The Sparkchasers Podcast

How Context Switching is Holding You Back

Are you a serial multitasker? If so, you might be getting LESS done and losing MORE time. In today's episode, we dive into the science of context switching and how you can avoid it in your day. View the full shownotes and links to resources at artsintegration.com/sparkchasers

 

What is Context Switching?

So in computing, a context switch is when an operating system stores where you’re at so you can go back later. It essentially allows you to multitask. Now, multitasking can be great at certain times - like when your computer is trying to do multiple things for you at once. But it’s terrible for us as humans. 

Multitasking never allows you to fully focus on one thing. Your attention is pulled in so many different directions that you’re not able to do any one of them well. So here’s where this becomes important to us. Context switching in humans is when we’re jumping back and forth between tasks all day, every day. And according to research, it actually eats up almost 80% of your time. Here’s what that might look like:

• Working on 3-4 different projects on the same day
• Moving between tasks and never finishing any of them
• Writing an email, then working on curriculum, then grading a student assignment

How Context Switching Holds You Back

Now context switching might sound like a normal day for you. I know it did for me. But here’s where the research gets really interesting. When we context switch during our day, we lose momentum and focus. So everytime we start a new task, it takes our brains time to let go of what we were working on and switch over. That causes us to lose time. Which is why when we’re working on so many things during a day, it can sometimes feel like we haven’t accomplished anything at all. In fact, according to psychologist Gerald Weinberg, context switching can cost us anywhere from 40-80% of productivity time.

Here’s how this breaks down in real life:

• Focusing on one task at a time = 100% of your productive time available
• Juggling two tasks at a time = 40% of your productive time for each and 20% lost to context switching
• Juggling three tasks at a time = 20% of your productive time for each and 40% lost to context switching

How to Realign Your Work

So what do you do instead? Todd Herman suggests something called the Block and Tackle method. Dan Tricarico talks about this on his blog, The Zen Teacher as well. In the Block and Tackle method, you’re going to block off sections of your day to work on a single task. Nothing else is able to happen during that time block - you’re just going to tackle that one task. You’ll work on it with total focus during that time and when the time is up, you’re able to move to the next block.

3 Design Thinking Strategies for the Holidays

Find all the show notes and links to download resources at https://artsintegration.com/sparkchasers

This is typically a time when students and teachers alike begin to get antsy. It’s increasingly difficult to keep our attention and particularly now, getting students to continue to be invested is hard. One of the things that has worked for me many times is tapping into the excitement of the season with a tangible project students can take home or use in some way.

Many times, this involves the Design Thinking Process - but not necessarily in a traditional format. Today, I’m sharing with you my top 3 ways to rethink using Design Thinking Strategies for student engagement.

 

Get the Creative Juices Flowing

Before anything else, we need to practice getting the creative juices flowing. Sometimes, we can get stuck. Creative thinking and creative mindsets are two sides of the same coin. Creative thinking encompasses skills and processes that lead students toward a creative mindset. A creative mindset is a practice of leveraging creativity to continually grow and evolve.  Think of a creative mindset as a muscle and creative thinking as the strategies needed to build that creative muscle.

There’s lots of ways to do this, of course. But for our purposes of getting students into this mindset, I have 2 strategies that work particularly well and some applications you might like to try:

• 1x5 Creative Thinking Strategy
• SpaceWalk Strategy

Create Your Own Game

Once you’ve gotten students into a creative mindset, now it’s time to ramp it up and get them using that for a real-world application. One idea could be for students to create their own game. This is great around the holidays because it could be used for a gift, or it could be used as a way for students to consider other items they’d like to create. Once they have the process down, they can use it for anything. 

One of our authors at IAS, Rich Stachon, outlines this in a Design Thinking Game Challenge which I think is just great. Here’s how it works:

 

Key Steps:

• Day 1: Empathize
• Day 2: Define
• Day 3: Ideate
• Day 4: Prototype
• Day 5: Test

Using Story Structure for Creation

Finally, design thinking strategies aren’t limited to science, tech, engineering, or math content areas. You can use this same thinking muscle for the humanities. One example of that is with the Structure Your Story strategy.

According to Shonda Rhimes, most stories fall within a specific structure. You can use this framework to develop narrative and informational writing, as well as work through ideas, presentations and more. Here’s how this framework is organized:

Key Ideas:

• Based in 5 Acts, each with a specific prompt for response
• Used by scriptwriters and playwrights to keep the audience engaged

Hopefully, the ideas shared in this episode give you a jumping off point for your own hands-on project. I know it’s hard to feel like you have time for this kind of thing. But I promise you, your students will get excited and you can hit your curricular milestones at the same time. You can weave them into the project design so students are learning, creating, experimenting, and connecting all at the same time.

 

 

Build Your Own Playday

For full episode shownotes, visit artsintegration.com/sparkchasers

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Today (the day this is being released) is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and I’m not in my office. I’m actually at home, preparing my kitchen for the invasion of my team members - both in person and virtually. Today is our 2nd company playday and I couldn’t be more excited. 

I learned about this idea of a Playday from the incomparable Brene Brown who shares research that taking a true break is incredibly important us in both our work and our personal lives. Today, I want to walk you through how we have chosen to set up our Playdays as a team, why we believe in this so much, and how you can build your own. Let’s dig in!

 

Playday Overview

This whole playday experiment started because of a podcast I listened to from Brene Brown. She shared some incredible research on the power of play. Not just for kids, but for us as adults, too. This research shares that play helps our brains process, recuperate, and create in new ways. For me as a business owner, that’s powerful stuff. The research also shares that play helps us personally to reduce stress, find joy in our lives, and to build connective relationships. 

Key Ideas:

• What is a Playday?
• How do you structure a Playday?
• The difference between work and home Playdays
• Using playdays in school

 

Why and How We Built Our Playdays

Once I learned about the importance of play, I knew I wanted to begin implementing this with our staff. I had already started using this practice at home with my family and I loved it. We were more connected and joyful together. And after this past summer, I knew this was something my team needed as well.

Key Ideas on how we built our Playdays:

• Outlining the purpose and scheduling the days for our whole group with the Leadership Team
• Asking our team members what they love to do, or what they do that makes time disappear.
• Creating playdays around common items everyone loved.
• Selecting one day each month for a Playday

 

Behind-the-Scenes of our First Playday

 

Our first playday was the Thursday before Halloween. We had selected two items (since it was Halloween): dress up as your favorite Golden Girl character and playing board games. We were going to Facetime in Holly in New York so she could participate virtually and the rest of us would come into the office for a day of games and fun. But it turned out a little differently - and we learned a lot of lessons.

 

Here’s some key things we learned:

• Make sure everyone knows how the day will go and the ground rules
• Don’t schedule a playday during a time when there’s a deadline looming for something critical
• When you select items for your playday, be clear on the specifics of what you enjoy
• Letting go of stressors is hard in a work environment. If you’re not going “off campus”, build in time to transition out of work mode.

 

How to Craft Your Own Playday

 

So how do you take this idea of a playday and make it your own? After all, if you’re in schools, it’s mighty difficult to take a whole day to play either as a staff or as a class. And unless you’re an administrator, you probably don’t have the ability to call a playday as a staff.

 

But there are definitely some ways to work this in. You just have to think about it a little differently. First, try bringing this idea to the social committee. You might not be able to have a full playday, but you might be able to have a play staff meeting. Or a play hour or half-hour. 

 

You might also think about how to do a playday or even a play warmup in your class. And you get in on the action! Don’t just facilitate the play - actually play. 

 

Key ideas:

• Remember that it’s not about the amount of time playing. It’s about the play itself.
• Think small: how can you build in play during your lessons? Is it just a matter of switching up roles so you are able to play with your students? Or, how can you build in play with other staff members?
• Maybe you want to do this at home, instead. Ask everyone what they love to do, come up with a list that includes things everyone enjoys, and then pick a day and time to start doing this together.
• Whenever possible, try to weave these in during times that are a little low-key to start. Once you’ve built in the practice, then you can start building them in during times of high-stress as well.

So...are you ready to work in more play? I hope you’ll give this idea a try...and this upcoming holiday season is the best chance to give it a whirl. There are so many fun activities you can do - see if you can weave them in a little more purposefully this year. 

Authentic Teaching & Creative Thinking with Betsy Potash

View all the show notes and links to resources at the Sparkchasers podcast page.

On this episode of Sparkchasers, I'm thrilled to welcome veteran educator Betsy Potash. Betsy spent almost a decade teaching every level of High School English and now shares her creative thinking strategies for the classroom with others on her site, Spark Creativity. During our time together, Betsy's love for reimagining the possibilities for the classroom was obvious, but it was her dedication to authentic teaching that made me lean in.  In this episode, Betsy shares how she was shamed by other teachers for embracing creative methods, as well as how she overcame those naysayers to build a creative community of over 16,000 other creative educators. Here's some key lessons from our talk:

Be True to Yourself as an Educator

Betsy tried the traditional English teacher route for about 5 minutes, but it just didn't feel right to her. Once she embraced the idea of using creative thinking and project based learning to engage her students, her teaching felt more natural and organic. 

Know Your Intent

When other teachers in her building shared they heard her class was "easy", Betsy didn't let it phase her. She knew that her intent was to get students to love reading and writing, not to make it a difficult process. By knowing what her end goal was for students, she was able to craft curriculum that both built critical and creative thinking while meeting her curricular standards.

Creativity is Like Color

This might have been my favorite part of our chat. Betsy explained that to her, creativity is like color. Without it, you can still accomplish your tasks, you can still check things off your list. But it's just not going to be as beautiful. When you have all the colors to work from, you can create something so stunning. This visual is so helpful when we're looking for our own "why" for bringing creative approaches into our classrooms.

The One-Pager Strategy

For all of you out there looking for a simple way to bring creative thinking into your own content, Betsy recommends the One-Pager strategy. She has a variety of templates you can download for free on her site. These one-pagers provide students with a way to predict, connect, and synthesize their learning on a single page. We also talked about how these one-pagers could be used in combination with Artful Thinking strategies to make thinking more visible.

Resources from this Episode

Here's a list of resources we shared during our conversation:

• Betsy's site Spark Creativity
• The One-Pager Templates
• 13 Strategies to Make Thinking Visible
• The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast
• The Creative High School English Facebook Group

3 Frames for Creative Teaching

Visit ArtsIntegration.com/Sparkchasers for the full episode, show notes, and resources.

As a teacher, I always found the holiday season to be both joyous and stressful in schools. Students have a long winter ahead of them with a lot of intense work. And we’ve just turned the corner of 1st quarter and getting settled in for the ride. Now, we throw in the holiday season and virtual/hybrid teaching and our students need an outlet more than ever before. They’re getting antsy and classroom management becomes a challenge. And we have all of the regular stressors of school, plus making sure we order our gifts so they arrive on time. We don’t have the energy to try and make something engaging.

If that sounds familiar, then you’re going to love these 3 frames I’m going to share today. Think of these as a handy set of options that you can pull out of your bag of teaching tricks and immediately get students focused in a new way. 

 

3 Frames Overview

Now I’m going to let you in on a little secret: these frames don’t come from the world of education. They are actually sales and persuasion frames that marketers use to sell us products. BUT, what I’ve discovered is that they work really well to encourage divergent and creative thinking in the classroom. 

 

Also, these frames are simple - I don’t want you to overcomplicate things here. They are each built on one single question. The elegance is in the simplicity. Remember: these are frames. They aren’t hard and fast rules. Imagine that what I share today are the boundaries that you set, but the students have a lot of freedom to make the picture inside the frame anything they want.

 

List of Frames Discussed:

• The Contrast Frame
• The Less is More Frame
• The Empty Chair Frame

 

As we go over these frames, think about how you might be able to use each in your class individually as well as possibly layering them together. I think you’ll find so much flexibility with these and have fun being creative in how you use them.

 

NEW! Lesson Pack Pre-Order

Did you hear? The 2nd Edition of our K-5 IntegratED Lesson Packs is now available for pre-order here. You'll receive access to over 120 lessons, assessments, student materials, and student websites to make teaching with creativity as easy as possible. And right now, it's available for $49 PLUS 30-days of free access to our Accelerator membership. 

 

I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions about this topic.  Remember, you can use the ask me anything button on the podcast page to share with me your ideas and what’s bubbling to the surface for you. Just head over to artsintegration.com/sparkchasers and you’ll find today’s show notes, contact area, and links for more resources.  And if you are enjoying the show and know someone who could benefit from our discussions, please share the podcast with them. Together, we can chase the spark of our ideas and make a brighter future for everyone. I’ll see you soon.

 

Additional Resources:

Dan Pink’s book To Sell Is Human

Using the Pixar Formula in Arts Integration

Ep. 07: Using the Throughline Strategy

Message Framing and Framing Theory

The Biggest Challenges I've Faced Working from Home

Since 2014, I’ve been working either completely from home or have had the flexibility to work from home whenever I’d like. And in 2020, lots of you are now in the same boat. There’s this idealized “must be nice” kind of thinking about people who get to work from home. But now that we’ve all been forced into that scenario, it’s becoming so clear that there are some real downsides.

Today, I’m hoping we can dig into the truth behind the challenges of working from home, as well as some specific tools I’ve learned that have helped me make this more joyful. My hope is that this conversation helps you know you’re not alone if you’re not happy about working and living in the same space, and that you leave our chat with some specific strategies to make it a little better. Let’s dig in.

Lack of Boundaries

Perhaps the biggest challenge I’ve faced working from home is a lack of boundaries. Every other challenge actually comes from this one. Because when you’re working and living in a single space, there’s no definitive start and end time. Your office becomes your living room which becomes your laundry folding station. Here are some aha’s I’ve gotten about this over the years:

Key Ideas:

• Working more hours (not less) is common
• Continuously being “on” makes taking breaks difficult
• Make it hard to access your stuff - social media, email, and even your office space
• Limit what you want to accomplish for work each day
• Set a schedule and stick to it

Health Takes a Backseat

Here’s a hard truth for me: in the first two years of working from home, I gained 50 pounds. And I’ve watched many others who have made the same switch struggle with their health as well. It’s not just weight gain that threatens our health. It’s the mental drain, the constant staring at a screen, and the limited movement that are chipping away at our best selves. Here’s some tools for bringing health upfront again:

Key Ideas:

• Stretch and movement breaks are critical.
• Make a meal plan and stick with it
• Make drinking at least 60 oz. of water each day easy
• Find a hobby you love and make it a priority to do at least once per week

Maintaining Relationships

This one hurts to admit, but working from home for me meant watching a lot of relationships fade. This includes relationships with my family, which was tough. About 3 years in, I had a realization that I didn’t like where this was going and made some very specific changes which have made a real difference:

Key ideas:

• Set aside at least one block of time each week for the people who are most important to you
• Create a 15 minute “Connection Time” in each day for letter writing, sending emails, or calling those special people in your life
• Don’t forget the relationship with yourself. How do you practice self-care?

So...think back on the year so far. How are YOU doing with boundaries, health, and relationships? If any of these areas need a little TLC, you are not alone my friend. Hopefully, something from today’s show has sparked an idea for making one of these areas a bit brighter. Because if there’s one thing I am certain about, it’s that each of these areas will help us get through our new reality with just a bit more hope and support.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions about this topic.  Remember, you can use the ask me anything button on the podcast page to share with me your ideas and what’s bubbling to the surface for you. Just head over to artsintegration.com/sparkchasers and you’ll find today’s show notes, contact area, and links for more resources.  And if you are enjoying the show and know someone who could benefit from our discussions, please share the podcast with them. Together, we can chase the spark of our ideas and make a brighter future for everyone. I’ll see you soon.

Why Isn't Your Stuff Free?

For the full episode and resource list, visit https://artsintegration.com/sparkchasers/

Today’s our first reader question segment and it comes from Sharron who writes:

“I love the resources you share every week, but why isn’t more of your stuff free? Your audience is teachers and we don’t have a lot of money. I feel like I’m missing out on so many of your resources in the membership because I can’t afford the yearly fee.”

So...does that question make you feel a little uncomfortable? Or maybe it’s a question you’ve been dying to ask, too. Either way, I’m SO happy Sharron sent this in because it’s something I’m really passionate about. So let’s get started, friends.

 

Free vs. Paid Content

 

So many people are nervous to talk about money, but I think it’s important because it’s one of the ways our world operates. 

At the core of this conversation are a few key beliefs: the philosophy of sharing ideas, the mindset of teacher pay, and the uncomfortable idea that businesses are profiting off of underpaid individuals. We’re going to dig into all 3 of these today. But I want to start out with a simple phrase from the documentary “The Social Dilemma”: if you’re not paying for the product, you ARE the product.

 

Key Ideas Discussed:

• Data privacy online
• 80% of what we offer is free. The rest helps to pay for our staff, platform access, etc.
• Paying for content that someone produced is okay. It doesn’t make you or them a bad person.
• Nothing is ever totally free - people have to get paid. So that could be with grant money, for-profit pay structures, or venture capital.

 

Business Models

 

One thing I’ve learned over the past 10 years is that you can never know someone’s backend business by what you see on the front end. Here’s some realities we need to remember:

Key Ideas Discussed:

• Non-profit vs. For-Profit. What do these two mean and how do they differ in the way they make money?
• Grant-Funded Model
• Crowd-sourced Model: Donations included
• For-Profit Model
• Why we chose a for-profit model
• How to look at a business or organization holistically. 

 

Teacher Pay Mindset

 

Finally, we need to take a look at our own mindsets about teacher pay and the value of what we choose to buy. Nobody goes into teaching to become a millionaire. But that doesn’t mean we need to keep up the mindset that we are “poor”, either. We have the ability to choose how and what we spend our money on. This is directly tied to our values.

 

Key ideas Discussed:

• Values to explore: Do we value our time over money? Do we value supporting other educators? Do we value our family over our jobs?  
• Some people believe that everything should be open-source and teachers should all share freely. However, would you expect to teach for free? 
• We can also leverage the power of dialogue with our administration. If there is something you need to make you more effective at your job, advocate for it with your administrators and community. It’s important to stand up for the tools that you need to do your job well.

Creative Strategy: Using Throughlines in Your Classroom

Visit Artsintegration.com/Sparkchasers for the full episode show notes, resources, and conversation.

There’s a secret that writers use to instantly make their writing more engaging for the viewer or the reader. It’s called a Throughline. Essentially, a throughline is a connecting theme, plot, or characteristic. Today, I want to show you how to use Throughlines in your teaching to make it pop and help students deepen their learning.

Key Ideas:

• A Throughline is a theme, plot, or characteristic that connects stories together. 
• Authors use Throughlines for stories that have a lot of elements going on. Example: Outlander, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, TED Talks. These are for EPIC content.
• Throughlines help the viewer or reader do a few things: understand the theme/character better over time, layer experiences, make predictions, and become invested in the story.
• Throughlines help the author do a few things, too: chunk out a story so as to not overwhelm the viewer/reader, get deeper with a theme/character, make their content super engaging. Throughlines are directly connected to open loops. Open loops allow you to hook a viewer/reader and gives you a reason to circle back.

How to Use Throughlines in Your Classroom

• For lesson planning, use your yearly scope and sequence to find when you’re circling back to specific topics to add or expand on them throughout the year. This is the point of a spiral curriculum model. Once you know when each of these topics/themes/ideas occurs, you can design a throughline concept. For example, if you know you’ll be looking at place value multiple times throughout the year, explore the idea of a digit value throughline because Place value refers to the value of each digit in a number. Try to create a place value story that you can add onto throughout the year. 
• For Pulling in Various Artforms: Look for overarching themes in your curriculum and use them as artistic throughlines. For example, try looking at elements like form, rhythm, or color. These cross artform boundaries, and also connect with other content areas very easily. 
• When you have a specific throughline, it provides a homebase you can keep coming back to throughout the year.

Expanding Student Autonomy with Throughlines

• Student autonomy instantly provides more ownership in the learning process. When students own their learning, they are more willing to engage and stay focused.
• Ask students to create their own Throughlines they’d like to explore this year. See how those Throughlines already weave into the curriculum you have to cover and then add them in as you can.
• Select a few Throughlines on a specific unit you’re working on and have students get into small groups to select one of the Throughlines available. Students can then learn the content of the unit through the lens of their specific Throughline.

Teacher Burnout? Try this.

If you're feeling the effects of teacher burnout, you're not alone. In this episode, we chat about how to tell if you're experiencing burnout or surge depletion, how to use a 3-pronged approach to deal with it, and how to use burnout as a way to move forward.

Creativity is Not a Soft Skill

In this episode, we're diving into the beliefs surrounding creativity: whether it's optional or essential, how to measure it, and exercises you can do to cultivate your creative habit.