Students increasingly seem disengaged in the classroom - but most are still delivering the requirements. How?
I have three kids in middle school. And I keep hearing the same thing from parents and teachers:
Classroom behavior issues are increasing. Students are more and more disengaged. Teachers struggle to maintain order.
Yet somehow, homework gets done. Tests still get passed.
How does this work?
My observation is that this gets accomplished through massive outside effort – more study hours, tutoring, parent help, online programs.
All the outside effort and support mask that most students don't actually understand in class.
Teachers see completed assignments and passing grades. They think instruction works.
But it frequently doesn’t.
Students are just managing to deliver requirements through outside help. Most of the time they deliver whatever is immediately due, but do not retain the knowledge or keep building on it.
Everyone's trying their best. But we're all collaborating - unintentionally - to make a broken system look functional.
This is primarily a system design problem
We're asking an industrial-age system to deliver 21st-century learning. The system was built on the factory mindset of standardization, compliance and pushing in more input to get more output.
So instead of getting real results, we see it cracking: disengagement in the class, behavior issues, having to work outside school hours to deliver requirements, exhausted students and sometimes parents.
The masking is a symptom that shows where the old design can no longer meet new demands.
Go back to basics on how humans actually learn
We each can't redesign the whole system alone. But we can reclaim the classroom to the extent that's possible within our school systems.
We owe it to the kids whose time we hold to at least try.
So here's where educators should start: Learn how the brain actually works.
The last few decades of neuroscience research has transformed our understanding of human learning. But most teachers were not trained in this. It's a missing foundation for many educators.
Understanding how humans learn - what enables it, what blocks it - changes the way we use classroom time.
Reflecting on our image of the child and our role as teachers changes the way we relate and communicate.
What would become possible if each teacher could build on these principles?
This breakdown is a new opening for those building alternatives
If you're a school leader, entrepreneur or changemaker building new learning environments… The exhausted families and even teachers looking for alternatives are already becoming early adopters
These people are ready for something that actually works.
>> Once we see what's actually happening in classrooms, we can't unsee it.
The first step is acknowledgment - seeing what we're caught up in
Acknowledging the cycle of masking is itself eye-opening.
This is where the “committed sardines” begin: recognizing the system for what it is. (If you had missed the last letter, read about the committed sardines here)
Welcome to The Why.
This is the second issue of our bi-weekly newsletter.
We're here to explore what it means to transform learning & education for humans in the fast-changing, increasingly AI-dominated 21st century. Not only through theory, but through a journey of building, experimenting and learning together.
We support those ready to see and act differently - whether that's transforming oneself or building new learning environments.
