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/

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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.

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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!

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!