S1:E5 John Spencer on "Learning that sticks: Classrooms where creativity and deeper learning thrive"

What if the best learning isn’t the most polished—but the most meaningful?

In this inspiring episode, Dr. John Spencer—educator, author, and host of The Creative Classroom—sat down with Phil to explore how project-based learning, design thinking, and creative risk-taking help students master academic content and build the core competencies they need for life. From the messy middle of learning to the power of student voice, John shares practical insights and stories that challenge the myth of perfection and reframe what success really looks like in school.

John and Phil talk about what makes learning stick, why unfinished work still matters, and how teachers can give students—and themselves—permission to be messy, curious, and adventurous in an age of AI.

Whether you’re a classroom teacher, school leader, or parent, this episode will leave you rethinking how creativity, reflection, and deep learning come together to shape empowered learners.

And, be sure to check out John's books including; Launch, Vintage Innovation, and, The A.i. Roadmap, and explore his sketch videos on YouTube.

Follow the EduByDesign Blog to explore the podcast topics, further.

And please let Phil know what resonates with you, in the comments.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Education by Design, the podcast that explores how schools are shaping the future of education by centering on values, embracing community voices, and building systems that work for every student. I'm your host, Phil Evans. What if creativity wasn't something that we programmed into the curriculum, but it was something that we practiced alongside our students every day? And I've also been wondering, what if AI didn't just do the work for us, but it helped students to see how they think and why they think and what they might think next? Or to put it another way, perhaps the real promise of AI in education is this, more reflection, more intention and more thoughtful design.

UNKNOWN 1:11

Music

SPEAKER_00 1:12

In today's episode, I speak with John Spencer, a former middle school teacher, professor and author, and the host of the Creative Classroom podcast. If you've ever seen his sketch videos, read his books, or heard him speak, you'll know that John champions learning that is authentic, messy, and above all, human. As we talked about the role of creativity in schools, John and I began to reflect on our creativity in our own lives and both the joy and vulnerability that comes with making something and putting it out there in authentic spaces. I've been undertaking The Artist's Way, a process designed by Julia Cameron. In the first few weeks, we're asked to sort of consider our monsters and our champions of creativity, those that have potentially put us down when we put ourselves out there creatively, and those that have built us up and encouraged us to go further. I was about to ask John to reflect on a teacher that really supported him in his creative journey, but he got us thinking about the role of creativity. Take a listen.

The role and goal of creativity

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Before getting there, I just want to say, as you were sharing that, it had me thinking of the goal of creativity, right? And I love the fact that you brought that up because it had me thinking so much of what I have to do is translating a deeply held conviction. that the creative life is the good life that there's something valuable in doing creative work in itself as a goal right um that i and i often have to translate that into the expectations of the institution, right? So the graduate profile, or, you know, I often share this metaphor, the corporate ladder has become a maze and what is needed to navigate this maze. And it's all of these essential skills, these human skills in a world of AI. And, you know, we think about portrait of a graduate or graduate profile or learner profile, whatever people, districts talk about, you know, what are the competencies that we need when we leave? But then I'm also reminded that when the pandemic hit and we did a little show and tell activity with my cohort of how are you handling social isolation, the ones who were handling it best had a creative outlet. They were gardening, which I think is inherently creative. They were doing a home improvement project, which before it got super expensive because everyone started doing those. They were baking, they were cooking, they were making their recipes.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

And some of them were putting all of that on TikTok too. Like it was sort of an explosion of like people coming into people's living rooms and watching them dance and cook.

The creative struggle

SPEAKER_02 3:49

And honestly, they were dancing, right? Like, I mean, I love that you brought that up because my daughter's a dancer and my middle son is, is into performance and he does theater and mock trial and things like that. But, you know, like those were what got people through hard times, right? And I know I took it in the direction, different direction. No, this is the direction. But it was really interesting because, you know, when you think about your role in IB and the way we talk about it, it's so often about college. It's so often about getting into a university career And I don't want to minimize that. That can be a game changer, especially for students coming from poverty and things like that. But the other piece is you have forever. You have the rest of your life to do this kind of stuff. And if those become habits and mindsets, then it just makes it so much better. I had to remind myself yesterday, I had never used Instagram before. edit before and a buddy of mine who does a lot of really cool stuff on Instagram. His name is Trevor Muir. He said, you got to try this app. And I was like, I hate mobile editing. I have like giant sausage fingers that screw it up. And I like I'm such an elder millennial slash Gen X, like I can't do it. And so I spent 90 minutes from sketching through editing, making a one minute video. And then felt this sense of like, gosh, I just wasted my time. And then had to step back and say, no, I enjoyed that. I enjoyed learning something new. I had fun. It doesn't matter how the video goes and I need to do this kind of stuff. Cause it, cause it reminds me that there's a learning curve that my students are going to do when I teach. And I asked them to do anything creative too, right? Like I need that to build and maintain empathy with my, with my students.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

That's very much a part of what I'm doing in The Artist's Way. Like this last week was about recovering your strength. And one of the major themes was how do we deal with loss? You know, as an artist, you make things and they don't always float. Or you put them into a sphere where there is an audience and the audience responds in a way that you weren't anticipating or the iterative aspect of creating. I mean, the promise of being skilled at something. But I also see that that's sort of a barrier I think a lot of people have to come to terms with in their creativity is what if it doesn't work? And it won't. Yeah. Have you ever read the book...

What if it is messy

SPEAKER_02 6:33

messy yes so one of the things you know i i'd read you know these productivity books and always felt like i was failing you know essentialism and books like that um atomic habits and you know and then and i felt like okay i'm productive i actually actually create a lot right um and i'm enjoying it but there's something wrong in the fact that it's not orderly or tidy or whatever and then in messy when he just he just takes a deep dive into like every creative person you've ever met, you know, who's doing amazing work, whether they're artists or writers or musicians, they have a bunch of unfinished projects, right? They have a bunch of things that didn't work out. They have a bunch of times where they start something, it fails, they shelve it and they come back to it a decade later, you know, like when the time's right. And I think, oh yeah, okay. Like that book gave me this permission to recognize that it's okay that my creative process is messy.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Oh, it's where the learning happens, isn't it? It's about like keeping the door open, isn't it? To possibility.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

So it has me thinking like, all right, so if this is a reality of the creative process, right? And we want authentic learning. One of the biggest questions that I run into when talking about project-based learning, design thinking, inquiry-based learning is what happens when kids don't finish? or what happens when it fails. And the deeper reality is if that's true of adults who are absolutely elite in their craft, we shouldn't be shocked when that happens with kids. And that's a really hard thing to embrace the mindset that the goal is not the process, even though a lot of people talk about the process, and the goal is not necessarily the product. The goal is the learning.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

If

SPEAKER_02 8:32

students absolutely mastered the standards, but they have an unfinished project or a failed experiment or something that didn't turn out right, they took a big swing and it didn't work, they can be successful. That's really hard, especially in spaces where teachers want high academic standards. They want students to succeed. I'm sure you see it in the IB world, right? What happens if they do a big project and it fails? And the answer is, then it's a null hypothesis, right? Or it's a normal part of the process.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

What's interesting, John, is that we have a problem in education and in schooling when it comes to success measures and expectations. But we want more. We want it to be... you know, the mission is compassionate and caring lifelong learners. So are we actually teaching students to learn how to learn? World Economic Forum saying that Being an agile, active, engaged learner, understanding how you learn is in the top percentile of skills across industries that you need today and in the future. Lifelong learning is literally, I think, number six on the skills list. But is that happening in our schools? And I think creativity and the design process is actually a really great tool, again, to whether or not you fully understand design thinking, if you can sort of start to integrate some of these skills approaches into the way you plan you know we can we can actually push things into the learning space much more intentionally can't we

SPEAKER_02 10:16

i think so and you know it's interesting i i feel like there are all these big goals right you know we want students to learn this academic content right we want them that's important and then there's the you know whatever we want to call them essential skills soft skills things of the world economic forum is saying is important and i think sometimes it creates this false dichotomy of are we going for these competencies or are we going for academic knowledge and one of the things i think about is things like design thinking project-based learning meaningful authentic mastery-based approaches right that deeper learning it does both you know one of my favorite theorists is jerome bruner and he has that whole notion of learning how to think in a discipline right thinking like a historian thinking like an economist I had this amazing AP stats teacher, and it literally has shaped the way I view the world to think statistically, to be statistically literate. And so there's this aspect of meaningful, authentic projects, whether you're using a design thinking framework or not. And I love design thinking because it has that empathy piece. But it does allow students to think in that discipline, to master the content in a way where it's sticky, right? Where they remember it, where there's this interleaving involved. And then at the same time, they develop all those core competencies that they're going to need to be agile, to be empathetic, to be a great communicator, to problem solve on the fly. All those things that they're going to need for the rest of their life.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Absolutely. Absolutely. I feel like the design thinking actually also creates space because when we're sort of talking about thinking like an economist, thinking like a mathematician, design thinking gives you that ability to really ask those questions and to think about the discipline and its traditions and sort of the things that are interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary and break the mould. But if you don't mind, I'd like to come back to something that you were referring to earlier when you were talking about translating your creativity into the expectations of the institution. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you think we should be working in schools to move away from some of these transactions that come back into focus, particularly in the upper school towards the end of high school?

Moving away from transactions to learning

SPEAKER_02 12:36

Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is that we have to we have to ask the big core questions of who do we want students to be? It's not just what do we want them to learn, but it's who are they going to become, which is truly something all teachers think about. It's something that they all care about. And then what are the institutional expectations? And then the tough thing is sometimes it's translating. Sometimes it's talking about how this particular PBL approach or design thinking approach is going to boost student achievement if that's an expectation. Sometimes it's focusing on maybe not assessing per se, but celebrating the things that matter. You know, no school grades football in the U.S., but they all celebrate the heck out of it, right? You know, like we know football is important because of Friday night. It doesn't matter what region you're in. So there's, you know, the reality of what are we celebrating? What are we saying matters? Yeah, but also what do we actually spend time on and focus on? And then I think some of it is at different times teachers advocating for systemic changes, you know? Policy changes, systems changes, more creativity when it comes to those types of things. And that's a heavy lift and that's a lifelong lift. And part of it comes down to that tension between living out your values and convictions within a system that may not always align. And so some of it is code switching, you know, translation, whatever you want to call it. Some of it is fighting against it at different moments. Some of it is working within it and compromising. And those are the tough things that teachers have to wrestle with at the K-12 level. And it varies from space to space. You know, in early elementary, it's the excessive focus on just phonics phonics phonics right now um and then at the high school level it's we're preparing them to go to elite universities right or whatever that may be

SPEAKER_00 14:49

yeah and i kind of feel like it's a very small goal considering how long we are alive um that we're sort of focused on you know some of these transactional things that fly by quickly when we really should be focused a little bit more on learning you know So at the beginning of our conversation, we were talking about our own creativity and sort of internalizing that. And we were talking about teachers that inspired us and prompted us to kind of put our creativity forward. So who was a teacher that shaped who you are and how you show up for kids, John?

The teachers who inspire creativity

SPEAKER_02 15:25

You know, for me, the one that really stuck out was, you know, for the first time ever, I did an independent project in eighth grade. And for me, it was this teacher named Mrs. Smoot. And in her class, we all did one independent project. And she encouraged me to do this thing called National History Day Project. And one of the things that I think about is we get obsessed sometimes with the terminology. Is it project-based learning? Is it inquiry-based? Is it problem-based? Is it performance-based? It's just learning through a project. That's the bottom line.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Learning through

SPEAKER_02 16:03

doing, right? Learning through doing, yeah. And I absolutely loved this project in the end, but I hated it at first. And I think that's an important thing to recognize. Sometimes kids hate it. So I'll share it briefly. I love baseball. I love history. I care about social justice issues. And so she said, I really think this National History Day project will be right up your alley. And one day a week, I would work on this project. And then this was my homework for the entire year for social studies and language arts. And I was like, this is wild. Because back then, think about the, I guess, early to mid 90s. That was an era of lots of homework, right? Like homework was, there was a lot. And so I was immediately overwhelmed. And I came up to my teachers. There were actually two of them, Mr. Darrow and Mrs. Smoot. And I said, you know, which topic should I choose? And Mr. Darrow said, play with it for three, four weeks and then narrow it down. And I was like, this is not how school works. Like, it should be fast. It should be efficient. It should be. And then Mrs. Smoot said, you know what? What is going to sustain your interest for the full year? And I was just blown away by this feeling of. overwhelm of too many choices of um what if i do it wrong i i mean and what they did is they gave me slack to develop grit they said you're focused on the end product we're gonna break it down into phases right now you're in an exploration phase you don't have to do the research so explore everything and then narrow it down and so then i chose a topic i i loved it it was the integration of baseball i began to do research um And I worked harder on that project than I've ever worked before. I conquered fears in terms of talking to people. I would do these interviews with strangers, these former baseball players. I told the story of what were called at the time the Negro Leagues and the integration of baseball, Jackie Robinson. I worked through the revision process and really That was when I learned how to communicate, how to engage in critical thinking, how to research, all those skills that lasted for a lifetime. And there was a moment where I was ready to give up. I was right at the finish line. I recorded my script, I heard it played back, and I hated how my voice sounded. I could hear you know, moments I had stuttered. I had some memories of speech therapy and, you know, just remembering, I still stutter sometimes. I could hear my braces coming through, you know, the fun 14-year-old adolescent voice crack, all those things. And Mrs. Smoot looked at me and I said, I can't do it. I was crying, like tears rolling down my face. And she said, John, when you hide your voice, you rob the world of your creativity. You need to share this. And so again, she gave me slack to develop grit. She said, we have as long as we need to at the radio studio. And so I was there for hours. Every other kid had finished. It was me, the audio engineer, her. And finally I had something I could be proud of. I went on and I did the competition connected to it. I won the state competition in California. I went to the national competition and it changed my world forever.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

I bet. I mean, that's what launch is about, isn't it? It's about doing something where students get the ability to engage in their passions and sort of explore something. But all of that mess, too, of dealing with ambiguity and dealing with all of these choices and then finding– an aspect that really floated or really sort of felt comfortable and felt good, and then hitting another wall and having to sort of bounce back from that, like that's real life.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

And I think that's something to remember, you know, certainly the IB's been doing the big independent projects for a long time, right? So it's definitely something that teachers have worked with. I think it's important to recognize that sort of emotional element because the assumption is always that kids are going to love it, right? And they will love it, and they will remember it, but they're also going to have moments where it's unpleasant, moments where it's not fun, moments where you hit resistance. And we sometimes have this expectation that if they have voice and choice, it'll be fun. It's like projects are fun, worksheets are not, right? And the reality is, sometimes it's not fun. Sometimes it's really challenging. Sometimes it's frustrating. And learning how to navigate all those emotions is a part of the creative process too, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

And you write a lot and you're sitting down to, you know, put together the final cut for your, you know, your videos or your, all of that stuff. It's fun. And then it's also, it can be tough. You know, it can be, you know, especially if you're having a 14-hour day, when you get to hour 12, hour 11, you're kind of like, you're still in it, but you're kind of like maybe slowing down and sort of the labor of what you were doing very quickly in the first four hours is now becoming a little bit slower. That's so

SPEAKER_02 21:37

true. And the reality is, you know, like we all have aspects that we, for you, as someone who comes from the language arts background, right, when it comes to writing, Is there an aspect that you don't

SPEAKER_00 22:13

love? And I sit down and I wait for my coffee and I get started with the writing and I'm on the way there. I'm committed, you know, I'm ready to do it. And then like, as I'm getting down sort of three quarters of a page, I'm like, oh my word, why am I doing this to myself? And then, you know, page two, I'm sort of like halfway down page two going, I've still got another page and a half. What am I going to say? But then by the time I turned the corner on page three, I'm on a roll and I'm getting down the page and I'm like, I could write and write and write from here on. And It's an interesting cycle listening to you describe the project that you've done before and sort of like this is sort of a recurring theme in the work that, you know, what I find that's interesting about this training, you know, those three pages that take you, what, 15, 20 minutes, you know, it's kind of that artistic, you know, creative process over and over again and getting yourself really comfortable with that, the stress points in fatigue and for, you know.

Professional learning in the student experience

SPEAKER_02 23:17

I love that you're describing that because, like, One of the things that when we think about, you know, just project-based learning, right? And teachers doing professional development on PBL, right? One of the things that I think is a form of professional learning and professional development is to do creative work yourself. Because it's partly to empathize. It's partly to see it. It's partly to remember it. It's partly to develop the patience when students experience that. But it's also partly to just see and experience and identify those elements so that you can help students navigate that frustration themselves. I'm navigating the getting started piece. You know, one of the things I think about is as someone with who I think is pretty productive, but with ADHD, you know, I use the strategy. I didn't even know there was a term for it. And I just use it as a productivity strategy. of creating early wins early on, on a to-do list, using that to-do list. And my to-do list would literally be like, get the computer out and plug it in. Like it was these early things. And what I realized, you know, eventually is that process of engaging in that is the endowed progress effect. That's the term. And I didn't realize that I was doing something that is research-based, that actually works. I just knew it was this little strategy, this little hack to get started. Because once I am into it long enough, I can hit that state of hyper-focus and you cannot stop me. But it's that getting started piece. I never would have introduced that to students if I hadn't done that myself, right? It's things like that. Just finding those aspects that work for you whether it's the rituals to get started, how to build creative momentum, how to problem solve when you hit a wall. I remember working with someone who honestly, he didn't do a whole lot of creative projects outside of school. In fact, He didn't do any kind of project. But I remember a moment where he was frustrated with me because he saw a kid in a hallway and he had a restroom pass and he was just walking around the breezeway. This is Phoenix, right? It's sunny, it's gorgeous, it's spring. And he's gone for a walk and he comes back three minutes later and he said, you know, I noticed that Miguel just left your class and he never even went to the restroom, you know? And I had to say, well, the reason he was going for a walk is he was stuck. And he was like, what do you mean he was stuck? I said, you know, he was hitting kind of like a creative block. And I told him, if you just go for a walk for three minutes and come back, that that reset is going to help you get over this block, right? And lo and behold, it worked. It was absolutely what he needed. Now, that is a hack that artists use it. It's animated like they use it at Pixar. Like, this is not an uncommon thing. But Again, I wouldn't have known to use that little hack with students if I didn't do that myself when I get stuck.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

It reminds me of the last time that we chatted, you were telling me that the whole idea of diving deeper into the creative classroom and design thinking in the classroom was because you had a project that you were doing with your students that involved the design process. process and so you were actually exploring that for yourself and then you were thinking well how else does this apply absolutely

SPEAKER_02 26:47

and and it's just that that reciprocal relationship of like you try things that work with students and then you go oh wait a second that works in my life too it's a great thing

Teaching in Beta

SPEAKER_00 26:58

yeah I remember that one of the very first videos that I came across just happened upon on YouTube that you'd made was teaching in beta, inspiring teachers to think that this doesn't have to be completely baked to be a perfect assignment or activity that you're doing to engage the learning. It's something that you can try out to see how it goes and tweak it and improve it. And your kids are going to tell you. They're going to demonstrate what's wrong with it or what's good with it. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that because that really resonated with me and i feel like teaching in beta is something that is a really cool concept

SPEAKER_02 27:36

yeah i think

SPEAKER_00 27:36

i

SPEAKER_02 27:36

think for me it's the notion of treating lessons as experiments to to feel no sense of guilt pressure shame anything cutting it off and saying that didn't work and abandoning it being um you know um not being too precious with our approaches, right? Being willing to discard things that didn't work and then really focusing on that question of what did I learn from it? And part of this for me came from, I had this amazing mentor teacher who gave me this giant gift basket with all the amazing things, the Astro Brighton paper, the Mr. Sketch markers, the Expo markers. And at the bottom of this gift basket was something that she called the new teacher card. And she said, play it every time that you mess up or play this when a parent seems mad at you for no reason and you're trying to figure it out. And just play this as... your new teacher card as a reminder that there's a big growth curve, that you're learning from it. Treat this as a card where you can make mistakes. Give yourself the permission to make mistakes. Play it to remind yourself to experiment. Play this as a reminder that success is about faithfulness, not results. I played that new teacher card so many times, right? Like all the mistakes. And I would just, it became an inside joke where I would say, oh my gosh, like I was trying this thing and kids were totally confused. And it took me five minutes to get them back. And I would vent to Nancy and she would say, well, play the new teacher card. What do you learn from it? And then it wasn't until the next year when I was unpacking stuff and reorganizing my classroom that I saw that new teacher card. you know noticed that at the bottom she'd put expires and then never right and it was this reminder of like every year is a new year every group is a new group of kids but also every day is a new day to try new lessons that may or may not work and so to me i think that's what teaching in beta is it's the recognition that we will very very rarely get 100 engagement We will very rarely have projects that are grand slams, right? Like we're going to have a lot of swings and misses. We're going to have a lot of singles and doubles. We're going to have a lot of moments that don't work perfectly. And that is okay because our imperfection, our humanity is exactly what our students need.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

And that's where we'll leave it for today. But there'll be more from John Spencer later in the week. You've been listening to the Education by Design podcast. I've been your host, Phil Evans. If you like this episode, please hit subscribe or follow and join us for our next episode. And until next time, stay curious.