The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

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 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!

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 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!

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 Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Grab the free Better Discussions 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!

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. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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!

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. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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!

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. 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!

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. 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!

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. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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!

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. 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! 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.

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. Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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! Sources: Chavez, Felicia. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021. 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. 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.