417: Graduate Programs for English Teachers (Help to Launch your Search)
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Release Date: 03/18/2026
445: The Poetic Structure Lesson I Can't Wait to Do (Today)
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Today on the pod, let me walk you through a fun new way of teaching poetic structure. I'm doing it TODAY, and I'm so excited about it, I just had to share it immediately. Poetic Terms you could explore: form, structure, concrete poem, line break, enjambment, stanza, repetition, rhythm, rhyme Access the post, "How to Make Digital Poetry Tiles," here: Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of . Snag three Join our community, , on Facebook. Come hang out on . Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or...
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444: How One Teacher used Panel Discussions to Help Students Find their Voices
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
When you think back to your high school English classes, is there a certain activity that really sticks with you? One lesson or project that still hums through your brain and puts a smile on your face when you look back? I have a feeling that today’s guest, veteran teacher Wendy Eberhardt, will have a lot of students who look back on their lives in high school and think about the activity she’s about to share with us. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, so let’s just say that Wendy has come up with an incredible way to help her kids find their voices, and she’s about to give us all...
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443: What I've Learned about Teaching Reading Strategies
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
As a fairly constant reader for the last few decades, I sometimes forget how challenging reading can be. But then I get into, for example, a dense thirty page research write-up about the study of how different factors affect relationships between kindergarten teachers and kindergarten moms in Finland, and I remember. Reading can be so hard. So how can you make it easier for your students, as they dive into the books you share? Well, one option is to share explicit strategies they can plug into along the way. Penny Kittle does such a beautiful job of demonstrating the way she does this in...
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442: How One Teacher Leveraged Hexagonal Thinking for Messy Magic
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
It’s easy to think of hexagonal thinking as a one-and-done. But it’s not. It’s a strategy you can tailor to a thousand different situations. Andi Jackson, veteran teacher, creative thinker, and hexagonal thinking launcher-extraordinaire, is here today to spotlight the possibilities. She’s taken hexagonal thinking, originally developed by Anthony Hodgson in the business world, and remixed it in three different creative ways to help guide her students through complex thinking toward original writing. She’s about to share her stories and tips with us, and I’m positive you’ll come...
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441: 4 Ways to Help Early Finishers Thrive in ELA
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
We've all had the experience of planning a detailed activity meant to take thirty or forty minutes, and then watching a student close their book or notebook after five. It's confusing. It feels obvious that they couldn't have done a good job, and yet it's often not the best use of teacher time to litigate this individually with each early finisher. And yet, preparing a plan for what to do is tricky, because there's not a one-size-fits-all approach to students finishing early, because it looks different in different situations. Sometimes students finish early because they rushed, but...
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440: ELA Classroom Design: Come Tour with Me
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
I've been the first one to school a lot lately, and I'm spending a lot of quiet moments in my classroom, thinking about what's working well, what I can tweak, and how I can best use the spaces I've set up. Rounding the bend into week three feels very different than the summer what-if energy, so I'm in a position now to tell you what's working, what's a work-in-progress, and what I still need to work out. I wish I could swing by and see your classroom too - wouldn't it be fun if there was some way we could run a vast YouTube channel with just 90 second videos of classrooms all over the world?...
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439: How to Play Genre Trashketball (A Lesson + A Game)
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
"What's this?" I was crouched alongside a student on the first day of school as she filled out her reading profile. She pointed her pink highlighter at the section of genres, unsure how to proceed. I wanted to know if she liked scifi or romance, dystopia or suspense or YA. She wanted to know what they were, and she wasn't the only one to ask. So I pushed back my plans for the next class a bit, and made time for a lesson on genre instead. And it was such a blast, I want to share it with you today, in case your students are asking the same questions as mine. Today I'll walk you through a...
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438: Experiments in Ungrading: What does it look like to Decenter Grades?
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
There are so many ways to grade students. You can avoid zeros, use a standards-based approach, allow iteration, tweak your late policy, experiment with different categories and percentages. What works best? That’s hard to say. But today’s guest, Dr. Brittany Dillman, wanted to try something different. She’s an expert in educational psychology and educational technology, and directs several online masters programs at Michigan State University. She decided, with her colleagues, to step away from traditional grading and its many remixes altogether, and pursue an alternative known as...
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437: 16 Graphic Novels for your Classroom Library
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Recently I listened to Daniel Wilingham's book, Why Don't Kids Like School?, about how we can use what we know about how the mind works to make school work better for kids. And I found myself nodding along in chapter two as he talked about reading: "Do whatever you can to get kids to read, but it's not enough. People sometimes ask whether graphic novels count, or whether audiobooks do. The answer is an emphatic yes." I couldn't agree with Wilingham more. Sure, I've heard the argument that students need "rigor" at school. The canon. The classics. But I would certainly side with Penny Kittle...
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436: Highly Recommended: This Free Vocabulary Tool
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
You know how I love to share a great find, and this week I've got a real winner for your vocabulary program. On this episode of "Highly Recommended," I'll tell you about a new tool I just found and why it's so high impact for helping kids learn new words. Let's dive in. Word Dissector App Link: Go Further: Explore alllll the Episodes of . Get my popular Join our community, , on Facebook. Come hang out on . Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others...
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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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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!