420: My 9th Grade Dream Curriculum (as I get an Unexpected Request)
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Release Date: 04/08/2026
435: Start the Year with these AI Conversation Stations
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
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434: What I'll be Doing on the First Day of School
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
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433: The Uncrackable Justification for Choice Reading
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
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432: ELA Classroom Design: What to Put on your Walls this Fall
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
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431: Highly Recommended: This Vehicle for AI in ELA Conversations
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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 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...
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430: What you Need to Know about Design Thinking for ELA
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
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429: Don't Miss this Essential Lesson on Multimodality
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
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428: Start a Classroom Library With Me
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
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427: Try this Colorful Maker Tool: Digital Idea Blocks
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
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426: I Read 17 PD Books this Year so You Don't Have to
The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
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...
info_outlineRecently 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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