Yes, engagement is so important, especially when students feel connected in their learning environment by developing connections with their teachers and peers!
I would argue another important way to improve engagement in school would be removing 1:1 devices, especially in K-8. As I recently wrote about, https://dencham.substack.com/p/a-world-unseen-the-real-social-dilemma , when children’s eyes are diverted to a screen at school rather than those around them, they miss an unquantifiable amount of opportunities to develop much needed social relationships. We use our eyes to think about our surroundings and those who are in it, it is the root of our ability to develop our social skills. Our eyes are used to notice and interpret facial expressions of others, to develop empathy, to determine what group expectations might be. It is at the core for developing relationships. When students feel connected and have a strong sense of community which is fostered by learning together, rather than independently using “personalized” learning programs, they become more engaged with their learning. Plus these “personalized” edtech programs make students feel constantly evaluated, zapping any joy from learning. From homework, class assignments, assessments and progress monitoring, kids are seeing their scores daily which often can feel defeating.
AI will destroy any fabric of human connection in school if left up to the tech industry and their well stated goals (replace teachers with AI tutors). It is not enough to expect parents to do their part in restricting tech, schools need to get on board as well. It is time to undo the death grip that the tech industry has on education and our children.
Paul Graham wrote a wonderful essay called "why nerds are unpopular" (if you haven't read it, Google it!) which explains a lot of why teens are disengaged. What they do in school does not fundamentally matter outside of school, and schools are childcare as much as they are education. What they really care about is each other's approval, so most of them focus on social hierarchy games.
"What they do in school does not fundamentally matter outside of school." This explains why mindful spending workshops, which allow young people to work on a problem that matters to them in real-time: "Should I buy this item or experience?" are so popular - and effective.
AI in it's infancy cannot come close to human-level engagement for students, but if it advances sufficiently, it clearly will surpass human-level engagement. Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson spells it out all too conceivably.
While I appreciate many of the sentiments in this post, readers should know (and I'm sure the authors know) that the "student-driven" model of education is routinely used to justify letting kids "explore" apps and websites on laptops and chromebooks. This ideology is fine in principle, and I love many of the suggestions. However, in the actual non-ideal reality of US public schools, teachers and administrators pat themselves on the back for achieving "Student autonomy" while overseeing classrooms full of children staring at screens and wearing headphones. Just something to bear in mind.
The Explorer mode framework maps cleanly onto what I'd call high-agency AI use — and the distinction matters enormously in practice. As a sophomore English teacher and member of my district's AI team, I've found that the students who benefit most from AI collaboration are the ones already practicing the metacognitive habits this article describes: questioning their own assumptions, generating ideas before outsourcing them, and treating the tool as an interlocutor rather than an answer machine. AI doesn't create that disposition. It amplifies whatever disposition is already there.
What's missing from most of these conversations is the structural layer. Explorer mode doesn't emerge from good intentions — it requires deliberate instructional design, teacher capacity to model and assess it, and budget frameworks that treat professional development as the primary cost of AI integration, not the licensing fee. My district has been building exactly that: governance structures, human agency frameworks, and multi-year implementation plans that sequence AI use from internal operations to student-facing contexts. Without that scaffolding, "give students more agency" becomes another mandate teachers absorb alone.
One point worth adding to your six actions: AI makes the design of learning experiences more important, not less. A poorly designed task that AI can complete in forty seconds was probably a poorly designed task before AI arrived. The real opportunity here isn't resisting the shortcut — it's making the learning so genuinely interesting that the shortcut becomes beside the point. That's always been the standard. AI just makes it impossible to quietly sidestep.
I think the root cause is more basic. What incentive do student's have to care about schooling? I was in high school during the 00's and students were already looking at how the internet and celebrity culture was enabling "drop outs" to make millions. It didn't matter that the chances were low. Also the students who were on the STEM path had "gifted" programs or advance classes that rewarded and challenged their efforts. Now schools do everything they can to pad stats that students can coast to A/B's.
Just want to note that developing curiosity and agency is not a panacea. For years I worked in a high school program where students made films. They had full creative license coupled with vast instruction on all of the tools needed to create a film. The students worked in groups, and most worked well together and did amazing work. There were a few students, however, who contributed very little to their groups. We decided to put the slackers in a group together (they were all friends), and, lo and behold, they were unable to create a film. After three months they had some B roll they never got around to editing. That was it. Whenever I read these things I want to shout "It doesn't always work!"
As a Grade 11/12 teacher of Psychology and French in Canada for 38 years, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that encouraging Explorer mode through interactive lessons , and a growth mindset is key! “ in French classes, I regularly tell my students that I love mistakes, so let’s give it a try”. And then we celebrate when somebody struggles and gets it right. In psychology classes. I give students full reign to choose their own topic for their research papers and I also empower them to teach the class for 70 minute lessons so that they can truly become experts in whatever they’re passionate about. The other piece that is crucial is connection and belonging. When students feel safe in a classroom, they will explore, but when they feel the pressure of the social hierarchy, they will often shut down. This is a nuanced often complex dance for teachers but worth every moment.
This framework captures something I’ve seen repeatedly in my work with early adolescents through mindful spending workshops.
The goal is exactly what you describe: creating moments of “Explorer Mode” around money during the developmental window when kids are forming their default money habits and beliefs.
Mindful spending is a pathway into Explorer Mode for financial decision-making because students are working on a real question that matters to them in real time: Should I buy this item or experience? When they pause, gather information, and reflect before spending, they start to see the ripple effects of their choices — disappointment avoided, waste reduced, family friction eased, and future options preserved, including for the planet, since mindful spending naturally reduces our carbon footprint.
That small pause before purchase changes how young people see themselves. They realize they have agency over their financial futures, one thoughtful choice at a time. What a gift to discover that insight at a young age.
Very few teens are interested in mortgage rates. But when young people begin making thoughtful spending decisions, they start connecting their present choices with their future lives — when things like mortgage rates will actually matter. I often quip that the best time to teach kids about money isn’t a specific age — it’s a specific moment: when they want some.
Because, as you write, “we don’t think about things that don’t matter.” When students experience that their decisions actually shape outcomes, curiosity about money and financial knowledge follows naturally — which is exactly what we hope to spark.
Everyday decisions like spending may be one of the most underused gateways into Explorer Mode.
One issue I see is also the ever-raised standards that are leaving students with academic struggles behind. In our effort to make everyone a STEM genius, schools no longer separate kids to teach them where they are. For example, when my 8th grade daughter suddenly began to struggle in math (her grades tanked at the beginning of the school year) her tutor told me that what is now pre-algebra was what we learned in Algebra 2. She said many kids brains just aren’t developmentally ready and, thus, the influx of expensive after school learning centers. Not only is AI an issue, the money-making industry around “excellence” is ensuring the standards continue to rise, leading more and more kids to simply give up because the system flew past them long ago and no one is willing to jump out of the speeding train to help them.
You may enjoy Ted Dintersmith's (@dintersmith) new book, "Aftermath" which delves into the math that is taught versus the math that humans use after graduation.
Yes, engagement is so important, especially when students feel connected in their learning environment by developing connections with their teachers and peers!
I would argue another important way to improve engagement in school would be removing 1:1 devices, especially in K-8. As I recently wrote about, https://dencham.substack.com/p/a-world-unseen-the-real-social-dilemma , when children’s eyes are diverted to a screen at school rather than those around them, they miss an unquantifiable amount of opportunities to develop much needed social relationships. We use our eyes to think about our surroundings and those who are in it, it is the root of our ability to develop our social skills. Our eyes are used to notice and interpret facial expressions of others, to develop empathy, to determine what group expectations might be. It is at the core for developing relationships. When students feel connected and have a strong sense of community which is fostered by learning together, rather than independently using “personalized” learning programs, they become more engaged with their learning. Plus these “personalized” edtech programs make students feel constantly evaluated, zapping any joy from learning. From homework, class assignments, assessments and progress monitoring, kids are seeing their scores daily which often can feel defeating.
AI will destroy any fabric of human connection in school if left up to the tech industry and their well stated goals (replace teachers with AI tutors). It is not enough to expect parents to do their part in restricting tech, schools need to get on board as well. It is time to undo the death grip that the tech industry has on education and our children.
Paul Graham wrote a wonderful essay called "why nerds are unpopular" (if you haven't read it, Google it!) which explains a lot of why teens are disengaged. What they do in school does not fundamentally matter outside of school, and schools are childcare as much as they are education. What they really care about is each other's approval, so most of them focus on social hierarchy games.
"What they do in school does not fundamentally matter outside of school." This explains why mindful spending workshops, which allow young people to work on a problem that matters to them in real-time: "Should I buy this item or experience?" are so popular - and effective.
AI in it's infancy cannot come close to human-level engagement for students, but if it advances sufficiently, it clearly will surpass human-level engagement. Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson spells it out all too conceivably.
While I appreciate many of the sentiments in this post, readers should know (and I'm sure the authors know) that the "student-driven" model of education is routinely used to justify letting kids "explore" apps and websites on laptops and chromebooks. This ideology is fine in principle, and I love many of the suggestions. However, in the actual non-ideal reality of US public schools, teachers and administrators pat themselves on the back for achieving "Student autonomy" while overseeing classrooms full of children staring at screens and wearing headphones. Just something to bear in mind.
The Explorer mode framework maps cleanly onto what I'd call high-agency AI use — and the distinction matters enormously in practice. As a sophomore English teacher and member of my district's AI team, I've found that the students who benefit most from AI collaboration are the ones already practicing the metacognitive habits this article describes: questioning their own assumptions, generating ideas before outsourcing them, and treating the tool as an interlocutor rather than an answer machine. AI doesn't create that disposition. It amplifies whatever disposition is already there.
What's missing from most of these conversations is the structural layer. Explorer mode doesn't emerge from good intentions — it requires deliberate instructional design, teacher capacity to model and assess it, and budget frameworks that treat professional development as the primary cost of AI integration, not the licensing fee. My district has been building exactly that: governance structures, human agency frameworks, and multi-year implementation plans that sequence AI use from internal operations to student-facing contexts. Without that scaffolding, "give students more agency" becomes another mandate teachers absorb alone.
One point worth adding to your six actions: AI makes the design of learning experiences more important, not less. A poorly designed task that AI can complete in forty seconds was probably a poorly designed task before AI arrived. The real opportunity here isn't resisting the shortcut — it's making the learning so genuinely interesting that the shortcut becomes beside the point. That's always been the standard. AI just makes it impossible to quietly sidestep.
I think the root cause is more basic. What incentive do student's have to care about schooling? I was in high school during the 00's and students were already looking at how the internet and celebrity culture was enabling "drop outs" to make millions. It didn't matter that the chances were low. Also the students who were on the STEM path had "gifted" programs or advance classes that rewarded and challenged their efforts. Now schools do everything they can to pad stats that students can coast to A/B's.
Just want to note that developing curiosity and agency is not a panacea. For years I worked in a high school program where students made films. They had full creative license coupled with vast instruction on all of the tools needed to create a film. The students worked in groups, and most worked well together and did amazing work. There were a few students, however, who contributed very little to their groups. We decided to put the slackers in a group together (they were all friends), and, lo and behold, they were unable to create a film. After three months they had some B roll they never got around to editing. That was it. Whenever I read these things I want to shout "It doesn't always work!"
As a Grade 11/12 teacher of Psychology and French in Canada for 38 years, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that encouraging Explorer mode through interactive lessons , and a growth mindset is key! “ in French classes, I regularly tell my students that I love mistakes, so let’s give it a try”. And then we celebrate when somebody struggles and gets it right. In psychology classes. I give students full reign to choose their own topic for their research papers and I also empower them to teach the class for 70 minute lessons so that they can truly become experts in whatever they’re passionate about. The other piece that is crucial is connection and belonging. When students feel safe in a classroom, they will explore, but when they feel the pressure of the social hierarchy, they will often shut down. This is a nuanced often complex dance for teachers but worth every moment.
Why my husband and I homeschooled our children back in the 90s.
And we chose that mode to inculcate a love of learning, something notably absent from our own schooling.
This framework captures something I’ve seen repeatedly in my work with early adolescents through mindful spending workshops.
The goal is exactly what you describe: creating moments of “Explorer Mode” around money during the developmental window when kids are forming their default money habits and beliefs.
Mindful spending is a pathway into Explorer Mode for financial decision-making because students are working on a real question that matters to them in real time: Should I buy this item or experience? When they pause, gather information, and reflect before spending, they start to see the ripple effects of their choices — disappointment avoided, waste reduced, family friction eased, and future options preserved, including for the planet, since mindful spending naturally reduces our carbon footprint.
That small pause before purchase changes how young people see themselves. They realize they have agency over their financial futures, one thoughtful choice at a time. What a gift to discover that insight at a young age.
Very few teens are interested in mortgage rates. But when young people begin making thoughtful spending decisions, they start connecting their present choices with their future lives — when things like mortgage rates will actually matter. I often quip that the best time to teach kids about money isn’t a specific age — it’s a specific moment: when they want some.
Because, as you write, “we don’t think about things that don’t matter.” When students experience that their decisions actually shape outcomes, curiosity about money and financial knowledge follows naturally — which is exactly what we hope to spark.
Everyday decisions like spending may be one of the most underused gateways into Explorer Mode.
One issue I see is also the ever-raised standards that are leaving students with academic struggles behind. In our effort to make everyone a STEM genius, schools no longer separate kids to teach them where they are. For example, when my 8th grade daughter suddenly began to struggle in math (her grades tanked at the beginning of the school year) her tutor told me that what is now pre-algebra was what we learned in Algebra 2. She said many kids brains just aren’t developmentally ready and, thus, the influx of expensive after school learning centers. Not only is AI an issue, the money-making industry around “excellence” is ensuring the standards continue to rise, leading more and more kids to simply give up because the system flew past them long ago and no one is willing to jump out of the speeding train to help them.
You may enjoy Ted Dintersmith's (@dintersmith) new book, "Aftermath" which delves into the math that is taught versus the math that humans use after graduation.
I’ll look that up!