While I was putting the IKEA bed together and following the steps, I couldn’t help but think that this is what many of our students must feel like.

They are often given “big tasks” to complete in school. These tasks could be writing a paper, research essay, book report project, word problem, or lab.

In each case, the task must seem like it is going to take forever for the learner to complete. But then, we break it down step-by-step. We give students the exact directions and models on how to finish the work. We outline a rubric and project guidelines that keep the student working at a good pace, and urge them to take it step-by-step until it is completed the “right” way.

While this might seem like a good thing, I’d argue it is one of the biggest issues we have in our education system right now.

I never thought I would write a book.

When I was in middle school, I didn’t believe I was a writer. I liked playing sports, hanging out with friends, and getting into some trouble.

In high school, I despised my five-paragraph writing assignments. I procrastinated on every research paper. I agonized over the entire process, and rarely edited or improved my writing with revision.

Apart from school, I actually enjoyed writing. Although I didn’t call it that. I was in a band and wrote all the lyrics for our songs. This was fun. It was challenging. It was exciting to have your words come to life in the form of a song.

My first 2-3 years at college were mostly the same. Writing was a chore. It was a necessity of school. I still wrote lyrics here and there but not as much as my band days were over.

Then, I took a creative writing class. We could write about what interested us. The professor challenged perspectives, style, and made writing come alive with assignments that were less cookie-cutter and more cookie-batter.

Somehow, three years after that class, I found myself with a teaching degree, working at a middle school, teaching English Language Arts.

So, everyone is cheating their way through college? But, get this...we aren't going to change college teaching and learning!

Imagine your favorite team losing at halftime, instead of making adjustments, those coaches stay the course.

Now imagine that team having an entire offseason, after the rules changed in the game, and yet those coaches stay the course.

Now three offseasons, no real changes made.

What's worse is that you see that other team over there, and the coaches have made all kinds of changes. Some have worked, others haven't, but at least they are acknowledging this simple fact: We need to adjust to a new game.

This isn’t only happening at universities, it is also K-12. We can’t stay the course on assessing only final products, while missing the assessment during the learning process.

I was working with a group of teachers in Georgia yesterday, and a simple comment resonated with me so much.

We were discussing the impact of artificial intelligence on their 5th grade students. She mentioned that despite hoping it would not creep on down to the Elementary level, “things have changed”.

It seemed to be a recurring theme in our workshop.

Things have changed.

The first post in our series looked at the goal of school. Is it compliance or learning? If it is learning, then we need to actively work to engage kids who live in today’s world, and not try to make them fit into a system that was designed for a different world.

The second post in our series looked at the boredom problem we see in schools today. Seen as apathy, we can’t blame the kids, and must look to create more meaningful and relevant learning experiences across the K-12 spectrum.

Our final, and third part in our series now goes into specific strategies, structures, tools, and experiences that can re-engage youth in our schools right now. If you liked this series, you’ll love my new book, Meaningful and Relevant: Engaging Learners in an Era of Distraction.

Let’s get started!

When a student says, "I'm bored," it's easy to dismiss it as a lack of motivation or effort. But what if that statement is actually a crucial signal that something in our educational approach isn't working? Research says that students are bored for a third to half of their time in school. That is a lot, and way more than at home.

Raise your hand out there if you’ve ever been bored at school. Yep, that’s what I thought. We’ve all experienced it. It’s also not the worst thing to happen (which we will look at below), however, it does impact engagement and learning in many different ways.

As teachers and school leaders, it's time we recognize boredom not as a student problem but as a system problem, and an opportunity for meaningful change.

Let’s dig in.

If you are anything like me, your educational experience consisted of many lectures, notes, homework, tests, and papers.

Then, when I started teaching, I gave a lot of PowerPoint lectures, had my students take a lot of notes, and focused on rigorous tests and all kinds of papers.

Seemed to be a cycle.

I taught like some of my previous teachers taught.

Some students enjoyed this type of educational experience. Maybe enjoyed is too strong a word. But they played the game of school well, and this was the game they were used to and had mastered over the years.

Other students went through the motions. They knew this was what school looked like, and for them, it was a means to an end. If they just followed the directions and kept their heads down, they could focus on other things they were interested in while going through a formal educational experience.

And, of course, there were plenty of students who struggled in this setting.

Holy smokes. I’ve got AI whiplash, and I’m ready to talk about it!

It seems impossible to attend a conference, read an educational blog, listen to a podcast, or even have a conversation with colleagues without the inevitable mention of artificial intelligence.

It’s always AI blah, blah blah…

The constant barrage of AI products, services, and "revolutionary" solutions has created a echo chamber of noise that often drowns out what truly matters in education: the learning experience and the students themselves.

My new book, Meaningful and Relevant: Engaging Learners In An Era of Distraction, releases this week.

I’ve spent the last three years working on this book, and I’m so proud to put it out into the world. It came from a place of frustration I’ve had as an educator and parent, with a strong focus on solutions to the problems with distraction we are all facing.

Here is the introduction to the book. I hope you enjoy it and I’m so pumped to share the rest of the book with you on April 1st!

n 1936 Dale Carnegie wrote a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People. It went on to sell over 30 million copies. It still sells today and is probably one of the best books on how to improve your social skills.

In the book, he shares a quote that resonated with me so much, it was an epiphany in the middle of my student-teaching experience:

“I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish.”

Do you bait your students with strawberries and cream? Do you focus on what interests you when you teach? Or do you understand that our learners want something else? 

This simple mental exercise changed the way I taught forever. 

I asked myself before every lesson, in every unit: What are the strawberries and cream vs the worms?

When I was growing up and going through my Dinosaur phase (I believe almost all of us had a dinosaur phase), I remember asking my teacher when we would learn about dinosaurs.

It was September and she mentioned that we would have a unit on dinosaurs in February. I had already checked out all of the dinosaur books in our local library and the school library. I’d watched “Land of Time” too many times to count.

Flash forward to my son going through his Dinosaur phase. I caught him on a Youtube Livestream, watching a Q&A show with one of the best paleontologists in the world at an actual dig site.

Talk about a difference in learning opportunities. Same subject. Different time. World changed.

I have to be honest.

For years I believed phones should not be banned in classrooms.

But, after looking at the research, and my interactions with students and my own children, I started leaning heavily in the direction of removing phones from all learning environments.

I’m not one to change my beliefs lightly, but I’m also not going to hold onto a belief when research and reality are showing me, I’m wrong.

That is where the initial research for my upcoming book, Meaningful and Relevant, started: From a place of a frustrated Dad, teacher, and school leader wondering how we can possibly engage learners in such an era of distraction.