Imagine you and I were about to make a dinner together. Now, I bring a love of baking to our project, and a decently strong roast chicken game. But I don’t want to dominate the conversation too much. “Let’s make roast chicken and vegetables,” I say, “and cookies.” Your face falls a little. “Oh but you can choose which vegetables we roast, and what kind of cookies – I have M & Ms AND chocolate chips.”
Perhaps you love making bibimbap, tagine, paella, tacos, or BBQ pork. Maybe you’ve got three Ottolenghi cookbooks in your bag and you were about to suggest a middle eastern buffet followed up by your incredible raspberry jam donuts. Possibly you spent a year in culinary school before I knew you and your artisan pizza was legendary among your college friends.
You put all those ideas aside and dutifully don an apron, trying to look OK with the choice between sweet potatoes and carrots, chocolate chips and M & Ms.
But what if I had started the conversation by showing you everything I had in my kitchen, including my rainbow shelf of cookbooks, and asked you what you’d like to make? And how I could help? How would that feel?
Agency is a key word when it comes to education, but it’s easy to underestimate its power and think of a few small choices as agency. Today, in our continuing conversation about #evolvingEDdesign, I want to think bigger and wider.
How can we give our students more agency in the classroom, empowering their creativity? Let’s dig in.
Ooh, one more thing before we start. Throughout this podcast, and the ones to come in this series, I’ll be showcasing graphics and displays from the #evolvingEDdesign Toolkit, a vast free resource I made for you. You can grab it here. Please share your classroom design stories, questions, photos and ideas with the #evolvingEDdesign hashtag across platforms so we can continue the conversation off the pod!
What Agency is Not
Let’s just start by saying agency is not about abandoning the teaching of skills and the sharing of resources. Not at all. We can empower students to move in directions that interest them while still teaching them skills that will help along the way.
Genius hour is one of my favorite examples of a project that runs on student interest. So do we just turn over the floor and say “Good luck, I’m empowering you with agency”?
Nope, we can help students with brainstorming topics, learning research skills, tackling modes of sharing (how do I create a podcast? a vlog? a social feed?), planning and scheduling their time, using project tools like design thinking, dealing with obstacles, developing a growth mindset, etc.
But in the end, they’ll create a project on a topic they’re passionate about, using a medium that they choose. Supported along the way by working in a creative environment, in collaboration with a creative community.
What Agency Can Be
So we’ve talked a bit now, about gateposts on either side of what real agency is NOT.
It’s not providing students with two options that are almost identical instead of one – the chocolate chips vs. M & Ms. problem.
It’s not providing students with the entire world, a “good luck,” and no guidance either.
So what is it? Let’s talk about agency in terms of three areas.
Last week on the pod, we talked about the creative classroom space as a partner in student agency and learning. This space can have flexible displays, resources, and seating to allow students to curate what they need as they work in terms of resources and workspace, giving them ownership over their environment.
Today, we’re moving into agency in the process of learning and the way that learning is shown back to the community.
Agency in the Process of Learning
Whatever you teach, and whatever unit you’re in, chances are there are ways you can your students agency in their process of learning.
Let’s consider some examples.
Students might choose…
- What medium works best for them as they take in information from a webquest or choice board (audio, text, imagery, video)
- What note-taking method helps them remember new information and connect the dots on their learning (sketchnotes, bullet points, idea maps, etc.)
- Which pieces of similar content interest them most (what book to choose in choice reading or book clubs, which poem to read for an analysis activity, which short story pulls them in a short story unit, which mini-documentary to examine as a mentor, which author interview to watch as they learn about the writing process, etc.)
- When to work collaboratively, and when to work alone. When they’re ready for an idea partner or editor. When they want feedback and what kind of feedback they want.
- How to manage their time, when to switch tasks and schedule their check-ins and deadlines
- What topic to research, problem to solve, idea to explore. What experts to reach out to and what to ask when they’re connected.
No doubt you can think of more examples of student agency in your own classroom. Lean in to what’s working, and think about ways to experiment further. In our conversation a few weeks ago, Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, Yale Creativity Researcher and author of The Creativity Choice, told us that providing students with choice was a key element in motivating them to work harder in school. “Students are willing to persist and put more effort when they perceive they have some choice,” said Zorana. “We have done research with high school students and that is the #1 finding we had.”
Agency in Showcasing Knowledge
Agency over the learning space and the learning process set up a wonderful creative learning environment for students, but it doesn’t end there. How will they reflect their learning back to you, their peers, and the community? We need agency there too.
A little creative constraint is helpful – again, we’re not choosing between the cookie fillings option and the entire world-is-your-oyster option. We’re looking for something in between.
Consider these categories.
First, mediums (or genres, or modes – I can’t quite figure out the difference). Let students reflect their learning in a way that makes sense to them, at least some of the time. Sure, you may need your A.P. students to practice a very particular sort of essay at times. But maybe if you’re looking for a student review of their choice reading book you don’t need to say exactly how that will look.
A review could be an infographic comparing the book to others in the genre, a video review with fun graphics and music, a book talk podcast recommending (or NOT) the book to others in the class. It could be a text submission to a teen reading website, or an Instagram-style carousel with five images and a caption. And all of those would reflect real-world ways of communicating about books which could be shared back to the class to guide others in what to read. Plus, they’re much more likely to resonate with students than a book report they turn in for the teacher’s eyes only (but more on audience in a minute!).
Let’s consider another example for mediums. Maybe you’re looking to have students analyze a poem. I’ve written my share of poetry analysis, but I’ve also created a poetry blackout, a poetry illumination, and a poetry house. And each of them let me showcase my understanding of a poem in my own way, because I love incorporating visuals into my presentation of information.
Students might have fascinating, innovative ways to reflect their understanding of poetry back to you, if given the chance to experiment across modes.
Next, let’s consider authentic audience. Where will students share their work? Sometimes they’ll share practice with you, with the goal of getting feedback to improve. But other times, they need a wider field of vision, so they are inspired to create something they’ll be proud to share with the world. How might they have agency over that audience?
Here are a few ideas:
- Let students choose to submit work they’ve put serious time into to online competitions, like the NYT podcast contest or the many writing and essay competitions around the web
- Let students help plan events, like performance poetry nights, TedX-style events, documentary festivals, etc. Give them ownership over the ambiance of the event, hosting it with an intro and outro speech, and who they invite as guests or judges.
- Build in gallery walks and gallery walls with daily work and projects, but give students an out with work that could feel private
- When workshopping creative pieces, let students take ownership over peer editing, asking for feedback on things they’d like help with so they don’t feel hurt if a peer has a different style and doesn’t like their creative risks and unique voice (this idea comes from Felicia Chavez’s book, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop)
- Build audience into the design process with projects. Let students think about who they’re creating for and how they want to share what they’ve made at the end of the project. For example, if they are creating a research infographic about how to fight global warming on the local level, might they showcase it in a display in the school library? If they’re reviewing a book they loved, might they want to send that review to the author with a note of appreciation for their book? If they’re creating a short play, could they perform it at the elementary school nearby?
These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg. Once you make providing agency a priority in your curriculum design, you’ll see it’s easy to build signficant student choice into your curriculum.
Coming Next
Ok, my friend, today we focused on student agency, and I know your wheels are spinning! Next week on the pod, we’ll be back to talk about the classroom sensory dashboard, an important part of designing your creative classroom because it impacts the way you (and your students) feel in your shared workspace. Don’t forget to grab your copy of the #evolvingEDdesign toolkit for everything we’ve talked about, and everything we’re going to talk about, and to share your thoughts under the same hashtag.
If you’re looking for more inspiration today, check out the “5 Minute Upgrades” page of your toolkit, which will give you quick wins you can try immediately in your classroom space, circling back to what we discussed last week. I know how time flies, so this is your chance to start implementing small shifts in your space if you haven’t had a chance just yet.
Sources Considered, Consulted, and Cited for this Series & for the Toolkit:
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Potash, Betsy. “Research-Based Practices to Ignite Creativity, with Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle.” The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast, Episode 393.
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Ritchart, Ron and David Perkins. “Making Thinking Visible.” Educational Leadership, February 2008, p.p. 57-61. https://pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/makingthinkingvisibleEL.pdf. Accessed October 13, 2025.
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Richardson, Carmen and Punya Mishra. “Learning environments that support student creativity: Developing the SCALE.” Thinking Skills and Creativity, Volume 27, March 2018, p.p. 45-54. Accessed online at https://doi-org.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/10.1016/j.tsc.2017.11.004, October 13, 2025.
Stockman, Angela. Make Writing: 5 Strategies that turn Writer’s Workshop into a Maker Space. Hack Learning Series, 2015.
Utley, Jeremy. “Masters of Creativity (Education Edition) #1: Input Obsession (Design Thinking).” Stanford d.School Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LosDd3Q0yQw . Accessed October 15, 2025.
Utley, Jeremy and Kathryn Segovia. “Masters of Creativity: Updating the Creative Operating System (Design Thinking).” Stanford d.School Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggza7df7N7Y&t=2233s. Accessed October 17, 2025.
