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.

Average GPA goes up! Average SAT goes down...in the same time period.

Why is this so important (and why does it bug me so much, when maybe it shouldn't)?

Because much of our K-12 system and Higher-Ed is based around one specific type of measure: Final Product Grades.

These summative grades are given at the end of a test, quiz, unit, project, essay etc.

While the grades keep rising, what we are really missing out on is whether or not real learning is occuring.

The learning happens during the actual process, not in the result of a final product.

When we only assess the final product, we miss so much value in the learning -- and ultimately fall short of providing valuable and useful feedback that is needed to support learning progress.

There is an intense video making its way across the internet and social media this week.

A professor confronts one of his students about using AI to cheat. He apparently assigned five different videos (10 minutes each in length) to watch and respond to (100 words).

The student in question, turned in the assignment in four minutes. The professor, obviously upset, gets into a contentious back-and-forth as the student shows the AI tool they are using to watch the video, provide notes, and ultimately answer any questions.

The student reiterates over and over that they are not cheating, they are using the technology to help them learn.

The professor disagrees, and it seems like this is not the first time it is an issue. The student is subsequently kicked out of class.

I’m not sure either of the people in the video gave their consent in the filming, so I won’t share it out here.

First, a quick overview of this plagiarism problem:

In March 2024 Copyleaks announced new data showing changing student habits regarding AI usage and plagiarism in schools. The study—conducted from January 2023 to January 2024—revealed a 76% surge in AI-generated material over the year. 

Recent studies underscore the rapid adoption of AI tools among students. A survey by BestColleges revealed that 56% of college students have used AI for assignments or exams. Similarly, research from Nerdynav found that 43% of students admitted to using tools like ChatGPT, with 89% leveraging them for homework, 53% for essays, and 48% for at-home tests.

Educators are increasingly alarmed by the ease with which students can use AI to sidestep academic standards. A Wiley survey indicated that 96% of instructors believe at least some students have cheated in the past year, with AI tools frequently cited as contributing to this trend.

The Gallup report Creativity in Learning is based on a survey conducted in 2019 as a “nationally representative study” of teachers, students, and parents of students. The focus was the extent to which “creativity in learning” is being fostered in American classrooms, what respondents think of it, and how technology supports it. Project Based Learning is cited throughout the report.

Here are some highlights via PBLWorks:

“Teachers who often assign creative, project-based activities are more likely than other teachers to say their students display a range of learning and development goals, including building self-confidence, utilizing their unique strengths, and developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills.”

“68% percent of teachers say project-based assignments are a good measure of student learning, far more than the 12% at who say the same about standardized tests.”

Raise your hand if you’ve ever held a big ol’ floppy disk before!

If I could look through this screen I’d see a lot of hands held high :)

Way before we all had three devices on us (yea, I see you with the watch, phone, and laptop over there).

And way before we used computers for work, communication, research, writing, music, art and thousands of other creative pursuits.

There was Oregon Trail.