Episodes

  • 402: Make Your Space a Partner with Flexible Resources

    402: Make Your Space a Partner with Flexible Resources
    Nov 12 2025
    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. 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. "What is Curriculum and Where Might we Find It?" Teachers College, Columbia University Youtube Channel: Curriculum ...
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    21 mins
  • 401: Easy Wins on the Sensory Dashboard (yes, in ELA!)

    401: Easy Wins on the Sensory Dashboard (yes, in ELA!)
    Nov 5 2025
    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!) 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://...
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    19 mins
  • 400: #evolvingEDdesign: Giving Students Real Agency

    400: #evolvingEDdesign: Giving Students Real Agency
    Oct 29 2025

    Imagine you and I were about to make a dinner together. Now, I bring a love of baking to our project, and a decently strong roast chicken game. But I don't want to dominate the conversation too much. "Let's make roast chicken and vegetables," I say, "and cookies." Your face falls a little. "Oh, but you can choose which vegetables we roast, and what kind of cookies - I have M & Ms AND chocolate chips."

    Perhaps you love making bibimbap, tagine, paella, tacos, or BBQ pork. Maybe you've got three Ottolenghi cookbooks in your bag and you were about to suggest a middle eastern buffet followed up by your incredible raspberry jam donuts. Possibly, you spent a year in culinary school before I knew you, and your artisan pizza was legendary among your college friends.

    You put all those ideas aside and dutifully don an apron, trying to look OK with the choice between sweet potatoes and carrots, chocolate chips and M & Ms.

    But what if I had started the conversation by showing you everything I had in my kitchen, including my rainbow shelf of cookbooks, and asked you what you'd like to make? And how I could help? How would that feel?

    Agency is a key word when it comes to education, but it's easy to underestimate its power and think of a few small choices as agency. Today, in our continuing conversation about #evolvingEDdesign, I want to think bigger and wider.

    How can we give our students more agency in the classroom, empowering their creativity? Let's dig in.

    Throughout this podcast, and the ones to come in this series, I'll be 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!

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    35 mins
  • 399: #evolvingEDdesign: Crafting a Flexible Classroom

    399: #evolvingEDdesign: Crafting a Flexible Classroom
    Oct 22 2025

    My first classroom was a little blue trailer on the edge of the soccer field. Every morning, I got my shoes clogged with mud hiking across the field, but I loved my corner of campus, and I felt pretty free to design it to work best for my students.

    And it turned out that what really worked best was constant change. Our desks were attached to our chairs, so to move one was to move both. And move them I did, frequently working up a sweat between classes as I threw them around the room as quickly as I could, moving from circular discussion seating in one class to desks pushed against the walls for a visiting theater artist in another, station seating for book clubs in one back to circular discussion seating in another.

    I wanted the room to work for the task, not the task to conform to the room. And that meant staying flexible, even though I hadn't yet heard the phrase "flexible seating" and certainly didn't have any couches, yoga balls, or beanbags. I didn't even know I wanted those yet.

    These days, it's that word "flexible" that defines so much that is helpful in modern classroom design. Flexible seating, flexible displays, flexible resources. I want your students to be able to collaborate with you from day to day to create the environment that will help them shine.

    So what might that look like these days? Let's dig in.

    Throughout this podcast, and the ones to come in this series, I'll be 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.

    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!

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    21 mins
  • 398: A Simple Trick to Elevate Poetry Analysis: Poetry Blackout

    398: A Simple Trick to Elevate Poetry Analysis: Poetry Blackout
    Oct 15 2025
    The first time I had much use for poetry came in college, freshmen year. My professor assigned each of us to memorize a poem and recite it in class. Horrified, I chose ee cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town" and began the process of reading it a million times between tennis practices and snowball fights. Over and over and over I read it, trying to memorize how the words and lines zipped together without the usual literary wardrobe of grammar. I can still remember pieces, twenty five years later: "anyone lived in a pretty how town / with up so many floating bells down..." "no one loved him more by more..." As I read and read, I realized the poem featured two characters named "anyone" and "no one." I began to understand how the years passed quickly through the lines and stanzas, as cycles of time spun through small word choices. I saw its heartbreak. Reading by reading I began to find it utterly beautiful. By the time my friends and I went out to practice for our class presentation by reciting our poems in the middle of Pomona College's outdoor Greek theater late one night, I loved it. But I was still really nervous. As an educator, I've often wondered how to help students get as close up to a poem as I got to ee cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town." What makes it possible to step inside the story of a poem, try on its language, dream its dreams? Maybe without having to recite it though? This month I had a chance to explore some of Robert Scott Root-Bernstein and Michèle Root-Bernstein book, Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People. Inside, they discuss the risk of education staying on a kind of hypothetical parallel track to the realities of the world, each so close to each other and yet never quite touching. Imagination and experience, they suggest, have become disconnected. "This being the case," write the Root-Bernsteins, "the task for educators, self-learners, and parents is simply put: to reunite the two. And the world's most creative people tell us how in their own words and deeds, in their own explorations of their own minds at work. What they find as individuals, when taken as a whole, is a common set of thinking tools at the heart of creative understanding" (24-25). What are these tools, you might well ask, and what do they have to do with ee cummings, students, and the study of poetry? The tools are: observing, imaging, abstracting, recognizing patterns, forming patterns, analogizing, body thinking, empathizing, dimensional thinking, modeling, playing, transforming, and synthesizing. They're pretty fascinating to play around with when it comes to designing curriculum. How might we help students better understand a poem, using these tools? I decided to experiment with designing around patterns when it comes to ee cummings, a master of writing in rhythms and cycles. The nexus of patterns and poetry had me thinking of blackout poetry at first, but of course, I already had a poem. I didn't need a new one. So I decided to try a new spin on the blackout - blacking out for discovering meaning, instead of to create a new poem. Instead of a blackout poem, I would try a poem blackout, illuminating what patterns I could find by eliminating everything else. For me, the results were powerful. So today on the pod, let me walk you through how to do a poem blackout of your own in class, with any poem you might want to dig deeply into with students. If you love blackout poetry, I think you'll love this riff. As usual, I really encourage you to check out the show notes for the oh-so-necessary visuals to complement this episode. Sources Cited: Root-Bernstein, M. and Root-Bernstein R. Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World's Most Creative People. Mariner Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=DARiLCJc0dEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. Accessed Oct. 14, 2025. 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!
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    21 mins
  • 397: The Humble Webquest Levels Up (How-To + Templates)

    397: The Humble Webquest Levels Up (How-To + Templates)
    Oct 8 2025
    I've got more and more respect, these days, for the humble webquest. Slash hyperdoc. Slash game board. Slash immersive digital multimedia experience. Slash clickable infographic. Slash playlist. Slash choice board. When it comes to sharing information and contemporary texts with your students, there is SO MUCH available online right now. Students can see actors practicing behind the scenes at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Read John Green's thoughts on drafting. Hear Jason Reynolds' read his children's book, There was a Party for Langston, while the illustrations wash across the screen. Students can learn MLA with Purdue, watch Joy Harjo read her own poetry, listen to our country's top researchers and academics and start-up founders on podcasts and Ted stages. So cool, right? With so many immersive, multimodal resources waiting for our students, building their roadmaps to what's available becomes an important (and fun) job. We want to present them with great options, and help them feel positive and excited about the experience of exploring. We want to give them possibilities across modes and from many perspectives, so students can use their agency to learn in ways that feel good to them, and connect to at least some aspects of what they discover. We want to provide options in terms of how they synthesize the information they take in so they can use it later. As I see it, here are some of the benefits to building quality webquests for students: students have choice in what to explore, starting with what seems most interesting to them and continuing to make choices until they're out of timeplugging in to the kinds of contemporary connections available online (like listening to author interviews, visiting settings, seeing adaptations, and viewing connected social media) can often make learning feel more relevant for studentsyou can build in resources across genres and modes, letting students listen, watch, read, explore, view, and zoom in according to their preferencesit's easier to provide more viewpoints, voices, and perspectives, helping you to diversify your curriculumsharing a webquest is less stressful than giving a lecture, and more likely to keep students engagedyou'll save a tree, since photocopying a packet of information won't be necessaryyou can take advantage of the incredible wealth of informational resources available online Today on the pod, let's talk through some examples. Be sure to grab the free templates that complement the episode! These are meant to make this whole process quick and easy for you as you get started, and then you can go on to develop your own. Get the Free Templates Here: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/webquesttemplates Sources Considered and Cited: Beers, Kylene and Robert Probst. Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters. Scholastic, 2017. This book features a helpful look at why relevance is key to engagement. Read more in this blog post. Chavez, Felicia Rose. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books, 2021. Felicia Rose Chavez talks about letting students have a voice in the texts that form the curriculum, and "completing the canon" (97) to go well beyond the white Eurocentric voices so often enshrined there. Clapp, Edward. "5+3 = 8: The Eight Barriers to Access and Equity in the Creative Classroom." Participatory Creativity: Introducing Access and Equity to the Creative Classroom. MSU Article Retrieval Service. Accessed October 2025. The chapter from Edward Clapp discusses sharing models of creativity that don't just reflect individual creatives working in isolation, but also collective and collaborative creativity. Rodriguez-Mojica, Claudia and Allison Briceño. Conscious Classrooms. PD Essentials, 2022. (+ Related Podcast Interview). Claudia and Rodriguez-Mojica and Allison Briceño showcase the increase in student performance when they can see themselves in the texts they read. Muhammad, Gholdy. Cultivating Genius. Scholastic Teaching Resources, 2020. Gholdy Muhammad's Cultivating Genius calls for us to layer contemporary multimodal texts into our curriculum, something that reinforced my own long-term interest in this possibility. Ivcevic, Zorana. The Creativity Choice. Public Affairs, 2025. "Research-Based Practices to Ignite Creativity, with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. Episode 393. September, 2025. Ivcevic suggests that teachers use models and mentors of creative thought that allow students to see themselves, both in terms of their identity and in terms of the level of creativity. Stockman, Angela. Creating Inclusive Writing Environments in the K-12 Classroom. Eye on Education, 2020. Angela's work on multimodal texts, makerspace freedom, and creating more inclusive curriculum is helpful in this conversation.
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    23 mins
  • 396: Try these Inviting Alternatives to the Research Paper

    396: Try these Inviting Alternatives to the Research Paper
    Oct 1 2025
    Recently I had to learn APA citation. Oof. It was a heavy lift, after a few decades with MLA. It gave me a refreshed sense of how overwhelming students likely find MLA. I found myself thinking, why can't I just link my sources in parentheses? Why can't I just reference the authors who informed my thinking inside my sentences? Why on earth does it matter if I use a comma or a semicolon, put the page first or put the page second? Why does APA even exist? Yeah, all the things our students probably think when we roll out our 26 page MLA redux, which doesn't even cover it all. And that's only the beginning of student frustration when it comes time for a research paper. Now, I struggle a little bit in recommending these alternatives to the research paper today, partly because my husband regularly references the research paper he wrote in high school as a landmark in his academic life. He loved it. He was so proud of his work. It set him on a path that eventually led all the way to a PHD program at UPenn. The other night, though, when we were debating the relative merits of 5 paragraph essays and research papers, he did mention that the rest of the class did not exactly excel on that research paper assignment, if the comments his teacher made as she passed back the papers were any sign. John Warner, in his book, Why They Can't Write, posits a possible reason for that lack of excelling. "The writing-related tasks we frequently visit upon students would prove difficult for even highly experienced writers. Writing on subjects with which we're newly familiar, in forms that are foreign, and addressed to audiences that are either undefined or unknown (other than 'for the teacher') bears little resemblance to the way we write for the world" (27). In other words, we often ask students to try and make themselves an expert on something they're not that interested in for a research paper, use a citation format that is next thing to a foreign language for them, tie themselves in knots trying to figure out how to convey what they've learned in an orderly way that generally leaves little room for their own voice or opinions, and do it all just to show their teacher, for a grade. Of course, that is how it has seemingly always been done. And after all, we survived. I remember learning MLA format in 7th grade, and creating my first research notecards. I dutifully scrawled quotation after quotation on those notecards, putting all the source information on the back. I can't remember what I wrote about though, for that 7th grade research paper. Literally nothing comes to mind. The first research assignment that I do remember came in 11th grade, when I participated in Minnesota's National History Day, making it to the State Finals with my project "The Column: Supporting Architecture through the Ages." I remember my architectural timeline, supported on a bridge of heavy white dominos across the front of my display board. I remember learning about Ionic, Corinthian, and Doric columns, and I've seen them all over the world in my travels since. I remember my virtual explorations of Athens, as I searched through various texts trying to figure out how the column worked, why it was so special, and what it looked like in buildings all over ancient Greece. I remember presenting my project in Duluth, sensing that I barely made it through with so many other great projects on hand, learning from the quality around me, and improving it before heading for Minneapolis. I remember going to Valley Fair, the amusement park I had had my eye on for years, after the state competition, with my Dad. It. Was. Awesome. My National History Day Project let me choose any topic of interest to me that fit whatever the general theme was that year. It let me use my love of design, color, lettering, and layout in addition to my research skills. It gave me an authentic audience to consider. I think I still had to use MLA citation format, but I was so busy with everything else that I wasn't about to let cracking that code stop me. I had a competition to win. (Not that I did, but I sure had fun trying). When I look back on my academic and professional life so far, research in service of real purpose, in an arena that truly interested me, with the ability to include modes that I enjoy working in, for an audience I truly hoped to impact, made all the difference in igniting my best work. So what if we warm our students up to research with activities, projects, and shorter writing pieces that focus more on elements like these, and less on notecards? What if, instead of jumping into huge MLA research papers with only one person - us - as the intended audience, we cast a wider net around the area of research and explore ways to give students more agency over topic, mode, and audience? This introduction is getting out of hand. Thirteen paragraphs in and we haven't played the music yet. It's lucky I'm not writing a five paragraph essay. So without further ado, ...
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    24 mins
  • 395: The American Dream: A Multimedia Introduction Lesson for ELA

    395: The American Dream: A Multimedia Introduction Lesson for ELA
    Sep 17 2025

    If you teach American literature, chances are you're touching on the theme of the American Dream somehow, through book clubs, a poetry unit, a look at Gatsby, or an essential question that binds together a variety of genres and perspectives. So when I received this request for our Plan my Lesson series, "How about a fun way to introduce the American Dream unit for juniors, about 36 of them," I was ready. In today's episode, we're going to talk about how you might introduce the concept of The American Dream through a series of multimedia activities, first letting students choose which ones to explore, then letting them respond with multimedia of their own, creating a collage of dream experiences for the class to view.

    American Dream Text Possibilities (Starter List):

    • Death of a Salesman Trailer (Royal Shakespeare Company)
    • American Gothic Painting (Painting at The Art Institute of Chicago)
    • Reyna Grande: A Migrant's Story (Video on Youtube)
    • The Sun is Also a Star (Movie Trailer)
    • "American Dream" (Video from the Beltway Poetry Slam on Youtube)
    • "Let America be America Again" (Poem by Langston Hughes at Poets.org)
    • "Immigrant Photos by Augustus Sherman" (Photos from Ellis Island at the National Park Service)
    • "An American Sunrise" (Poem by Joy Harjo at Poets.org)
    • "American Dreamers Mural" (Mural by Shepard Fairey and Vils, Photo at Obey Giant) - you'd want to pull the photo out of the blog post
    • "Lincoln, Nebraska 1977" (Photo by Keith Jacobshagen at the Spencer Museum of Art)
    • American Dream Exhibit (Punto Urban Art Museum)
    • "Gold Mountain Dreams" (PBS: Bill Moyer's Becoming American: The Chinese Experience")
    • "This Hill we Climb" (Amanda Gorman on PBS Youtube)
    • "I hear America Singing" (Poem by Walt Whitman at The Poetry Foundation)
    • Start-up Story: "Jerry Yang" (The Immigrant Learning Center)

    Multimedia collage response example (one illustration, one quotation, and an interpretive 6 word memoir):

    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!

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    14 mins