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. 5d ago

    Start the Year with these AI Conversation Stations

    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 of constant AI detective. Because there are digital activities I really love, activities that put the world at students' fingertips. And we already know that AI Detectors constantly make mistakes or are duped by AI Humanizer programs. Make your copy of this curriculum as a station set or as individual activities in the full show notes at nowsparkcreativity.com.  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!

  2. Jul 29

    What I'll be Doing on the First Day of School

    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 stand in front of the class and lecture about our course texts, my expectations, and their upcoming units. So what will I be doing instead, in my first year back in the classroom in a bit? That's what today's podcast is all about. 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!

  3. Jul 22

    433: The Uncrackable Justification for Choice Reading

    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 audiobooks on my walks, pored over research roundups and articles at the coffee shop, hit up the hammock with my Penny Kittle, and stared and stared and stared at the growing evidence mounting in my endless Google doc of notes. The evidence is clear. The need for help for kids who don't read, don't like reading, and don't want to read is great. And yet STILL we are prioritizing reading snippets and drilling for tests to "improve" our readers' reading. I want you to have the information you need to fight. So here I am. Again. Despite my efforts to focus on something else this week. Let's dig deep. Illustration for The Cycles I share in this episode: The Infographic I mentioned: 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!  Sources: Amato, Jarred. (2024). Just Read It. Corwin. Atwell, Nancie. (2007). The Reading Zone. Scholastic. Aukerman, M. & Schuldt, L. (2021). "What Matters Most? Toward a Robust and Socially Just Science of Reading." Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1) pp. S85–S103 | doi:10.1002/rrq.40 Bains, A., Spaulding, C., Ricketts, J., & Krishnan, S. (2026). Providing choice enhances reading motivation. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006), 79(4), 959–970. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218251370916 Bishop, Rudine Sims. "Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors." Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom. Vo. 6, No. 3, Summer 1990. https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf Accessed November 2, 2025. Briceño, Allison and Claudia Rodriguez-Mojica. (2022). Conscious Classrooms. PD Essentials. Bridges, Lois. (2018). The Joy and Power of Reading: A Summary of Research and Expert Opinion. Scholastic. Chavez, Felicia. (2021) The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop. Haymarket Books. Elley, W. B. (2000). The Potential of Book Floods for Raising Literary Levels. International Review of Education, 46(3–4), 233–255. Gallagher, Kelly. (2009). Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. Routledge. Kerkhoff, Shea. (2026). Adolescent Literacy: Integrating the Sciences of Reading and Writing in Grades 4-12. Bloomsbury Academic. Kittle, Penny. (2013). Book Love. Heinneman. Miller, Donalyn and Susan Kelley. (2013). Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits. Jossey-Bass. Morgan, Denise N., & Wagner, Christopher W. (2013). "What's the Catch?" Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(8), 659–667 doi: 10.1002/JAAL.193 National Endowment for the Arts. (2007, November). To Read or Not to Read. O'Grady, R. J. (2025). The reading renaissance: Reimagining literacy practices in secondary English education. ENGLISH IN EDUCATION. https://doi.org/10.1080/04250494.2025.2567939 Wilhelm, J. D. (2016). Recognising the power of pleasure: What engaged adolescent readers get from their free-choice reading, and how teachers can leverage this for all. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 39(1), 30. Willingham, Daniel. (2021). Why Don't Kids Like School? Jossey-Bass. 2nd Ed. (Audiobook)

  4. Jul 15

    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!

  5. 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!

  6. 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!

  7. 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!

  8. 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!

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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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