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We all want to be teachers, but I think this helps us look at what kind of teachers we want to be. I know I don't want to be another bland, boring teacher who just goes by the books. Ken Robinson helps us see what schools do stop stop us reaching our full potential and why we need more creativity and arts - things that students will be passionate about in class - in the classroom.

A TED talk (because that's more or less all I'll be posting) about the status of creativity in early education, and the implications for all levels of education (and beyond).

Ken Robinson describes how schools are killing creativity and most importantly highlights why it is so important in our futures. He urges us to maintain creativity in our curriculum so English teachers, please do your part to keep it.

I think this is a good website that teachers and students to choose different topics to journal. I think students should write everyday, and with the variety of topics, students can avoid writer's block.

This website offers engaging prompts for creative writing assignments. It includes different audiences and styles of writing.

Once in the schools, many English teachers will have to teach other related subjects such a speech and creative writing. This site offers a lot of great prompts to get students to start thinking.

From the MacArthur Foundation site announcement (12.3.09): "The report, "Meeting of the Minds," (PDF) is the result of a series of cross-generational online dialogues about digital ethics involving more than 250 adults and teens around the world. Participants discussed how to behave in a digital world, from illegal downloading and the creativity associated with remixing,to the factors that go into deciding whether to meet an online connection face-to-face".

826 National is a network of nine nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing. The organization was founded by the American writer, Dave Eggars.

If you are a creative writer and haven't heard of nanowrimo, you need to check it out. It is a website that spurs writers on, through word goals and inspirational e-mails, to write a novel in a month. It could also be useful if you teach a creative writing class in the future. Effective writing teachers are writers.

Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools.

Ideas on how to creatively teach grammar.

Lots of links and ideas about creatively teaching poetry to students.

The National Writing Project investigates more innovative ways to instill creativity in students' writing, one of which is detailed here in this article. A combination of art, writing and tactile sensory is used as students are encouraged to "write what they see."

This is a YouTube video that was a project for a high school public speaking class. It's a good example of how we can use technology to allow our students to use a little creativity and have a little fun with their assignments. Also, many of us may be asked to teach a speech class at the school where we are hired!

This article discusses the idea of creativity and a better term for it being inventiveness. It provides options for students to think outside the box.

We've all heard of blogs, but this site has twisted blogs to make them a little more creative and fun and coined them glogs. They are basically kind of like an online bulletin board where you can upload videos, images, text, etc. It is a great alternative teaching method for teachers and can be a new way for kids to learn/post information, too.

This site contains a lot of information on just about every aspect of teaching English. All of the various areas broken down, with lesson plan, project and unit ideas on poetry, literature, writing, reading, vocab, grammar, esl, etc.

When working with different plays in high school, I think it can be very beneficial for students to recreate scenes from the play. In high school, I had to do this several times and it was a creative outlet to further understand the play while having fun. This is a nice model for students to create their own video.