{"podcast":{"title":"The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA","slug":"the-spark-creativity-teacher-podcast-ela-743282","podcast_index_feed_id":743282,"rss_url":"https://sparkcreativity.libsyn.com/rss","website_url":"http://nowsparkcreativity.com","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/c/2/e/b/c2ebf102a6acd494bafc7308ab683e82/TSCTP_3000px.png","author":"Betsy Potash","episode_count":425,"summary":"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 mak…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-30T04:18:43.548102+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-spark-creativity-teacher-podcast-ela-743282"},"episode":{"title":"426: I Read 17 PD Books this Year so You Don't Have to","slug":"426-i-read-17-pd-books-this-year-so-you-don-t-have-to","published_at":"2026-05-20T18:14:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-spark-creativity-teacher-podcast-ela-743282/426-i-read-17-pd-books-this-year-so-you-don-t-have-to","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-spark-creativity-teacher-podcast-ela-743282","url":"https://sparkcreativity.libsyn.com/426-i-read-17-pd-books-this-year-so-you-dont-have-to","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/sparkcreativity/PD_Books_full.mp3?dest-id=518145","summary":"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!","meta_description":"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…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1042,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-spark-creativity-teacher-podcast-ela-743282/episodes/426-i-read-17-pd-books-this-year-so-you-don-t-have-to/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-spark-creativity-teacher-podcast-ela-743282/426-i-read-17-pd-books-this-year-so-you-don-t-have-to.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}