My EdTech Life
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My EdTech Life
Episode 320: Zachary Stier & Tom Rendon
Episode 320: Creativity in Young Children: What Science Tells Us and Our Hearts Know with Dr. Zachary Stier & Tom Rendon
In this episode of My EdTech Life, I’m joined by returning guest Dr. Zachary Stier and first-time guest Tom Rendon to explore their new book Creativity in Young Children: What Science Tells Us and Our Hearts Know. We dive deep into the intersection of creativity, child development, advocacy, and play—discussing what it means to truly nurture creativity in early learning environments and why it’s time to center it, not sideline it.
Whether you're a parent, educator, policymaker, or lifelong learner, this episode will challenge your assumptions, spark new ideas, and reignite your belief in the power of curiosity and imagination.
⏱️ Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome & intros
04:20 – Why creativity matters in education
09:45 – Story behind The Power of Play
14:10 – Using creativity as advocacy
21:00 – Designing inclusive classrooms that invite belonging
28:40 – Play and emotional growth
36:00 – Classroom experiences that shaped the book
42:15 – Actionable strategies for creative learning
50:00 – Final reflections & book access
53:10 – Wrap-up
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Hello everybody and welcome to another great episode of my EdTech Life. Thank you so much for joining us on this wonderful day and, wherever you are joining us from around the world, thank you, as always, for all of your support. We appreciate all the likes, the shares, the follows. Thank you so much for engaging with your support. We appreciate all the likes, the shares, the follows. Thank you so much for engaging with our content and thank you so much for your wonderful feedback, as that helps us continue to bring you some amazing conversations that will continue to help us grow in the education space. And today I am really excited to welcome a two-time guest and a first-time guest. You know we're gonna be talking about one of my favorite topics, which is amplifying creativity, and these gentlemen have written a book and I'll let them tell you a little bit more about that. But I would love to welcome to the show Zachary Steer and Tom Rendon. How are you doing today?
Dr. Zachary Stier:I'm doing great. Thank you for having us Great.
Tom Rendon:Thank you. Thank you, fonz, appreciate being on the show.
Fonz Mendoza:Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us and, like I said, zachary being a two-time guest, and one of the things that I do want to reiterate to all my to anybody listening or to previous guests, if you're listening to this when I tell you like, hey guys, whenever, once you're a guest of my EdTech life, you're listening to this when I tell you like, hey guys, once you're a guest of my EdTech Life, you're always welcome back. This is an example of that. Like I mentioned, zachary, he's a two-time guest and today he's going to be talking about this wonderful project that him and Tom have been working on. But before we get into the meat of the project, for those of you that are listening and are not familiar with Zachary's and Tom's work just yet, I'm going to go ahead and let them introduce themselves and give you a little bit of context of what they're doing in the education space. So we'll start with Zachary. Zachary, can you give us a little introduction?
Dr. Zachary Stier:yeah, well again, thank you so much for letting me be on as a guest, and my background has been for well over a decade in public libraries, and that's the space that I am really excited and continue to be excited in bringing forth how we look at learning and creativity within informal learning spaces such as public libraries. So it's yeah, it's part of what I do. Obviously, I'm an author and I do teach some courses at the University of Illinois in the School of Library and Information Science.
Fonz Mendoza:Excellent. Well, thank you, zachary and Tom. Now to you, our first-time guest.
Tom Rendon:Give us a little brief introduction and what your context is within the education space and I've written a number of articles, resources, and now this is actually my second book. My first book was called Saving Play, so it was all about the importance of play in early childhood education and that's really been the focus of a lot of my writing and work has been around early childhood education, particularly at the level of early childhood systems, governance, collaboration efforts, socio-emotional development, young children, that kind of thing. I'm also a consultant with two Head Start National Technical Assistance Centers the National Center for Healthy Rural Health and Safety and also the National Center for Parent-Family Community Engagement. So that kind of keeps me also involved in things. But in that role serving as a consultant Excellent Well, definitely you On lots of subjects.
Fonz Mendoza:Yeah, I was going to say both of you definitely keep very busy and I know, Tom, I just met you recently and Zachary, we were just having a conversation and, like I said, I really love the work that you all put out and I'm really excited to talk about this, and especially you, Tom, right now that you hit on a couple of things there as far as the creativity and the play, you know, in young children. So the title of the book is called Creativity in Young Children, which really goes to straightforward and to the point. So I want to talk and I want to get started here with a couple of questions. So now you call this, you know what would be something like a journey in curiosity and about creativity. So I want to start with you, Tom. What was the initial spark about this topic in curiosity, you know, creative play in young children and the collaboration? How did that come about?
Tom Rendon:Well, it actually started with Zach, so I mean he can fill in that part of the story. But I think he had this idea. I think some of it had come out of some research he had done, I believe, for his dissertation. And he kind of approached me and said hey, why don't we do a presentation? And this was right at the start of COVID.
Tom Rendon:So we had an online presentation we put together around creativity and sort of the role of creativity, and you know, it was sort of our kind of us dipping our toe into it, and but I think part of what makes it made it an adventure was and we even say this the very first sentence of the book is we should not be writing this book, which seems a little counterintuitive. And then we talk a little bit about why we went ahead and did it anyway. And I think the reason we did it anyway was really two driving forces. One was curiosity, like we really just wanted to know more about it. And then, once we knew more, we kind of put that together and said, hey, maybe some of this would be worth sharing with other people.
Tom Rendon:And the other part of it, I think, is, you know, is courage. Like sometimes we're afraid to speak out because we don't feel like we know enough, we're not an expert enough. Or we look around us and say, well, this person knows much more than I do, or this person is a much better. Or we look around us and say, well, this person knows much more than I do, or this person is a much better expert at this than I am. And yet I think anytime anybody reappropriates or rethinks new ideas, they kind of make it their own. And that, in fact and this, I think, is the point I really want to underscore is our process of writing the book was in fact, a creative process and in writing the book we learned that much more about creativity and then also put that into it and that sort of snowballing effect is something we discovered throughout all of our research as we looked into creativity.
Fonz Mendoza:Excellent.
Dr. Zachary Stier:Zachary, how about yourself? Can you fill in some of those gaps there? Like Tom said that you know, as far as seeing this project, yeah, tom and I already knew each other for quite a few years, but it was during that baseball game that I think we connected strongly on Mr Rogers, on Fred Rogers. I had not known that about him and his. You know his connection to, to that world and I don't know it's a spark just happened and, um, I left that game thinking we need to, we need to circle back to that conversation, especially with Mr Rogers neighborhood, because it is truly there's many different themes in that neighborhood, but curiosity and creativity is our two strong ones.
Dr. Zachary Stier:But I'm also coming from this from a space of experience in how my own learning is and having a learning disability, and wanting to ensure that we're honing in on that differentiated learning trajectory, that there are many ways to see the world and there are many ways to do things creatively, and so I wanted to be able to investigate that and something I will also say that brings, I think, strength to the book, for you know, tom and I being co-authors is our different backgrounds, right, is you know, in that formal learning space and the informal learning space. How do we build that bridge together? Because learning and creativity is universal. It's not confined to a specific environment.
Fonz Mendoza:I love it. Well, this is great because it kind of gives me a little bit of insight as far as your perspectives and how both of you kind of came into this project and kind of also at the same time, not only digging more into the topic and learning more about it, but through your own individual perspectives, also bringing that and your voice together. And I know, zachary and I, prior to recording, we're talking about that storytelling process and how we learn and how we share the knowledge and the learning that we do. And I think that the way that I'm seeing you two connect here your worlds and bringing this together to create this book is really exciting and I'm definitely looking forward to reading the book. For sure.
Fonz Mendoza:But I did get to see a little preview of the book. Thank you, zachary, for sending me that link book too. As well as we kind of get into the core concepts here is in the book you state that creativity is so critical to the way humans grow and learn that it should be at the center and not the periphery of early childhood education. So I'll start with you, zach. Can you expand on why you believe that creativity deserves to be at the center of learning?
Dr. Zachary Stier:Yeah, I mean the way I see it. Creativity, you know, connects to a person's identity. In that way, it's a discovery process to not only those aspects of learning, whether it be in a classroom, at the library, but also how you know what their process is and how they're seeing the world and what narrative they want to share with that. I think it really creates a catalyst for a conversation, especially within that space when individuals may I wouldn't necessarily say frustrated, but maybe they're confused as to why they may not be, you know, connecting to a certain concept or a certain way on how to solve something or complete an activity. But when we take the time and initiative and we allow ourselves to listen to that narrative of how someone is seeing the world, how someone is able to achieve whatever they're wanting to achieve, we begin to realize that that's their individuality and we need to lean in on that. And, yeah, that's how I take that particular statement that you had just read. Excellent, tom, how about you?
Tom Rendon:Well, I guess, just to build a little bit on what Zach's saying, I mean, I consider myself to have some amount of knowledge and expertise in the area of child development and interestingly enough, I think the last chapter we wrote in the book is actually the second chapter, which is one which sort of unpacks child development from a perspective of creativity. And in fact we go through some of the hallmarks of child development, through some of the hallmarks of child development, particularly as articulated by developmentally appropriate practices document from the National Association for the Education of Young Children, and then begin to talk about the connections we see between these hallmarks of child development and the hallmarks of and what we see as the connections with creativity and the creative process. And then we go back and look at a number of the pioneers of early childhood development theory, so people like Maria Montessori and John Dooley and Jean Piaget and Vygotsky and all these names which early childhood educators are very familiar with and sort of looked at. What did they say and how did what they said connect back to creativity? So that really we said that really needs to be front and center, it needs to be in the beginning, because it really creates this foundation for the point that we made, this foundation for the point that we made, and that I hope that people hear that phrase really as an opening of a door to begin to rethink and re-explore, because one of the things that we come around to in one of the later chapters is the whole idea that when people think about creativity in young children and we saw this in a number of books that we looked at that were on that very subject of creativity and young children and most of those books were focused on things like, you know, art activities you can do with children and music or dance or you know, any kind of creative, like classical creative expression.
Tom Rendon:And what we wanted to say is you know, actually creativity is much more fundamental than that. It connects to our consciousness, which means it connects every way we are aware of the world around us and process that world around us. That's why it becomes so integral to child development. And I'll just make one last point. The book is you, the title is Creativity and Young Children, but the subtitle is what Science Tells Us and Our Hearts Know. So it was about trying to connect both head and heart, and we think creativity does that. So it becomes a sort of unifying force, that rather we think that, well, here are cognitive skills or here are social, emotional skills and well, actually, creativity starts to connect all that stuff together. So it can, it can become kind of a unifier.
Tom Rendon:And I remember one of the lessons I learned really early on when I was studying child development is this this sort of whole child notion that you know, the child doesn't come to us as um, as a cognitive being or emotional being or as a behavioral being. It comes all of that's together. It's only when we analyze or look at what a child is doing and try to categorize or try to understand it that we begin to pull it apart. But that pulling apart in some ways is unnatural. That's not the way the child experiences it. They're experiencing all this stuff together. There's no interaction way. The child experiences they're experiencing all this stuff together. There's no interaction that doesn't have an emotional content or a cognitive, intellectual content. And so that's where creativity can become really key.
Dr. Zachary Stier:And, if it's okay, I want to pick up on something here. One other chapter that we focused on was the work from Uri Braafenbrenner, who is famous for the ecological theory, but what's unique about that is it went through an evolution and he then created the bioecological model, and why that's unique within the context of creativity is connecting.
Dr. Zachary Stier:What Tom is saying is that bio meaning life, the individual, and, you know, ecology meaning the environment. They equally have influence on an individual and looking at things within the ecosystem in that model demonstrates that you know the child, let's say, is at the center, and then what's built around that child and that bi-directional relationship right that everyone has a responsibility to ensure, and something that Tom and I found which is really great is the child also has significant influence and we need to lean in on that as well.
Fonz Mendoza:Yeah, you know, and that's something that's very important that kind of brings to mind and into light a lot of the things. You know, being in education for 18 years, I have seen education change, even from the time that I was, you know, coming up in grade school, where I felt that I had a little bit more opportunities to be creative while still learning. And then all of a sudden, you know, as you get into high school and so on, you know I got into a lot of things as far as creativity, you know, being in band and chess club and doing all of those things, things as far as creativity, you know, being in band and chess club and doing all of those things. Now, kind of seeing it from the inside, you know, and being in education for 18 years, now one thing that I've noticed is that that creativity kind of is no longer there. And I'm speaking here just for myself and I don't know if you've experienced this in your state, but I know here we're very, you know, state testing heavy, and so one thing that I do notice is that from the from about third grade to about ninth grade actually because that's when they stopped taking their state tests of opportunity that is given to a lot of students to really express their creativity, because it seems like everything is just curriculum go go go, state testing practice go, go, go, and we're losing a lot of those creative components and allowing students to be able to express themselves or even express their learning in a different way, or even discourse in classrooms. So I think myself too, I kind of fall in line with what you're saying is being able to allow that creativity in the classroom can allow me, as a teacher, to know my students more and to play to their strengths and allow them to learn in a way that is still very creative, touches on their personal, I guess, modalities of the way that they like to express their learning.
Fonz Mendoza:But as long as I get to see that there is content mastery, I'm completely okay with it, because that's the way that I would run my classroom. I would tell my students here's a choice board, and this I'm talking about maybe 10 years ago, when I was last in the classroom. Here's a choice board. However, you love to share your learning with me in a creative way. Here are your choices, and if there's something that isn't there that you'd like to share, just let me know and I'll be more than happy to let you do it that way, and it was just amazing how the students were so engaged. Even my absenteeism in my class was really low, because nobody wanted to miss class, because you allow for that creativity to be amplified, and I think that's something that is very, very important. That play, that discovery, that curiosity which I was telling Zachary, growing up, as, english being my second language, I would sit there watching shows like Pinwheel, mr Rogers, square One. I was watching Sesame Street and reading Rainbow and a lot of those shows really inspired my creativity when I was little and just being very curious about things, and I think that's something that's very important.
Fonz Mendoza:Well, I want to ask you now the way that you broke up this book. There is a specific section that I want to talk about, which is the seven big ideas about creativity, which is part two of the book. So I know you've organized your research into these big ideas and I'll start with you, zachary. Could you share which of these ideas was most or most surprised you as you were doing your research for the book, as you were doing your research for the book? And, if you don't mind, before you answer that just for our audience members because they may not have the book in hand yet, which we'll definitely link here, in that book, but we'll definitely link it in the show notes so everybody can get their copy.
Fonz Mendoza:But your big ideas number one is creativity as a life force. Number two, the neuroscience of creativity. Number three, creativity and neurodiversity. Number four, creativity as curriculum. Number five, creativity in formal and informal settings. Number six, creativity and diversity, equity and inclusion. And number seven creativity and trauma. As you wrote this book and doing the research here, which of these seven big ideas just really just wowed you, or you kind of went in deep and found something enlightening within it?
Dr. Zachary Stier:I knew you were going to ask a question. That's going to be tricky, and I say tricky in a good way, because you know there are several chapters that I truly enjoyed investing in. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say this for today, where I'm at with this, it would have to be the last one for me and that is creativity and trauma. Um, and the reason is I've invested some of my work as a children's librarian. You know social work in libraries has become very prevalent.
Dr. Zachary Stier:In understanding, you know all of the challenges that individuals face, especially with their lived experiences, and you know, let's say, being unhoused or food insecurity, and you know some of transportation needs and the like.
Dr. Zachary Stier:But diving into creativity and trauma and knowing that you know, based on those lived experiences and those challenges, that there is an impact there I don't necessarily know if the word is stifle, but when individuals are faced with circumstances that can leave lasting impacts and effects, for me, investing in that chapter was to really dive into not only the neuroscience, how that, you know, can shift an individual's understanding of themselves, the belief in themselves, and that you know trauma can have lasting effects not only you know, based on some of those challenging areas of equity, but also, you know, in their learning and development. And there was a lot of crossover in that chapter and I was happy that we put that in the last chapter because I I was able to see a lot of connections, you know, and, and that that one of the strongest connections is what Tom alluded to, which is, you know, head and heart as well. So that would be mine as of today, would be my, one of the strongest chapters that I enjoyed investing in. Excellent Thank you for sharing Tom.
Fonz Mendoza:how about yourself? Well?
Tom Rendon:I, I'm like like, like Zach, I'm going to say it's a little bit unfair question. It's like which of these is your favorite child? You know as a parent, but I'm going to pick a minute. But you also added the descriptor, of which one surprised me the most. And I think the one that surprised me the most was the very first one, which is creativity as a life force. The most was the very first one, which is creativity as a life force.
Tom Rendon:And I was actually in the process of writing the book, we interviewed about six different known experts in the subject of creativity and we interviewed them and I was actually kind of intrigued by this idea of the life force and and and so I ran in by one of them and he goes oh, that's what's up and that's a bunch of nonsense, she said. And so I said, oh, okay, you know, and I said, well, we'll have to be really careful with that one. But then the more I dug into it, the more I found that it actually explained a lot. And the other thing that I find again just kind of going back to this wider theme of you know, writing the book was a creative. We took a creative approach to write a book about creativity which is like, how else do you do it? But like so much in creativity, it was an accident that we really stumbled across this idea of the life force. I was doing some research into PIJ and beginning to try to figure out, like well, what did he say about creativity? And because I was making the connection between creativity as the way in which we construct meaning and information and knowledge. Well, that's very much akin to constructivist theory, which of course Piaget was sort of. You know that was very solidly in his contribution to the child development field, and so I was doing some research on it and discovered that actually Puget's first area of study was biology. So he was a scientist, a biological scientist studying life forms.
Tom Rendon:Quite influential was a book called Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson, who was a French philosopher around the 20th century, and this book was highly influential at the time, and in there he posits this idea Henri Bergson does of what he calls and I really like the French here it's élan, vital, so vital élan, and actually élan is an English word if you look it up, and it sort of means panache or flare. So I just sort of enjoyed thinking about all that because I really love words and I love the connotations that come out of words, and so this idea of the élan vital and this vital energy force that connects directly with life itself. And part of what Henri Bergson was doing was he was criticizing people who had taken Darwin's idea of evolution and saying this is a mechanistic process. Right, it just happens. Natural selection is a mechanistic process. And he goes I don't think it works that way, like it doesn't seem as mechanistic as you think it was. So he was actually trying to levy a critique in it, and while he doesn't go so far as to say, well, there must be some kind of divine creator behind all this, he kind of suggests that as a possible way to explain what's happening. But he breaks down exactly what happens during that evolutionary change and what he says that makes it possible is this life force that's in us.
Tom Rendon:And so then we really, in that chapter, really unpack that idea. And of course he saw it as the key to what evolution really is about, which is creativity. It's about the emergence of new life through change and, as Zach was pointing out, with our introduction of Uri Brontenbrenner, with the environment, the environment in fact plays a really, really critical role in all of that, and so part of what we talk about in the book, then, is what happens when we, if we think that children being creative is children's life force exhibiting itself. How does that change the way, then, that we might support children's learning or add to children's learning or be better teachers? And I think it really comes down to a lot of the things you were mentioning before about how we might need to reintroduce that, and some of the rote learning processes could get broken open by really thinking about this life force. That's why we thought it was so fundamental, because we then could allude to it in all the other big ideas, since that's one of the reasons we need it first.
Fonz Mendoza:Excellent, and that was great, tom, that you mentioned that, you know, because that was actually my next question, but you've already answered it, which is great, talking about life force, but I want to give Zachary a chance. Zachary, is there anything that you'd love to add to that, because that was definitely one of my big particular ideas that I was intrigued by as creativity as a life force. What was your experience through that research and what surprised you about? You know, your research in that chapter.
Dr. Zachary Stier:Yeah, you know, one thing that I have always appreciated about co-authoring this book is being able to be introduced, to kind of sit back and immerse back in that time when you know some of that language was obviously a little bit more I wouldn't say advanced, but you know it's a little bit different. We don't talk necessarily like that as much anymore. But for me, why I believe that that chapter needed to be first is it just again circles back to the individual and that they have a driving force within them and helping them to kind of discover that. And that's why I thought the foundational theorists that we included in that chapter were the right choices and you know there are others obviously but those definitely were catalysts in this area of learning and really connecting that and really helping to evolve the next chapters and figuring out how do we sort of connect each one to that life force. So that was really my journey is to really again see that connection between all of them as we continue to evolve our book.
Fonz Mendoza:Well, what I love about the book and just again, like I said, seeing just the chapters and a little bit of that preview is just again, for me, in reading what I read, it just seems very straightforward, very research-based, but also practical in a lot of areas, and I found myself just connecting with a lot of what I read, Again, just because of my experience growing up as an only child and having to be creative in a way and I know I've mentioned my story a lot of episodes, you know, growing up being a language broker for my parents and obviously having to be very creative and learning quickly and learning how to translate and just being able to navigate the space as an English language learner.
Fonz Mendoza:Growing up that way and helping parents, my parents, you know you have to, definitely, you know, improvise, adapt and overcome, you know, through a lot of situations. And so, as I was reading, you know what I, what I'm available to see, and you know a lot of these chapters I'm to ask you, you know and I'll start off with you, zach, you know, because I know you talked a little bit about this too, and then we'll move over to Tom so how exactly does nurturing creativity help develop these crucial areas you know, such as social-emotional that emotional, excuse me, let me rephrase that. So you mentioned the connection between creativity and both cognitive and social emotional learning. So my question is how exactly does nurturing creativity help develop these other crucial areas?
Dr. Zachary Stier:I think what the big word that comes to my mind first is relationship. Right that they are, and we're not looking at each of those in separate silos. I mean, we have to be able to understand each of them individually, but the goal is is that we want to create that bridge of a relationship Going into this book. Yes, we needed to ensure that we were focusing on you know neurology and you know spending a great deal of time and working, you know, helping the reader to understand the different parts of the brain. You know that chemistry, all of that.
Dr. Zachary Stier:But what I also found exciting is to work in that space of social emotional learning. It is a space that I think needs more attention, and there are, you know, a variety of frameworks that you can look at, but what is crucial in social emotional learning is you look at it within nurturing of self, nurturing with others, such as through play, which is something that I know Tom knows a lot about. It's something that we did focus on. And how do we also build social emotional capacity within our environment, within our community, and so it really is a blend again, of those ecosystems and, as well as you know, our connection to neurological influence, cognitive influence and how you know, children are able to operate and see the world around them.
Fonz Mendoza:Excellent.
Tom Rendon:Tom. Well, I want to. Before I do, I want to just make a brief comment, because we're talking about growing up as a dual language learner and what that meant, and I think it's actually directly connected with what we know about creativity as well, and that is that we know that dual language learners have greater cognitive flexibility, not least because they're switching back and forth between different languages. And it is exact. What we discovered was, rather than there being, like I think we sometimes have this idea in in in in brain science that people live in like, oh, if I'm going to do something, well, a certain part of my brain is going to light up, and if I do something else, so like, I have a language part of my brain and I have a memory part of my brain, part of my brain, and I have a memory part of my brain. And it's not that that's not true. But what they're finding is more important than the location of these things. It's the interconnectivity between them. So it's the flexibility, and they've actually done studies that show that people that have a not to get too nerdy on you, but you have two sides of the hemisphere, right at the brain and in the middle is something called the corpus callosum, and the corpus callosum is really just a massive net of different nerve connections between the right and left hemisphere of the brain, and what they have found is that the smaller that is in terms of literal closeness, the more creative people are likely to be, because interaction and connectivity is apparently easier, faster, more fluid, more flexible. So I think that actually dual language learners ought to have a natural tendency. I'm not saying I don't want to stereotype anyone in particular, because these are really really broad, vague generalizations but the fact remains that flexible minds actually encourage that kind of creativity, and when you were talking about your own background as a dual language learner, it made me think about its direct connection actually to creativity. And when you were talking about your own background as a dualized learner, it made me think about its direct connection actually to creativity.
Tom Rendon:Getting back to the question that you were asking, which was how do we see creativity supporting cognitive development and supporting social emotional development, I think some of the same things that I just said can really relate that, and that is that cognitive development is really about the development of new ideas, the development or, as I was talking about before under sort of constructivist theory, the development, the construction of meaning and the construction of new knowledge. So the idea is that when I teach a child something, so if, when, the idea is that when I teach a child something, that child may receive what I said. But what ends up? When you say, so, what did you learn about ABC? Because I just taught that to you it's not going to come back exactly the way you said. It's going to be changed. They're going to hear some parts more than other parts. They're going to emphasize some things more than so. It's like well, how can I give somebody something and then they give it back to me and it looks different. How does that happen? Well, that's because I was constructing it, I was creating knowledge from the information that you gave me.
Tom Rendon:And if that's really the way we learn, which is by, we shouldn't just attention, as we often do as teachers, we pay attention to what's the content that I'm conveying to children, but it's what's the content coming out of children, and this, of course, I always remember. You're going to more of my word love, of word nerdiness coming up, but the word education comes from the verb educe, which we don't use very often. But to educe something is to draw it out. So education is not about what we put into children, it's about what we draw out of children. We draw out of children, and so, and, and what we discovered is that there is no learning unless it's recreated, and I'm, and I'm generating it. So you were talking before about what I would consider multiple means of expression, like, maybe, maybe there are many ways, like I can have a lesson on, you know, the geography of Mexico. Let's say, well, there, you know, I could write an essay about that, I could do a PowerPoint presentation, I could draw a map, you know, I could make a video, I could. You know, there are many ways I could express that. And in doing so, I'm actually really highlighting the creative and the constructing nature of my own learning. Well, how can I not be learning better and learning more when I do that? So that's the connection to cognitive and, I think, the connection to socio-emotional that I find actually really, really important, really important.
Tom Rendon:And if I could just give an example from our current, what's currently going on now is, I think a lot of the failure in our politics is a failure of imagination. We can't conceive of how certain things fit together, and I'll just give you one quick example that I've been thinking about a lot, but if you follow the news as carefully as I do, you know there was a recent vote in Chuck Schumer, who's the minority head of the Senate. He voted with the Republicans to pass this and anyway, there were a lot of Democrats who were really angry for going along with the Republicans because they're not happy with all the stuff that the Republicans are apparently supporting Trump and people who like that. You know, I'm just I don't want to turn your show into a partisan thing, but I'm just saying, I'm just describing what's happening. I'm not saying anything more than that.
Tom Rendon:Well, when they were asking Chuck Schumer, like well, why did you do that? You know his response was well, because, within the context of lawmaking, we think we're giving them more control and we want to still retain control of it. But then, when somebody asked Bernie Sanders as an example of somebody sort of outside of that frame, it's like well, why would you be opposed to what Chuck Schumer is saying? And he said because real power comes from the bottom up, it comes from the people, and that's where we're really going to get change. Well, regardless of the merits of those two different points of view.
Tom Rendon:What struck me about Chuck Schumer's response was he did not have the imagination to think about where does power really come from From his mind. I mean, if you're a minority leader of the Senate, you think your power comes from being the minority leader of the Senate. But if you take a wider view, say, well, where does power really come from? Well, maybe power comes from the bottom up, from people getting together and organized people. So a lot of our solutions to different political problems. We think we have an answer, but I think the question we need to be asking is what are we not thinking? What can creativity tell us to make us more imaginative for new possibilities of how we interact, how we understand the world, how we design solutions to problems?
Fonz Mendoza:So that's great and that, you know, right now I'm still with not only that example, but just the word, you know, educe, and the way that you said it's drawing out the learning. And what we continually see, at least now in my experience now in education, is the students are consuming the learning but they really aren't creating or, you know, being creators of that learning. So that really struck a chord with me, that really resonates really loud and I think that's going to be a great soundbite for sure that I definitely want to put out. But you know, and of course, going into the cognitive side of things, you know it's just so important making those connections, like you mentioned, and being very imaginative in the way that you're learning and even in the way that you present learning.
Fonz Mendoza:And I think you also hit on a couple of things throughout the episode too, talking about, you know, a little bit of that imposter syndrome maybe many times, thinking, well, maybe that person knows more than me, like, for example, I would, you know, say well, you know, zachary, tom, they're a little bit more knowledgeable on creativity than I am. But at the same time I come in with a different perspective too as well, and sometimes I think that hinders a lot of the creativity for a lot of people, which is that imposter syndrome. Which kind of brings me to one of my last questions here that I do want to ask, and just kind of, maybe through your research and maybe in your own experience working with children and working with adults too as well, what are some ways that adults might accidentally be stifling children's creativity without them realizing it? And I'll start off with you, zachary.
Dr. Zachary Stier:I'm smiling just because I have such an amazing community, especially parents. This week we had Clifford the Big Red Dog come and visit the library and really seeing that excitement come to life, especially from an imagination, where we're able to bring a character from a story to the library. But why I'm smiling too is when we complete, let's say, a story time and we go into a craft activity or an art activity or that space for creativity. It's an interesting time for me as a librarian, as a researcher, to observe that interaction, because I'm always curious as to when, you know what window window of time occurs to where, as an adult, we want to take over and we want to control the creative experience. And I say that with all the love of my heart. I'm not saying anybody's at fault here, but there are times. I'll give you a prime example.
Dr. Zachary Stier:I don't know why I decided one time to do to teach kids about camels.
Dr. Zachary Stier:I don't know how that all came about, but, um, we did a creative activity after the program where kids could, you know, kind of piece together a camel so sort of a creative craft, if you will and I observed this child putting the head where the feet should be and the feet where the head should be, and I was just having a good old time allowing that child to really experience that creativity and being mindful that eventually we want to learn about, you know, the top down, about how our bodies are put together, and that is important.
Dr. Zachary Stier:But it was interesting to see the parent come immediately and say we got to start over now.
Dr. Zachary Stier:And they I watched them, you know take, take it apart.
Dr. Zachary Stier:And because they ripped a little bit of it and they threw that part of the garbage, um, and again I I want to be very clear, like nobody's at fault, I never want to tell a parent how to parent, but we need to give grace and space for children to um, be spontaneous and go through that process and enjoy it as well and limit our control at times. And that's something that we learned, you know, in the process of our research and especially with our application by going to different sites and stuff is you do set the space up right, you bring supplies in or you bring puppets in or whatever you're wanting them to do, but you're also giving them space to figure out that journey and how they want to enjoy that experience. So that to me, is sort of a big lesson is to let children be creative and to celebrate that and to really be mindful of how much control you may want to have, um, because it's very easy for us as adults um to to want to redirect a child immediately. So excellent.
Fonz Mendoza:Thank you, Zach. How about you, Tom?
Tom Rendon:Well, I really want to just underscore some of what Zach said about control. I think well and you know, thinking about teachers I think teachers really like control and they often feel like it's really important because classroom management is a big challenge for teachers.
Tom Rendon:But I would say that the biggest obstacle to supporting children's creativity, or what maybe adults do that prevent creativity or stifle it in some way is really not listening or paying attention to what children are saying and doing.
Tom Rendon:I think we have to be able to listen to them because one of the things we do we think of it as a passive role. I'm not doing anything, I'm just listening, but active listening and really paying attention. What you're doing is you're giving that person a gift of time and your own attention. I could be focused on many, many things, but no, I'm going to be focused on you and what you're saying and how you're expressing yourself, and what I'm doing when I do that is I'm saying you're valued, what you say is important and um, and I think that that's one of the best things we could do to encourage creativity. Children is to um, is to get them to value for themselves their own creative expressions and their own way of being created. The other part of the control is I kind of want to ask why do we feel control is so necessary? And I think one of the reasons we think that control is necessary is because we're afraid of what's going to happen when we lose control, and I think that if we don't allow for spontaneity and allow for things to happen and emerge, we're not going to be so creative. We're not going to be so creative.
Tom Rendon:I think that, like the sort of classic way teachers are often taught, you establish a lesson plan and you decide well, here's what I'm going to give to the students and here's what I'm going to say to the students, here's the experiences I'm going to give to the students. And then you do that and I would venture to say 95% of the time it never works out. Sometimes you have a 10-step process in your lesson plan and you get to one and that's it. That's as far as you get. And so we think, oh my God, what a failure I am. I can't even do a simple lesson plan. What's wrong with me? And I want to flip that on its head and say but you created an opportunity for stuff to happen. And then can you improvise in the context of that. And actually we have a whole section in the book, really based on a wonderful book by Sawyer. I'm trying to remember Keith, yeah, keith Sawyer, thank you. Really great book.
Tom Rendon:We talk about it in the book, but he talks a lot about the kind of drawing parallels between improvisational comedy and teaching and how they can support each other. So, but in order to do that, I'm going to come back to something I said earlier. The two key ingredients we need in ourselves to be creative is curiosity and courageousness, the ability to put it out there and go, and students have the same thing. It's like, oh no, I better not raise my hand because my answer might be wrong. Well, if we can't do everything we can to eliminate that, whatever penalty there is associated with giving the wrong answer, because you are creating something, even creating something wrong will lead to creating something better, you know. Wrong will lead to creating something better, you know, and, and. So I just want to highlight those two pieces of courage, and and, and and curiosity as sort of antidotes to that need to control.
Dr. Zachary Stier:And if I had you know if I could finish on that question. Something that I also was excited that we put in the book is daydreaming is a good thing and to celebrate daydreaming, because I don't think we I daydream a lot and I don't think I think we underscore that value of daydreaming Because, as Tom said, you know we want to be able to give them that space and to be courageous and knowing that dreaming like that allows for new creative avenues and opportunities. I love that One thing.
Fonz Mendoza:I also wanted to add though, if you don't mind and is for me one of the biggest things in the classroom that really helped me out was not only my own personal curiosity with the subject matter, and again, maybe for me it was very different or maybe because I was hardwired that way, I guess, growing up.
Fonz Mendoza:But for me, coming in from private sector into education and so really not knowing or learning, I guess, how to teach, really sparked my curiosity in my subject matter. But also one of the things that I found was very useful was even just being vulnerable with your students and understanding that, hey, it's OK to not know everything. I may not have the answer right now or yet, but I can get that for you and allowing them to also feel comfortable in the classroom to say like, hey, although the answer might not be correct, but let's dissect what you did answer and how that does tie to you know, getting you to the right answer and I think the attention to the creator's human and I think one thing that I also want to highlight and sort of where I came from in my own experience with the disability is helping children to eventually become their own creative advocate.
Dr. Zachary Stier:Right, how do we teach these skills to advocate for your creativity? And one way that happened to me was geometry. Somebody asked me to memorize all these proofs and I'm like this isn't working for me, but if you let me walk around this table, we'll get where we need to go. But because that individual and I'm not going to call them out did not lean in on that, did not support that, it failed geometry and what it did in 11th grade is to really show value in making sure you're advocating for yourself. But we need to do that as early as possible and advocacy really starts with us as adults, as Tom said, you know, making sure that we're courageous enough to give them the space to do that.
Tom Rendon:Fawn. Do you mind if I add just one more? Sure, go ahead. Yeah, because, and actually this is in the final chapter of the book. Yeah, because, and actually this is in the final chapter of the book.
Tom Rendon:But but one of the things that that we really recommend is is to think about your own yourself as a creative person. How are you created and what ways you create. We really want to just issue the whole notion of well, there are, you know, I'm not a creative, or those are the creative people I'm like the non creative peopleive people or whatever we might. It's like we're all creative. And if you don't believe that and there's no reason that you should, just because I'm saying that, but it's like, think about your own life and how you've been creative.
Tom Rendon:And we actually model in the last chapter and I really love your word vulnerability, because I think both Zach and I were very vulnerable in that final chapter about sort of admitting to tough times in our lives, mistakes we've made, things that didn't work out well and the role of creativity.
Tom Rendon:So it was sort of created a creativity biography for ourselves and using that as a basis to say you know what I did, create that and I created that and I created that and I created. It's like I am a creative being, like I've got tangible evidence, I can prove to myself that I'm a creative being. But when you can get to that point, then you can really teach children about that same process of discovering their own creativity and it's not like they don't have creativity. That's why we call it creativity in young children, not as if creativity is a skill we're going to give to children. They're already being created. It just needs to be, as we've said repeatedly, brought out and nurtured, and you need to be the midwife to all of the creative process, but starting with your own creative journey. And so we kind of model that in the book and then really encourage people to do this.
Fonz Mendoza:I love that. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much. This has been an amazing and enlightening conversation and it's definitely filled my bucket, and especially, talking about creativity, which is something that I know, I've gone through a creative journey and you know a lot of the things that you've described is things that I have either felt or have experienced at some time, or even had to adapt and overcome. But I thank you for this wonderful resource and I definitely we will be linking it in the show notes. So, for all our audience members, please make sure that you check out the show notes for creativity and young children. What science tells us and our hearts know, so make sure you pick that up.
Fonz Mendoza:But before we wrap up, gentlemen, I always love to end the show with these last three questions, so we'll go ahead and alternate them, and I'll go ahead and start with you, tom, since you're a first-time guest, so you get to answer this question first. So, as we know, every superhero has a weakness or a pain point. Like much like superman, kryptonite was his weakness. So I want to ask you, tom, in the current state of education, what would you say is your current edu kryptonite?
Tom Rendon:uh, it'd have to be procrastination it kills me it destroys me and uh and it. It's, uh, probably the biggest stifler, uh, of my creative output, and I don't generate as much things. You know. It's things I write, or things I say, or what product, whatever I'm doing, ideas if I um, if I you know, procrastinate, so that's just sucks, just like kryptonite just sucks all the energy out of me and all I want to do is to curl up and stay in bed all day.
Fonz Mendoza:Hey, you know what? That is exactly the way that I feel. I think you and I are the same way, like procrastination. I used to always say when I was going to college I'd say I procrastinate later. I'd be one of those the night before doing 25-page research papers and everything. But now, as I get older, I'm like, oh, this hurts, this really hurts now. And yeah, it's definitely difficult.
Tom Rendon:It hurt back then too, you know.
Fonz Mendoza:Yeah, it did hurt back then, but we were still young and we didn't feel it either. But now, oh, that hurts. All right, zachary, on to you. I want to ask you what would you say is your current edu kryptonite?
Dr. Zachary Stier:I struggle with this one, but I think mine is balance right now, because I just want to seize every opportunity and I don't know, I don't want to say the answer no, but I don't know how to find that balance and saying maybe right, not right now, and so then I just get really tired but I do want to go to bed. But trying to find that balance is my kryptonite right now.
Fonz Mendoza:All right, it sounds good. Thank you, zachary. All right, we'll start off with you now, zachary, for question number two. If you could have a billboard with anything on it, what would it be? And why.
Dr. Zachary Stier:You know, you and I were talking about this at the very beginning, before we hopped on, and I've changed it and I'm going to give credit where credit's due. But right now, in talking about this today and our creativity, I'm going. You've made this day a special day, but just by just being you, there's no person in the whole world like you and I like you just the way you are, and I think that pretty sums up the billboard I would like to have right now.
Fonz Mendoza:Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Zachary. How about you, Tom? What would your billboard say?
Tom Rendon:Well, I'm going to that. What what came to mind for me was actually something I saw. It wasn't quite on a billboard, it was on the side of a building and it was the Science Center of Iowa, and it says creativity is intelligence having fun, and I think that pulls together a lot of the things that we've been talking about today. That, um, creativity is an expression of intelligence, and so therefore, we can't think of intelligence just as like book, knowledge or whatever. It's obviously something more than that, and if there's not an element of fun to it, I think we're somehow cutting it short and short, changing ourselves. So that's something I really learned when I with the saving playbook. So I sometimes think maybe this book should should be have been saving creativity. Yeah, what you were saying about how maybe it's gotten pushed out too much out of our educational processes today yeah, definitely great answer, tom.
Fonz Mendoza:All right, and the last question. Now we'll start off with you, tom. If you can trade places with one person for a single day, who would that person be and why?
Tom Rendon:I could trade places with Mr Rogers for a day. And the reason is because, to me, what makes Mr Rogers special and and in you know again, maybe this is the wrong vocabulary, but what I consider him a saint is his transparency. He's utterly who he is, you know. He was always interviewed. It's like well, you're like, you know, you're this very nice man on television, but like, who are you really? And he's going well, I'm who I am. I can't be anybody who I am. And when we can come, if I can live out of that space to just say I am who I am. And this is how I'm presenting myself today, without apology, without explanation, without regret with courage to do that, as we've been talking about.
Fonz Mendoza:That, to me is real freedom. Excellent, tom. All right, great answer, I love it. All right, zachary. How about yourself? Who would you trade places for with a day? Who?
Dr. Zachary Stier:would you trade places with for a day, and why? Being famous like Mr Rogers? But I would definitely say my dad. You know seeing the world like what he did was very simple. He went day to day living a very simple life. But it really helps me to connect to creativity because he was able to really operate in that space and figuring out ways to solve, you know, day-to-day problems or articulate things. Going fishing and seeing you know the connection between nature and fish to the metaphor of life. I mean, I really appreciated that because I sometimes can take things a little bit more seriously than most and it just provided a lot of ease into my life. And I think that that's significant when we look at creativity is that there is simplicity and it is a matter of pausing and reflecting and looking, and sometimes I don't think we do enough of that because we're in this space of what's next and being busy checking things off, and so that would be the best answer today for me.
Fonz Mendoza:Awesome, zachary. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, zachary. Tom, you've been phenomenal. Thank you again and again.
Fonz Mendoza:Ladies and gentlemen those of you that are watching or listening make sure you look for the book. The link is in the show notes. Creativity and Young Children. What Science Tells Us and Our Hearts Know these are your wonderful authors, zachary Steer and Tom Vendon.
Fonz Mendoza:Thank you again and for all of you watching, please make sure you visit our website at myedtechlife myedtechlife, where you can check out this amazing episode and the other 319 wonderful episodes where, I promise you, you will find a little something that you can sprinkle on to what you are already doing. Great that you visit our website. Make sure you follow us on all socials at my EdTech Life and, if you haven't done so yet, go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Give us a thumbs up, share our content. That way, all the algorithms can go ahead and put us out there to all your friends too, and they can go ahead and like and share as well. And thank you to our wonderful sponsors. Book Creator. Thank you, as always, to Yellowdig and Edu8 for believing in our mission of bringing you some great conversations, bringing you some amazing resources and, of course, all for us to be able to grow in the education space. So thank you, as always, and my friends, until next time. Don't forget, stay techie. Thank you, bye.