The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA

This week, I want to talk about Sunday nights. If you’re struggling to figure out how you can be a good partner, parent, person, and teacher, and it all seems to come to a head on Sunday nights, I want to offer three ideas. I’m not saying I can solve the teacher work-life balance issue that plagues our profession in one short episode, but I hope one of these ideas will help you feel more free to follow your instincts towards less stress and pressure on yourself, and maybe, just maybe, happier Sunday nights. 

#1 Don’t Grade it All

I put this one first for a reason. It’s huge. Let’s say your students are doing a ten minute writing prompt each day to practice a specific skill. Maybe you’ve got 30 students, times five days a week, times five classes. That’s 750 writing samples you’re trying to grade every week. Even if you just put a smiley face on top to show that you put your eyeballs on their work, it’s still going to take you hours. Instead, try having them choose the sample at the end of the week that they feel best represents their ability with the new skill, polish it, and turn it in the next week. Now your eyeballs just have to scan 150 writing samples. 

Students need way more practice writing than they need detailed feedback. Is detailed feedback amazing? Yes. Is feeling like you have to give it constantly likely to ruin your Sunday nights, your holiday breaks, and eventually, your ability to stay in teaching? Probably. 

Not only do I think you should heavily reduce your grading via selective feedback, stickers, stamps, and peer feedback, I think you should start a conversation in your department to help everyone consider these options. 

#2 Stop Playing Email Whack-a-Mole

Do you open your email every time you have a second and try to get rid of all your new messages? I did too, for sooo long. And it messed with my mood, left me with no time for more major projects, and made me feel like I was always behind. 

If it’s possible for you to block off time to check your email once in the morning and once at the end of school, I’d like to plant a flag in your inbox and say hip hip hooray! It’s not your job to give all your attention to others’ priorities every single time you have a second. 

Take five minutes between periods to get a breath and set up your next activity in a relaxed manner instead of worrying about a parent’s frustrating message. Spend lunch watching Kristen Bell and Adam Brody while you eat or hanging out with a friend for ten minutes over sandwiches instead of running through emails. 

Email never stops, but you’re allowed to. And in case it wasn’t clear, I’m definitely suggesting you don’t have to check it at night and on the weekends too. 

#3 Get Help in Key Places

There’s help for an awful lot in the world these days. Is laundry a specter that makes you feel terrible all week because you don’t have time to get to it? You can probably hire someone to come in and do it for you - maybe even your teenager who needs extra money. 

Is cooking a nightmare for you when you get home after a busy day? Approximately one hundred meal service kit companies would like to help, and so would the ready made section at Trader Joe’s.

 Do you hate writing lessons after your kids go to bed? I spend all my time writing curriculum to help with that, and so do a lot of other people. Give yourself permission to join a curriculum membership like The Lighthouse or pick up units that you love and that fit your style from TPT. 

OK, my friend. I could definitely keep going, but I wanted to keep this short with three genuinely doable ideas. If you can cut your grading load dramatically, stop playing email whack-a-mole, and choose one stressful area to get significant help, I believe Sunday nights WILL get a little easier. 

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! 

Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill get plenty of spotlight on the ELA curriculum stage. And sure, it's well-deserved! But they aren't the only incredible American playwrights to pick up a pen in the last century. If you're looking for some contemporary plays to share with your students, and you're struggling to find ones that fit your vision AND fit the maturity level of your kiddos, I've got a quick idea for you today.

So here it is. You've got your stack of A Streetcar Named Desire or Death of a Salesman ready for your students, as always, AND you have a series of Pulitzer-Prize winning contemporary playwright snapshots to share. It's the classic "yes AND" combination that comes straight from the improv playbook.

Each snapshot will let students learn about an award-winning contemporary playwright by exploring their background, learning about the play which won them a Pulitzer, and then watching a little bit of that play. You'll get to showcase a diverse range of writers and topics, and you can avoid moments in the plays which might be too intense or mature for the age of your students. My deep dive down the Youtube rabbit hole leads me to believe that most award-winning plays feature at least SOME scenes that are rated PG.

It's a little like First Chapter Fridays, except for plays. You're introducing your students to a much wider world than the single lens on theater that whatever your assigned play can provide (wonderful though it may be!), by showcasing complementary work regularly. At the same time, you can work through a whole class read with rich literary merit (that your school has already purchased and approved.)

So how can you get started quickly and easily? That's what today's episode is all about. I'll walk you through how I created some of these snapshots - which I'll share with you - and then you'll be ready to create more of your own if you want to go further.

Go Further: 

Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.

Grab the Contemporary Playwrights Snapshots: https://spark-creativity.kit.com/0c32caad5f 

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 fabulous resource I recently discovered, a website full of short video models for acting games you can use in class.

The first time I taught a play in class, I sure wished I had more theater background to help my students act out the scenes. Luckily, I was able to connect with a creative theater professional to come and visit my classes for a few days. Soon she had them playing acting games, creating scene sculptures, and generally having a great time while relaxing into the idea of playing new roles. 

After that week I always incorporated acting games into my theater units, and they never failed as a community-builder and theater-bolsterer. I bought two books to complement what I learned from my theater guest: Acting Games, by Viola Spolin, and Games for Actors and Non-Actors, by Augusto Boal. 

Which brings me to my recent discovery, a website showcasing many of Viola Spolin’s acting games through video demonstrations. With a few minutes on this website, you can easily gather games to use in class and learn how to use them. Let me suggest a short routine similar to what I’ve used, and then I’ll link the activities in the show notes so you can head straight over to the website for the details. 

OK, so before I ever asked students to act Prospero or Willy Loman, we’d spend five or ten minutes at the start of class with games that would help them loosen up and trust each other a little more.  I suggest you start by making space in the center of the room by pushing desks and tables to the side. Then invite students to start walking around, trying to keep a bubble of space around them so they fill the room without ever touching each other. Start slow, then invite them to speed up a little, and a little more, then slow back down, then go into slow motion. Then, perhaps start a game of slow motion tag (linked) or start playing with an invisible ball (linked). After a couple of minutes, you might play a game of lemonade (linked) or invite partners to try mirroring each other (linked). 

As your students become more comfortable, you can move into more complex games, or you can just stick with this simple routine to break down everyone’s “I’m too cool to pretend to be doing anything I’m not actually doing” facades. 

Remember, while acting comes naturally to a few students, many teenagers are just really nervous about embarrassing themselves around their peers. Acting games help everyone get more relaxed before diving into Shakespeare or O’Neill, and this lovely website will help YOU get more relaxed before diving into acting games! 

Links: 

The Mirror: https://spolingamesonline.org/mirror-follow-the-follower/ 

Lemonade: https://spolingamesonline.org/lemonade-new-york/ 

Play Ball: https://spolingamesonline.org/play-ball/ 

Slow Motion Tag: https://spolingamesonline.org/slow-motion-tag/ 

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! 

My son and I love a few certain characters from the books we've read aloud over the years. Gum-Baby, from Tristan Strong, Boots, from Gregor the Overlander, Maniac Magee. For my daughter, it's Junie B. Jones and Ramona from their named series collections. For me, it was always Anne (of Green Gables) I returned to growing up, and Jo from Little Women. Oh, and of course, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.

Incredible characters are everywhere we turn in literature, and they make such an impact on us. We see through their eyes, experience their transformations, build empathy through their experiences.

Maybe that's why when I think about characterization, I tend to think about activities that showcase characters visually. That come at them from many angles. That require students to consider their evolution, their growth, their nature vs. their nurture.

Because sure, by all means, let's talk about what it means to be flat or round, static or dynamic. But then let's go much further.

Today on the podcast, I'm sharing six creative characterization projects I've come up with over the years, in hopes that one (or two, or three) will fill a hole for you. I love them all for different reasons, and I hope you will too.

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! 

Grading discussion can feel like juggling cats. How can you be present in a class discussion while also trying to grade thirty people’s comments? But over the years, I’ve tried three methods that that have worked for me without causing too much strain. I call them the bump, the challenge, and the chart. In today’s mini-episode, I’ll walk you through all three so that the next time you feel you need to give credit where credit is due during a discussion, you’ve got a plan that doesn’t feel like a cat-splosion.

First, there’s the bump. With the bump method, discussion provides that intangible bump that defines whether kids on the borderline move up or down. A kid working hard in discussion will go from an 89.5 to an A-. A kid who is unprepared or often interrupts will stay firmly at a B+ with that 89.5. 

This method is easy to explain to kids, and doesn’t require a constant running paper trail. I can’t recall ever having an argument over this with a student, but I CAN recall encouraging students to push themselves harder in discussion with this small carrot as a reminder that it matters both to the community and to their own results. 

Next, there’s the challenge. For this method, I invite students to focus on something we’ve been working on and work together to have a discussion that crushes this one aspect of our group dynamics. I let them know that EVERYONE in class will get a 10/10 on that day as a free bonus grade if they complete my challenge. If they don’t, no harm no foul.

For example, say you’re working on making more text references. You might create a challenge in which if the class is able to make ten different text references (that feel relevant) during the discussion, everyone gets the bonus grade. The nice thing about this method is that it allows you to grade for something really targeted, helping the class move forward in its discussion evolution. 

Third (and last, for now), there’s the chart. This method is the most time-intensive, but it gets easier with time. Keep a chart for each class with students’ names. At the end of a class period, jot down a check minus, check, or check plus for each student, based on their participation. Then assign grades at the end of term based on whether they are mostly check plus, mostly check, etc.

The pros here are that this method provides you a very clear paper trail and allows you to make discussion a significant part of the grade if that’s what you want to do. You’ll be able to defend a discussion grade by showing any student the chart at any time. However, if you find you are always juggling a lot in those moments between classes, it can feel like a major task that is always hovering over your shoulder. Maybe you’re wanting to pull books for a book talk, grab a student for a quick chat, or send an email, but you’ve got to fill in that discussion chart every single time. For me, it wasn’t a good long term solution, and I preferred to rely mainly on the bump with occasional challenges. But everyone’s situations is different, so I thought I’d share it here as a solid option if it feels right to you. Maybe you finish up class with an exit ticket or another activity that would give you time to fill in a chart like this without much stress. Whatever feels right for you!

OK, there you have my top tested methods for discussion accountability - the bump, the challenge and the chart. Whether you use one, use ‘em all, or maybe just use one of them as a springboard for a totally new option that just occurred to you, I hope these possibilities will help you destress the grading process when it comes time for your next discussion. 

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! 

We’ve all been in a discussion hurtling off the track and into the canyon, far, far below. Chances are, you’ve been in this type of discussion as a student AND as a teacher, and it’s no fun in either scenario.

So how do we prevent it?

And what do we do if it’s already happening and glaze is washing over our students’ eyes?

In today’s episode, the fifth in our discussion series, we’re diving into how to deal with discussions that go off the rails. Because even if YOU prepare in all the ways, those days happen. And it doesn't mean all is lost.

 Ooh, by the way, do you have my free discussion toolkit yet? It contains many of the tools we'll be talking about today.

Go Further: 

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! 

Remember in elementary school, how some kids were so excited to answer a question that they would wave their hand back and forth in the air, lifting ever so slightly from their seat? The Hermione Grangers of 2nd grade. Yeah, that was me. 

So I have real sympathy for students who become discussion dominators. Though on the outside, this appears to make them successful students, it’s really just as important for them to adjust their approach to group dynamics as it is for students who are completely silent in class.

Both groups present a challenge for educators looking to use student-led discussion methods, and today on the podcast, I’m sharing everything I’ve learned about helping kids on both ends of the participation spectrum. 

Because in fact, helping one is helping the other. Quieter students won’t have a chance to participate until dominant students take a step back. Dominant students won’t understand why it’s important to step back until quieter students begin to use their voice. The first steps are the hardest on both sides of this story, but it IS possible, and the results ARE so worth working for.

This is the fourth episode of our discussion series, maybe the one you’ve been waiting for. Because we’ve all been in discussions carried by three kids while the rest watch, turning their heads like they’re at a tennis match. But not anymore.

Key Points:

• Try brainstorming with the class about ways to get into the discussion if you’re feeling a little nervous or you like more time to prepare: ideas might include… be the first person to start a discussion or topic because you can read your question, quote, or answer to the warm-up, write down an idea as you read that you want to bring up, arrange with a friend to turn the floor over to you as they finish a comment, like “Jenny, we were talking about this before class. What were you saying?”, folks talking more have to make room for other voices

• Remind everyone of the bean bag story we talked about in the last episode - the discussion is incredibly enriched when everyone contributes their personal history and knowledge, their curiosity and questions

• Use the observer with nuance, asking them to think about how they can chart the discussion and report back with suggestions in a way that will help everyone improve the dynamics of balance

• Individual conversations -  you might try gently inviting a dominator to try limiting themselves to three contributions or even just listening for a day to see what others say. You might talk with a quiet student and suggest a goal of one comment on a single day, and brainstorm together how to make it happen. It’s a push and pull. As one group start to make small adjustments, the other group is affected. It never looks the same in any class!

• Try the ABC Game

Think about all the group situations you’re in day after day: faculty meetings, dinner tables, school board meetings, neighborhood potlucks. Chances are you know dominators and silent observers in your adult life too. Maybe they never had the chance to explore these group dynamics issues in school. This process is a gift you can give to a student for their future. In an increasingly partisan world, where everyone is talking about the bubbles we live in, what could be more important than learning to talk to each other? Whether you use Harkness, Socratic, or your own twist on student-led discussion, I believe these messy life lessons of student-led discussion are worth the complicated emotions and conversations they require. 

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! 

Welcome back to our ongoing discussion series. If you missed the first two episodes, covering five types of discussion worth trying and introducing the Harkness method for student-led discussion, you might want to pause and go back to the last two episodes before continuing with this one.

Today we’re diving deep into student-led discussion, specifically setting up a structure that will let you be successful.

I’ll be sharing both highlights from what I learned at the Exeter Humanities Institute about helping students be successful - which, by the way, I couldn’t recommend more as a summer PD opportunity - and also, what I learned personally working with twenty-five different classes of students as their skills with the method evolved over the course of our year together.

You’ll walk away from this episode ready to run your first student-led discussion, whether you choose the full Harkness method or create your own twist on student-led discussion.

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! 

Today we’re talking about a model that influenced every discussion I ran in my classroom from my first year to my last, across grade levels, years, and countries. I’ve run hundreds of Harkness discussions - terrible ones, experimental ones, pretty ok ones, good ones, and absolutely incredible ones. Today I want to tell you how Harkness discussion changed the way I see group dynamics and why I can’t talk about class discussion without centering this model. I want you to try Harkness, or some spin off of it that fits your classroom space and size, and here’s why.

Maybe you’ve heard me talk before about the new teacher conference I attended in Northern California when I was 22. At some point during that loaded weekend, someone handed me a sheaf of papers labeled “Harkness Discussions.” Inside, I found some example discussion charts, a summary of the model, and a dream. 

Harkness was originally developed at Philips Exeter Academy, where a philanthropist named Edward Harkness made a gift to the school that was channeled into creating and implementing a model of discussion centering student voices. It sounds pretty simple - students sit in a circle, ideally - but in practice rarely - around a large oval wooden table, and talk to each other in class. They face each other, look at each other, acknowledge each others’ ideas, rather than all facing toward the teacher leading the way.

By the time I started flipping through my packet in 2004, more than seven decades after that initial gift, teachers had been experimenting with and improving the model for a long time. I read everything I could find online, then decided to roll out a one month experiment in every class. I was waaay into experiments at that point, and my students were used to seeing my metaphorical jazz hands as I rolled out poetry slams, performance projects, transcendental showcases, and whatever else I cooked up late at night and on the weekend while I was working all. the. time. 

So they were game enough when I explained what we’d be doing. I showed them a picture of a discussion chart and explained that a student observer would chart each discussion and give a compliment and a recommendation for improvement at the end of the discussion (not mentioning specific names). I explained that my role would be to help them prepare in advance for the discussion but not to moderate it during the actual conversation. I warned them about the vast potential for awkward silence, promised that they’d get through it, and also promised not to ruin everything by rescuing them. We talked about what could make a student-led discussion go well. And then we started. 

During that first month of Harkness, I watched four different classes go through four very different evolutions. 

F block skipped the floundering stage and went right to the “we’re awesome and we can rock this” stage. They had lots of kids who did the reading and wanted to talk, so after the initial observer comments that not everyone was talking (which is pretty much always the observer comment in every class in the first few Harkness discussions), things progressed quickly. With a little bit of help from me in chatting with observers before class, observations became more nuanced, and the class moved into the common next stages of Harkness, like helping students work on not interrupting each other, finding ways to subtly invite and support comments from students who were reluctant to speak, bringing more specific textual evidence into the conversation, making better transitions, and asking good questions.

B block, on the other hand, floundered with the best of them. Maybe the trickiest transition into good Harkness that I ever saw over 25 different classes. Still, not to ruin the ending, but they got there by the end of the month. In D block I learned a lot about how to work with a slow-starting class. I integrated strategies like careful warm-ups to give students plenty to talk about, staring down at my notebook and writing “this is awkward” over and over again with careful focus during awkward pauses so that kids would know I wasn’t going to rescue them, and helping guide my observer in positively reinforcing the smallest improvements and giving a specific focused goal that was achievable for the next discussion. 

That first month built the foundation to continue for the rest of the year, though we stopped integrating the method every single day. Harkness became our go-to discussion method, more like once or twice a week, which is how I continued into the next years. But that sense of the method as a living experiment, an evolution that never ended, stayed with me.

The next year I surveyed my students about their experience with Harkness, and here are some of their comments: 

“I think I’ve always been able to share my thoughts, but I’ve definitely changed as a listener. I’ve learned how to pay attention.”

“I have changed. I seem to like to talk a lot more than I thought I would have. Harkness has allowed me to gain confidence in myself and what I believe is right.”

“Harkness teaches hesitant speakers to be more confident with their ideas. Conversely, it shows talkative people the value of listening to their peers’ opinions.”

“I have yet to feel like sleeping during a discussion.” 

“I’ve learned to think before I speak.”

Over the years, I watched powerful transformations. Learned how to help silent students break in. Learned how to help dominators step back. Learned how to team up with my observers to chart dynamics relating to ever more complex factors in the room, like gender, friend groups, types of question, and topic transitions. I watched a brave young woman, our student body president, break down in tears after class as she realized for the first time that quieter peers she didn’t think had anything to say had rich contributions to make when space was made for them. I watched emerging bilingual students realize others cared about their opinion and were willing to make space to hear it. Awkward silence became funny instead of scary. Wide-ranging student-led discussion became the norm.

And that’s where we’re going to leave it today. Next week we’re digging into specifics. Expect to see one episode in your feed Tuesday on setting up success and the role of the observer, and another on helping discussion dominators and silent students. I’ll be coming at it through the perspective of Harkness, because that’s the discussion country where I’ve got my citizenship, but you can apply similar ideas to Socratic Seminar or whatever spinoff of student-led discussion you prefer. 

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! 

Discussion. Theoretically it’s the bread and butter of the English classroom, but sometimes it feels like all crusts and crumbs.

How can you get students excited to talk about voice and theme, metaphor and symbolism, when they have a million other things going on?

How do you inspire them to dive in together to the ways that literature illuminates life and life speaks back to the page, when they’re already nervous about speaking up in class and afraid they’ll look bad in front of their friends?

If a good discussion feels like a distant dream to you on rough days, and a tantalizing almost-there vision on good days, the new discussion series is here to help. We’re starting today with five types of discussion that can work for you, and in the coming episodes, we’ll be going much deeper.

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!