The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

I want you to watch Gene Luen Yang's Ted talk called “Comics Belong in the Classroom!”  Here's why. It's a hilarious look at why comics are such a powerful medium for our students, how they accidentally got classified as a negative influence on young people (with totally false evidence) and the power they can actually wield for good - Avengers-style. I was so amazed to learn that library usage goes up 82% in libraries that feature graphic novels, according to a School Library journal article.  This Ted Talk is a quick watch. Gene Luen Yang gives a stellar overview of why comics and graphic novels are so helpful for students, how they fell from grace, and why they deserve their current rise to popularity.  Grab a minute to watch it HERE, and then maybe share it with your department! If you've been struggling to get others onboard with a graphic novel book club, a graphic novel unit, or new graphic novels for your choice reading library, this talk just might help.    Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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 joined by education leader Reid Saaris. He’s the founder of Equal Opportunity Schools, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that students of all backgrounds have opportunities to succeed at the highest levels. He is an Echoing Green, a Draper Richards Kaplan, and a Stanford Social Innovation Fellow, and has advised federal, state, & local leaders, teachers, philanthropies, companies, and universities on topics like justice, impact, data analysis, communications, and learning.  His most challenging and meaningful professional experiences have been as a classroom teacher. He’s the author of the new book THE KID ACROSS THE HALL. Today we’ll be talking about why what is often called the achievement gap in schools is actually an opportunity gap, and what teachers can do about it, starting immediately. To follow along with his journey, visit reid4waschools.com. He's currently running for Washington State Superintendent.   Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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 I want to share a wonderful website and resource with you, Melissa Alter Smith’s brainchild, Teach Living Poets. When I first started teaching poetry, it couldn’t have been clearer to me that students needed modern poets to relate to. Though we eventually enjoyed unpacking poems like Wallace Stevens’ “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” that was only because we started with a lot of performance poetry, modern poems students leaned into and even loved.  Melissa Alter Smith, founder of the #teachlivingpoets hashtag, creator of the website of the same name, and author of a book on the subject, has created an incredible resource for teachers who want to bring more modern poetry into their classrooms. Since I interviewed her on the show to share her Amanda Gorman lessons, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate on a number of projects with her showcasing other living poets and crafting poetry workshops for teens, and I'm so impressed by her imagination and the way she pushes kids to think deeply about poetry and then express themselves both through analysis and creative writing.  That’s why today I want to highly recommend you go and check out her work. Take a tour of teachlivingpoets.com, visit the amazing virtual library of work available to you there, and find a new poetry workshop to add to your lessons this year. See how your students respond, and then go back for more! Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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 sitting down with Dr. Mark Gooden, the Christian Johnson Endeavor Professor in Education Leadership and Director of the Endeavor Antiracist & Restorative Leadership Initiative (EARLI) in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. He’s got a new book out, 5 Practices for Equity-Focused School Leadership, offering five methods to increase educational equity and eliminate marginalization based on race, disability, socioeconomics, language, gender, and sexual identity, and religion.  In this interview, I asked Dr. Gooden to bring his work right into the ELA classroom. You’re going to hear his thoughts on what it means to be an anti-racist teacher in the long term, how to listen better to the people in your community, how to fight for diverse books, and more.  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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 I want to give you a few quick ideas for using your whiteboard to help share great books with your students. First things first, your whiteboard tray. I am seeing a lot of folks making a super quick display that’s really impactful by spreading books along their tray, then writing a one-sentence teaser above the book. This display is so easy to change up, and you can even get students involved in making new versions. Next up, you can use your whiteboard to showcase what you’re reading. Create a little corner that says “Ms. Potash is reading…” and then print cover screenshots of what you’re reading. Again, so easy to change up, but it opens up conversations if kids have read or want to read what you’re reading. I recently saw the Book Wrangler on Instagram talking about magnetic book shelves that he’s using in his library under the circulation desk. These would be a great add on a whiteboard too. Small magnetic shelves would let you feature a few books front and center of your classroom, and you could write headers or descriptions next to the shelves. Finally, here’s an idea that could combine them all. You know I’ve been creating free display materials for various theme months throughout the year, most recently Hispanic Heritage Month. Caitlin Lore, who was on the podcast last year, has generously shared pictures with me of how she uses these displays as a starting point to devote her entire whiteboard to stunning displays for these various theme months. You could do the same, and incorporate all of these other ideas. Feature books from the theme along your whiteboard, add some to magnetic shelves, read one yourself and feature it in your corner, and then add display materials and posters wherever there’s still room.  So if you’ve got room on a whiteboard this year, I highly recommend trying one or all of these quick flips to turn it into a P.R. station for books and authors. It won’t take long, but it may just inspire a lot of new reading.  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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!   

Need a creative approach to your next short story? Or short story unit? (By the way, here are some fabulous classic and contemporary short stories if you need some). Stations can provide so many inroads, while allowing students to proceed at their own pace and based on their own interests. PLUS, they give you a chance to move around the room and help out individual students or small groups that need you. So today on the podcast, I want to share some creative options when it comes to short story stations. We'll talk about the fundamental elements that can help make stations a success (like clear tasks, resources, scaffolds, and models) as well as ideas specific to approaching the key elements of short stories. Could you use all these activities with short stories even if you WEREN'T doing stations? Sure, that's definitely an option too. But they would make excellent stations.   Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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 I want to tell you about the most beautiful, powerful, impactful classroom posters I’ve seen on the internet. And they’re totally free.  This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about Amplifier Art on the podcast, and it probably won’t be the last. I’ve even had their executive director, Emily, on the podcast to talk about their incredible wellbeing series.  But since it was Indigenous Peoples Day this week, I think it’s the perfect time to recommend their “Thriving People, Thriving Places” campaign. These posters help to rewrite old narratives and counter stereotypes by featuring modern Indigenous leaders showing strength and courage.  Here’s how Amplifer describes the series: “The Thriving Peoples Thriving Places campaign was a collaboration between Nia Tero and Amplifier, and uplifts the stories of fifteen Indigenous women leaders from locales spanning from the Philippines and New Zealand to the Brazilian Amazon and the Arctic.” To find these posters, just visit Amplifier Art’s Free Downloads section, then choose Indigenous Resistance and click down at the bottom to show all the posters. Here's the link.  While you’re at Amplifier, I highly recommend looking around at their wellbeing series as well, and all their amazing free poster downloads, to see what else might be a helpful addition to your walls. It’s really an amazing site, and you can easily sign up for their updates while you’re there. They’re hosting their first ever educator’s conference in Los Angeles soon, if you happen to be in that area.  Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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!   

In this podcast, discover NINE creative ways to bring Taylor Swift's music into class. Find out how to have students create their own eras, practice public speaking on song-inspired topics with song-inspired tones, build book bracelets or character playlists, practice rhetorical analysis through songs and music videos, and more.  Special thanks to ALL our wonderful guests - Ashley from Building Book Love, Amanda from Mud & Ink Teaching, Delia from @mrsreganreads, Allie from @bayeringwithfreshmen, Meredith from Bespoke ELA, Melissa from Reading and Writing Haven, and Krista from @whimsyandrigor. Helpful Links: The Eras Project: Make your copy of the Canva template here Bookish Bracelets: See an example in this reel Practice Rhetorical Analysis with Songs: Grab the free rhetorical triangle templates here  Practice Character Analysis with Eras: Pick up the free resource Teach Narrative Terms with "Love Story": Grab the  free resource Help Students create their own Antiheroes:  FREE anti-hero character sketch chart Guide Students to Practice Tone when they "Talk Swiftly": use this link to download the free teaching tool   Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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 I’ve got a productivity tip to give you so much more focused time in your classroom.   Let’s talk about email, and how often you check it.    I can still remember the exact feeling of sitting in my kneeling desk in my first classroom, watching red flags spring up in the eight different inboxes in my First Class email dashboard. No sooner would I zero out my personal inbox than there would be a new announcement to teachers, or request to coaches, or task for advisors.    It was like playing whack-a-mole, trying to respond to everyone all day long.    But I worked hard at it. Every time I was free before school, between classes, before lunch, after lunch, and before practice, I’d quickly log in so I could reduce the stacking emails in every conference.   Whack. Whack. Whack.   And so it went on for years.   Want to know how much I check my email now? Once a day. Unless I really can’t get through it all, then I might follow up later after turning my attention to another project that needed me more.    Here’s the thing. In my experience, your inbox will be as demanding as you let it be. If you feel you must respond to everyone within 20 minutes, that’s what they’ll expect from you. But really, for almost everything, a day is a totally reasonable turnaround time.   Sitting down to respond to emails when you really have the time and energy, instead of task switching in and out of your inbox constantly just to “make progress” can be a huge time saver for you. Not to mention energy and mood saver. The last thing you want is to feel frustrated and angry starting class after getting a problematic email, or to walk into lunch with your mind overwhelmed by an announcement you just read.    Try saving email for one chunk of focused time in the day, and see if you begin to feel more free - in your mood and with your time -  for other aspects of your day that are more rewarding and interesting to you.   So, if you’ve ever felt like you’re caught in an email hamster wheel that never ends, this week I highly recommend you try an experiment. Check it once (or if you must, twice) a day for a week instead of 10 or 15 times. See if it’s a win for you.   Go Further:  Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. 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!     

As Banned Books Week kicks off, I know not every teacher is in a position to showcase it. In some places, it's simply too dangerous for an educator to display banned and challenged books and talk about intellectual freedom with students (the Fahrenheit 451 realities are overwhelming). But for those in a position to share about this with students, today I want to give you some options. Choose the ones that are right for your classroom and community. As usual, it's not about telling our students what to think, it's reminding them that this is an important thing to think about. The American Library Association has compiled a lot of great data about censorship and challenges taking place around the country. In 2022, there were 1,269 attempts to ban or censor library books or resources. This is the highest number in the last twenty years. You can get a concise picture of the statistics and related issues on this page of the ALA website. Banned Books Week: Display Ideas One of the easiest ways to raise student awareness of book censorship is to put up a display for Banned Books Week. Again, the ALA has amazing resources for ideas. Check out their Pinterest page here for dozens of ideas, or try one of the easy options below. Try a Fahrenheit 451 theme for a quick and easy Banned Books display. Cut large orange and red paper flames to line your shelves and/or small ones to stick into the pages of your books, then add a sign that says "Read Banned Books" and perhaps a few quotations from Ray Bradbury. Another easy option for a Banned Books display is to put up caution tape, or, if you can't easily get any, print out strips of text saying "caution" on yellow copier paper and tape them up to look like caution tape. Banned Books Week: Free Posters for your Display To complement your displays of banned books, try adding one of these free poster resources. I loved this idea I saw on the ALA Pinterest page so much I had to try making my own version for you. Rachel Moani created an amazing book display for the Lacey Timberland Library featuring characters holding up signs showcasing the insane reasons their books had been banned. You can make your copy of my easily printable version here if you'd like, or make your own. I didn't try to include every reason each book had been banned or challenged, but I included one or two. The Alexandria Public Library has some great free posters waiting for you to download as well! Check them all out here. The National Education Association has a "Freedom to Read" poster available here if you need something more subtle. These two infographics from the American Library Association can help students get a clearer picture of what's going on. You can download and print them from the ALA website. Go Further:  Explore the full show notes and alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast over at nowsparkcreativity.com.  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!