What My Sabbatical Taught Me About Creativity
By Constanza de Radcliffe, Upper School Spanish and French Teacher
February of 2025 brought me some wonderful news: I was the lucky recipient of the 2025 Brenda B. Brodie Faculty Sabbatical. This meant I would spend the Fall 2025 semester embarking on a project of my choice, with time off from my teaching duties. I used this precious time with three objectives in mind: to write a novel; to research the field of creativity in education; and to take a course about Miguel de Cervantes in his birth city, Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
Creativity and Writing: No Start is a False Start
On the first day of my sabbatical, a sunny morning in mid-August, I felt like I was sneaking out of faculty meetings. I saw what seemed like a vast expanse of time in front of me and a blank slate. What I wanted, more than anything, was to finish my second novel. I had the perfect conditions: time, space, silence, no work obligations.
How to begin? I had been plotting and trying out scenes for my novel for two years — a weekend here and there, and many mornings before school, when I’d steal half an hour from my day by waking up at 5 a.m. On that first morning of my sabbatical, I was glad to have those pages. Even if they didn’t make it into the novel, they gave me the feeling that the world of this story already existed, and the momentum to begin again. They taught me that no attempt at creativity, no matter how small, can ever be lost.
Little did I know that a much trickier blank slate proved absolutely necessary to my creative process. I needed to empty my own mind of fear and inner distractions. I relied on the wisdom of generous creators like Elizabeth Gilbert and Anne Lamott.
In Gilbert’s book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, she describes her creative work as a disciplined, daily practice, done with stubborn gladness, regardless of obstacles or obsessing about results, regardless of fear.
Lamott, with her characteristic warmth and colorful language, always celebrates those clumsy first attempts or drafts as necessary steps, and believes that impostor syndrome is the main enemy a writer must face.
I came to rely on a steady daily routine of journaling and meditation before the hours of writing. Most days, the writing felt like sheer effort and produced text that was far from final or polished. On very few of those days, I felt like the writing flowed. Although I already knew it to be true that sweat will beat inspiration any day, I discovered that the state of deep focus that writing offered me was what kept me coming back every day.
Creativity and the Brain: Learning with Joy
Every afternoon of my sabbatical, I researched creativity in education. Among the experts I turned to was world-renowned Spanish neuroscientist Dr. Mara Dierssen. In addition to producing cutting-edge brain research in her Barcelona lab, Dierssen has dedicated much of her writing and conferences to teachers — or “brain builders,” as she calls us. She emphasizes that “learning necessitates emotion, surprise and creativity, and without them, the brain does not learn well.”
Dierssen, the daughter of a physician and a painter, writes that when we engage in a creative pursuit, our reward system comes into play with our higher cognitive functions, such as memory, attention, imagination and executive function.
She celebrates diverse learning environments as best suited for development, and she reminds us of the utter wonder of the human mind and its ability to shape itself.
In a world that feels more chaotic and automated every day, students should realize that they still hold the treasure of their infinite potential because they are the builders of their own minds.
Mercado Cervantino at Alcalá de Henares, Spain.
Creativity in Teaching: Lessons from Cervantes
It turns out that all of these lessons about creativity and the mind were well understood half a millennium ago by none other than Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quijote de la Mancha. In October, I traveled to Madrid and Alcalá de Henares, Cervantes’ birth city, to take a course about Don Quijote at the Cervantes Institute. I observed closely how expert teachers share this masterwork with students, many of whom are not native speakers of Spanish. The town was celebrating its Semana Cervantina, an annual festival that honors Cervantes’ birthday. Every afternoon after class, students enjoyed a 17th-century open market, featuring music, theater and even a jousting tournament.
Around the time that Shakespeare’s Hamlet said, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” Don Quijote said, “I know who I am and that I can be …” Then he brags he can be better than any chivalrous hero who ever existed in the heroic novels that became his obsession. I believe Cervantes wanted to show his readers what extreme creativity is — brilliance that is bordering on madness. Maybe that is why the world will never forget him.
A 1605 print of Don Quijote de la Mancha at the Serrería Belga in Madrid.
As luck would have it, I returned to Madrid when the Serrería Belga, a small museum, had the 1605 first edition of Don Quijote on display from a private collector. Imagine a room full of Don Quijote editions that spanned five centuries, full of visitors of all ages and from all walks of life. Every single one of us wanted to see that magical text firsthand: the letters and words that hold an everlasting key to creativity.
My Dream for Students
I believe every student and every mind is creative, in the sense that the making of a particular something will ignite that fire in them — the combination of effort and reward — that will shake the “proverbial neuronal forests,” as Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, called brain activity.
I know Durham Academy has robust programs in the arts and excellent academics. I am also convinced that we can offer a path for creativity: one in which we build long-term mentoring and guidance for young creators and we recognize their journeys. My dream is to see a first- or second-year student decide they want to explore something — whether it is a film, a novel, a fashion line, a collection of songs or a product — as long as it is exactly what they want to make. I’d like for this student to graduate with a diploma and their creation in hand, having taken those first steps toward deciding who they can be, the quixotic impetus every creator needs.
Epilogue
The six months of my sabbatical came and went quickly. Yet when I returned to my beloved World Languages department office on a frigid January 2026 morning, excited and nervous to meet my new students, I felt that this sabbatical was a permanent and life-changing gift. What I get to keep forever are some profound lessons about creativity — its relationship to writing, the brain and education. These are lessons that will forever shape my teaching.
The following month, a Chicago-based Spanish publishing house reached out with the news that it intends to publish my novel, titled Del abismo, una hija, to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month this fall. It was fitting that the news came nearly one year to the day after receiving the happy news that my sabbatical application had been granted — a “path for creativity” come full circle.
Editor’s Note:
The Brenda B. Brodie Faculty Sabbatical Endowment Fund was established in 1986 with a gift from former Durham Academy trustees Brenda and Keith Brodie. Each year, the fund enables one deserving faculty member to pursue endeavors such as independent research, advanced degrees or art portfolios. Sabbaticals may consist of time off from teaching responsibilities, salary continuation during the faculty member’s absence, and/or financial assistance for tuition and related costs or expenses. Since its inception, 45 faculty members have been awarded this extraordinary opportunity, supported by the income that the fund generates each year.