This week, I want to tell you a story about pancakes.

You might know I love to cook and bake. My instagram stories feature enough pan-banging cookie demonstrations, bread-baking Sundays, and chocolate donut dipping and sprinkling to show my secret food blogger tendencies. So of course, I have a treasured pancake recipe, and my family loves a good weekend pancake morning.

But here’s the thing, pancakes take a little bit of forever. Especially these. And I don’t always feel like making pancakes for two hours on a weekend morning, even though I do love making food.

So a couple months ago when my son asked me to make pancakes, and I just didn’t feel like I had the hours to give, I suggested that he make them. At first he was a bit stunned.

"Me? Make the pancakes?”

But I said I would teach him how to do it and make them with him, if he would learn the process so he could start making them. 

So that’s what we did. I showed him the recipe, helped him find all the materials, and guided him through it. Everyone loved the pancakes, and we all showered him with compliments. A couple days later, he made them again, and I only helped with egg cracking and butter melting. More compliments. More joy for him. He started making pancakes to warm up on school mornings. He asked to make them for dinner when his grandparents were visiting, and the grandparents loved them. Soon he was cracking his own eggs, and I didn’t even need to be in the vicinity of the kitchen anymore.

So why am I telling you this? Well, for almost every teacher and parent I know, time is the great struggle. How to do it all? And sometimes that means letting things go, even if you know you’re good at them and maybe they even feel like a part of your identity.

Is it possible you could teach student volunteers to make beautiful book displays in your library each month? And that those students might actually feel really proud and pleased with the job?

Might you be able to empower student leaders on a team that you coach to plan part of practice time, give pep talks, or help set up or clean up practice equipment?

Might you be able to let go of something in your household that your children or partner might be good at too?

Maybe you want to try student-led discussion via the Harkness method, rather than trying to spearhead it every day yourself. 

Every time I see my son eating the lovely pancakes he makes, I have to smile to myself. While no one is now complimenting “Mama’s pancakes,” I love to see him feeling good about what he can do and I’m happy to have the time for other things. That’s why this week, I want to highly recommend you ask yourself what kind of pancake project can you launch? (That has nothing to do with pancakes). 

So I wonder, is there something you can turn into your own personal pancake project?

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! 

I'll never forget the "C" I got on my first English paper in college. I was walking across the quad in the warm eucalyptus-scented California air when I confidently pulled my paper from my bag to look at the comments. The day suddenly slid into grayscale as I saw my grade.

After a lifetime of "A" and "Great job" written at the bottom of every paper, fresh from winning the English award at my high school awards night, I was totally unprepared for the many, many scrawled notes about the problems in my paper.

I walked into class the next day in a daze, and listened to my professor as he went into a terrifying but effective rant. Apparently I wasn't the only freshmen to confidently turn in a paper that wasn't nearly complex enough.

His speech has stuck with me.

"Your rough draft," he said at one point. "Is a chair."

He scrawled an incredibly messy chair on the whiteboard for emphasis.

"And you have to take that chair," he sputtered. "And build a boat!"

We students glanced at each other, a little overwhelmed.

A boat?

Today I want to talk about the chair and the boat, and some of the process that happens in between. Because let's face it, most kids (high school me included) really struggle to understand the work that happens between ROUGH drafts and final drafts. And it's perhaps the most crucial part of the writing process.

The strategy we're going to dive into now, self-editing stations, can help scaffold editing for  your English students, saving them from falling into the usual traps, allowing you to intervene on behalf of key writing improvements you're trying to help them make BEFORE they turn in their work, and ultimately, saving your commenting time for only the most important personalized suggestions.

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! 

This week, I want to share a quick resource to help you celebrate Black Artists and Authors in your classroom next month. 

Last year I started a project to create heritage displays you can use in your classroom throughout the year for special months like Black History month, Women’s History month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride month, and more.

Each display has a colorful header and a series of interactive posters featuring artists, creators, activists, and authors. Students can read the bio and scan the QR code on each poster to go learn more about the featured person.

February’s display features Zora Neal Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Amanda Gorman, Jason Reynolds, and more.

It’s a super quick display to put up - you just print out the pieces and put them up on some colorful paper on your bulletin board, door, or hallway. I’d love to share this free resource with you and help you get ready for Black History Month right around the corner! Then you can snag some books featured in the display to put up on your windowsill, along the top of your shelves, and along your whiteboard tray, and you’ll be ready to rock. 

Easy, right?

Here's the link to grab this free resource: https://spark-creativity.ck.page/93cae16cef 

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! 

I recently polled our community on Instagram about the paper pile. Because let's face it, it's a huge part of an English teacher's life. How many papers will you assign? How will you grade them? When will you grade them? These become defining questions. I heard from teachers who have graded papers at an ice cream social, at the bar, at a Superbowl party, in the emergency room, in the delivery room, in a parent's recovery room at the hospital room, at the beach, and more.

I certainly remember the folders of papers always weighing down my bag from my teaching life. And I remember grading past midnight.

I'm sure you can relate to all of this. But more than ever lately, are you asking the same question as me? DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY?

The teaching profession has suffered through many difficult challenges of late, and the teacher shortage is the newest on a long list. I see many colleagues leaving the classroom or thinking about leaving, and while I know there are many factors, the crush of grading still feels like one of the biggest.

After all, there would be more time to creatively deal with planning, admin tasks, differentiation, parent communication, and everything else if English teachers weren't trying to find four or five hours a week to stare down the paper pile.

So today I want to suggest something, just my two cents. I think it would be better to dramatically change the way you grade to give yourself back time, than to be pushed out of the classroom by your paper pile, or made miserable by it. I think this is a conversation we need to be having honestly with our colleagues, and I hope this podcast might lead you to bring it up with your department if you feel you can. 

Today on the podcast I'm going to share six ideas for taking back some of your grading time, and then in several upcoming episodes I'll be going deeper with some of these strategies.

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! 

This week, let’s talk about expanding students’ concepts of the world. 

The other day I was talking to my husband in the car, as we drove through rainstorms and rainbows home to Slovakia from our holiday trip to Croatia. We were talking about his wonderful high school Spanish teacher, who we’re still friends with thirty years after she taught him Spanish. 

"She was the first one, you know,” he said. “She said to us, ‘you know not everyone thinks America is the best country in the world, right?’”  Growing up in a small and quiet town in America’s heartland, far from the borders of any other country, he hadn't really thought about this before, and it made a big impact on him.  

Just like my husband, I grew up in the midwest, and my small city in Northern Minnesota felt pretty far from the influence of other countries. I felt like I stuck out at my high school a bit because I was Methodist instead of Lutheran, had red hair instead of blonde, and lived in a cute little white house instead of in the wealthy neighborhood most of my classmates came from. My only international experience was on a church service trip to Thunder Bay, Canada, three hours north. 

These childhood experiences contrast sharply with those of, for example, my students back when I worked in Bulgaria. On the first day of my first year, I played an icebreaker game with my tenth graders where they would go to one side of the room if they chose one answer to a question, and the other side if they chose another. For one of my questions, I asked them to move to this side of the room if they had been out of the country. They all did. I asked a few follow-ups, and soon realized that most of my kids had been to at least three other countries.

Think of the difference, growing up having experienced the reality of life in other places. To see that parents are playing with kids on the playground, just the same. That people are speaking other languages with all the confidence and nuance that students are speaking their own. That people are thriving in other countries with different beliefs, different cultures, different norms, different histories. 

We can help students experience more international awareness through small choices in class, whether or not they'll have the opportunity to travel beyond their national borders as students.

Let’s talk about a few quick ideas.

Maybe you could host an international classroom project, connecting your classroom with one in another country to share writing, talk about a book together, or work collaboratively on a creative project.

Maybe you could incorporate international photography and video into writing prompts and grammar lessons, helping kids see parts of the world they wouldn’t normally interact with.

Maybe you could try to feature international writers and travel literature now and then in your FCFs, BT Tuesdays, and book displays. 

Maybe you could try comparing news articles from papers in different countries, taking a look at different perspectives.

These are a few quick ideas, and I’m sure you can think of many more. Helping kids understand that there are many possible ways to see the world, and many perspectives from which to see it, is such an important part of preparing them to be world citizens. A few small additions to class can make a big difference, so this week I want to highly recommend that you help students look beyond their borders in whatever ways you can easily incorporate. 

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! 

Welcome to the first episode of the author spotlight series here at Spark Creativity!

In this series, you’ll hear from authors sharing their work directly into your classroom. Today we’re hearing from Megan E. Freeman, reading from her book, Alone. Stay tuned throughout the year to hear from many more wonderful authors, including Matt de la Peña, Payal Doshi, and Nancy Tandon.

Megan E. Freeman attended an elementary school where poets visited her classroom every week to teach poetry, and she has been a writer ever since. Her bestselling novel in verse, ALONE, won the Colorado Book Award, the Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont children’s book awards, is an NCTE Notable Verse Novel, and is included on over two dozen "best of" and state reading lists. Megan is also a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet.

My hope is that you'll play this episode to your students on an upcoming Friday, sharing the guiding sketchnotes handout featured below with them so they can jot down their key takeaways as they listen.

Grab the sketchnotes handout here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ox4NNN9SZOG2oR1AQsHxyf0txLrrcR81gFP1sLbsIo0/copy 

You can find the text of the first 60 pages of the book available free on Overdrive.

If you'd like to project this episode on Youtube with an image of Megan and her book to give kids a visual as they listen, you can find it here. 

Megan E. Freeman attended an elementary school where poets visited her classroom every week to teach poetry, and she has been a writer ever since. Her bestselling novel in verse, ALONE, won the Colorado Book Award, the Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont Children’s Book Awards, is an NCTE Notable Verse Novel, and is included on over two dozen "best of" and state reading lists. Megan is also a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, and her poetry chapbook, Lessons on Sleeping Alone, was published by Liquid Light Press.

An award-winning teacher with decades of classroom experience, Megan taught multiple subjects across the arts and humanities to students K-16, and she is nationally recognized for presenting workshops and speaking to audiences across the country. She studied theater and dramatic literature for many years, earning degrees from Occidental College and the Ohio State University. 

Megan is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Northern Colorado Writers, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Columbine Poets of Colorado, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She is an Impact on Education Award winner, a National Writing Project fellow , a Fund for Teachers fellow, and a member of the Colorado Poets Center. She used to live in northeast Los Angeles, central Ohio, northern Norway, and on Caribbean cruise ships. Now she divides her time between northern Colorado and the Texas Gulf Coast.

Visit her website here.

This week, I want to share the daily planning routine that is working better for me this year than anything I’ve ever done. 

Figuring out how to approach time when it seems that there is never enough can make a big difference in how you feel about your day, and that’s why I think a simple thing like a planner routine that feels really helpful is worth sharing. I’ve recently been digging into productivity for The Lighthouse, and I listened to Ali Abdaal’s wonderful book Feel Good Productivity and took James Clear’s masterclass on building habits. They both helped me understand why my planner routine works well for me, and why I think it can work well for you too.

At the start of this year, I knew I wanted to incorporate a few new things into my week, but I didn’t want them to feel overwhelming. I wanted to drink more water after years of ignoring it, try to create a gratitude practice that felt simple and doable, and really focus my energy on work projects that I care about. Little by little, I figured out how to help myself with all of these things with my 5 minute planner routine at the start of each day.

The first thing I do when I see the column with my new day is to draw six little water glasses down toward the bottom, and fill in the first one since I’m newly motivated to drink a glass of water the moment I come downstairs to the kitchen. This also reminds me to fill my water bottle and put it by my desk. If I’m going to take a walk or do kettlebells for 20 minutes that day, I put that next to the water with a little checkbox to remind me.

Above that I draw three colorful hearts and write in three things I’m grateful for that have happened lately. Though I don’t write a lot, I try to think carefully and specifically about what was so meaningful about these things so I really put my focus there. 

Then I go up to the area where I write my plans for the day and I pick out ONE really important thing I want to get done and I write that first. That is what my focused work time is going to go to, the very first thing I’ll work on with my freshest uninterrupted energy. It’s the thing I absolutely want to make serious progress on by the end of the day. It is never, ever answering emails. 

After that I write in other priorities, trying to keep email down a few rungs of the list, because I don’t want email to drive my work energy for the day. I like to check it once and clear it out as much as possible, and then move on. Honestly, I almost never check off all of the other priorities from a single day, but I work my way down and get through what I can when I have focused work time. 

Finally, I add all my meetings, family commitments, and errands into time slots throughout the day. I try to brain dump whatever might worry me in the back of my mind, so I know everything is there for me to do throughout the day and there’s nothing else to keep track of.

After five minutes, I’m done and I have my day lined up in a way that feels clear and good to me. I’ve assigned different tasks to different parts of the day, prioritized what is really  important to me, and set myself up for success with new habits that matter to me. 

Whatever your priorities are, taking five minutes at the start of the day to intentionally block your time, choose a key task to work on, and build in new habits you’re trying to focus on in - as James Clear suggests - an easy and obvious way -  can help make them happen! That’s why today I want to highly recommend you consider a plan for your planner in 2024, and maybe even swipe mine. 

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! 

Today on the podcast, we're sitting down with Abby Gross from Write on with Miss G, who has become known for her thriving reading program and the wonderful tools she has developed to support other teachers with their own reading programs.

After spending the first part of her career teaching high school English, Abby unexpectedly fell in love with teaching middle school ELA. With her switch to the middle came a new goal of creating a community of readers and helping all of her students find books they enjoy. For the last four years, she has built a classroom library and independent reading program from the ground up, watching her readers flourish with choice, time,

The co-author of a guidebook for teachers, Keeping the Wonder, and a picture book for young readers, The Magic of Wonder, Abby is committed to fostering joy in learning and literacy. In addition to being an advocate for independent reading, Abby is a big believer in the power of curiosity and student-centered learning. support, and good books.

I enjoyed our conversation so much - this is truly a value-packed episode. I think you'll love Abby's practical, doable (and fun) advice for building more reading and book PR into your weekly routine. Get ready for quickly actionable tips on building strong Book Trailer and First Chapter programs, creating book posters and brochures, selecting and organizing your classroom library, and rolling out fun hybrid book tastings on the regular.

When she's not teaching, you can find Abby creating resources, blogging on writeonwithmissg.com, hanging out on Instagram, presenting workshops for Keeping the Wonder, and reading.

Check out her blog posts on Why You Should Try a Book Tasting, 10 Ways to Use Book Recommendation Posters, and Book Trailer Tuesday: How to Hook Students on Books in 3 Minutes to go even deeper on this subject. And be SURE to grab her FREE Book Trailer Tuesday Links for the Entire Year.

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! 

This week I want to talk about your work space and why it matters that you love it.

Do you remember having a locker in middle school? Remember taping pictures all over the door, adding one of those rectangular magnetic mirrors, maybe a little pink plastic basket with gum and lifesavers? 

 Setting up my locker was so important to me those days, and I really haven’t changed much. 

 When it comes to my workspace, I want to love it. And recently, as I listened to Ali Abdaal’s book, “Feel Good Productivity,” I got some insight into why that’s so important. There’s a key section in the book that talks about how much more productive you are when you are feeling happy. Abdaal suggests coming back to a question when you’re struggling to accomplish a task - “What would this look like if it were fun?” For him, the answer often meant listening to inspiring music while typing up paperwork as a young doctor. For me, it often means I put a vase of flowers in the window behind my desk as a step toward accomplishing my daily work goals. It means putting George Winston on the wireless speaker, clearing away clutter, lighting a candle. It means changing out the cute little postcard I bought in Vienna that sits on my windowsill for one of the other ones that fit my mood. It means filling my water bottle and jotting my big plans in a beautiful planner that is always right next to my computer.

But enough about me - what about you? What would some of your daily tasks look like if they were fun? What can you do to make the place that you work feel GOOD?

Would photocopying be more fun if there was a lovely bulletin board and twinkle lights next to it? Maybe you could make that happen.

Would grading feel better if you had a mug full of flair pens next to your computer and a cozy teal-colored blanket on your desk chair that felt like a hug? 

Would notes home to parents feel enjoyable if you had a stack of lovely postcards you printed and kept in a little basket in your windowsill?

Would changing out your bulletin boards feel better with Taylor Swift blasting from your wifi speaker on your desk and a peppermint life saver in your mouth from your secret snack drawer?

These small things may seem frivolous at first. But actually, the research supports them as productivity boosters. So you don’t have to feel guilty for taking time to make your space pleasant, comfortable, and inspiring. And this week, I want to highly recommend that you make a quick list of work space changes you can make ASAP so you can enjoy your work more AND, as a result, get more done. 

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! 

There's nothing quite like knowing exactly what you're going to do on the first day back after break as you cruise into the winter vacation. Giving yourself that mental cushion means that maybe when you wake up in the middle of the night over break, you can think about what cookies you want to make in the morning and which book you want to read by the fire instead of what to teach on the first day back!

Because it's OK to take a break.

So in today's short and sweet episode - because I know you're BUSY right now - I want to suggest an easy lesson for the first day back - the one-word project.

I first heard about the one-word project fifteen years ago when I was living in Bulgaria. Struggling a bit to adjust to my new surroundings in post-Communist Sofia (Bulgaria's capital), I started listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love on my regular jogs around my neighborhood, Mladost 1-A.

It helped to listen to Elizabeth Gilbert process her life in Italy, India, and Bali as I tried to process my first foray into Eastern Europe.

One of the things she talked about - I think it was during her time in India - was this idea of choosing a word to define the year ahead. Unlike a six word memoir, which stems from all that we have been, the one word project helps us envision the future we want and choose a way to guide ourselves into it.

Now this project could be incredibly quick if you just pass out paper and invite kids to choose a word. But I'd scaffold the process a bit to make it more meaningful.

You might start by having students write some reflection on the past year, 2023. What was most meaningful for them? What did they learn that they valued? What do they want to build on that really mattered to them? What would they say their theme songs were in 2023?

If they're up for it, you might let them share with a partner, or add their theme songs to a big list on your white board.

Next, turn their attention to 2024.

You know how I feel about one-pagers. I think the combination of visuals and text can really help highlight meaning. So I suggest you invite students to start by just jotting ideas in a notebook for possible words they'd like to use and ideas, goals, and visuals of their own lives that relate to those possibilities.

Then you can share a one-word prompt that invites them to write and illustrate their one word. They'll want to write that defining word in big bold letters, then illustrate it with the smaller goals and steps that will help them to truly live that word in 2024.

Maybe some of your students aren't big on paper and markers? No problem. The one-word one-pager works great on a platform like Slides or Canva too. In fact, if you're hoping to help students get onboarded to Canva in 2024 this could be a wonderful starter project.

If you'd like to share a basic template with them to help them get started, feel free to use the one I used for the model above! You can find it here.

Once your students have created their one-word visual, either on paper or digitally (and printed them out), I highly recommend you turn them into a display! Covering a wall (with permission from students) in the words your students hope to use as guiding lights for the year can help keep them front of mind. You can even revisit them every few months with some reflective writing about how things are going with regard to their goals.

If some kids prefer to keep their words private, that's totally understandable. You might suggest they tape them into the front of their notebook or hang them by their bed at home. But most kids will probably be OK with displaying their goals.

If you still have time in class, you might introduce students to the idea of SMART goals, a popular form of goal setting in many workplaces these days.

If you haven't heard about this format, here's what SMART stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-Bound

Invite students to create three SMART goals in different areas of their lives for the term with their one-word in mind.

So, for example, let's say a student's one word is "Strong."

Maybe they really want to become an incredible athlete in 2024 and make the varsity hockey team the next winter. A SMART goal would be to choose a strength benchmark they can realistically work up to and a time by which they will achieve it. Like "I will be able to do 10 pull-ups by May 1st."

Maybe they want to become stronger in math, as it's an area of struggle for them. A SMART goal might be "I'm going to ask my older brother to tutor me once a week on Tuesday nights and raise my math grade to a B by the end of this quarter."

Maybe they want to become a stronger boyfriend, as they feel their relationship could be going better. A SMART goal might be "I'm going to try to ask my girlfriend how she's feeling in a thoughtful text every weekend."

Giving students time to really reflect on how to integrate their one-word vision into their lives is a gift to them, and a great way to start the year!

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!