The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

Betsy Potash: ELA
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Want to love walking into your ELA classroom each day? Excited about innovative strategies like PBL, escape rooms, hexagonal thinking, sketchnotes, one-pagers, student podcasting, genius hour, and more? Want a thriving choice reading program and a shelf full of compelling diverse texts? You're in the right place! Here you'll find interviews with top authors from the ELA field, workshops with strategies you can use in class immediately, and quick tips to ignite your English teacher creativity. Love teaching poetry? Explore blackout poems, book spine poems, I am from poems, performance poetry, lessons for contemporary poets, and more. Excited to get started with hexagonal thinking? Find out how to build your first deck of hexagons, guide your students through their first discussion, and even expand into hexagonal one-pagers. Into visual learning? Me too! Learn about sketchnotes, one-pagers, and the writing makerspace. Want to get your students podcasting? Get the top technology recs you need to make it happen, and find out what tips a podcaster would give to students starting out. Wish your students would fall for choice reading? Explore top titles and how to fund them, learn to make your library more appealing, and find out how to be a top P.R. agent for books in your classroom. In it for the interviews? Fabulous! Find out about project-based-learning, innovative school design, what really helps kids learn deeply, design thinking, how to choose diverse texts, when to scaffold sketchnotes lessons, building your first writing makerspace, cultivating writer's notebooks, getting started with genius hour, and so much more, from our wonderful guests. Here at The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, discover you're not alone as a creative English teacher. You're part of a vast community welcoming students to their next escape room, rolling out contemporary poetry and reading aloud on First Chapter Fridays, engaging kids with social media projects and real-world ELA units. As your host (hi, I'm Betsy), I'm here to help you ENJOY your days at school and feel inspired by all the creative ways to teach both contemporary works and the classics your school may be pushing. I taught ELA at the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels both in the United States and overseas for almost a decade, and I didn't always get support for my creativity. Now I'm here to make sure YOU get the creative support you deserve, and it brings me so much joy. Welcome to The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies!

  1. 4d ago

    ELA Classroom Design: What to Put on your Walls this Fall

    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 free (asynchronous) PD, Camp Creative: Your Stress-Free School Kickoff Kit. We'll keep it simple today, digging into five colorful, fun ideas for your walls. I'll be sharing all the resources and links for these resources inside Camp, don't worry! Sign up for Camp Creative (free PD lands in your inbox July 27-31): https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/Khm334 Visit the Downloads section at PBS' The Great American Read: https://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/resources/downloads/  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!

  2. Jul 8

    Highly Recommended: This Vehicle for AI in ELA Conversations

    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 get all the details and sign up right here 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 frustrations, and most recently, the growing movement away from letting AI increase its foothold in our classrooms (a movement I'm very glad to see, as it matches up with my own take). My rabbit hole life has led me to one particular resource for you that I'd like to highly recommend as a conversation starter this week, and that's the student finalist gallery from The New York Times' Growing up with AI Multimedia Contest. This contest plays a central role in the AI Conversations & Research Stations I've created for Camp Creative, and whether you join us there or not, I hope you will take a minute to explore what kids have shared about their experiences living at the epicenter of the AI explosion. The New York Times' "Growing up with AI Multimedia Contest" Finalists Gallery: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/learning/growing-up-with-ai-a-multimedia-challenge-for-teenagers-and-educators.html?eafs_enabled=false  Sign up here for Camp Creative July 27-31 (FREE, ASYNC): https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/Khm334 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!

  3. Jul 1

    What you Need to Know about Design Thinking for 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 it's a good one, so let's dive into what it is and what it means.  Sources: "Design Thinking Bootleg." Stanford d. School: https://dschool.stanford.edu/tools/design-thinking-bootleg. Accessed April 2026.  "Mitchell Resnick on Seymour Papert." Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoczAscGYeQ. Accessed March 13, 2026. Potash, Betsy. "Empower your Students, with John Spencer." The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 28. "The Launch Cycle: A K-12 Design Thinking Framework." Spencer Education: https://spencereducation.com/the-launch-cycle/ Accessed Apr. 13, 2026.   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!

  4. Jun 24

    Don't Miss this Essential Lesson on Multimodality

    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 multimodaly as they knit together their images with color and imagery.  But I had never worked with them before, and none of them had heard of multimodal communication, though they're surrounded with it everyday. I realized I had left out a crucial step in the workshop, to help them see that multimodal communication would go well beyond "decorating" their poem or underlining all the lines in color. So how can we introduce this concept to students? How can we help them see that text, images, audio, and video can all convey such very different shades of meaning in communication? This week on the pod, let's talk about introducing multimodality, and showing kids what works and what doesn't. Be sure to grab the free download that goes along with this episode, a slideshow full of examples you can share with your students. You can sign up to have me send it over totally free right here. You'll also be subscribed to my teaching idea emails, though of course you can unsubscribe at any time. OK, let's dive in. Grab your copy of the multimodality introduction slideshow: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/bdde614049 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!

  5. Jun 17

    Start a Classroom Library With Me

    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 some helpful inspiration in this episode. Links: Access the Scholastic Compendium on Reading Research: https://www.scholastic.com/worldofpossible/sites/default/files/Research_Compendium_0.pdf  Sign up for Camp Creative Coming in July: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/Khm334 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!

  6. May 28

    Try this Colorful Maker Tool: Digital Idea Blocks

    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 students build ideas across modes, using free or inexpensive materials to help them construct concepts, characters, and storylines. In our interview a few years ago, she said: "When we ask kids to build, they typically come up with ideas they wouldn't have otherwise. When we ask kids to build and then talk about what they have built, the complexity of their ideas is usually higher." These feel like very worthwhile goals to me - kids coming up with innovative, complex ideas. But let's be clear, we don't have to ask kids to build on a 3D printer or learn to code in order to help them extend and amplify their thinking through maker tools. Angela has always said that, but the proliferation of high tech makerspaces can be hard to drown out when thinking about this issue. Making is not about having one specific tool. It's about what making can give to kids in terms of their development of ideas, as Stockman suggest above, and in their development as learners too (Cohen). When students make, they make choices, they make mistakes, they recover. Ideally, they develop new skills at the same time that they develop a growth mindset around iterating. Today on the podcast, let's talk about a fun new free tool I've created for you to help your students build their ideas. Sign up for the free block kit: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/2195ef8920  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!  Sources: Ackermann, E. (2001). Piaget's Constructivism, Papert's Constructionism: What's the Difference? Future of Learning Group Publication, 5(3), 1-11. Cohen, J. D., Jones, W. M., & Smith, S. (2018). Preservice and early career teachers' preconceptions and misconceptions about making in education. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(1), 31-42. J, Jessie. "Price Tag." Spotify Lyrics. https://open.spotify.com/track/2vR1oGQdPfwJe4EVh8uNGc  Kretchmar, Jennifer. "Seymour Papert and Constructionism." EBESCO: https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/religion-and-philosophy/seymour-papert-and-constructionism. 2021. Potash, Betsy (Host). (2018, September 6). The Power of the Writing Makerspace, with Angela Stockman (No. 47). [Audio Podcast Episode]. In The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast. https://nowsparkcreativity.com/2018/09/the-power-of-writing-makerspace-with.html Smith, S. (2018). Children's Negotiations of Visualization Skills During a Design-Based Learning Experience Using Nondigital and Digital Techniques. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 12 (2). Available at: https://doi.org/10.7771/1541-5015.1747 Stockman, Angela. (2016).  Make Writing: 5 Teaching Strategies That Turn Writer's Workshop into a Maker Space. Hack Learning Series. TEDxTalk. (2013, January 10). Reimagining learning: Richard Culatta at TEDx Beacon Street [Video]. YouTube.

  7. May 20

    I Read 17 PD Books this Year so You Don't Have to

    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 yourself be a good teacher next year. It's all valid. But just in case you are looking for a book, it just so happens that I have some recommendations. Because I read 17 books about teaching this year, watched myriad Youtube videos on creativity and design, and listened to a LOT of ed podcasts. So let me break down my favorites for you. 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!

  8. May 13

    5 Engaging Ways to Review in the Final Days

    The countdowns are on all over the place, and that means in many classrooms, it's time to review. So let's dive into a lightning round of review ideas to help you come up with ways to make all that looking back engaging and memorable for your students. Links Mentioned:  Hexagonal Thinking Review Activity Free Download Sign-Up: https://sparkcreativity.kartra.com/page/endofyearhexagons  Jennifer Gonzalez's "Crumple and Shoot" Game from Cult of Pedagogy: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/how-to-play-crumple-shoot/ 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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Want to love walking into your ELA classroom each day? Excited about innovative strategies like PBL, escape rooms, hexagonal thinking, sketchnotes, one-pagers, student podcasting, genius hour, and more? Want a thriving choice reading program and a shelf full of compelling diverse texts? You're in the right place! Here you'll find interviews with top authors from the ELA field, workshops with strategies you can use in class immediately, and quick tips to ignite your English teacher creativity. Love teaching poetry? Explore blackout poems, book spine poems, I am from poems, performance poetry, lessons for contemporary poets, and more. Excited to get started with hexagonal thinking? Find out how to build your first deck of hexagons, guide your students through their first discussion, and even expand into hexagonal one-pagers. Into visual learning? Me too! Learn about sketchnotes, one-pagers, and the writing makerspace. Want to get your students podcasting? Get the top technology recs you need to make it happen, and find out what tips a podcaster would give to students starting out. Wish your students would fall for choice reading? Explore top titles and how to fund them, learn to make your library more appealing, and find out how to be a top P.R. agent for books in your classroom. In it for the interviews? Fabulous! Find out about project-based-learning, innovative school design, what really helps kids learn deeply, design thinking, how to choose diverse texts, when to scaffold sketchnotes lessons, building your first writing makerspace, cultivating writer's notebooks, getting started with genius hour, and so much more, from our wonderful guests. Here at The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, discover you're not alone as a creative English teacher. You're part of a vast community welcoming students to their next escape room, rolling out contemporary poetry and reading aloud on First Chapter Fridays, engaging kids with social media projects and real-world ELA units. As your host (hi, I'm Betsy), I'm here to help you ENJOY your days at school and feel inspired by all the creative ways to teach both contemporary works and the classics your school may be pushing. I taught ELA at the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade levels both in the United States and overseas for almost a decade, and I didn't always get support for my creativity. Now I'm here to make sure YOU get the creative support you deserve, and it brings me so much joy. Welcome to The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, a podcast for English teachers in search of creative teaching strategies!

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