- You have these interviews with kids.
- Yes.
- And I think, you know, when you talked about them,
you just sense some delight in your voice
about what you learned from the kids.
Could you say something about these interviews?
- Yeah, yeah.
This is my favorite.
I mean, I basically, I have a simple series of questions
that I ask them, but I kind of gave them a little definition
of what engagement is, and I said,
"Tell me about a time when you felt like that."
"Tell me about a time, and what led up to that."
And they go on and on and on.
They understand the difference between compliance
and engagement, for sure.
And they can describe deep levels of engagement,
and the thirst for more.
The, I have to know more, and they do.
But the thing that struck me, Tom,
is that so many of the scenarios they described
were outside of school.
And that's great, I want them to feel,
of course I want them to have lives of engagement
outside of school, and I want them
to have lives of engagement inside of school.
So, it was a joy to talk to them.
Most of the interviews were done with kids
who do not have access to a lot of advantages
outside of school, and yet, they found and described
great joy in learning and in being,
in different ways, outside of school.
I wanna bring that in.
I think, to have an authentic classroom,
is to have an engaged classroom,
but that's gonna mean much more choice,
and that's gonna mean much more modeling
on the part of teachers.
And just a conversation about engagement.
What is it like to feel that way?
What did you experience?
What would you suggest to other children
who want to feel that way?
These are very simple questions.
It's not a new curriculum,
but we've gotta ask those questions.
- Well, it is a new curriculum, 'cause a lot of this stuff
is gonna go out. - I guess that's true.
I'm on a school board, where we're constantly
trying to add things in, we're kind of are hoarding.
So, what are you gonna leave out?
Nobody wants to leave - Absolutely.
anything out. - Absolutely.
You know?
- Yep, and in the end, my Ed Psych professor taught me,
this was in the Mesozoic Era, I mean, a long time ago,
that kids are gonna learn better if we focus on fewer
concepts that are very important,
and that we teach them in depth over a long period of time.
But, most importantly, that we give kids
a long time to experiment with those concepts,
to find themselves engaged in them.
Without that application, we can count on disengaged kids.
And we have a lot of disengaged kids.
And I'm sad to say, and it's not a surprise.