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SEEing to Lead


Sep 12, 2022

Dr. Cindi Burnett is the director of possibilities for creativity and education. Like her creativity Focus curriculum for students and teachers, Cindy embraces the creative Life Style that she teaches. You will often find her trying on new ideas, exploring resources to stretch your thinking, and being an advocate for playfulness and humor. Although she loves to research and write about creativity, Cindy is a firm believer in field service. She has 20 years of teaching experience as an academic at the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State where she instructed classes in creative thinking and creative problem-solving.

Cindy is the co-editor of the big questions in creativity book series and co-author of the books weaving creativity into every strand of your curriculum, 20 lessons for weaving creativity into your curriculum, and my sandwich is a spaceship: creative thinking for parents and young children

Some of her projects include: working with Educators to bring creative thinking into the classroom, connecting communities of creative thinkers via social media, and designing and running a massive open online course on everyday creativity. She's the recipient of the president's medal for excellence in teaching in 2018 by SUNY Buffalo State, was Buffalo business first, women of influence 2018 for her work in creativity, and was featured in The New York Times article titled “creativity becomes an academic discipline.”

Cindy has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater, a master of science in creativity and change leadership, and a doctorate of Education in curriculum, teaching, and learning, all of which she uses to help ignite creativity and education around the world. In her spare time, she can be found singing and dancing with her two children, propagating plants, and trying to find the world's best slice of pizza.

Key Takeaways:

Don't ask what you want to do with your life, instead ask what do you want to learn about.

The science of creativity is just as important as the art of creativity because it helps teach others the strategies to become more creative.

Creativity is the generation of novel and appropriate ideas.

Leaders can help educators infuse more creativity into their classroom by reframing what creativity actually is.

Educators by definition are creative because they are problem solvers.

Creativity cannot be treated as an add on it must be infused into the curriculum.

Creativity isn't always about the feel good emotion of success because because there is ambiguity in the process.

Give people a mistake quotient when trying to get them to take risks or be vulnerable with their creativity.

Use creativity boards.

Use teacher superhero capes.

Stay in Touch:

Twitter

Director of Possibilities: CreativityandEducation.com

Fueling Creativity in Education podcast: fuelingcreativity.podbean.com