta figure out in terms of food, child transportation, to do it right.

Colin Seale:
So it’s a really innovative kind of thing. It gets me necessarily. I must understand the way people do it in Antarctica. I must understand all the different things about food, child transportation in Antarctica. But it takes a lot of creativity to figure out how I can run a school community doing that out there. But then I bring it back full scale because a big part of our work is, you know, Matt, Cindy, myself, we all went to school, and a lot of us going to school was learning the way it is. We all learn the way it is. A big part of what I want our kids to do is be able to figure out the way it ought to be, the way it ought to be.

Colin Seale:
We learn how to play the game. We want our kids to be able to slay the game. So by the time they’ve done this activity, mind you, they started with what they knew. They started with understand, understanding. Like, okay, here’s the advice that I will give you. Living in extreme temperature, which I actually relate to living in Phoenix. And now we do this whole thing about planning out how we’re going to survive in Antarctica for a year. Then it turns out that right here in Phoenix, in my own hometown, there are people who struggle with access to food, to shelter, to transportation.

Colin Seale :
But because I’m now an expert at figuring that stuff out, I could come up with recommendations for my city council person to start addressing that right here in my own community. Because I already had the power. Even though I can’t vote. I do not think that any local politician will be able to ignore 60 letters coming from seventh graders about this pressing issue in their community, if nothing else, for the photo op. But they won’t ignore it. They won’t ignore it. And when kids recognize that I can write something today that can lead to action tomorrow, that’s the kind of thing we’re really trying to get our kids to think. And it’s because of you.

Colin Seale:
It’s because of your uniqueness. It’s because of the unique way your brain is put together, those unique ideas that only you can create. Because there’s something to be said for having a proximity to the problem and the experts being there at that position.

Matthew Worwood:
Now, I want to just bring this into the think law framework a little bit, and perhaps you can do it from the scenario that you just played out there. But as a teacher listening, who hasn’t read your book, could you tell them a little bit about how you can take these kind of real world concepts and layer it with a think law approach? Within the classroom environment.

Colin Seale:
I think that one of the things that really struck me about the whole idea of the law was that a lot of people think the law is about arguing and making your point and doing all this stuff. But really it’s about persuasion. It’s about negotiating. It’s about, how do you get somebody to buy into a story, right? Like, we all hear these things, right? Like, if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. Right? Like, but there’s an amazing story that makes that really easy for people to kind of wrap their heads around here, right? And, like, there’s even this idea. And I know that obviously one of the biggest controversies in modern legal jurisprudence is, you know, Roe versus Wade and abortion rights. But, like, if you just look at the story, if you look just. If you just think about the story element of, like, okay, how do we actually get from the laws we have in the books and the Constitutions to, like, this kind of attaching to a woman’s right of privacy, right? And it’s like, okay, like, they take the idea that you’re not allowed to quarter soldiers right under the Constitution.

Colin Seale:
Like, we’re not doing that. I’m not courting soldiers because there’s something precious about the house. We took the idea that you need to have a warrant and all this stuff to have a proper searching. So it’s like, okay, like, we kind of have this. They call it a penumbra to say, like, okay, like, if I look at all these things together, there’s a story where in America, we value a right to privacy. And then they take that and they’re able to kind of model it and make it sound like this. Like, okay, like, I can create a lot of policy and rules around getting into this story. So going back to your original question about how this kind of fits into thinking like a lawyer framework does, the idea that when you’re trying to get kids to engage in critical thinking, when you’re trying to get kids to actually go deep into rigor and challenging work, it’s not about meeting them where they are academically, because I argue often that we gotta go beyond where kids are and really stretch them.

Colin Seale:
But I’m meeting them who they are, I’m meeting them how they are, and I’m trying to get them to connect to a story. So a very concrete example, we have a teacher in Dayton, Ohio, that we’ve been working with for over a year, and he’s starting a lesson. 8th grade US history starts a lesson. When is it okay to get back with Somebody after a breakup, you better believe every eighth grader knows exactly what this is all about, because their whole life is relationship drama. They love it. They eat this stuff up and they’re saying all these things and they’re going back and forth. But you know what the lesson is actually about? The lesson is actually about the Emancipation Proclamation, which is the breakup, and the Gettysburg Address, which is the attempt towards reconciliation. So this is kind of what, where we really kind of see that spark in kids, that fire that I experienced in law school, because I’ve connected them with a story.

Colin Seale:
Now when I’m going through this teacher’s lesson for the day, and I’m looking at the activities they have set up, there’s all these essays and first person sources and speeches, and they’re asking all these higher order questions about them. And I’m like, wow, this probably took you a really long time to design this.

Matthew Worwood:
How?

Colin Seale:
He’s like, no, actually, it took me five minutes because I’ve already had these resources. I had them for years. I just presume kids couldn’t do it. But now that I’ve got these hooks, now that I’ve got these ways that I can use the funk, the drama, the controversy, the conflict as the entry point, it sparks so much inside of me as a thinker. Okay, And I’ll give you one more concrete example of this, and this one I might need your help on, okay? And this comes from the idea of, like, mistake analysis and the idea that a lot of our students and teachers alike are petrified of mistakes, and it shuts them down. So when my son Oliver was in kindergarten, he had the privilege of doing kindergarten on zoom during a pandemic. Okay? It was a message. And one day they’re going through letters of the Alphabet and they get to the letter I and they go through show you how to do the letter.

Colin Seale :
And then a kid says, does anyone know a word that starts with I? A kid says, iguana. Okay, great. Does anyone else know when Oliver’s like, oh, I know. Okay, Oliver, unmute yourself. He unmutes himself. Okay, Oliver, what’s your I word? And he screams out, lizard. And she’s like, no, that’s not right. Does anybody else have an answer? And Oliver shuts down.

Colin Seale :
Oliver sad. Oliver’s so let down. Like, oh, man. And he’s done. He’s done. He’s over it. And I thought to myself, we’re missing something here. If a kid tells me, lizard, like, what should I say next? As an educator, what should be the next thing out of my mouth, like, Matt City.

Colin Seale :
Like, what would you say next? Somebody said lizard. You’re expecting an I word? They said lizard. Someone just said iguana. You say lizard. Like, what would you say next to that kid instead of just. No, that’s right.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah. No, I’d probably go frog just because, you know, it’s the same. They’re all. And you’re Colin, you’re testing my knowledge a little bit. But the point is, yes, I’m going frog.

Cyndi Burnett :
All right, See, I would have said izard. Izard. Okay, izard. So what are we missing if we say izard? I probably would have gone izard with that.

Colin Seale:
Most of the time when I ask educators what they would do next, they say, like, a lot of them say things like, oh, okay, like a lizard is like an iguana. Like, gary, good for you. Or like, okay, like a lizard has an eye in it. But there’s something else that I do that’s a lot more important. Okay, so I’ve been practicing Spanish over the last few years, and I would do a lot of work all over the nation where people speak a lot of different languages, But I’ve never met an adult who is fluent in kid. Nobody speaks kid. Only kids speak kid. So because that’s the case, you have to ask for a translation.

Colin Seale:
That’s actually the most easiest way to give a kid the chance of really show their agency of like, oh, lizard. Say more about lizard. Why’d you pick lizard? And it could be a lot of options, but it could be the case that the letter I, you know, Oliver is his name. And at that point in his life, he dotted his eyes like a serial killer. I don’t know. The dots were always so dramatic and so huge that maybe anywhere with an eye in it was an I word in his opinion. Maybe he’s like, talking about he knows his cold blooded reptiles. Right? He knows a lizard is like an iguana.

Colin Seale:
But no, you know what? It actually was when I say he went to his kindergarten on zoom. On zoom, they use the Arial font. In the Arial font, there’s no difference between the uppercase I and a lowercase l. It’s the same as that character. He’s giving you an I word, but because our ability to accept an answer is so limited, we don’t even give it a shot. So a part of, like, really encouraging creative critical thinking is we have to. To be open. We have to be open and we have to let go of the power.

Colin Seale:
Because even in saying, like, oh, look, like, let’s not presume that we know what kids mean. Give them the power back. Give them the power to explain.

Matthew Worwood:
Do you know what’s really important about what you just shared there? And, you know, and I wanted to take it a little bit about connecting it to critical thinking and creative thinking. But before I do that, I think in essence, you rob the ability to make that connection with the Arial font if you don’t pose that question. And I get it, especially during the pandemic, you’ve got that pressure of time, right? And we’ve got that time constraint. But when you was asking me what would I say next, I thought I’d be the next student. That’s why I said frog. But you are right, is that if you say, why did you do that? Or what made you think of this? You get to learn what’s happening, the operation behind the brain, right? You get to see the cognitive thinking that is taking place in that moment. And in that moment, that allows you to discover something about that child and how they’re seeing the problem in a way you would not know if he hadn’t posed that question. And then to your point, from there you get to build and wow, now you don’t use Arial font, right? Like, I know, I know it seems small, but that is like a kind of really crazy mistake that you may have got there, Colin.

Matthew Worwood:
I bet you the average instructor or teacher would not have made that connection. The only way to possibly do that is to ask, how did you get there? When you get this anomaly in the classroom, how did you get there? That outlier? Why? Why are you there?

Colin Seale:
And. And when you think about just bigger picture, right? Like, I’m very much of this at the time. Like, I’m optimistic about what kids can do, but I also know, like, it’s almost a necessity. Like, our kids need to do a lot for our world. A lot of that is going to require a lot of divergent thinking. And what I think about is, for Oliver’s case, when you get shut down like that, you’re like, forget it then, forget it. And you now are like, stepping back. And if you think about how infants come out of the womb, they’re so curious.

Colin Seale:
They’re exploring the whole universe. They’re asking questions nonstop. And at a certain point, that all stops because we kill it. We beat it out of them. And I’m like, what happens when we create the space where, like, my curiosity never actually stops, my ability to wonder and to imagine never actually stops When I think about my hopes and dreams for My children, Rose and Oliver. One of my biggest dreams for them is that no one ever steals that fire from their eyes. Nobody takes that, like, that level of desire to know more or ask, wait, what? Huh? Like, I want them to always have that spark. But I don’t know that it’s going to survive high school.

Colin Seale:
I don’t know that it’s going to survive middle school, even.

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. Colin, I am loving these examples, so thank you so much for sharing them. And we’re starting to run out of time, and I promised our listeners that we would talk about the relationship between creativity and educational equity, which I know is a passion of yours. So I want to make sure we get to that. So can you tell us more about the connection that you see between creativity and educational equity?

Colin Seale:
Okay, so anyone listening right now? You’re probably listening because at some point you’ve had big and bold ideas for kids when it comes to education and what’s possible. And at some point someone has told you that’s just unrealistic. That thing you want to do, that program you want to have is unrealistic because look at these parents, look at these kids. Look at this neighborhood. Look at this politics. Whatever it is, it’s unrealistic. But here’s the thing. Here’s why it all connects.

Colin Seale:
When I look at a lot of the educational inequities we have, no matter where I’m at in a country, I’m always looking at like, you know, how do things get to be the way that they are? Like, what policies have happened in terms of redlining, like, the underinvestment, the environmental pollution, like, how has it come to be that in almost any neighborhood in this country, I can look at the zip code and predict what the outcomes might be based off of the poverty level, Right? Like, I can predict how close you’re going to be to a healthy grocery store or how many people were likely to die from COVID in that area based off of how poor this neighborhood is or how black that neighborhood is or how brown that neighborhood is and what languages are spoken. But if I’m thinking about this idea of what we got to do, a lot of what I advocate for is this feeling that when I make a goal about what’s possible for kids and achievement and it doesn’t feel unrealistic, I should take that goal and throw it in the trash. It’s probably not worth it. We need to be unrealistic on purpose. We need to be unrealistic with a purpose. Because the reality is that reality is unacceptable. Reality is trash. Reality is set up so that even a little bit of justice can feel unrealistic.

Colin Seale:
A little bit of fairness can be unrealistic. We need to have folks that are channeling their inner Angela Davis, right? She has that quote that says, I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept. That’s a different kind of energy. And to do that, you can’t even fathom this without creativity, because you literally have to see something that’s not there. You actually have to be a visionary. You have to see something that’s not there. Like, right now, what we see is not okay.

Colin Seale:
It’s not acceptable. I need you to be a dreamer and what’s possible. And throughout history, there’s always been these folks that can, like, really paint a picture of what that means, right? Like, I have a dream, I’ve got a vision, right? Like, I think to myself often, and people don’t often associate me and my work around being super patriotic, but I am as patriotic as they come because, look, as flawed as our founders were, I think it’s so wild. Some of these folks actually owned people, right? Women weren’t involved at all. And the same language that they wrote hundreds of years ago is being used to advocate for, like, rights for folks all across the gender identity spectrum. Like, I’m like, they never would have even fathomed that before. But the idea of, like, they were creative enough and thinking through something that was so broad that it could be used to really advance a set of rights that they never would have imagined would even have become up a conversation that, to me, is, like, the level of, like, unrealistic we need to do. And I think about things, like, just to be really clear, like, we talk about closing the achievement gap.

Colin Seale:
That, to me, is the way we tend to talk about things. Okay? I’m looking at the data, I’m looking at this. I say we shatter the achievement ceiling. We need to shatter the ceiling. Forget about closing gaps because the reality is that most non poor white kids in America aren’t actually doing that good. That can’t be the gap that’s worth closing. What does it really mean to create a path for excellence for every kid? What does it really mean to really think about kids achieving at a high level across the board? Excellence shouldn’t be a four letter word. Excellence should be the goal.

Colin Seale:
As unrealistic as it is. If we had excellence in the communities that have been historically under invested, how transformational could that be for our society? So we need the creative thinking in there. We cannot even fathom educational equity without creativity. That’s the connection.

Matthew Worwood:
And if I was to try and summarize that one, I’m making a connection to Jonathan Plucker who we had on the show. He always talks about the idea of identifying these standards and then you kind of declare victory when those standards are met. And he always finds it odd that we kind of declare victory there when actually a lot of students are capable of going much further.

Cyndi Burnett:
Colin, I feel so inspired by your story and I really feel like it’s going to and I’m going back to that word empower which I’ve always used. But I’m going to rethink using that word empower and giving teachers the opportunity to really maximize and break through and extend their boundaries and go into the unrealistic goals. Because I think even as someone who is in the creativity field and you know, Matt and I work in the creativity education field as our careers, I think it’s very easy to get stuck on. That’s not realistic. And I think hearing your story and thinking about our students, it’s really exciting and I just feel so grateful for your time and energy today. Now before we go, we ask all of our guess if they will share three tips that they would give to educators. And this episode is so full of so many tips, but three tips you would give to educators to help them bring creative thinking into the classroom.

Colin Seale :
Don’t underestimate the power of a very simple open ended question. I was at a classroom in Louisville, Kentucky that started with the question is tradition good or bad? Explain. And I thought about this. It was really powerful because it’s really like now what do you think about tradition? Do you think tradition is good? Do you think tradition is bad? What traditions do you think are good? What traditions do you think are bad? And it was an insight for a lesson that was about like reading about this lady from ancient China arguing for more rights for women. And it was like alone. That article was awful for middle schoolers. But with that hook, I’m like, oh, I relate to this lady. I’m living the same struggles right now in my house.

Matthew Worwood:
Okay?

Colin Seale:
So never underestimate the power of an open ended question. The second thing is, it’s not about your creativity, it’s about theirs. You do not even have to consider yourself to be a creative educator to create learners that have a ton of at bats at demonstrating their creativity. So don’t make it about you, it’s about them. And the last one I would say is we gotta play the game and slay the game, right? Like. So there’s a level of like, I need to make sure that my kids have the tools to exist and do really well and thrive in the systems that we have and also create the systems that we need to have. Which means we could find a spots for creativity in a lot of spaces that don’t always sound open to them. Like in Thinking like a Lawyer, I have a chapter called Beyond Test Prep.

Colin Seale:
We talk about this idea that like, when kids can learn to think like a test maker, it actually takes a ton of creativity to look at these things and think about like, okay, what are the possible ways that somebody would actually get this question wrong? And when I can start to develop multiple questions myself and recognize, oh, that’s what the test maker is thinking, that’s how they think I’m going to get this thing wrong. It really gives our kids a whole lot more swagger walking into these tests in a world where test anxiety feels like it’s at an all time high. It’s so much different when kids realize, I can actually make this test myself because I’m so good at understanding the way this game is played. So don’t underestimate the spot where creativity can go. Creativity can go in your standard day to day curriculum that’s required by the district. You just gotta find those spots. And I would argue that when we find those spots for our kids to be able to navigate the system that we already have, while also dismantling the systems that we need to dismantle in the future, it creates a kid that is actually able to thrive in this world while being able to fight for the world that we need.

Matthew Worwood:
So, Colin, thank you so much for that. You’ve given us a lot to talk about on our upcoming debrief episode of the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast. And what I would say is if you listen to this episode now, it’s not just about being inspired if you’re seeing an opportunity to infuse some of the things that was discussed today, or even look at this concept of thinking law, bringing in some critical thinking and creative thinking when going and exploring new topics, trying to go and grabbing logic and analyzing information, presenting an argument. It doesn’t necessarily just have to be at the humanities. I see a connection with the humanities, but as we’ve discussed with Colin before the show, that might also be in STEM education as well as math education. Please share this episode with one of your colleagues who you think is willing to go and try this type of new approach in education to bring that hook to steal from Collins words. Bring the hook to make the content super duper exciting. 

Matthew Worwood:
My name’s 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.