The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast

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If you joined us for Camp Creative last week, you know we spent one of our days focused on AI. I shared a variety of activities to help students consider, discuss, and write about how AI affects them and their learning. Because I received so much positive feedback about these activities, I want to share them here too, in case you missed Camp. So today, let's talk about how to dig into one of the big questions facing our profession right now, with your students, right from week one. Because I hope there's a middle option between going entirely to paper and staying digital but playing the role of constant AI detective. Because there are digital activities I really love, activities that put the world at students' fingertips. And we already know that AI Detectors constantly make mistakes or are duped by AI Humanizer programs.

Make your copy of this curriculum as a station set or as individual activities in the full show notes at nowsparkcreativity.com.

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My first first day of school, as you probably know, did not go well. Unless you count laying on the floor of my office crying at the end of the day "going well." It was the first time I ever realized you could be thinking one thing while saying something completely different. "Take a look at the syllabus," said my mouth, while my brain said, OH NO, they hate this! They're looking at the clock! And you have nothing else planned! And you have to do this with three more classes! Since then, "going over the syllabus" is not in my first day playbook. Nope, the last thing I want on day one is to stand in front of the class and lecture about our course texts, my expectations, and their upcoming units. So what will I be doing instead, in my first year back in the classroom in a bit? That's what today's podcast is all about.

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So here's the thing. I know I talk a lot about reading. It's pretty important to me. But all week I've been trying to prepare a different podcast, one NOT about the uncrackable justification for choice reading. But recently I heard from several teachers over in CHSE about thriving reading programs they had going, only to get shut down by folks who felt like reading in class was a waste of time. And then I kind of ended up in a rabbit hole, as I am wont to do. It's like researching the justification for choice reading became my guilty pleasure, sucking up all my time. I listened to audiobooks on my walks, pored over research roundups and articles at the coffee shop, hit up the hammock with my Penny Kittle, and stared and stared and stared at the growing evidence mounting in my endless Google doc of notes.

The evidence is clear. The need for help for kids who don't read, don't like reading, and don't want to read is great. And yet STILL we are prioritizing reading snippets and drilling for tests to "improve" our readers' reading. I want you to have the information you need to fight. So here I am. Again. Despite my efforts to focus on something else this week. Let's dig deep.

Illustration for The Cycles I share in this episode:

The Infographic I mentioned:

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Sources:

Amato, Jarred. (2024). Just Read It. Corwin.

Atwell, Nancie. (2007). The Reading Zone. Scholastic.

Aukerman, M. & Schuldt, L. (2021). "What Matters Most? Toward a Robust and Socially Just Science of Reading." Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1) pp. S85–S103 | doi:10.1002/rrq.40

Bains, A., Spaulding, C., Ricketts, J., & Krishnan, S. (2026). Providing choice enhances reading motivation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006), 79(4), 959–970. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218251370916

Bishop, Rudine Sims. "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors." Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom. Vo. 6, No. 3, Summer 1990. https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf Accessed November 2, 2025.

Briceño, Allison and Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica. (2022). Conscious Classrooms. PD Essentials.

Bridges, Lois. (2018). The Joy and Power of Reading: A Summary of Research and Expert Opinion. Scholastic.

Chavez, Felicia. (2021) The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books.

Elley, W. B. (2000). The Potential of Book Floods for Raising Literary Levels. International Review of Education, 46(3–4), 233–255.

Gallagher, Kelly. (2009). Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. Routledge.

Kerkhoff, Shea. (2026). Adolescent Literacy: Integrating the Sciences of Reading and Writing in Grades 4-12. Bloomsbury Academic.

Kittle, Penny. (2013). Book Love. Heinneman.

Miller, Donalyn and Susan Kelley. (2013). Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits. Jossey-Bass.

Morgan, Denise N., & Wagner, Christopher W. (2013). "What's the Catch?" Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(8), 659–667 doi: 10.1002/JAAL.193

National Endowment for the Arts. (2007, November). To Read or Not to Read.

O'Grady, R. J. (2025). The reading renaissance: Reimagining literacy practices in secondary English education. ENGLISH IN EDUCATION. https://doi.org/10.1080/04250494.2025.2567939

Wilhelm, J. D. (2016). Recognising the power of pleasure: What engaged adolescent readers get from their free-choice reading, and how teachers can leverage this for all. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 39(1), 30.

Willingham, Daniel. (2021). Why Don't Kids Like School? Jossey-Bass. 2nd Ed. (Audiobook)

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I'm not going to lie, the prospect of getting to set up a classroom space after years of dreaming about that very task is one of the reasons I'm headed back into the classroom this fall to teach one section of freshmen English. I just believe SO HARD that secondary spaces matter as much as elementary school ones.

Heck, I'm an adult, and the space around me matters enormously to my productivity and pleasure in work. How could it not matter to teenagers?

So today, I want to share a quick look at some of the resources and recommendations we'll be diving into at the end of the month inside our free (asynchronous) PD, Camp Creative: Your Stress-Free School Kickoff Kit. We'll keep it simple today, digging into five colorful, fun ideas for your walls. I'll be sharing all the resources and links for these resources inside Camp, don't worry!

Visit the Downloads section at PBS' The Great American Read: https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/resources/downloads/

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So I've been working on the materials for Camp Creative: Your Back-to-School Kickoff Kit, this year's iteration of the free summer PD I run every year. (By the way, you can get all the details and sign up right here for this fun, free, async PD). And it seems to me that one of the most vital conversations this year for us all to be having is what exactly it means to use AI at school - the risks and dangers, the helpful aspects in terms of accommodation, the temptation, the citation process, all of it.

I've been in and out of the rabbit hole on AI for months and years now, following along with policies, trends, Ted Talks, teacher frustrations, and most recently, the growing movement away from letting AI increase its foothold in our classrooms (a movement I'm very glad to see, as it matches up with my own take). My rabbit hole life has led me to one particular resource for you that I'd like to highly recommend as a conversation starter this week, and that's the student finalist gallery from The New York Times' Growing up with AI Multimedia Contest.

This contest plays a central role in the AI Conversations & Research Stations I've created for Camp Creative, and whether you join us there or not, I hope you will take a minute to explore what kids have shared about their experiences living at the epicenter of the AI explosion.

The New York Times' "Growing up with AI Multimedia Contest" Finalists Gallery: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/learning/growing-up-with-ai-a-multimedia-challenge-for-teenagers-and-educators.html?eafs_enabled=false

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Design thinking is a framework for creating things. And creating things, as Semour Papert argued in his theory of constructionism, is the kind of "hard fun" that engages people in meaningful work that helps them stretch themselves (Resnick). As his colleague at the MIT media lab, Mitchell Resnick, put it: "they're going to learn fast when they work on things they really care about. Seymour once said that education has very little to do with explanation, it has to do with engagement, falling in love with ideas." Design thinking is one of the many options in your teacher toolbox, but it's a good one, so let's dive into what it is and what it means.

Sources:

"Design Thinking Bootleg." Stanford d. School: https://dschool.stanford.edu/tools/design-thinking-bootleg. Accessed April 2026.

"Mitchell Resnick on Seymour Papert." Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoczAscGYeQ. Accessed March 13, 2026.

Potash, Betsy. "Empower your Students, with John Spencer." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 28.

"The Launch Cycle: A K-12 Design Thinking Framework." Spencer Education: https://spencereducation.com/the-launch-cycle/ Accessed Apr. 13, 2026.

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Recently I was invited to give a poetry workshop on a reflection day at a local school. They wanted the writing element of the day to help students understand themselves better, so I chose to provide a workshop based on George Ella Lyon's poem, "Where I'm From." You know I love that workshop.

Together, we looked at how details bring poetry to life, brainstormed images about their childhood experiences, explored how various creators have interpreted the "I am From" prompt to create videos, paintings, photo essays, poems, and combinations thereof. Then I invited them to work multimodaly as they knit together their images with color and imagery.

But I had never worked with them before, and none of them had heard of multimodal communication, though they're surrounded with it everyday. I realized I had left out a crucial step in the workshop, to help them see that multimodal communication would go well beyond "decorating" their poem or underlining all the lines in color.

So how can we introduce this concept to students? How can we help them see that text, images, audio, and video can all convey such very different shades of meaning in communication? This week on the pod, let's talk about introducing multimodality, and showing kids what works and what doesn't. Be sure to grab the free download that goes along with this episode, a slideshow full of examples you can share with your students.

You can sign up to have me send it over totally free right here. You'll also be subscribed to my teaching idea emails, though of course you can unsubscribe at any time.

OK, let's dive in.

Grab your copy of the multimodality introduction slideshow: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/bdde614049

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So maybe you already know I'll be teaching a section of ninth grade next year to help a local school fill a hole. Want to know what I was doing at 11 pm the night after I agreed to this role?

Guess.

If you guessed working on my class library, you are so right.

Let's talk about first steps, for my library, and maybe, if you're thinking of starting one of your own, for yours. Whether you're completely new to building a classroom library, about to start a new one in a new place (like me), or building new layers onto a library you've already begun, I think you'll find some helpful inspiration in this episode.

Links:

Access the Scholastic Compendium on Reading Research: https://www.scholastic.com/worldofpossible/sites/default/files/Research_Compendium_0.pdf

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Walk into an expensive "Innovation Lab" or High Tech Cutting Edge University Makerspace, and you'll probably see a laser cutter, a 3D printer or two, all kinds of expensive technology and the adjacent software and screens that make it possible.

That's cool.

But that's also a high barrier to entry.

Does it really have to be that way? And how did the maker movement come to sit so deep in pricey STEM territory?

You probably know I've always admired the work of Angela Stockman, writing makerspace pioneer. She's been on this podcast several times, and I love what she shares around having students build ideas across modes, using free or inexpensive materials to help them construct concepts, characters, and storylines.

In our interview a few years ago, she said: "When we ask kids to build, they typically come up with ideas they wouldn't have otherwise. When we ask kids to build and then talk about what they have built, the complexity of their ideas is usually higher." These feel like very worthwhile goals to me - kids coming up with innovative, complex ideas.

But let's be clear, we don't have to ask kids to build on a 3D printer or learn to code in order to help them extend and amplify their thinking through maker tools. Angela has always said that, but the proliferation of high tech makerspaces can be hard to drown out when thinking about this issue.

Making is not about having one specific tool. It's about what making can give to kids in terms of their development of ideas, as Stockman suggest above, and in their development as learners too (Cohen). When students make, they make choices, they make mistakes, they recover. Ideally, they develop new skills at the same time that they develop a growth mindset around iterating.

Today on the podcast, let's talk about a fun new free tool I've created for you to help your students build their ideas.

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Sources:

Ackermann, E. (2001). Piaget's Constructivism, Papert's Constructionism: What's the Difference? Future of Learning Group Publication, 5(3), 1-11.

Cohen, J. D., Jones, W. M., & Smith, S. (2018). Preservice and early career teachers' preconceptions and misconceptions about making in education. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(1), 31-42.

J, Jessie. "Price Tag." Spotify Lyrics. https://open.spotify.com/track/2vR1oGQdPfwJe4EVh8uNGc

Kretchmar, Jennifer. "Seymour Papert and Constructionism." EBESCO: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/religion-and-philosophy/seymour-papert-and-constructionism. 2021.

Potash, Betsy (Host). (2018, September 6). The Power of the Writing Makerspace, with Angela Stockman (No. 47). [Audio Podcast Episode]. In The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2018/09/the-power-of-writing-makerspace-with.html

Smith, S. (2018). Children's Negotiations of Visualization Skills During a Design-Based Learning Experience Using Nondigital and Digital Techniques. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 12 (2). Available at: https://doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1747

Stockman, Angela. (2016). Make Writing: 5 Teaching Strategies That Turn Writer's Workshop into a Maker Space. Hack Learning Series.

TEDxTalk. (2013, January 10). Reimagining learning: Richard Culatta at TEDx Beacon Street [Video]. YouTube.

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I often see conversations online at this time of year about PD books worth reading over the summer. Maybe your PLC is looking for a good read, or you want to take something awesome with you on a plane ride or road trip, along with a stack of Emily Henry novels and A Man Called Ove (which, by the way, I'm giving my own personal read-of-the-year award to, wow).

Or maybe not, which I totally get too. If you'd like to take the next couple months totally away and renew your energy and creativity and health and not even think about the classroom, that's great too! That's another way to help yourself be a good teacher next year. It's all valid.

But just in case you are looking for a book, it just so happens that I have some recommendations. Because I read 17 books about teaching this year, watched myriad Youtube videos on creativity and design, and listened to a LOT of ed podcasts. So let me break down my favorites for you.

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The countdowns are on all over the place, and that means in many classrooms, it's time to review. So let's dive into a lightning round of review ideas to help you come up with ways to make all that looking back engaging and memorable for your students.

Links Mentioned:

Hexagonal Thinking Review Activity Free Download Sign-Up: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/endofyearhexagons

Jennifer Gonzalez's "Crumple and Shoot" Game from Cult of Pedagogy: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/how-to-play-crumple-shoot/

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Years ago, Teri Lesegne wrote a book called Reading Ladders, about meeting readers where they are and then guiding them to new heights. It's a lovely image. I've got my own twist on it; I like to think of helping kids get onto the reading escalator. They read the first book I hand them, or their best friend forks over after staying up til midnight to finish it, and boom, they're on that escalator cruising toward the next book without even realizing it.

Sometimes it's a series that helps them on, or realizing that audiobooks count, or discovering Jason Reynolds for the first time.

Sometimes it's a genre - they grab a Rick Riordan, then the next twelve, then realize that "fantasy" is a thing and cruise straight into Fablehaven, Skandar, and the Unicorn Thief, and Harry Potter.

It's a genre I want to talk about today, one that has exploded in popularity over the last twenty years, and just keeps going. Sometimes I think Neal Schusterman is keeping it alive singlehandedly, but then I remember that Margaret Atwood, Adam Silvera, Megan Freeman, and Darcie Little Badger are part of the movement, along with so many others.

Have you guessed? Yep, it's dystopia. Dystopia provides a fast-paced reading escalator, with many series integrated inside. Students might pick up The Hunger Games, move through the whole series, snag The Maze Runner, move through the whole series, snag The Uglies, move through the whole series, pick up Scythe, move through the whole series, pick up Divergent, move through the whole series. You get the idea! There are many series-based, fast-paced starting points where students can step onto this reading path and find themselves carried upwards with a whoosh.

Then, as they start to understand the genre more and more, and become intrigued with it, there are new angles to explore. They might try Megan Freeman's novel-in-verse, Alone, and its new companion, Away. They might pick up the graphic novel version of The Giver. They might imagine their lives with their internet feed planted inside their head, by reading Feed. Eventually, deep in the genre, they might be ready for Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, or another book that will stretch them further. Or, they might be much better positioned to engage those books in your whole class curriculum.

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The countdown started yesterday in my kitchen, as my daughter flipped the calendar forward for something and realized she had less than thirty days of school left. She loves her teacher and looks forward to school, so she felt sad. It launched her into a story about how her class is trying to convince her teacher to move to the next grade with them. If you, too, are starting to plan ahead and think end-of-year thoughts, today I want to share a way to help students review and reflect on the year in one multimodal activity. I've had requests in The Lighthouse for ways to help students reflect on their own learning - to tell their own learning story. Research backs the importance of metacognitive reflection for students - in other words, it's helpful for them to think not only about what they've learned, but also how they've grown and developed as learners, and where they might want to go next.

Before we dive in, feel free to grab the free curriculum that goes along with this episode. Everything pictured below and discussed throughout the episode is already set up to make this activity as easy to implement for you as possible! And yes, the handouts are editable so you can tweak them to suit your own twist on the activity.

Grab the free curriculum for this activity: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/endofyearhexagons

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When my daughter was a baby, she was a terrible sleeper. I spent many early morning hours trying to find advice online from research, experts, and parents in similar situations. As surely as there was any piece of potentially helpful advice, there existed its polar opposite. "Keep the baby near you, so it can form a healthy attachment," one expert article might read. "Let the baby soothe itself, or it will never be independent," read the next. I sometimes feel the baby sleep debate is similar to the teacher feedback one. When it comes to this absolutely vital issue, one that plagues teachers and often drives them out of the profession, why can't research provide a more solid answer? One book calls for one approach, but there's another in the next. And the next. And the next.

Here's the thing. Baby sleep and writing feedback have something in common - they're complex, they're individual, and they're so difficult that many, many people have tried to offer creative solutions. So instead of lamenting all these often frustratingly different possible approaches anymore, I decided to go hunting for treasure. Today on the podcast, I'm sharing my distillation of the feedback landscape. Ideas to keep in mind as you approach the feedback process, so that you can help students as much as possible while sparing yourself unnecessary angst. Because when it comes down to it, I think it's waaaaaay more important that your students get to have you as a healthy, creative, energized teacher than it is for them to get an acre of feedback on their writing.

Sources: Andersen, Carl (2000). How's it Going? Heinemann Educational Books.

Graham, S., MacArthur, C., & Hebert, M. (Eds). (2019). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. The Guilford Press.

Hillocks Jr., G. (2007). Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Heinemann.

Kohn, Alfie (2020). Forward to Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), edited by Susan D. Blum, West Virginia University Press.

Perkins, David. (2009). Making Learning Whole. Jossey-Bass.

Terada, Youki and Stephen Merrill. (2024: November 8). "Why Teachers Should Grade Less Frequently." Edutopia Online. https://www.edutopia.org/article/why-teachers-should-grade-less-frequently

Zemelman, Daniels and Hyde. (2005). Best Practice. Heinemann.

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Earlier this month we started to explore creative poetry activity options for National Poetry Month (and any time!). But there were just too many to pack into one episode! I promised you a part II, so this week let's continue our creative poetry fun together. If you've always felt a surge of irritation when you flip your planner to the next week and realize a poetry unit is on the horizon, I believe these two episodes can really help. Let's dive right in.

Learn more about I am From poems: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2020/02/how-to-use-i-am-from-poems-in-class.html

Learn more about hosting a poetry slam: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2017/03/poetry-outside-textbook-slam-jam.html

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Recently an invite dropped into my inbox - did I want to swing by a school in my city to talk about teaching ninth grade English for them next year? They really needed to fill a hole for a year. Just one hole - one course, one period, one group of kids. For one year. Did I want to do it? If I did, what was my vision for the course?

Whew. Honestly, the flood of emotions about knocked me over. On the one hand - maybe I could act on the ideas I've spent all my working hours cultivating for the last decade. How I would love to design my room, my booklist, my units, using all the materials I've developed, and hopefully making a real impact in the lives of this class of students.

On the other hand - the struggle. The school was already using a textbook to teach 9th grade English and I wanted nothing to do with it. I imagined total freedom to craft the course of my dreams, but of course, the school would already have arcs and norms in place. They might not want a vigilante substitute looking to repaint and refurnish her classroom with stacks of choice reading books while teaching podcasting and multimodal memoirs, hosting literary food truck festivals and one-pager fairs, and submitting to New York Times contests.

But maybe they would? I'll be taking that meeting soon, but in the meantime, I've got a question to answer. What's my vision for the course? So just in case you, too, are trying to define your vision for a 9th grade course, I thought I'd brainstorm right here with you.

For folks inside The Lighthouse, this will also serve as a fun look at how I'd use materials there to build my course. All the visuals you see in the blog version here are pulled from resources already available to you inside The Lighthouse.

Grab the Free Literary Food Truck Curriculum: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/literaryfoodtrucks

Grab the Free Classroom Design Tookit: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/evolvingEDdesign

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Maybe you weren't taught poetry with joy and pizzazz, and you don't incline to writing it yourself. Which perhaps describes, what do you think, 99% of the population? Maybe 99.99%? If you're in this camp, I get it. Poetry can feel like a nebulous enigma in the world of literature, and it's easy to find yourself nodding along when people talk about it being great without really believing in your nod, like the parade-goers in The Emperor's New Clothes.

I didn't have much use for it until I met my first performance poetry multimedia - audio recordings, a slam documentary, and the Def Poetry jam series - about twenty years ago. Then everything changed. Suddenly instead of a hoop to be jumped through, poetry opened up as a gateway I could use to help students connect to ELA.

Since then, I've discovered layer upon layer of wonderful ways to build poetry in across units, learning a great deal from others along the way. Today on the pod, I'll walk you through twelve different creative, engaging options you can tap into as you teach poetry throughout the year. And I do hope that after this, you WILL teach poetry throughout the year.

Links Mentioned:

Chrome Music Labs Song Maker Tool: https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker

Poetry Blackout for Analysis Activity Episode: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2025/10/poetry-blackout-a-creative-analysis-tool.html

Blackout Poetry Activity Full Handouts Free Resource: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Blackout-Poetry-Activity-l-black-out-poetry-l-blackout-poetry-passages-4165682

Video Interpretation of "In the Dead of Winter We": https://jotreyes.com/in-the-dead-of-winter-we

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Welcome to another episode in our occasional series of short "Highly Recommended" episodes, in which we dive into a quick idea, resource, or tip that I hope will have an immediate impact for you. This week, we're talking about an online treasure trove of authentic audience for your student writers.

Here's the link for this year, or search "NYT Student Contest Calendar" anytime: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/learning/our-2025-26-student-contest-calendar.html

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I loved the Bread Loaf School of English program at Middlebury College. It's a unique summer program leading to a Masters in English, catering almost entirely to English teachers. So the class conversations are literary, but somehow it's all infused with teaching ideas, since it's almost all teachers in every room. Through this program, I spent two summers in Vermont, two in Santa Fe, and one in Oxford. I'd be happy to talk about it here, in today's episode on masters programs, but I already shared a complete review, from my perspective, of The Bread Loaf School back in episode 223, so I'm going to direct you over to that episode if you're looking for a masters in English right now that you can do in person while you teach.

But then there's the other option for an English teacher - a masters in the field of education. There are soooo many possibilities that it's a bit hard to know where to start. So here I'm going to round up some top candidates that I considered when I recently decided to go back and get a second masters. They all appeal in different ways. In the blog post, I'll let you know the name of the program, the format, the length, the description as given on the program website, and the current deadline to apply that they have listed for the nine programs I considered. In the podcast version, I'm going to zoom in on my personal top candidates. I'll also share links in this blog post and the podcast show notes to the many ongoing conversations on masters programs always taking place in Creative High School English, and to the U.S. News and World Report Rankings for top programs.

All the Links!

The Masters in Teaching & Curriculum at Michigan State University (all online): https://online.msu.edu/programs/teaching-curriculum

The Master of Arts in Education from Arizona State University (all online): https://asuonline.asu.edu/online-degree-programs/graduate/masters-in-education/

Learning Design, Innovation and Technology Program (in person):

At Harvard: https://www.gse.harvard.edu/degrees/masters/program/ldit
At Stanford: https://ed.stanford.edu/ldt

Interested in a Masters in ENGLISH? To learn about a summer in-person program for teachers that I did and loved, check out Episode 223: The Bread Loaf School of English

Want to read the most current conversations about masters programs in Creative High School English? Here they are: https://www.facebook.com/groups/256927044749038/search/?q=masters%20program

The U.S. News and World Report ranking for best programs in Curriculum & Instruction: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-education-schools/curriculum-instruction-rankings

The U.S. News and World Report ranking for best programs in Secondary Instruction: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-education-schools/secondary-teacher-education-rankings

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I'm in a book club right now, for the first time ever. (Yeah, I know, gasp. But I've always had so much to read for so many reasons that I've never sought out a book club). It's a pretty great concept - reading a book you want to read with your friends. A concept that I've thought about for a while now should really be part of every single ELA curriculum. Book clubs allow us to offer students curated choices, present more diverse voices as part of our curricula, and expand on themes and genres to give students a wider range of experiences through their conversations with classmates. Win, win, win. Today on the pod, I want to show you how easy it is to wave your book club wand and easily turn part of your curriculum into book clubs.

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When you boil down the essentials of so much writing, what you get is the need for vivid, original detail. In a college essay, the story comes alive when a student goes way past the generalities and gives specific examples. In an argument essay, the intricate examples and counterargument that is explained with depth makes the most impact. In any kind of research, carefully exploring the core of the ideas with the most interesting possible language will hook and hold the reader's attention. And in narrative - as we've seen, eminently transferable to other areas of writing - it's the details.

I took a copywriting class once where they boiled this concept down to a sandwich. Never say someone ate a sandwich. Say it was a pastrami on rye with extra mustard and a sheaf of pickles. Say it was a PB & J positively oozing J. Say it was a double-decker smash burger with Jimmy's special sauce and extra crispy sweet potato fries.

See the difference?

But here's the thing. When you tell a kid they need more details, that doesn't exactly come alive for THEM. You need more details in your request for details. They need to SEE and FEEL what you mean, just like you need to see and feel the world of their writing. So today on the pod, let's dive into six strategies you can use with your students to help improve their narrative writing detail. Your students may already have some of these down, but others may be new, or areas that will help with something causing them to struggle. As with any set of writing strategies, teach what they actually need. Apply it to their current writing projects.

Links:

41 Authentic Audiences for Student Work: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2026/02/41-authentic-audiences-for-your-ela-students.html

Find the new narrative unit on TPT here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Narrative-Unit-Digital-Editable-3-Weeks-15700216

Sources: Hillocks Jr., G. (2007). Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Heinemann.

Graham, S., MacArthur, C., & Hebert, M. (Eds). (2019). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. The Guilford Press.

Stockman, Angela. (2015). Make Writing. Hack Learning Series.

Zinsser, W. (2004). On Writing Well. Harper.

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This week would be my Dad's birthday. If he was still here, spice cake with thick caramel frosting would be in order, and a beautiful cross country ski outing through the snowy forests of Duluth.

He taught sociology at the University of Minnesota when I was growing up. Once, while teaching a weekly three-hour Monday-night class, he dressed as a different famous sociologist every week to help get his students interested in the history of his discipline.

Isn't that nice?

Over the course of his career, he was voted both adviser and professor of the year at the university by his students.

There was always a new sociology book lying around our house, with half the text underlined and his untidy notes scrawled in the margins. Whatever had just come out, he had it.

He crafted new courses about the civil rights movement, religion in Northern Minnesota, and corporate corruption, to name a few, trying to make sure his classes taught both what he thought was important for students to know more about AND what was current and interesting to them.

He took his students to Chicago by train over spring break many times to study the city and its neighborhoods, arranging police ride-alongs (since many of his students were planning to become police officers) and museum visits.

He offered extra credit to anyone who would challenge social convention and stand up on a public bus to sing the National Anthem. More than one student boarded a bus with a friend ready to videotape and then changed their mind, realizing just how strong the pull of convention really is.

He invited students to examine the role of technology in their lives - way before rejecting screens was all the rage - with his assignment to watch someone else watching T.V. for an hour.

I thought about Dad this month as I read Harvard School of Education professor David Perkins' book, Make Learning Whole. Perkins asks educators not to let school become "a bag of information" (173). It's easy to see how that could happen. Students can graduate in a voluminous swirl of facts. Facts from five or six subjects times twelve years. Facts that often got crammed into corners of the mind awaiting tests. Kids could easily leave high school, or even college, with a backpack of facts and very little understanding of how to use them.

My Dad didn't let that happen. He had his Sociology of Religion students out in the community visiting different centers of faith and learning about their history and practices. He had his criminology students riding in police cars to learn from actual police. He had students questioning and challenging social norms on buses and in living rooms as they learned about how sociology works. When he had to lecture late on a Monday night to quickly cover the history of sociology, he did so in a costume, trying to help the voice of a historic sociologist come to life through his impersonation.

Perkins calls for the idea of learning in a real context, devoting his book to a framework in which students experience the real-world work of a discipline on a level that's reasonable for them. Throughout his book, he calls it "playing the whole game at the junior level." There's a lot to it, and I'd really recommend the book, but at the crux, it's this: kids practice baseball skills so they can play the game. They're willing to play catch, step in the batting cage, and practice their slide because they know they're building up to something that matters to them. In school, we can offer the same thing. Skill practice embedded in a context that's meaningful to our students.

Maybe that means researching ethical AI use and presenting solutions to the teaching faculty.

Maybe it means writing narratives they eventually enter into the New York Times memoir contest.

Maybe it means interviewing local business leaders, learning about graphic design and website construction, and then creating a tourism website for their small town.

There are so many ways to bring the real-world work of English into the classroom, and this week, I just want to highly recommend that you plan a whole game of your own.

Source:

Perkins, David. (2009). Making Learning Whole. Jossey-Bass.

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Today on the podcast we're digging into student agency and the lessons Dr. Annalies Corbin has learned from her work pioneering microschools and portable innovation labs. Who is Dr. Corbin, you ask?

Well, she's the CEO and founder of the PAST Foundation. "From a single school partnership in 2006, Annalies has grown PAST's supporters across the nation, building a reputation for both transforming teaching and learning by understanding tomorrow's education needs. In 2015, Annalies' commitment to transforming schools led to the development of PAST Innovation Lab. Connecting directly with teachers through online professional development courses, MAEd program and on-site workshops, PAST Innovation Lab impacts more classrooms and expands learning opportunities for teachers and students everywhere. In 23 years, PAST has impacted more than 2,300,000 students, over 20,000 teachers across 42 states, hosting nearly 20,000 visitors and building hundreds of partnerships" (Foundation Website).

To connect further after the show, you can find Annalies hosting the podcast, Learning Unboxed, or read her new book, Hacking Schools: Five Strategies to Link Learning to Life.

I think you're going to be really intrigued by the programs the PAST foundation has put into action, and the ways they can be applied to ELA. So let's dive in.

Connect with Dr. Annalies Corbin:

Find out more about her new book, Hacking School, here.

Learn about The Past Foundation.

Say hello to Annalies on Instagram.

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A few weeks ago I shared my dream American Lit curriculum here on the pod, and soon after I heard from a British Literature teacher who was hoping for some new unit ideas for her curriculum too. She shared her starting point, which sounds like a highly engaging set of texts: "Our long reads," she wrote, "are The Princess Bride, Macbeth, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Beowulf- a hero's journey theme!" So today I'd like to brainstorm with you, throwing out ideas for a British Lit curriculum, based on some of these starting texts and a few more I'll throw into the mix. Get ready for a Holmes-inspired True Crime podcast project, Shakespearean book clubs, a mashup of dystopia and contemporary street art, and more. Whether or not you teach a British Literature course, I think you'll find some fresh ideas and inspiration for new unit possibilities today.

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The word audience conjures up a crowd, perhaps people watching an opera late at night at the Santa Fe outdoor amphitheatre, as the moon rises over the spectacle of Cosi Fan Tutte. Or wearing sparkles and friendship bracelets as they scream themselves hoarse at the Eras tour. Or packing a stadium as they stomp their feet and cheer at a Lakers game.

But audiences don't have to be so huge, or dramatic. When it comes to students, what they need is to know they'll pretty often have one for their best work. A friend, the kids walking through the hallways every day, the school principal, the 2nd grade class at Wilson elementary down the street... it matters.

It changes the way they work, and helps their work parallel the writing they'll do one day across a wide variety of careers, in which their emails will go to someone, their presentations will be to a room full of co-workers, and their social media posts will make the difference between their small business making it or not.

An authentic audience brings engagement and motivation, helping students be successful at school and beyond. So today, let's talk about where to find it (hint... around every corner!).

One quick note before we begin - for any of these audiences that exist online, keep in mind that you would need appropriate parent and/or school permission for students to submit to be published, and that students should never share their personal information or photos of themselves.

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Sources:

Landay, Eileen and Kurt Wooton. A Reason to Read. Harvard Education Press, 2012.

Warner, John. Why They Can't Write. John Hopkins University Press, 2020.

Zemelman, Daniels and Hyde. Best Practice. Heinemann, 2005.

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American Lit has the potential to be an engaging, broadening, fascinating course. We're in what I consider an in-between era, where many schools are still providing the historical American lit canon to teachers, while other schools or independent teachers going around the system have moved into teaching a broader swirl of America's diverse stories.

The American Lit curriculum I was handed twenty years ago was 98% written by dead white men. Since then, I've learned about the impact on our students when they can (and can't) see themselves in the books they read.

When they can and can't see their identities. Their communities. Their problems. Their hopes.

I learned from Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's call for books in which students can see themselves and learn to understand others in her appeal to our collective humanity in her landmark essay, "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors."

I learned from Felicia Rose Chavez, author of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop, who shared her personal experience as a young reader: "It's startling as a young person of color to stare down the spines of literacy and note the neat annihilation of most of the world" (29).

I learned from Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño, co-authors of Conscious Classrooms, that using culturally relevant texts can improve student outcomes by helping improve their comprehension, motivation & engagement.

I learned more about pairing contemporary texts to the canon from the #distrupttexts movement, about "completing" the canon from Chavez, and about layering multicultural, multimodal texts from Dr. Gholdy Muhammad's Cultivating Genius.

For me, it feels so clear. And yet I still see so many curriculums either still cleaving to the classics for the most part or abandoning books altogether in favor of textbooks and " short selections."

So today I want to offer my American Lit dream. If I had an unlimited budget, and didn't have to worry about book challenges, this is an outline of the American Lit curriculum I would love to teach today. If you're an American Lit teacher, I hope you find an idea for a new unit or two or five that you'd be excited to try out. If you don't teach American Lit, I think you'll still get a lot of ideas about curriculum possibilities in terms of structure and balance from this episode, which you could remix with any authors you choose.

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Sources:

Chavez, Felicia. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021.

Graham, S., MacArthur, C., & Hebert, M. (Eds). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. The Guilford Press, 2019.

Hillocks Jr., G. Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Heinemann, 2007.

Kittle, Penny. Micro Mentor Texts. Scholastic Professional, 2022.

Muhammad, Gholdy. Cultivating Genius. Scholastic, 2020.

Potash, Betsy. "Students Need Diverse Texts and Choice, with Dr. Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica and Dr. Allison Briceño." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 204.

Resolution on Grammar Exercises to Teach Speaking and Writing. NCTE online: National Council of Teachers of English Position Statements: https://ncte.org/statement/grammarexercises/, Accessed January 2026.

Schoenborn, Andy and Troy Hicks. Creating Confident Writers. W.W. Norton, 2020.

Zemelman, Steven, Harvey Daniels and Arthur Hyde. Best Practice. Heinemann, 2005.

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Let's talk about an incredibly adaptable project in which students experiment with creative ideas across modes. It's easy to plug into a variety of units and times of year, and ready to tap at a moment's notice. It remixes easily for Valentine's Day on the horizon, but it could also work well at Halloween, or as part of a creative writing unit, or when you're reading any verse novel or graphic novel.

This project starts with fiction, moves into verse, and lands in a multimodal combination of verse and imagery. I call it a multimodal flash verse project, informed along the way by the brilliant mode collaborations of Jason Reynolds. Let's dig into it.

Links Mentioned:

Jason Reynolds' Interview with the Kennedy Center: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuXNsJvNaFs

Book Trailer for Ain't Burned all the Bright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjqvOyAh36Y

Reynolds on his collab with Novgorodoff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ErpAXd7Swg

There was a Party for Langston Read-Aloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4MYO4WmR9s

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The more time you spend writing, the more you know that revision is everything. Let me cite writing superhero John Green on this one, who discusses his drafting processin the FAQs on his website: "...I'm a big believer in revision: I almost always delete most of my first drafts (often as much as 90%). But there are many mini-drafts along the way, so it's hard to talk about the process quantitatively. I do try to save the file with a different name each time I've made some dramatic changes I fear I might later regret, so that's some measure, maybe, of how many drafts there are. The final copy of Katherines on my hard drive is called aok284; the final copy of TFiOS is called okay192." If I'm understanding John correctly, that means he wrote 284 drafts with dramatic changes for just one of his novels.

Let's let that sink in for a moment.

Let's be sure to mention that to students sometime soon.

I tried to demonstrate some of this to my students back when I was at the Bread Loaf School of English in the summers (find out more about that fabulous program here in episode 223), and teaching in the school year. I photocopied every phase of one of my major papers, from random thoughts on paper to sort-of-organized thoughts to outline to research notes to draft to draft to draft to final paper. The booklet I passed out to students literally looked like a book. I wanted them to understand that writing isn't a matter of freewheeling a draft and then cleaning it up.

Recently, I spent twenty or so hours over winter vacation (soooo much travel time) reading up on the most current best practices in writing instruction. It was a good time. There's nothing quite like reading classroom stories about integrating sensory detail at 3 a.m. over the Atlantic while the plane around you sleeps. (Yep, stop laughing. You always knew this about me. Pedagogy is my jam). A lot of it felt familiar, but there were also things that sparked new connections for me, and a few surprises, too. So today, let's tackle a huge topic together: student revision. We'll dive into the challenge and some solid solution options, and I'll hand over a curriculum booster pack to help you put it all into action.

The visual walkthrough of this episode:

Make a copy of the curriculum that goes with this episode: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TIxaV1lgaAJMZipDt6hgoPC6-Tz7wAi2P4KF2uSd_pE/copy

Sources:

Green, John. "FAQs." John Green Books: https://www.johngreenbooks.com/where-i-get-my-ideas-inspiration-and-general-writing-stuff. Accessed January 2026.

Hillocks Jr., George. Narrative Writing: Learning a New Model for Teaching. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2006.

"How to Teach Authentic Writing in the Age of AI." Edutopia: The School of Practice Podcast. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-teach-authentic-writing-in-the-age-of-ai/id1840474338?i=1000736252749. Accessed January 2026.

"Improve Students' Evidence Analysis: Meet Mr. Skeptical." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2025/05/improve-students-evidence-analysis-meet-mr-skeptical.html. Accessed January 2026.

MacArthur, Charles. "Evaluation and Revision" (Chapter 12). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Ed. by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Michael Hebert. New York: Guilford Press, 2017.

Wilson, Joshua. "Assessing Writing" (Chapter 14). Best Practices in Writing Instruction. Ed. by Steve Graham, Charles MacArthur, and Michael Hebert. New York: Guilford Press, 2017.

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We know we want kids to have choice. As much choice as possible in creating the education that is meaningful and helpful for them. That choice can come through choice over content, medium, expression of ideas, types of discussion, seating in the classroom, what to work on when, when to take a break...there are so many possibilities! If you make it a professional challenge to start seeing the possibilities for choice, you'll find them everywhere!

As I've been working on choice as a theme for The Lighthouse this month, I knew that I wanted to create a final choice board project adaptable for any text that would provide a range of options for students. But I also knew I wanted to avoid the pitfalls of some of the choice projects I designed for my own classroom, when I ended up having to create seven different rubrics and rewire myself for a huge range of requirements on my different project options as I graded them. While I was glad to give my students those choices, it was frustrating how long it took to complete my comments.

So I took some of my favorite types of projects, what I've learned about creating linked hyperdocs, and my strong desire for an easy grading situation and mashed it all up into an adaptable final project with nine choices, including one that allows students to create their own way to make meaning from what they've studied (so really, a million choices). I'm going to walk you through the process today, so you can do the same next time you'd like to create a project full of options, gifting your students agency as they synthesize what they've learned and create something new.

Let's dive in.

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Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Sources Considered:

Beghetto, Ronald. "Does Assessment Kill Student Creativity?" The Educational Forum, 2005.

Beghetto, Ronald. Killing Ideas Softly: The Promise & Peril of Creativity in the Classroom. Information Age Publishing, 2017. Accessed Online through the Ebesco Database.

Chavez, Felicia. The Anti-Racist Writer's Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021.

Gabriel, Elise. "Six Ways to Help Kids Grow their Creativity." Greater Good Magazine Online: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/six_ways_to_help_kids_grow_their_creativity. Accessed 28 October 2025.

Gonzalez, Jennifer. "Meet the Single Point Rubric." Cult of Pedagogy Online: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/single-point-rubric/. Accessed May 2025.

Pringle, Zorana Ivcevic. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs: 2025.

Wiggins, Grant. "Creative." https://grantwiggins.wpcomstaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/creative.pdf. Accessed 28 October 2025.

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I bet you know your favorite way to learn something. Maybe it's by listening to a podcast, skimming a couple of articles on the topic, reading a book, going to a live lecture, taking a Masterclass, talking to a knowledgable friend, playing your way through an App like Duolingo, attending a conference...

The point is, we're all pretty different when it comes to our FAVORITE way to take in information. The way that really helps it sink in.

For me, it's often about visuals and color, dating all the way back to my high school years when I created my own visual notes summaries of the semester for each class before finals. I enjoyed reading through all my notes and condensing them into a couple of brightly colored pages. Once I had done that, I barely had to study those highlight reels, because the process of making them had done most of the studying for me.

Honestly, I looked forward to exam week because I could take my exams and look at my notes for the next day more quickly than I could get through the work of a normal week of school. I had more free time when we had tests, and I enjoyed my review process.

Today on the pod, as many folks may be headed into a unit or term review, just as student focus is already taking a left out of school city toward vacation land, let's talk about an easy way to give students agency over their review, ANY review.

Go Further:

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit

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Dickens' A Christmas Carol stands out strongly from his other works, but not because it's so different, really, in what it hopes to accomplish. Critiquing society, drawing attention to the world outside the doors of the wealthy in Victorian England, hoping to create social change... this was Dickens. But it's in A Christmas Carol that he condenses this message and provides joy in equal measure with distress. I've read a lot of Dickens, though I never did quite manage to finish Bleak House even after carrying it around for months, but it's A Christmas Carol that most stays with me, and that most feels like a doable add to a high school curriculum filled with many voices.

At the same time, we can't talk about A Christmas Carol without considering how it centers Christmas. If you're going to teach this book, consider how you can also acknowledge the many other holidays that happen in this season - Diwali, Hanukkah, Eid, Lunar New Year, and more. I recently redid all the imagery in my winter holiday maker project (snag it free here) because I realized that although I had tried to keep Christmas from dominating, it was still too red and green. Take a look at the simple changes I was able to make (below) to create a more inclusive project, featuring imagery from many holiday traditions.

And if you'd like to explore more inclusive holiday activities, you can find a bunch in this round up blog post.

But to come back to Dickens, I think it's important to use the vehicle as a book to discuss Dickens' desire to use his art to create change, his context in Victorian England, and the transformation of his character, Scrooge, rather than seeing it as mainly a fun holiday activity, because of course, many students do not celebrate Christmas and so reading a Christmas story won't necessarily feel like a fun holiday activity to them. IKYK.

OK, with all this said, let's dive in to five creative activities you can use with this text, whether you choose to read the play, watch the movie, or some combination.

Go Further:

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

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According to research by Stanford Professor Bob Sutton, innovative businesses need to generate about 4,000 ideas to come up with two or three really good ones.

Think about that.

4,000 ideas.

What does that mean for our students? In their busy whirlwind days, they're likely to opt for their first or second idea on any given assignment. A thesis pops into their head? They'll probably hit the ground running with it so they can get their paper done. They think of a project concept for genius hour? Boom. They jump on board.

In an era of busy busy and test prep, brainstorming often gets shortchanged. But what if that means students are spending hours, days, even weeks on ideas that don't deserve their time? Ideas they would have quickly surpassed with a few more minutes of thinking, and a quick feedback session with a partner?

Today on the pod, let's talk about how can we build a better brainstorming engine into our projects, paper processes, and units. We're going to take a peek at two quick case studies today - one in a classroom full of students just getting started on a podcast project, and another from my experience working on a concept for PD.

Want to go Deeper?

Check out this guide to Brainstorming from the Stanford d.School: https://hci.stanford.edu/courses/cs247/2011/readings/dschool-brainstorming.pdf

Watch the Masters of Creativity Series from Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/@stanfordsmastersofcreativi9905/playlists

Sources:

Potash, Betsy. "Research-Based Practices to Ignite Creativity, with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 393.

Pringle, Zorana Ivcevic. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs, 2025.

Utley, Jeremy and Kathryn Segovia. "Masters of Creativity: Updating the Creative Operating System (Design Thinking)." Stanford d.School Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggza7df7N7Y&t=2233s. Accessed October 17, 2025.

Go Further:

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides

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It's easy to think of hexagonal thinking as a big event, a full-class activity that you set up and run for a whole period. But once your students know how to use this tool, it could come in handy in lots of other ways. Especially if you keep some blank hexagons on hand in your classroom.

In today's short episode, I want to share five ten-minute hexagonal thinking activities you could use in your ELA classroom any old time, but my hope is that after hearing these ten, you'll realize there are hundreds more waiting. This is a tool you can reach for time and again, to help students warm-up for discussion, look at things in a new way, or organize their thinking, their research, or their ideas in the midst of all types of units.

For today's examples, I'm going to use Trevor Noah's memoir, Born a Crime, as an example text. Facing History & Ourselves has his chapter,"Chameleon," available online here, if you're intrigued and want to learn more.

Go Further:

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Grab the free Better Discussions toolkit

Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides

Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit

Launch your choice reading program with all my favorite tools and recs, and grab the free toolkit.

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

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You know how some spaces just make you feel excited to DO something? Whether it's a Cricut getting your wheels spinning with what-ifs, beautiful shelves of paint inviting you to decorate holiday pottery, or a giant stack of cookbooks suddenly causing you to wonder if it's time to fill the cookie jar, well-organized resources in a creative space can help bring out your creative side.

Today, let's talk about how to choose and organize flexible resources for your ELA classroom, anytime you've got the budget and bandwidth. (Check out this post on how to use Donors Choose, if your budget is continuously falling short of your needs).

Ooh, one more thing before we start. Throughout this podcast, I'm showcasing graphics and displays from the #evolvingEDdesign Toolkit, a vast free resource I made for you. You can grab it here.

Go Further:

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Get my popular free hexagonal thinking digital toolkit

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Links:

The (Vast) Ed Design (Free) Toolkit: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/evolvingEDdesign

The Do's and Don'ts of Donors Choose: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2019/01/the-dos-and-donts-of-donors-choose-for.html

The Power of the Writing Makerspace: https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2018/09/the-power-of-writing-makerspace-with.html

The Ed Deck: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Ed-Deck-Lesson-Plan-Inspiration-ELA-Activities-and-Projects-Editable-5106443

Sources Considered, Consulted, and Cited for this Series & for the Toolkit:

Abdaal, Ali. Feel Good Productivity. Celadon Books, 2023.

"Aesthetics and Academic Spaces." Teachers College, Columbia University Youtube Channel: Curriculum Encounters Podcast, Episode 4. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuFs4Fyk-v0Bwtuy1eQJ3JkRTeL4Sjyz4 Accessed Oct. 21, 2025.

Chavez, Felicia. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021.

Dintersmith, Ted. Documentary: Most Likely to Succeed. 2015.

Dintersmith, Ted. What Schools Could Be. Princeton University Press, 2018.

Doorley, Scott & Witthoft, Doorley. make space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration. John Wiley and Sons, 2012.

"Exploring Google's Headquarters in San Francisco." Digiprith Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxGqbmFf9Qc. Accessed October 13, 2015.

"High Tech High Virtual Tour." High Tech High Unboxed Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87xU9smFrj0 . Accessed October 15, 2025.

"Inside YouTube's Biggest Office In America | Google's YouTube Headquarters Office Tour." The Roaming Jola Youtube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P26fDfFBx8I . Accessed October 14, 2025.

Novak, Katie. Universal Design for Learning in English Language Arts. Cast Inc., 2023.

Potash, Betsy. "Research-Based Practices to Ignite Creativity, with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 393.

Pringle, Zorana Ivcevic. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs, 2025.

Ritchart, Ron and David Perkins. "Making Thinking Visible." Educational Leadership, February 2008, p.p. 57-61. https://pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/makingthinkingvisibleEL.pdf. Accessed October 13, 2025.

Richardson, Carmen and Punya Mishra. "Scale: Support of Creativity in a Learning Environment," 2017. Accessed through Drive with permission.

Richardson, Carmen and Punya Mishra. "Learning environments that support student creativity: Developing the SCALE." Thinking Skills and Creativity, Volume 27, March 2018, p.p. 45-54. Accessed online at https://doi-org.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/10.1016/j.tsc.2017.11.004, October 13, 2025.

"Sensory Inquiry and Social Spaces." Teachers College, Columbia University Youtube Channel: Curriculum Encounters Podcast, Episode 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtD_-k5QmOQ&list=PLuFs4Fyk-v0Bwtuy1eQJ3JkRTeL4Sjyz4&index=2 Accessed Oct. 23, 2025.

Stockman, Angela. Make Writing: 5 Strategies that turn Writer's Workshop into a Maker Space. Hack Learning Series, 2015.

Terada, Yuki. "Do Fidgets help Students Focus?" Edutopia Online: https://www.edutopia.org/article/do-fidgets-help-students-focus/. Accessed 4 November 2025.

Utley, Jeremy. "Masters of Creativity (Education Edition) #1: Input Obsession (Design Thinking)." Stanford d.School Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LosDd3Q0yQw . Accessed October 15, 2025.

"What is Curriculum and Where Might we Find It?" Teachers College, Columbia University Youtube Channel: Curriculum Encounters Podcast, Episode 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh_UhGATVwM&list=PLuFs4Fyk-v0Bwtuy1eQJ3JkRTeL4Sjyz4&index=1 Accessed Oct. 23, 2025.

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The other day I found myself walking through a parking garage stairwell in Iowa City, and I realized they were using the same scent design as the local mall in Bratislava where we used to live. Half-shocked, half-amused, I climbed the cement stairs as I remembered riding the escalator through the same subtle scent cloud two years ago. The memory was visceral.

Though we don't always think about it, our sensory experiences have a strong impact on how we feel and how we work. I do my best work in a situation where I feel comfortable. In fact, I generally prefer not to work at home because step one, for me, to working at home is often to clean the entire house, put music on, light a candle, pick flowers, make tea, etc. and so I spent an hour prepping to work before I do anything.

I bet you've already put considerable time and effort into making your classroom a space where you feel comfortable and where students feel welcome. Today isn't about changing any of that; it's just about finding small places where you might be able to tune your sensory dashboard in class to make it work even better for you and your kiddos. By thinking specifically about the five senses - just like we have students do in their writing - you can find easy wins to make the workspace more welcoming, energizing, and comfortable for everyone inside.

Throughout this podcast, and all the ones in this series, I'm showcasing graphics and displays from the #evolvingEDdesign Toolkit, a vast free resource I made for you.

You can grab it here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/evolvingEDdesign

Please share your classroom design stories, questions, photos and ideas with the #evolvingEDdesign hashtag across platforms so we can continue the conversation off the pod!

Go Further:

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Snag three free weeks of community-building attendance question slides

Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.

Come hang out on Instagram.

Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the 'gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!

Links Mentioned:

Edutopia Article on Fidgets

Scottish Castle Fireplace Video

Nasa Space Images Video

Fun Stanford d.School Timer for Class Work (one of many they've created!)