How Will AI Transform Creative Thinking? Blog Post

As AI becomes becomes more pervasive in our daily work, we often wrestle with a big question: what should we automate and what should we protect as deeply human? We experience this profoundly in creative work. We are drawn to the speed and efficiency of…

Spencer Education: Spark Curiosity. Ignite Creativity. Page

Spark Curiosity. Ignite Creativity. I'm a former middle school teacher and a current full-time professor who is passionate about seeing teachers transform their classrooms into bastions of creativity and wonder. Over the last twenty years, I have written articles, recorded podcast episodes, crafted sketch videos,...

How Deeper Learning Can Address Summer Learning Loss Blog Post

Every year, we hear news reports about the “summer slide,” or the summer learning loss. Students arrive to school behind where they left off in May or June. This is a real challenge. But there’s more to the story. So, in this week’s article, I…

Deeper Learning is a Better Path Forward Blog Post

Teaching has always been challenging, but right now it feels heavier. In this piece, I share a conversation with Mike, a fifth-grade teacher who’s feeling the weight of tech distractions, AI-written essays, student apathy, and the pressure to do it all. The usual quick fixes…

Teachers Are the Champions of Depth in a Culture of Distractions Blog Post

In classrooms across the country, something subtle but powerful is taking shape. Amidst the distractions, the surface-level shortcuts, and the pressure to speed everything up, I’ve seen students quietly shift from passive to active. They’ve gone from compliant to curious and from distracted to dialed…

We Want Students to Be Creative, But How Do We Assess This? Blog Post

We know that creativity is vital for student learning. We also know that we tend to value the things we assess. However, when we assess creativity, we can unwittingly cause students to become risk-averse. So, how do we assess creativity in a way that encourages…