“Inquisitive.” “Impulsive.” “Pure energy.” These are some of the words a group of Washington, D.C., teachers participating in the Inspired Teaching Institute listed when asked to describe characteristics of children. Children are natural learners who are eager to experiment, to manipulate their environment, to explore. Most children, when they are young, are not afraid of failure. Their days are filled with trial and error and new discoveries. Most children are messy, adventurous, and excitable.
In contrast, school tends to be a subdued place, where order, raised hands, and straight lines are rewarded. Oftentimes, little space is provided for youthful exuberance or student decision making. As learning expert Eric Jensen points out, “At a typical school, nearly every decision, from length of time on learning to whom to work with, is dictated and managed outside student control” (1998, p. 59).
The rift between healthy childhood behaviors and school expectations is especially vast for students living in vulnerable circumstances. In his most recent book, An End to Inequality, Jonathan Kozol notes Black and Brown students who live in low-income communities are far more likely than their white or wealthy peers to be subjected to a “severity agenda” designed to “keep them on a straight gray line of march to their next examination [including sitting] stiff and silent in the classroom, no impulsive and unscripted questions, many numbered lists of minor misbehaviors and the unpleasant penalties for each, [and] regimens of shaming for those who aren’t 'performing up to expectations'" (2024, pp. 4–5).
Of course, all children should learn to be considerate, to listen to others, and to master academic subjects. The question is: Do they have to stop acting like children in order to make it through the school day?
Can We Blame Them?
While there are situations in which students are forced to miss school because they need to care for siblings at home or face other external barriers that make it difficult or impossible to attend, the primary reasons for student absenteeism, according to decades of research, are not these external situations that “pull” them out of school. Instead, students are “pushed” out by school-based factors that make school unpleasant (Doll et al., 2013).
How many children could attend school, but frankly, don’t want to due to negative school environments or a lack of connection to their teachers and peers? A report from CASEL found that “more than 8 in 10 recent high school students say they felt bored at school at least some of the time” (DePaoli et al., 2018). Young people, like all people, don’t want to go places where they don’t feel engaged. If they find school to be a place where their thoughts, ideas, and interests are not particularly valued, can we blame them for not showing up?
Imagine if school fostered children’s imaginations, curiosity, and communication skills, while increasing their knowledge of the world.
Keith Johnstone, former classroom teacher and renowned improvisational theater director, refers to adults as “atrophied children” in his book Impro (1979), claiming that we’ve lost the ability to imagine, to play, to communicate genuinely with one another. Imagine what it would be like if school fostered children’s imaginations, curiosity, and communication skills, while increasing their knowledge of the world.
As teachers, school leaders, and education changemakers, we have a unique opportunity and, given the growing engagement crisis, an imperative to create school communities where students’ full selves—their curiosity, their needs, their ideas—are welcome and valued.
Seven Ways to Make School Worth Kids’ Time
Below are concrete strategies teachers and school leaders can use to increase engagement and connection and decrease boredom and disaffection, which just might make students more interested in coming to school:
1. Examine underlying assumptions.
Due to the day-to-day pressures of their job, educators can sometimes fall into patterns of thinking that fail to fully appreciate students’ potential and interest in learning. Ask yourself: “Am I engaging with students and their families from a deficit-based stance? Might I be thinking, even unconsciously, ‘How do I convince these kids and their parents that school is valuable, that learning is important?’”
Or are you engaging with them from an asset-based stance? Asset framing, a concept coined and popularized by social entrepreneur Trabian Shorters, means assuming students and their families are inherently curious people who want to learn (Shorters, n.d.). From an asset-based stance, ask yourself: “How can I ensure that school identifies, values, and builds on the aspirations and contributions of our students and their families?” and “How can I describe the school experience to students and their families in a way that lets them know we value our students and want them to thrive?”
2. Engage empathy.
Ask yourself: “Would I want to be a student at my school?” Picture what it feels like to come into a classroom for the first time where you are greeted with a list of rules and consequences for breaking them, versus one in which you’re invited, for instance, to create a “profile page” about yourself and share with classmates your answers to questions like: What do I contribute to my learning environment? What do I like about where I live? What would I like to be doing five years from now? Imagine yourself as a student walking into both classrooms. Which classroom would make you feel more supported and valued?
The Profile Pages activity from Inspired Teaching helps educators understand their students better, value their voices, and strengthen peer connections.
3. Broaden the definition of success.
Borrowing from improvisational theater, embrace a “Yes! And . . .” approach. Yes! Students need to learn content and prepare for assessments. And students need interesting, meaningful work to do that engages their curiosity and engages them in authentic interactions with one another. Yes! Teachers are expected to deliver specific content to their students on a specific timeline and to ensure their students absorb that content and can prove they have done so on a test or other assessment. And while learning skills and content is important, education decision makers need to ask ourselves a critical question: “What price are we paying when we prioritize the delivery of content and skills over the needs, interests, and engagement of our students?”
A slightly less bleak version of that question is: “How can we spend our time with young people in schools so that they get to engage their curiosity, forge meaningful connections with peers and adults, and learn content in a way that is meaningful and relevant?” Content does not have to be learned at the expense of personal well-being. And personal curiosity and excitement do not have to be sacrificed for learning to happen. As educators, of course we know this. But when we are overwhelmed with the day-to-day demands of adjusting schedules, responding to administrative requests, documentation, meetings, catching up to curricular timelines, and more, we can lose sight of this core truth.
4. Connect the mind, heart, and body.
In most schools, a student’s day is divided by subject area. This artificial separation often results in the belief that movement is for gym class, critical thought is for English lit, and mathematics is for algebra. Time is carved out to address students’ social-emotional well-being, as if mental health is its own discrete subject.
What if, instead, the entire school day were a time for SEL and academic learning, and a time for students to engage their minds, hearts, and bodies? (Consider inviting students to journal about how they feel when they encounter an unfamiliar math problem; challenge chemistry students to use their bodies to demonstrate the difference between covalent and ionic bonding; or ask students to write persuasive essays arguing for changes to school policies to support well-being.)
5. Put kids in charge.
Give students something to do that’s worth showing up for. This can be as small as inviting them to choose where they sit, decide which of two novels the class will read next, or grapple with a difficult mathematical equation instead of turning to the teacher for instructions on how to solve it.
It can be as big as tasking high school students with designing and implementing a schoolwide poll on whether their peers intend to register to vote once they turn 18 (and why or why not), or involving students in making age-appropriate decisions about how to allocate funds in the school’s budget, as school leaders did recently at the Inspired Teaching Demonstration Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., when they surveyed students about which vendor they preferred for school lunches.
Putting kids in charge might also look like asking a student why they broke a rule, rather than proceeding directly to the consequences for doing so—or, even better, engaging students in creating rules in the first place. The more opportunities students have to take the lead, the more ownership they feel over their learning experience, and the more likely they are to want to spend time in school.
If kids find school to be a place where their thoughts, ideas, and interests are not particularly valued, can we blame them for not showing up?
6. Embrace awe.
Much of our focus in the classroom is on imparting information and confirming our students have, indeed, learned the day’s lesson so that we can move on to the next one. Surprise, wonder, and curiosity don’t fit neatly into that delivery-reception paradigm. But research has shown that experiencing awe—defined by social psychologist Dacher Keltner (2024) as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world”—offers a host of benefits that increase our students’ capacity to learn and their interest in doing so (Heshmat, 2023).
Simply asking students, “What are you curious about?” or “What do you wonder about?”—or incorporating this exercise into curriculum-based assignments—can infuse elements of awe into all aspects of the school day. So can spending time outside, incorporating music into the classroom experience, and inviting students to share stories about times they made a difference in someone else’s life.
7. Change the narrative for families.
In addition to, or instead of, traditional parent-teacher conferences, create ways to let families know they are important to the school community. We know, for instance, how important it is to offer food at parent events, but what about hiring local parent-owned restaurants to provide the catering, as Pittsburgh schools participating in the Parents as Allies (PAA) project do (Rayworth, 2024)? And while you’re at it, check out the PAA’s empathy interviews, a fabulous tool for engaging families and gathering useful context about everyone in your school community (Kidsburgh, n.d.).
If You Build It, Will They Come?
Each year in the Inspired Teaching Institute, my colleagues and I ask participating teachers, “Why do children go to school?” The answers vary widely, but they always include some version of, “Because they have to/because it’s the law.” We can’t simply require young people to go to school and expect them to show up. And ironically, the consequences put in place for truancy can serve as disincentives, by perpetuating the idea that school is a negative space where students are forced to go and a place where they will be punished for not complying.
Can children be themselves while also learning in school? They can if we rethink the school experience. Students shouldn’t have to check their needs, wants, energy, and expertise at the school door. When teachers and school leaders engage with students from a place of genuine curiosity and respect, we won’t have to threaten students in order to get them to go to school. They’ll want to spend their days learning by our side.
Reflect & Discuss
➛ What’s one way your school supports children’s natural curiosity and wonder?
➛ This article outlines seven strategies to boost student engagement and connection. Which of these strategies seems most needed in your school,
and why?
