Episode 1: Creativity, feat. David Finkle

Join us on the opener of our second season as we talk with actor, playwright, cartoonist, educator, and author, David Finkle. In this episode, we dive  into the power of creativity and how creative expression can heal, inspire, and direct our lives. 

Transcript

Transcript

 Kat:
[0:00] Albert Einstein once said that creativity is intelligence having fun.
 
[0:05] As we kick off our second season, we're gathering at the round table,joined by our first guest and good friend David Finkle, who personifies this wisdom.
He is a master teacher, writer, cartoonist, and creative extraordinaire.
We are having an amazing conversation today on how to use creative processingto heal, how we can and get over creative roadblocks.
We hope you'll pull up a chair at the round table as we prepare to be inspired.

[Introducing Guest: David Finkle]

[1:03] Thanks for joining us today as we enter a new season of The Fellowship.
 This season we're gathering around the round table and we're excited to introduceour first guest to the podcast. David Finkle is an accomplished teacher, writer, comic, actor with a creative career spanning more than 30 years. He has written books in both fiction and nonfiction genres. He's authored and published with Scholastic, writing a book on incorporating creativity into teaching, as well as a fictional novel titled Making My Escape. He is a prolific actor, playwright, cartoonist. He's the author and creator of the Mr. Fitz comic strip, which he's been faithfully writing for more than 25 years. 23 years. His accolades include having been named Teacher of the Year both by his school and his district. He has been acknowledged for his passion of utilizing innovative approaches to teaching and learning in his classroom. Folks, the list of David's accolades can really go on. He is a creative extraordinaire and we are honored that he is joining us today. David, welcome to the fellowship.
 
 Guest - David:
[2:11] I am happy to be here.

Kat:
[2:12] And we're happy to have you.

Robert:
[2:15] Yes.

Kat:
[2:15] So this is the first season I was stuck with these two guys in a room for the whole season.

Stephen:
[2:20] Oh, stuck, okay.

Kat:
[2:21] So the change of scenery is nice and having an additional voice to talk aboutlife. So thank you for being here.

Robert:
[2:29] Yes, indeed.

Kat:
[2:30] So you are a creative extraordinaire as your bio.
Detailed for us.

Guest - David:
[2:36] But I have not yet signed, as they say in the Muppet movie, the standard richand famous contract that Orson Welles speaks of. We joke about this continually, but I've put that in perspective now. There's still time.

Kat:
[2:48] There's still time, absolutely. And I think that we want to like shout out your praises and maybe contribute to, you know, getting you out there too.

Guest - David:
[2:59] Okay. That'd be good.

Kat:
[3:01] So, we brought you on because of your passion for creativity.
And you kind of shared a little bit of a bio with us.

Robert:
[3:11] Yeah. It's being an educator and just being able to see, like,when I see you in the morning, I get happy.
I'm like, maybe I'll have the opportunity to talk with David.

Guest - David:
[3:24] Well, I'm happy to see you too. We don't always run into each other.

Robert:
[3:27] We don't, we don't. And every time I do get to speak with you, I'm inspired.
I enjoy the conversations we have. So I'm really grateful that you're here.
And I just, I look forward to seeing where the conversation leads us. And there's just been so much going on since, well, since I've came to Deland High School and seeing, I'm like thinking of like all the politics going on presently.

Kat:
[3:53] We're in the mire right now with that.

Guest - David:
[3:55] Yeah, with like book bands and stuff and- It's,well, you know, I talked to someone at the district and I told this person,I said, my career started, the kids were a problem, but then I got that kind of under control. And then I was really happy for several years.
But then shortly after I'd been district teacher of the it was like the trash compactor scene in Star Wars. I feel like the walls have just been closing in, and every time I think they can't close in anymore, they find a way to close them in a little further ontrying to restrict what you do.

Robert:
[4:36] That's what I was going to ask you, what is it that's coming in and restricting you?

Guest - David:
[4:43] Well, I'll just go ahead and say this, it's the standardization.
But on the other hand, I've had supportive people as well, so I get mixed messages and I just go with the messages I like.

Robert:
[4:57] So did you teach before standards?

Guest - David:
[5:02] Yes. One of my projects that I want to do at some point is I want to use the Way Back Machine. I would like to find all the standards I've taught. They're hard to find online. Like they're gone. I've erased them. But yeah, when I started,I was at Spruce Creek High. It was very, do you know who Nancy Atwell was?

Robert:
[5:23] I'm familiar with the last name.

Guest - David:
[5:24] Yeah. Well, I student taught at Upstate New York in a Nancy Atwell reading,writing workshop. and it was totally student-centered. The kids only read books they wanted to read. You did reading workshop Monday, Friday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday were writing workshop. There were no writing assignments except write. You need to complete like three pieces by the end of the quarter. They did peer conferencing. It was very just completely open. And when I was at Spruce Creek, they were doing the Nancy Atwell thing. In fact, I was hired under a program called writing enhancement with it. This makes me cry. Limited your total number of students to 125 students. That's why I was hired is that they knew teachers of English who were giving feedback on writing needed a limited number of kids. So as I sit on my total of heading for 200 right now, it just makes me think back on that. And then when I started, I had a two-year gap in service where no one would hire me. I was laid off a week before Andrea and I got married.

Kat:
[6:22] That's crazy.

Guest - David:
[6:23] Which is good. Nobody would hire me. And then Taylor hired me.
And I had a group of students who said, Mr. Finkel, and I'm not making this up as Dave Barry would say, "we've decided that we've gotten a teacher fired or to quit every year since kindergarten, and we've decided you're next." And it was bad. I'm currently, I've just finished fictionalizing that in the novel I'm writing. So that was fun and cathartic.
But yeah, when I walked into the classroom at Taylor,There were textbooks, Prentice Hall literature. I think there might have been a separate writing textbook, but I'm not sure. And it was, there's your room, there's kids, teach them something.

[7:04] And there was a high school competency exam, the HSCT, I think that's what it was called. It was it, it was just, it was the wild, wild west. And it pretty much stayedthe wild, wild West until I would say 2009, 2010, somewhere in there.  And that's when they started to try to make everything more standardized. And I sometimes wonder if there's ideas I might have had along the way in ways I might have grown as a teacher if that hadn't happened.
 
 Kat:
[7:39] That's interesting.

Guest - David:
[7:41] Yeah, but there were no standards. The Florida, the Sunshine State standards were a draft at that point.

Kat:
[7:48] It's like the void gives you the opportunity to fill it.
But when the void is already filled with other people's things,it doesn't invite you to be creative or innovative about topics.

Guest - David:
[7:59] Well, it doesn't invite you to think deeply. I mean, I used to write in my planner,I'm not sure how to put it. I'm a planner keeper. I like having a planner.
And one of the things that got me through that first year, it was terrible at Taylor, it was The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It's kind of pretentious title, but boy, it's a good book. And one of the things that I would write, and this was, what do I want the kids to be able to do? But the thing was, I was always thinking about that really deeply. Like, what do I want them to be able to do and what does it take to get them to do that. But I was thinking about it in ways that were maybe a little bit different than what eventually came in as the standards. And then,As the standards have changed, I showed you, Catherine, I did a cartoon this summer when Indiana Jones 5 came out about Indiana Fitz and he's getting sent off on missions to figure out how to do the new standards. So it was Indiana Jones and the Raiders of... No, Indiana Fitz and the Raiders of the Rigorous Ark or something like that, I forget.
And then the temple of...I forget now, that's terrible.

Kat:
[9:13] The temple of doom would have been- Yeah, the temple of doom.

Guest - David:
[9:16] So I had a blast making fun of that.
But one of the things that I've developed over the years is the idea that schools...
We're doing a book study in IB right now for the teachers. I think five of us are doing, and Andrea's doing it too, called Creating Cultures of Thinking, I think is the title.
Schools should be places of thinking, and yet there's a lot of things that happen in schools that kind of work against that. And I, you know, there was a secretary of education at one point when they said,should we have national standards?
They asked this person and they said, no, but if you have to have them,they should be as vague as possible. And I really liked that because I think there should always be room to think,okay, there's all these standards, but I'm seeing a need for my kids to do such and such. I said there's macro standards above the standards that exist.

 [10:15] There's bigger picture things, and then there's little things.
 We had a PLC meeting once where we were discussing... Have you heard of the one-minute power write?
 
 Robert:
[10:27] No.

Guest - David:
[10:27] It's one of the things I picked up at a conference. You just give the kids two topics like tomatoes and toes or something.And they have to write just for one minute whatever comes off the top of their head. It just builds up their fluency and then you count how many words you have. Fantastic idea. But we had somebody at our meeting and she was trying to link it to a standard. And it didn't link to a standard. It was just like this is going to contribute to them writing well. It's great. I mean, every single kid writes.
And when most of them can get to 20 words a minute, I can tell them that means that if you focus really well, you can write a 500-word draft in 25 minutes. That's amazing.
And they do. Kids tell me they power write their way through papers. So that power writing wasn't my idea. That's one of the ideas I did pick up at a conference. But the idea that every single thing needs to be aligned to a standard,there's some things that maybe don't and so.

Kat:
[11:27] And I'm curious like how, I want to back up a little bit, I want to talk about your history and how your history has influenced you as a creative person because I think that,our histories are really powerful parts of who we become, right? And our journey.

Guest - David:
[11:46] CB. Absolutely. And it's a huge part of our students.

Kat:
[11:49] DR. Absolutely. And there's- CB.

Guest - David:
[11:50] And the way we're doing things now, and I just wrote this year's Halloween strip,and I'm really excited about it.

Kat:
[11:58] DR. I can't wait to read it.

Guest - David:
[12:00] CB. It's sort of like we're asked to leave our personhood at the classroom door, and our students are as well. Don't write about what you care about. Write about this arcane prompt about fence posts and read three articles about fence posts and hurricanes.

Stephen:
[12:15] We've industrialized education and at the expense of creativity.

Guest - David:
[12:19] Yeah.

Kat:
[12:20] Yeah.

Guest - David:
[12:20] And at the expense of humanity.

Stephen:
[12:21] Yep.

Kat:
[12:21] For sure. So.

Guest - David:
[12:23] So anyway, yes. So history.

Kat:
[12:24] How, yeah, like how has your history growing up, were you a creative personlike off the bat or did, did your, you know, circumstances and experiences helpyou'd build those creative skills?

Guest - David:
[12:40] Both. I was a strange child. Like at one point I'm from a family of five kids.
I'm the fourth. There were three boys who were each a year apart and there wasfive years in me and five years in my sister. And I've lived here in Florida since I came down to go to Stetson when I was18. Pretty much I had one year home. At one point I came home to visit and my niece's then boyfriend had met me for the first time and we were alone when I walked in my brother's house and he was like, oh, you're the different one.
So I've literally he said that and I've so I've always been I was an odd little bit out there child and so like my first educational satire cartoon was in kindergarten.
Have I told you about this? Oh, fire safety week. First, to draw a picture of what you do if the school's on fire. I wish I still had the original, but I remember it distinctly because I had...Drawing my characters had no fingers, they just had half circles for hands.
I drew a picture of the children roasting marshmallows over the smoldering embers of Scano Elementary. I do not recall what Mrs. Castle's reaction to it was, but I do distinctly remember that that was... And I don't know where that came from. I mean, I was five or six, right?

Kat:
[14:03] That's fantastic, though.

Guest - David:
[14:04] It's funny because... So, I don't know where that comes from, you know?

Kat:
[14:07] Yeah.

Guest - David:
[14:07] It's just been there, and then things along the way have inspired...
Like, the creativity has always been there. That's just been a part of who I am.

Kat:
[14:19] So, do you think your experiences have been a catalyst in having you utilize that creativity?

Stephen:
[14:24] Yes.

Guest - David:
[14:28] I think...
Because I think the two things that the creativity came first and then the teaching followed fast on its heels because well,my sister would have a different viewpoint on it, but my friends and I,we would draw cartoons together and we would make animated cartoons with – we didn't have cameras or anything at that point. So we would make cartoons by drawing backgrounds and then drawing the characters with long tabs underneath them of paper and we would cut them out. It was It's like sort of primitive puppet shows and we would put on these animated cartoons. But then we would do cartooning school for our younger siblings and then we would give them big F's on their papers when they didn't draw well enough. So that was not a good start to my teaching. But then high school, the Southern Adirondack Library System, SALS in upstate New York, somehow I stumbled into doing an actual two-hour coursefor kids on how to make your own comic strip. And that was my first teaching gig. I was, I think, 16. So, I mean, essentially, I've been teaching since I was about 16. And then I was a summer camp counselor during college at Sky Farm Camps, a Methodist camp. It's still there and been a while since I visited. It's beautiful, it's in the Adirondack Mountains. And Steve Burt, who was a minister who wrote horror stories,he's called the one radio interviewer dubbed him the sinister minister.

Robert:
[15:54] He was- I'm interested. I want to read the sinister minister.

Guest - David:
[15:59] Yeah. He was the director for the creative writing camp for a few summers that was part of a creativity camp, and I was the counselor for that. I swear, that's what solidified things. Every time I teach to a certain extent, whether it's creative writing or just regular English, um, I'm trying to recreate creative writing. It's like, if I could, if I could send them off into the woods to go sit ona log or a rock and write, I would. We just, you know, it's too hot in Florida.

Kat:
[16:30] Something about that, being outside and being in nature.

Guest - David:
[16:32] Yes.

Kat:
[16:33] It's so inspiring and...

Guest - David:
[16:34] So I think that, I think that solidified the teaching part. And then, you know, there were lots of other things. Um, there's a picture I found in the, in a scrapbook of my mom's this summer of me getting a book called Peanuts Jubilee, which is the 25th anniversary of Peanuts book. I was in third grade and there's like a three or four page spread of Charles Schultz actually drawing a comic strip.

Stephen:
[16:59] Wow.

Childhood Creativity: From Closet Studio to Movie Making

 Guest - David:
[17:00] I poured those pages I just looked at over and over.
And it was that Christmas that my mother had cleared out a closet that was allthe Christmas stuff, and it had a shelf inside it, and it had a light.
So I had a little drawing table my grandfather had made me.
I moved that in there and put it on the shelf, and I put a stool in,and I put my India ink bottles and my little pens, and I made it my studio.
And my mother put the Christmas stuff elsewhere because it was in my bedroom.
So, that book was incredible that when I was at Sky Farm, one of my counselors,some guy named Rick who I've never, I don't even know what his last name was. My counselor was Rick.
He read his Prince Caspian at night. And then I came home and read the other Narnia books.
And then I got the companion to Narnia, which was all about the philosophical,theological, mythological archetypal, as you talked about last season, underpinnings.
And I think that's made me an English major. I was just like,wow, these little stories can act on that many different levels. And I was just hooked.
And then it was Tolkien and then of course, and then it was, but it was also movies.
So like I was, when I was in seventh grade, we were making a science fiction epic called Nebula.
And I still have 10 minutes of very bad footage of us running around in robot costumes.
It's pretty funny.

Kat:
[18:24] So, I think that you brought up this camp, right, in your bio, the camp Sky Farm.

Guest - David:
[18:34] Sky with an E on the end.

Kat:
[18:36] You called it magical.

Robert:
[18:37] I love that word.

Kat:
[18:39] Tell me why. What was so magical about this camp that it was a defining momentthat spurred your creativity.

Guest - David:
[18:47] I went as a camper and it's where and I think I've written about this I oncethey were had a Orlando Sentinel had a thing to write about summer camp experiencesmany years ago like back in the 90s I read about this and I think part of it was thatRick had read us the Narnia book at night in the boys' cabin.
They were cabin groups, boys' cabin, girls' cabin with a campfire in between.
And it was sort of like Narnia and Sky Farms sort of became intertwined in my head.
But there were all kinds of things. We would take hikes out to this place calledthe Waterfall. It wasn't even on camp property. They probably can't do that anymore.
And just ramble up and down this raging stream that had a waterfall,and we would slide down the rocks. We did all kinds of dangerous things.
And we would also go property, there was a place called The Castle.
And it was this ruined old mansion made of stone that had burned up sometimein the 1920s. And it was on top of a cliff.
And we would actually climb down the cliff. And there was a ghost story thatthis mad scientist had lived there and had hated his wife and had pushed herout the window in a wheelchair.
And the older kids would go down and said they'd found it. But if you recall,have you read Prince Caspian?

Kat:
[19:54] MS. Yes.

Guest - David:
[19:54] CBT Well, they find Caraparraval in ruins.
Yeah. CBT So when we went to the castle, it was like- MS.

Kat:
[20:00] Everything came to life.

Guest - David:
[20:01] It was, yeah. And there were fireflies all summer, for a lot of the summer.
It got cold in August. I went as a kid, usually one or two weeks each summer.
And then when I was a permanent counselor, I was there for eight weeks everysummer, for the whole summer.
And we would sleep out under the stars and watch the meteor showers in August.
It was magical.

The Enchantment of Sleepovers and Meteor Showers

 Robert:
[20:27] It was magical.

Kat:
[20:29] Reading ground for creative thinking and experience.

Guest - David:
[20:32] Yeah, it was. And then, of course,there was creativity camp and creative writing camp. So it was a lot.
And I, in some way, you know, and sometimes I'm like, ah, you know,if I, New York State doesn't go back to school till Labor Day.
So they run on a different schedule.
They were always back in, we were always back in school here while they werestill in session at camp. So I have never gone back as a counselor.

Kat:
[20:54] Oh, man. That would be cool.

Guest - David:
[20:55] It would be, I might, I might in retirement at some point, but at least fora week, they take volunteers.
But in some ways, I'm glad that I didn't because it kind of encased it in amberas an experience and it has stayed magical. So that's kind of cool.

Kat:
[21:15] Tell me about, tell us about, I think when we were reading the bio,this all stood out to us, this moment of your life, like as a life-defining point.
You talked about your self-built garage movie studio and how that was a momentwhere you couldn't turn back on it, right? That was a change moment.
Can you tell us a little bit of why that was a change moment for you?

Guest - David:
[21:42] So, it's kind of weird.
My friends, I had friends, the ones I talked about, we did the drawings andwe had decided to make this science fiction movie.
And at some point, I forget, I think it was when we were pretty young,they built a new house, really cool house.
It's still there. I go walk through the woods and visit it. It's up a dirt road.
And they were getting rid of their white garage, this wooden garage.
So, they gave it to us. They took it apart and rebuilt it near our house.
And my dad had a big old gray garage closer to the road, a little further awayfrom the house. So, it was a white garage and a gray garage.
And we didn't usually use it for the there was other stuff in there.
And so, when I was making the movie with my friends before they moved away,which should have put an end to it, but didn't,I had turned the whole thing into my movie studio and I had tables full of modelsand styrofoam and I had this big spaceship like a Star Destroyer that I wasbuilding and I had little disposable flashlights to make it light up, I built inside it.
And so, my parents at the time were going through a rather not.

The Tidy Divorce and Its Impact on the Speaker

 [22:53] Tidy divorce, let's say. And for whatever reason, I've never exactly found out,my dad one night in August, right after I'd gotten back from Sky Farm for two weeks,right before I went into ninth grade, which is the age I teach now,he took our car and rammed it the ground.
 And that was what I've said about this is that it was sort of the epicenter of my young life.
 And within a half hour after it happened, I knew I was going to have to write about it.
 So, like, why did he do that? And he was always kind of disparaging of my creativity.
 So, two ways that's reverberated. One is, and it's taken talking to a varietyof different people, that,I don't like it when people mess with my creativity. Like, that's,that's, it really upsets me and- To your core.
 To my core. It shakes me because obviously since I was drawing cartoons in kindergarten,that's a huge part of my identity.
 So there's that. The really cool thing that happened is that I did get, I did fictionalize the whole thing, which I'm redoing now.
 
 Kat:
[24:04] Making my escape.

Guest - David:
[24:05] I wrote making my escape. And for many years, it was published by a very small publisher, and with Title I, we got some copies, and I taught it for many years at Southwestern.

Kat:
[24:17] And what was... I want to pause for a second. Just imagine you write a novel,looking at Bob and Steven right now.
Imagine you write a novel, and you teach your novel to your students.

Guest - David:
[24:27] How powerful is that? Well, I'm actually...

Stephen:
[24:30] The confidence to be able to do that, to be able to find those experiences andrelate those to a completely different generation.
I think that's fascinating. That's unbelievable.

Guest - David:
[24:40] Well, what's interesting is that I wrote it with teaching in mind because theway I wrote it, you know, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, right?
That short story by James Thurber?

Robert:
[24:47] Actually, yeah.

Guest - David:
[24:48] Have you read Calvin and Hobbes?

Stephen:
[24:50] Oh, yes. Grew up on it.

Guest - David:
[24:51] I played Walter Mitty in college at the same time that Calvin and Hobbes was still in the newspapers.
And I thought, the way to tell this story is to make it that it's a kid who's daydreaming about the movie he's making and it goes back and forth.
So, the book starts as this big overblown space opera and the kid,Zach, I kept the character names for the movie the same and he's flying a spaceship.
He's about to collide with another spaceship and all of a sudden,it switches from italic to regular print.
There's three asterisks and this kid is daydreaming it.
And he was about to get hit by a car because he was daydreaming,which actually happened to me.
I was biking to go do my paper route. I was going to pick up my papers at the store and a car almost hit me.
So I was like, oops, maybe I shouldn't daydream so much.
So what I realized was that if I don't explain the connections,like the bad guy who's like a Darth Vader kind of cyborg is like his dad.
And then there's a character who's still on Earth, who's sort of an Obi-Wan character was like the minister in the story.
And he's based on my real middle school, high school, junior high, high school minister.

Kat:
[26:01] Is that Reverend Jewel?

Guest - David:
[26:02] Reverend Jewel. Yeah, he passed away, he died in 2011, on 11-11-11, I still remember that.

Kat:
[26:09] Why was he so monumental in your life?

Guest - David:
[26:14] He used to be an English teacher. He was an English teacher for 25 years before he went to the ministry.
And his own dad had been an alcoholic, and so he was a shoulder to lean on.
But he knew C.S. Lewis, he knew Tolkien.
He was just, he was my Obi-Wan.

Kat:
[26:36] LS So it's like he took the stories and made them so you can internalize themand see yourself as the hero in your own story.

Guest - David:
[26:43] Yeah, exactly. So, anyway, when I decided to teach it, it was really interesting because I designed the book as a teaching tool, essentially,that the kids had to make the inferences.
And I changed, nothing in the book happens exactly the way it happened in reallife. Like in the original movie, there was only one planet they traveled to.
I made it so there's a gray planet and a white planet, and they're like the garages.
And the white garage is his escape through daydreaming, and the gray garageis the dad's escape through drinking and there's...
All kinds of symbolic stuff going on.
First, they had to make the connections and the inferences between the two worlds,real and fantasy, and then they had to make the further symbolic connections.
So, by the end, the kids had done all kinds of really cool thinking.
The last time I taught it actually was 2020 when we went into quarantine.
I didn't know of a way teach a novel except one that I had on hand as a Word document that I could make a PDF.
And I had by that time gotten the rights back from the publisher because whatI'm doing, well, I've started it. I haven't been working on it lately.
I'm changing all the fantasy sequences into a graphic novel,and I'm doing them as storyboards in the aspect ratio of the Star Wars movies.
So, I have the whole book of Star Wars storyboards, and I'm kind of basing the drawing style on that. So it made me draw, huh?

Stephen:
[28:11] 55 millimeter, what do they call it?

Guest - David:
[28:13] 35 millimeter.

Stephen:
[28:14] 35 millimeter.

Guest - David:
[28:14] Yeah, yeah. I looked up the aspect ratio. And so, I'm kind of redoing that,but I also decided to make some other small tweaks to it.
I added a character and also based on real life.
So I was able to try out some of the story changes with the ninth graders whowent into quarantine. So that was fun.

Kat:
[28:34] Oh, how has the writing of Making My Escape, Like how did that because I imaginethat was a process reflecting on your childhood.
How did was that like a contribution to your healing process?

Guest - David:
[28:45] Oh, absolutely. And that's, I didn't tell the kids that it was based on reallife, but some of them, like some of which start to go, wait a minute,Daniel Finn, that's the main character.
David Finkel, wait a minute. And I go, we'll talk about that later.
We'll have a Q&A at the end.

Healing and Making a Difference through Writing and Teaching

 [29:04] And you know, when I won teacher of the year, I was teaching Making My Escape.
 And that was one of the things I told them about is that at the end,they could ask me anything about the book. And they were like, is it based on your life?
 And I would tell them most first novels are pretty autobiographical.
 To Kill a Mockingbird is, lots of novels are.
 Not that I'm comparing it to that, except in that respect. But,So they would ask me all kinds of questions and one of the things I would tell them was,I went through everything that happened with the dad really happened and itwas not easy, my grades suffered, it was tough, but I got through it and nowI'm here and it gets better.
 Whatever you're going through, it can get better.
 And I think I've had some kids, see I'm gonna cry, I've had some kids tell methat made a difference for them.
 
 Kat:
[29:58] Yeah.

Guest - David:
[29:58] So.

Kat:
[29:59] It's, you know, there's a lot of creativity scars.
And I think that what you're doing, Brene Brown calls them,you know, I can't have a podcast episode without quoting Brene Brown,but she, she's amazing, but she says that the most dangerous stories we makeup are the narratives that diminish our inherent worthiness.
And we all carry these creativity scars.
And it happens a lot in childhood where somebody will tell you we're not worthyor that song you sang or that picture you drew or that painting, that wasn't enough.
And so we carry these and there's creativity gremlins that strike.
And I feel like what you are doing is kind of showing your creative processand how that was healing and how many of our students today have stories like that.

Stephen:
[30:52] I kind of want to ask you, where did you see, or have you seen a distinctionor a mark where you went from using creativity more as an escape to leveraging creativity to heal?
Did you notice any time in the past where that change took place?

Guest - David:
[31:13] So it's between what two things? Well, like hearing your story – Using it toescape versus using it to heal.

Stephen:
[31:19] Right. At what point, can you think of a time where you really saw creativitymore as a tool for your healing?

Guest - David:
[31:26] Well, I think...
I think when I was making, I mean, because the movie was, I mean,the movie we were making, I mean, the book is titled Making My Escape becausehe's literally making his escape by making the movie.
And I think that was pure escapism in some ways, but not entirely.
I mean, I think it's sort of a blend. I think it was more escapism then,but subcon... I mean, that's part of the book is that he, Daniel Finn,doesn't realize what he's doing.
He doesn't realize that Nerthron, the bad guy, is his dad. He doesn't realizethat it's all him dealing.

Escaping through creativity and finding healing through daydreaming

 [32:02] There's a major cathartic scene at the very end, the last chapter,where Reverend Jewell helps him realize what he's doing.
 
 [32:08] And so, the final, I think the favorite thing I've ever written is the finalchapter where he realizes what he's doing, and he's sworn he's not going to daydream anymore.
 And Reverend Jewell tells him, you have to, and this was made up,this didn't happen in real life, but he tells him, you have to go back to yourdaydream world. and he does and it helps him, that's where it starts healing for him.
 Weirdly, I started writing Making My Escape during my first year at Taylor whenI was dealing with stink bombs and children spitting on me and all of this horrible.
 So in some ways, I was escaping how terrible teaching was, but I was starting to heal my past as a kid.
 And then I started the comic strip mainly just to amuse myself.
 I started that in 1999 or so, I drew it and then it went into the paper in 2000.
 But over the years, the comic strip became a place that became both...
 Comic strip has never really been an escape.
 It's been a, I guess, a little bit of an escape.
 It's more, it's turned into therapy because anything that bothers me,and boy do a lot of things bother me.
 
 Kat:
[33:27] And a podium, right.

Guest - David:
[33:28] And a podium, yeah.

Robert:
[33:29] Right.

Stephen:
[33:29] And I'm thinking about those boring lectures, those early release type of thingswhere we have to be there. Yeah.

Guest - David:
[33:39] I'm doing one of those this week, but I'm going to try to make it entertaining.

Kat:
[33:42] Yeah, it'll be good.

Writing as an Escape Turns into Healing

 Guest - David:
[33:46] But actually, I'm glad you mentioned that because I hadn't actually thoughtabout it that way, that it was, when did it stop being escape and when did it start being healing?
And I think it's when I finally started to write it down.
But the comic strip, the comic strip...
It was interesting because it all gets very meta.
When they first brought in, It Shall Remain Nameless, like Voldemort,they first wrote in the first kind of canned curriculum and tried to tell usyou just follow it page by page, day by day.
I made fun of it in the comic strip, which at that point was in the newspaper six times a week.
And the series ran for three and a half weeks.
And right after it started, I got a call from somebody at the district sayingthe district isn't happy with you because I called the can curriculum teachby number, which I think is one of my better ideas.

Stephen:
[34:42] You were contacted by the ministry.

Guest - David:
[34:43] I was contacted by the Ministry of Magic. Yes. And so, then I contacted my...
It was harrowing. I mean, I've always been a rule follower.
I've gotten over that a lot lately. And I was really upset.
And I mean, we were up almost all night deciding what to do about this.
I almost ended the comic strip at that point.
And then my editor at the News Journal, Nick Klaasen, he was like,I've read this whole series because I turned it in early. He was like, it's brilliant.
This is you, this is your time.
And later on, somebody else from the district to their credit came in and toldme, nobody should have said anything to you about that. That's your freedom, creative expression.
But at the time, it was really – It's freedom of speech. So it was very upsetting at the time.
I mean, like it was a tailspin of depression that lasted a month or two.
It was really bad, and yet I still managed to keep drawing the strip.
But I came out of it, I think, a different and much stronger person.

Stephen:
[35:49] Empowered.

Guest - David:
[35:50] Yeah, I think so.

Stephen:
[35:51] It's as if that friction from the outside, which was trying to squash your creative outlet.

Guest - David:
[35:59] That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. And that then all goes back,so I'll be honest, I went to see a counselor to talk about the tailspin I wasin, and that's when I realized, oh, this all goes back to the garage. That's the epicenter.

Stephen:
[36:13] Now you're fighting for it.

Guest - David:
[36:15] And now, yeah. But as I said, the walls have continued to close in,but I still managed to have people who leverage,like you, Catherine, who managed to help me leverage that I'm still able to do what I do. So...

Stephen:
[36:33] And we love what you do.

Robert:
[36:34] Yeah. I mean, I imagine the comic book allows you... In education,I feel like we don't have a voice very often.
Whereas teachers were kind of diminished at points, our opinion doesn't reallymatter, whereas with the comic strip...
It's a way for you to say, here you go. Look at what's happening here.

Guest - David:
[36:55] Yeah. Really, I mean, it's kind of amazing.
I only do it on Sundays now, which has been fun to do a Sunday format. I never got to do that.
I get more space and I get to do color. So, I'm working with color more now.
So, on the weekdays, I'm running old strips on my website. And so,I started way back with the 2000s trips where the drawing looks terrible to me.
I tell the kids, you do something consistently, you'll get better at it.
Because I mean, I thought I drew pretty well.
And now I look back at the 2000s trips and I'm like, eww, eww,eww. They don't even look the same from frame to frame.

Stephen:
[37:34] And for our listeners, we'll be sure to link your website on your social.

Guest - David:
[37:38] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can go all the way back. But I'm on 2005 now,but I'm looking, I mean, the seeds are all there.
I mean, by 2001, the testing had started to become on my radar enough.
Remember the Borg from Next Generation, Star Trek Next Generation?
I had done a strip where Mr. Fitz is reading the script for a standardized test.
And over four frames, he slowly turns into a Borg.
And the last frame, he's like, make sure you mark your bubbles heavy and darkwith your number two pencil.
And then at the end, he says, we are the Borg, resistance is futile." And so,you know, pretty early on in the strip, I was getting quite pointed.
And that goes back to, you know, fire safety week in kindergarten.

Kat:
[38:22] So how, at that one juncture where you were really in a tailspin and you feltpressured and your voice, people were threatening to censor your voice.
How did you get over like those creativity gremlins? Because that's what that is.
It's somebody kind of challenging your creativity. and how there are so manypeople that I feel like...
One of the markers for wholehearted living that Brene Brown talks about is having a creative outlet.
And so many people are frozen in that they don't want to take the first stepto try. Bob's raising his hand.
So how do you get over that criticism and shake it off, shake off being frozenfor that moment to keep going?

Guest - David:
[39:04] Well, I mean, in the moment, practically, I had always from the time I got thatPeanuts book, actually from the moment I learned to read so I could read the funnies.
I don't know what attracted me to the funnies, but I wanted to,and I was never that into comic books. It was newspaper comics.
And so, you know, I was finally in the newspaper. I never got syndicated.
They kept turning me down. They were like, we don't feel your comic strip isappropriately, it's like going to be marketable to a worldwide audience.
And I was like, I have fans in New Zealand.
I've been emailed by them. I was like, yeah, I think it would.
But, you know, I was living my dream.
I was in the newspaper, I was drawing comic strips.
And so, part of it was just, I didn't want to stop doing it.
And then the other part is just wherever this comes from,whether I ever got published or not, I just couldn't stop.
I mean, I don't know where that comes from, but I just can't,even if I sucked, I'd still keep doing it. I don't think I do.
You know, everybody, you know, I've done the research that everybody likes theirown creative endeavors perhaps better than other people do.
But I've had some good feedback here and there, and, but I would do it anyway,just because it's part of who I am.

Kat:
[40:26] So would that be your advice to somebody who's in a frozen state, just to keep going?

Guest - David:
[40:32] Yeah, just keep swimming.

Robert:
[40:34] Persevere.

Guest - David:
[40:35] Persevere. But for me, it's not that hard except for time.
Time is sometimes an issue, but I will tell you, I mean, you know,now it's habit after 23 years.
I don't actually, I mean, I have Patreon people who contribute money, but I mean, really,if I wanted to take a week off, I could put up a rerun on the website for aSunday strip, but I can get a Sunday strip done in like not that much time nowunless it's really complicated drawing.
So having the demand of I had to meet the deadline, I would just crank out sixmore strips. It also gave me something to do at faculty meetings.

Kat:
[41:10] Oh, yeah.

Stephen:
[41:11] It's funny you mentioned the idea that you felt that internal turmoil or I'mputting words in, but you kind of talked about that imposter syndrome,the idea that, you know, I'm just one,I'm just so small, you know, is what I'm doing, is it good enough?
Well, people seem to say, keep it going. You've been doing this for enough years.
How have you overcome that imposter syndrome? We talked about this in a previous episode.

Discovering the Joy of Creating and Being Noticed

 Guest - David:
[41:39] I don't know if I had imposter syndrome. I just, because I don't know,it didn't matter to me that much.
It mattered to me more what people thought, I just wanted to do it.
But I knew I was onto something because very, within the first three monthsof the comic strip running in the newspaper, it was in the news journal,so their circulation was pretty big back then. Newspapers are in trouble now, sadly.
We were at a restaurant that's no longer here. What's there now?
Dobro's there or not, but it used to be Christos and Elenes.
And we heard people in the next booth talking about the comic strip.
And it was like, wow, that's really cool. So that was kind of amazing.

Robert:
[42:23] I have a question for you. As you entered into different seasons,like having children, how did you continue to make time for that creativity? BF.

Guest - David:
[42:35] That is a really good question, and I honestly don't know.
I do know because our kids were four and five when I started the comic strip.

Robert:
[42:46] CB. Okay.

Guest - David:
[42:48] But I mean, looking back, one of the things that's been great about teachingis that I had the vacation time, summers were off, and we had Christmas andThanksgiving and all of that.
And somehow I still managed to make time for having a really good time with the kids.
And then our son, Christopher, has sometimes contributed.
When I was going to end the strip in 2022 to devote more time to other writing,he helped me write the ending.
He came up with part of concept for it, which was really cool.
He also, one of my favorite series is How the Dirth Stole Learning,which is a Grinch parody I did.
And we were cooking this up in a swimming pool at my in-laws in the summer,and he's the one who came up with the best line in it, which is,Dirth is the student who doesn't do anything.
He's the do-nothing student, and he has been for over 20 years.
And he steals learning in this Dr. Seuss parody, and he wants to throw it offthe cliff, and he's at the top of Mount – race to the top instead of Mount Crumpit.
And all the schools down in Schoolville, the kids are all learning without allof the – because what he steals is the curriculum maps and the pacing guide,the standardized tests and all of that.
And the line my son came up with was, maybe learning perhaps doesn't come froma score. Maybe learning perhaps means just a little bit more.

Robert:
[44:07] Oh, that's awesome.

Guest - David:
[44:09] And I was like, okay.

Stephen:
[44:10] That's such a Calvin and Hobbes moment too.

Guest - David:
[44:13] Oh yeah, so I'm not sure, because I also wrote...

Robert:
[44:16] You wrote a book with him too, didn't you?

Guest - David:
[44:20] We were discussing this the other night. When he was in 7th grade,he was really into a lot of stuff that I was into when I was a kid,which was all the cryptids, like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster,and we would take walks at night, and we were talking about all this stuff,and we were like, what if we could make...
I'm trying to think if he was, I don't think we'd even started the HATS.
HATS is a program here at Stetson that they used to have for gifted kids,high achieving talented students. And for 10 years, he was my co-teacher.
And we would write a novel in a week with a group of fourth through 12th gradersin a mixed class, fourth graders, 12th graders, same class, we read a novel in a week.
But we proposed, could we take every mysterious thing we could think of fromLoch Ness Monster to Bigfoot, to UFOs, to what happened to Elvis,you know, he was abducted by aliens,to the King Arthur legend, to- DRH We don't think we included Jimmy Hoffa, we should have.
Atlantis, like everything we could think of.
Could we explain all of it with one very simple premise and where your socksgo when they disappear in the dryer?

Stephen:
[45:25] That's how it starts.

Guest - David:
[45:26] So we cooked up a backstory that went back like 4,000 years and worked it allthe way up to the present day. it starts with this kid named Ian Portent findinghis socks. So we self-published the first two.
The first one while he was in seventh grade, the second one,it took a long time to write by the time he was in 11th grade,by the time we published that. And then he went to Stetson.
And then we've gotten concerned in this era of so many conspiracy theories thatthis might be kind of conspiracy theory.
So he kind of lost a little bit of enthusiasm for it.
He'd written help me with write the first half and we were working on it andthen I finished it. He hasn't read the ending yet. Finish the book, Christopher.
Um, so we were talking the other night and he was talking about some of thebooks he's reading, like the Laundry Files and stuff, and I was like,you know, Christopher, it doesn't sound that much different than some of theseother fantasy things you're reading.
He was like, I guess not. So at some point we'll finish it, because I like the ending now.

Nurturing Creativity in Children and Embracing Zaniness

 Kat:
[46:23] So it's like...
And I think to circle back to Bob's question, one way that you balance the creativework parenting life is that you do creative things with your kids.

Robert:
[46:33] With your children.

Guest - David:
[46:35] Oh, yeah.

Kat:
[46:35] And teaching them how to be creative and think outside the box.
And I think just permission to be zany too.

Guest - David:
[46:43] Yeah. Well, my wife and I, we both do theater.
And then Christopher has done some. I directed the Martian Chronicles with allhigh school and middle school kids, actually some younger kids,Christopher, I think, was only 11 or 10.
No, I guess he was 12. I guess he was 11.
I did The Martian Chronicles. I directed it at Sands Theatre Center and he was involved in that.
And then at one point, the last show we did at Sands before they moved overto Athens was You Can't Take It With You.
Have you ever read that or seen it? Won the Pulitzer Prize. Oh, great comedy.
And Andrea and I played a married couple and then we used live kittens in that show.
Oh, my gosh. Our daughter, Alex,was the kitten wrangler. She literally watched the kittens backstage.
Tough job, except that one night they got diarrhea.

Kat:
[47:27] Oh, gosh.

Guest - David:
[47:29] And then Christopher, they used live fireworks on stage. They had to get permissionfrom the fire marshal, and Christopher was one of the fireworks wranglers.
So the whole family was involved in the show. So I mean, that was part of itwas that we did do creative stuff together as a family. Yeah.

Kat:
[47:45] And Andrea is so creative too.

Guest - David:
[47:48] Oh, yeah.

Kat:
[47:48] And such an amazing thinker and like she's also a teacher, so she challengesher kids to think outside the box.
It's like you two are... You're like creative gurus, like I come and see youwhen I need inspiration or...

Guest - David:
[48:02] And we've done a lot of shows together. We've done quite a few apart too,but we've done quite a few shows together.
Sometimes married, sometimes it's just totally different characters,but that's been really fun as well.

Kat:
[48:14] So, we're going to start kind of wrapping up.
What is your message to the fellowship community on embracing their creative side?

Finding joy and creativity in expressing oneself

 Guest - David:
[48:28] Figure out what kind of creativity makes you happy and what you want to sayand then have fun with it.
And then, we live in an era where it's so easy. Well, you're doing it with this.
It's so easy to get your material out there.
And one of the things I did was years ago, I've turned it into a straight play now.
I've been obsessed with the story of Johannes Kepler since 11th grade.
And at one point, we were doing a stage reading of one of the versions of theplay I wrote about him. And a name Jeff Bowen played Kepler.
He has now gone on, he did a Broadway show. He wrote it and starred in it.
It was called Title of Show.

[49:14] I wouldn't be able to teach it in school, let's just put it that way.
But it has a great song near the end. It's a four-person show,but I think it's titled Nine People's Favorite Thing.
And it's about the fact that instead of being a million or two million people's like,20th favorite thing, they'd rather be nine people's favorite thing.
And like actually, one time recently, we have Sirius radio, and we have a Broadway station.
And I was feeling a little bit down about, ah, you know, I've never gotten syndicatedand da da da da da da da da da with the comic strip.
And then that song came on. And I was like, hey, this is cool.
I know him, you know, I don't know him well, but I you know,he he performed a version of my play.
And then just the message of the song. It doesn't matter how big your audience is.
What matters is that you're saying something that maybe needs to be said andthat maybe you're bringing some joy into someone's life.
I've had teachers, including one who teaches downstairs with you too,Bob and Stephen, who actually told me the comic strip has helped her stay inteaching. And that's enough to make me fall over.

[50:30] It's helped me stay in teaching, I knew that. So, yeah, I mean, and have fun.
I wrote a book this year called The Power of Fun, and it was a reminder thatit's good for things to be flow experiences and to enjoy ourselves.
I think that's good.
And that's the thing, I want my kids to have fun. I always say that.
I mean, that's one of the reasons I teach writing and reading the way I do isthat I want them to have fun reading and writing. I don't want it to be a chore.

Kat:
[51:02] CMH That's beautiful. So, before we get into the QQQ,I will reveal it to you. Since we have David here, do we have any burning questions we want to ask him?

Overcoming creative burnout and breaking through creative fatigue

 Stephen:
[51:19] How do you avoid creative burnout? As a creativist, when we were all creative,how do you get past the creative fatigue and feeling like, okay,now I just have to do this?
How do you see past that brick wall?

Guest - David:
[51:38] Well, with the comic strip, well, it's interesting because the hard part withthe comic strip is not the drawing.
And in fact, in 2015, my son finally talked me into making my own font.
So I don't do the lettering anymore, I type it in my own – I have a font that's my own lettering.
And then I type it, set the margins, print it.
And that's enabled me to do more theater. For instance, I couldn't have hadtime to play Harold Hill in The Music Man when I did – if I would still do itdoing the lettering myself because lettering takes forever and gave me a hand cramp.
But I did realize the writing itself, like actually coming up with six ideas a week.
Was starting to wear me out because it's the hardest. You're not writing thatmany words with a comic strip, although sometimes I'm way too wordy.
But every comic strip is supposed to have some kind of irony.
You got to have a joke every six times a week. You got to come up with something.

Robert:
[52:35] It seems a lot like poetry where you have to be very precise.

Guest - David:
[52:38] Yeah. It's not that many words, but it's harder. There's the thing my son quotessometimes that's, I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not havethe time because it's harder to something shorter really.
And so, I decided to downsize and I was going to go just webcomic.
And then it was really funny, it was spring break when I just had decided todo this because it was in March. The strip started March 22nd, 2000.
So, I had just ended it at 18 years. I told the news journal, I'm going to wrap it up.
And I did sort of a wrap up, but I decided to do it as a webcomic,which most of those run three times a week.
And then I just happened to be walking past the Beacon offices, the DeLand Beacon.
And I walked in and said, I'm out of the news journal, but I'm going to be doing it three times a week.
And it turned out they only run three comic strips a week for each comic strip,and they run them as a block.
And they were like, oh, yeah. So like 15 minutes later, I walked out,and without missing a beat, I ended in the news journal one week and startedin the Beacon the next week.
So I mean, that was part of it is I had to decide, And it was hard because I love doing it.
So I had to decide when to give it up in favor of having more time to do other kinds of writing.
So sometimes you have to give some things up.

[53:57] But here's the thing, when I decided to end it in the beacon,I was going to really end it.
And Christopher helped me write an ending, and it was done, and it felt right.
And I lasted two months. And then I was like, I still have things to say.
And I had started experimenting with a Sunday format, and I decided I can comeup with 52 ideas a year, and it will give me something to do at faculty meetings.

Kat:
[54:28] So... Where you get most of your inspiration.

Guest - David:
[54:30] Yeah, really. So, like two months after I ended it, I brought it back Sundays.
And that was the other interesting thing, do you know about Patreon? Yeah, right?
I lost barely any Patreon people. I mean, I announced it, I was ending the strip,but I was going to keep doing reruns and I was going to be blogging.
And hardly anybody withdrew their support. And I was like, well,I kind of feel a response.
It's not that much money, but I was like, I kind of feel responsible to thesepeople who are still contributing.
So, it's been a really nice balance because I have been able to do more.
That's been a good kind of renewal. I don't feel the same pressure.
It's fun again. It was starting to turn not as much fun. So,I think you have to change things up sometimes.

Introducing Season Two's New Format

 Stephen:
[55:17] Here we are talking about changing things up in season two.

Guest - David:
[55:20] Yeah, see? So, you got yourself fresh.

Kat:
[55:22] Yeah, we did. Okay. Are we ready for the QQQ? Okay.
So, the QQQ, there are four core questions we're going to ask you,and you have to answer them in one word to one sentence.

Guest - David:
[55:35] Okay.

Stephen:
[55:36] So like- QQQ stands for?

Kat:
[55:38] Quick question quandary.

Guest - David:
[55:39] Ah, okay. So there's- I'll try.

Kat:
[55:41] Okay, so like, I mean, if we ask you to elaborate, you can, but you know,obviously. But if not, just- Yes.

Guest - David:
[55:48] Get it out quick and shut up.

Kat:
[55:49] Get it out quick. There's four.

Stephen:
[55:50] Okay.

Kat:
[55:50] Yeah, there's four questions.

Stephen:
[55:52] Say your piece.

Kat:
[55:53] And then we have a bonus question for everyone. Okay, so what is something you have let go of?

The Struggle of Being in the Newspaper

 Guest - David:
[56:01] Being in the newspaper, that was hard.

Kat:
[56:05] So the desire to be in the newspaper.

Guest - David:
[56:07] Yeah. Yeah.

Kat:
[56:09] What is something you collect?

A Collector's Dream: Complete Comic Strip Collections

 Guest - David:
[56:16] Books.

Robert:
[56:19] They're in his class. I would love to see his house.

Guest - David:
[56:22] Particular, well, in Android is too, particularly, well, I mean,I've stopped now, but complete collections of comic strips.
I have the complete Peanuts, complete Farside, complete Calvin and Hobbes.
Which 50 years of Peanuts is 25 volumes. It's a lot.

Kat:
[56:37] Where do you have space for them?

Guest - David:
[56:38] Those are in the studio. I have a shutout back behind the carport.

Stephen:
[56:42] The Calvin Hobbes collection was... It's 19 pounds. Yeah.

Kat:
[56:45] Oh my gosh.

Stephen:
[56:45] Wow, it's huge.

Guest - David:
[56:46] It's huge.

Kat:
[56:47] Okay. What is something you look forward to in the future?

Retirement and Creative Pursuits

 Guest - David:
[56:55] Retirement?

Robert:
[56:57] Yes, that's fair enough.

Kat:
[56:58] Yeah.

Guest - David:
[56:59] And more time to have fun and more time to be purely creative,to just do the creativity thing more.

Stephen:
[57:11] So... Because you can.

Guest - David:
[57:13] Because I'll have the time to do it. Yeah, and I'm gonna be retiring,I mean, depending on when I, I mean, I can go seven more years after this yearbecause I'm in drop, but at that point, my hand will be forced,and I still won't be, by today's standards, that old.
So we were watching Mick Jagger on the news this morning. He's 80 and he's stillstrutting around on the stage like he's 20-something.

Kat:
[57:35] That's Barry Manilow, too.

Guest - David:
[57:36] Yeah.

Stephen:
[57:37] Oh, gosh.

Kat:
[57:39] What did that concert a couple years ago?

Guest - David:
[57:40] He looks like a gelfling now, though. He's kind of weird.

Kat:
[57:45] All right. What is something you have read that has made all the difference?

Guest - David:
[57:51] The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer is the best teacher book I have ever read.
And it is not a how-to book, it's how teaching comes out of your identity,which they are, you know, and it's about,he calls it living divided no more, that you're not gonna live or teach in away that goes against who you are.
And just some of the concepts in it have made a difference to,I think you've seen the poem at the front of my room, the Robert Frost,The Secret. That has been- KS.

Kat:
[58:29] Can you say the poem to us?

Guest - David:
[58:30] CB. It's the shortest Robert Frost poem. I thought it was an excerpt and it's the whole poem.
We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.
And the idea that there's not always one right answer but that we can all havedifferent perspectives on things and that there's mystery at the center of everythingis really important to me.

Kat:
[58:58] I think in this era where we're banning books and we're stifling and quelching,you know, perspective. I think it's so important that we can live in kind ofan age of uncertainty and we can kind of just allow ideas to flow and appreciateother perspectives and ideas.
And that's, that's where true knowledge lies.

Guest - David:
[59:21] Exactly.

Kat:
[59:22] In the middle, right? Where we all dance around and say, we know,we know, we know, but, but we don't know.

Guest - David:
[59:28] And what I, what I parent with at the beginning of the school year is they dothe secret and I have them annotate what they think it means.
And then they share in small groups what they think it means.
And then we start sharing around the room.
And the first time I did it, I went, I suddenly had this revelation,wow, we're enacting the poem.
So then I added to it the poem about the six blind men and the elephant. Have you ever read that?
And each one, and then how did the two poems relate? And we talked about allof us have our each individual perspective on life, the universe,and everything, but no, but none of us have the whole picture.
I mean, I think that's part of what it means to walk humbly is to realize youdon't have all the answers and you shouldn't be worshiping your own certainty.
I think that's the biggest idol of our time is certainty.
So, I feel that's not in the standards, but it's an IB theory of knowledge kindof thing and I think it really matters.

Kat:
[1:00:25] Yeah.

Guest - David:
[1:00:26] So...

Kat:
[1:00:27] That's awesome.

Guest - David:
[1:00:27] But Parker Palmer.

Kat:
[1:00:28] Okay.

Guest - David:
[1:00:28] Courage to Teach. I'm gonna reread it soon for like the eighth time.

Kat:
[1:00:31] Well, we'll reread it with you. The fellowship will reread it with you.
Maybe that'll be... We can invite our community members to read it too.
And we can have kind of a...

Stephen:
[1:00:40] Our first book study.

Kat:
[1:00:42] Our first book study. Fellowship book study, The Courage to Teach.
Okay. So this is the communal thematic question that everybody's going to get.
I'll start with you, David, go to you, Bob, then Steven, and then I'll pitch in at the end.
I feel the most creative when... David?

The Game is Afoot: Finding Creative Inspiration

 Guest - David:
[1:01:05] I'm... That's a really good question. I feel the most creative when...
I know I have something I want to say, or I have the kernel of an idea,but I'm not sure how to execute it.
And then all of a sudden, it occurs to me how I could make it work,and then I sit down to write it or draw it and make it work.
I just had this with the Halloween strip, and it's an idea.
It's pretty harsh about the system, but I'm really excited.
So, it's sort of like when Holmes says the game's afoot, it's that moment whereI wasn't sure how I was going to say what I wanted to say and then all of asudden I know how I'm going to say it and I have to execute it.

Kat:
[1:01:49] And the game is afoot.

Guest - David:
[1:01:50] And the game is afoot, yeah.

Kat:
[1:01:51] Oh, I love that. I love that. All right, Bobbers, I feel the most creative when?

Robert:
[1:01:57] It's honestly, when you told me you were going to ask me this,I'm like, I don't know the last, I don't feel creative anymore.
And my own sense of my identity, how I used to be creative, but presently I'dhave to say it has something to do with Charlotte.
So whenever Charlotte is doingsomething arts and crafts and I can go into her room and do it with her.
It's just a wonderful feeling. Time kind of like ceases, right?
And you just get in this zone where it's like, I'm making caterpillars out oflittle fuzzy balls, you know?
There's so much joy to be had in the fact that I also get to do it with my daughter.
She is like the creative, well, Stacy's pretty creative too.
And Jamie is in his own way, but- Yes, it's just you that's in the funk.
Yeah, I guess it's me that's in the funk, right.
But like, I guess I just presently, I enjoy it through others and I'm doing it with others.

Kat:
[1:03:02] That's beautiful. That's really sweet though. Steven, I feel the most creative when?

The Unlimited Curiosity and Limited Ability

 Stephen:
[1:03:11] Hmm when my creativity or when my curiosity is Just beyond my ability hmm my curiosity is,Unlimited but my ability is limited Knowing that there is more than my abilityin my curiosity pushes me to keep going and trying and learning Oh my gosh, I love that so much,That's awesome.

Guest - David:
[1:03:39] Yeah, it's like a flow experience.

Kat:
[1:03:40] Yeah, and you're propelled forward because it's like an unknown factor,right? Like how far can I go in this?

Stephen:
[1:03:48] Because one, the creativity will always or my curiosity will always be more than my ability.

Kat:
[1:03:54] Right.

Stephen:
[1:03:55] I'll always be curious. I'm a curious being. My decisions are not always basedon my curiosity though, and my fulfillment suffers as a result.
So I'm most fulfilled in that creative mindset where I'm learning to go beyondwhat I currently have, what I currently know into that unknown, that space, that void.

Kat:
[1:04:18] Yeah. I love that. So I feel the most creative when I think I tap into my passions.
So things that are that I'm excited about.
I mean, obviously, that that's, you know, some your passion,but I mean, things that I'm,like, I kind of resonate with, with what you said,like things that I want to explore, and abilities that I want to explore,I get excited about and one thing that I've realized is that I will be morepassionate or more creative for other people than I will be for myself.
And so like for instance like throwing a party like I'm I wouldn't go to thatextent for for me, but I'm gonna do it for other people.
So creativity is deeply connected to community for me.
And I find my passion in, you know, like, you know, when we do our PLC days,you know, like making the muffins and doing the templates and things like that.
Like, I just get great pleasure and motivation for doing it for other people.
So that's kind of where I feel the most creative.

Guest - David:
[1:05:36] Can I add something?

Kat:
[1:05:37] Yes, please.

Guest - David:
[1:05:38] Because the other time I feel most creative is when with teaching I can seemy students aren't able to do something.
And so, I think really hard, sometimes for years, and then I finally figureout how to get them to do the cognitive practice they need to do it.
So, you know about incident irony, right?

Teaching and the Power of Creative Solutions

 [1:06:01] Students write terrible endings to short stories. They're terrible.
 Like, I woke up and it was all a dream or died.
 And I finally came up with a way. I mean, it wasn't until I got to the high school again in 2016.
 All I do now is as a bell ringer, I give them a scenario like you're on a train,your character's on a train, a gasoline truck is parked across the track,they try to save themselves or everyone, what happens?
 And they have to come up with as many ironic twists as they can in three minutes.
 And then I just give them scenario after scenario and they practice thinking ironically.
 And lo and behold, their endings get better. But I mean, And that's been like,that's what I try to do every year, one really good idea.
 And I just wonder, with trying to make all teachers teach the same way,how many fantastic creative ideas have been lost?
 I wonder how many I haven't had because of the pressure to conform and do,just do what you're told and don't think about it.
 
 Stephen:
[1:07:03] Amen.

Guest - David:
[1:07:04] So I just thought, since we're, you know, it pertains to teaching.

Kat:
[1:07:08] Yeah, for sure.

Guest - David:
[1:07:10] But what you all said made me think of that.

Kat:
[1:07:12] Well, David, this has been such an honor and such a pleasure just to be ableto have this undivided time with you.

Guest - David:
[1:07:20] Oh, it's been fun. Thank you for having me.

Kat:
[1:07:22] Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for joining us on the fellowship.
And if anybody has any questions or would like to comment to David,please join us on Facebook or Instagram.
And And we'll, if you're interested in the courage to teach book study,we're going to have that in effect soon, so.

Stephen:
[1:07:42] Send us an email at questionsatthefellowship.com and maybe we'll roll that out.

Kat:
[1:07:48] Yep, absolutely. Thanks so much, David.

Guest - David:
[1:07:50] Thanks. It's been fun.

Kat:
[1:07:53] Thanks for joining us today as we talked with David Finkel on the topic of creativity.
For more about David, check out the episode description where you can find linksto his website, social media profiles, and creative projects.
If you are interested in joining our courage to teach book study,check out our Facebook or Instagram for more information.
We are so glad you tuned in today, and we hope you join us next time on The Fellowship.