Student Boredom in the Classroom

This week’s article summary is I'm Bored: The Dreaded Student Complaint.

We are lucky to teach in an elementary school. For the most part, complaints from students about being bored aren’t very common, unlike in middle and high school.

We are also fortunate to teach at Trinity, which has always emphasized a pedagogy that fosters student engagement.

So, while the article below is aimed more at middle and high school teachers, the recommendations for mitigating student boredom in the classroom have merit in our elementary classrooms too.

The words I’m bored from a student can mask several reasons a student is disengaged.

The student may not be understanding the content being presented in the classroom.

The student might find the material too repetitive or easy. Think of what you learned about Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development in which students are optimally engaged with material they can complete with some guidance — the sweet spot between what students already know and what is new.

The student might find the classroom too sedentary. Kids need brain and physical breaks throughout the day. The article says even for middle and high school students 15 minutes of lecture is their maximum limit.

The class may be too teacher-led and lecture-based. Like adults, kids need opportunities to be autonomous and collaborative. 

The classroom may be too predictable. While classroom routines are essential, teachers need to find that balance between predictability and novelty. The human brain seeks to make patterns, but it also needs freshness.

So, while our kids won't often tell us that they’re bored, we need to reflect on both what and how we teach to optimize their engagement and learning.

Joe

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I’m bored. This class is so boring.

Teachers hear these frustrating words often, and while we may have been tempted in recent years to blame technology use and increasingly short attention spans, these familiar complaints usually signal something deeper.

To decipher what students are really trying to communicate and determine what they need to thrive, we need to dig a little deeper into what I’m bored might mean.

A LACK OF UNDERSTANDING: Often, I’m bored really means I don’t get it. Social psychologist Erin Westgate notes that boredom frequently hides confusion or frustration: “A student who proclaims, ‘I’m bored,’ may be struggling. Scaffolding difficult concepts and providing individualized assignments help students learn to calibrate.” Additionally, students who are afraid to be wrong might mask their trepidation by claiming boredom, which takes the form of students who exhibit behaviors such as ignoring assignments, feigning illness, skipping classes, or acting out. These actions often mask deep feelings of inadequacy or invisibility.

To help students who are feeling confused, ending each class with an informal check for understanding provides formative data that can accurately reveal where everybody stands. For example, if the learning goal in a sixth-grade world history class is to identify the characteristics that define a culture, students might write as many characteristics as they can on a slip of paper before exiting for the day. The teacher can then use this quick check-in to pinpoint students who might be lost, a key step toward addressing boredom rooted in confusion.

NOT ENOUGH CHALLENGE: On the other hand, students may also fall prey to boredom when they’re not being challenged enough. I recently spoke with a high-performing sophomore who shared that when she gets bored, it’s not about her readiness to learn. “In math, we learn the same concept a thousand times. In other classes, I start tuning out because I already know what we’re learning, or the teacher is assigning busywork.”

One way to mitigate a lack of interest on the part of students who are achieving beyond grade-level expectations is to offer extension options on assignments, such as solving “spicier” (more challenging) problems in math class or enhancing a written report with an audio component. Suppose that middle school life science students are drawing cells and labeling their parts, and some students want more leeway to be creative. Those who opt for extension can take their learning further by creating a detailed model of a cell in a medium of their choice.

THE PACING OF THE CLASS IS OFF: Sometimes boredom stems less from a single lesson and more from the overall pace of a class. When the curriculum moves too slowly, students feel stuck in place; when it rushes ahead, they may quietly give up. Both patterns erode engagement over time. Thoughtful pacing includes decisions about how long to linger on a concept, when to spiral back, and when to move on.

Suppose that in an eighth-grade algebra class, students are solving systems of equations, and the plan is to move from one set to the next as a group. If the teacher notices that most students are completing the first set of problems quickly and accurately, a possible tweak to pacing might be to have students who are finished work together to develop their own problems and then trade with one another while the teacher pulls a small group of students who are struggling aside for instruction. By adjusting to in-the-moment data that students present, the teacher is more likely to increase productive interaction and stymie feelings of boredom.

TOO MUCH TEACHER TALK: One high school senior expressed a deep appreciation for school, but his passion for learning has a hard time withstanding lengthy lectures. “If the teacher is just standing up there talking or going off on tangents, I get bored,” he told me. Students tend to find listening to a lecture for an extended period both wearying and boring.

Long stretches of sitting drain focus as blood flow literally shifts away from the brain, making movement essential for learning. The brain-to-body connection is a key ingredient to helping students refresh their cognitive capacity, and teachers can implement strategies like these:

• Limiting “teacher talk” to about 15 minutes and ensuring that students get at least 90 seconds to stand, stretch, and process information.
• Weaving in brief movement breaks, such as a walk across the classroom to talk to a partner about a new concept or to answer a question.
• Integrating standing group work into the class period for activities like solving a math problem or completing a joint exercise such as a historical timeline or a presentation.

REPETITIVE STRUCTURE: Early in my career, a student pointed at an agenda item on the board—a book discussion—and sighed: “We do this every day. Can we do something else?” His question revealed that repetition can drain engagement. Retired teacher Larry Ferlazzo calls this “satiation,” which occurs when students lose interest in overly predictable routines. As the high school senior pointed out, the issue can stretch beyond just one classroom: “We go from class to class that all have the same structure.”

To counter this slide into the mundane, teachers can identify and maintain core daily elements of instruction such as framing and summarizing learning while varying how they deliver content. For instance, in any text-heavy class like science, social studies, or English, the class might alternate between partner reading and instructional read-alouds to keep learning fresh and purposeful. By intentionally ensuring that students achieve course objectives in different ways, teachers have the power to allay boredom that comes from static instruction. Ultimately, when students show little to no interest in class, we can infer, as Westgate explains, that “boredom is a healthy warning that something is off in our environment.” Ensuring that lessons are challenging, varied, and connected in meaningful ways to students’ lives reminds everyone that their voices and experiences belong in the classroom.

 

 

iPad Babies Have More Tantrums

 This week’s article summary is Why iPad Babies Have More Tantrums.

The author is an educational researcher on the effects screen time has on children’s cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development. Her research began years ago by measuring the length of time kids watched television, which used to be the dominant entertainment technology. Today mobile phones and tablets are more commonly used by children. 

Whether it’s TV or iPads, she has consistently found a correlation between the overuse of technology and delays in children’s physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development. 

But there’s a major difference between TV and mobile devices: televisions aren’t portable.

With mobile devices, parents have a readily-available babysitter beyond the living room — the article refers to using mobile devices to keep kids occupied as digital pacification. 

Many kids today use a mobile device not only as a distraction but also as a calming device when they are emotionally dysregulated. Research shows that by using an extrinsic method, younger children aren’t being given the chance to develop their own internal calming and coping mechanisms, i.e., developing executive function skills, discussed in last week’s summary

This inability to regulate emotions in age-appropriate ways has an adverse effect on students in school: poorer attention, lack of self-regulation, inability to work with others, difficulty with problem solving, etc.

While I am always hesitant to find one cause for a change in students, the article is a reminder that as an elementary school, Trinity needs to avoid leaning too heavily on technology. It’s a useful tool, but our children need face-to-face time with peers to build the skills they need for middle school and beyond.

I do wonder if the technology pendulum has begun to swing back: at this year’s Admissions Open Houses, prospective parents have asked how we limit technology use in the classrooms. Perhaps our incoming students will be less reliant on technology as their parents are beginning to limit its use and availability at home.

Joe

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We’ve all seen it happen: a young child is having a tantrum in public. They get fussy, sitting in the seat of the grocery cart or waiting with their parents to board a plane. Their voice gets louder, their face goes red. They might start pulling things off the shelves at the store, kicking their seat or even their parents. 

But before the cranky child reaches full-blown meltdown mode, they’re pacified; a tablet appears before them, playing their favorite cartoon, and, like magic, the tantrum is forgotten. The child stares, wide-eyed at the screen. Everyone around them sighs, thankful that the meltdown was avoided. 

I’ve been studying children’s screentime since 2009. Back then, I was interested in how TV consumption was contributing to their early school readiness and development.  

I studied a sample of children born in 1998 who would have been preschoolers in the early 2000s—years before the introduction of tablets and smartphones. Our studies found that TV screentime contributed to children’s school readiness across the board: it was related to their cognitive readiness, their social readiness, and their physical motor readiness. Kids who spent more hours per day watching television had less classroom engagement, more interpersonal problems with peers, a smaller vocabulary, and worse motor development. 

Of course, TV is no longer the default screen for kids. A 2025 report by Common Sense Media found that 40 per cent of toddlers have their own tablet by the time they’re two. Children in the two-to-four age range spent about two hours per day on screens, while those under two watch screens for about one hour per day. 

Imagine a three-year-old named Emma who likes to watch her favorite cartoon on a tablet. Her parents are happy because it keeps her occupied while they make dinner or do chores. But over time, Emma wants to spend more time on the tablet. When her parents say no, she gets angry and frustrated. The tablet calms her down, so sometimes, Emma’s parents bring it out to avoid a tantrum. This is what researchers call digital emotion regulation, or digital pacifying, and it’s an effective and often immediate strategy. The child calms down nearly instantly, and parents avoid a public outburst. In the short term, it’s a miracle. In the long term, not so much. 

In 2020, I ran a study measuring children’s and parents’ screen use. We found that three-year-olds who spent more time on tablets had more outbursts of anger and frustration one year later. We also found that, by age four, the children who had more outbursts were more likely to have even more screen use by age five. In a separate study, we asked parents how frequently they used tablets specifically with the aim of calming children down. Once again, more tablet use at age three was associated with more outbursts of anger and frustration at age four, and worse self-control. 

It’s a vicious cycle, where using screens to calm tantrums actually increases how often a child has tantrums in the future. We don’t know exactly what it is about screens that are causing this spiral, but it likely comes back to the fact that a tablet is an external regulation tool. That’s why it’s an effective way to stop a meltdown—it shifts children’s focus away from their emotions and onto the screen. It’s a quick fix, but it stops children from learning to regulate themselves.

Educators are concerned that children are coming into kindergarten with insufficient autonomy. This is one of the first times we expect kids to act on their own—they need to be able to take off their own jackets, follow instructions for classwork, sit at their desks. When kids struggle with autonomy, they have a hard time adapting to this transition.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard from early childhood professionals who say children now struggle more with social situations. When a conflict arises—say, if another child takes their toy—they are overly reliant on the teacher to intervene. I’ve also heard occupational therapists say they are noticing more and more young children with motor delays who can’t tie their shoes, zip up their jackets, or put on their winter clothes.

These delays might be explained by the displacement hypothesis: if children are spending more time using screens, they have less time for imaginary play, exploring their environment, or interacting with caregivers or other children. Screens can borrow time away from these activities that are developmentally essentially for children. 

Children generally improve their self-regulation during preschool years, but it’s not an automatic fix: they need adults to help them. One way is through shared book-reading, when parents can explain how characters handle negative emotions. Understanding how Junie B. Jones deals with a tough situation can help a child adopt similar strategies.  

We know that low emotional regulation can plague kids into their adult life, affecting their relationships and their physical and mental health. When we use phones as pacifiers, we’re denying kids critical opportunities to learn to regulate their emotions, setting them up for a harder go later in life. The earlier we intervene, the easier it is to snap out of the cycle.

 

 

The Power of Yet

This week’s article summary is The Power of Yet.

I saw this article over Spring Break as I was previewing two summer reading options -- The Kids Who Aren't Okay and The Executive Function Playbook. 

While many common themes emerged in these readings, most significant to me was that we teachers always need to keep our focus on the long game: teaching, after all, is about tour students’ gradual development of essential habits and skills, particularly executive functioning.

The readings also pointed out that just as kids are more prone to be preoccupied with the present and lose sight of the progress and process of learning, teachers can also get consumed with the here and now.

Even during the inevitable stressful times in a school year, we need to resist letting little irritants cloud our perspective; we need to always look for the growth — no matter how incremental — in our students.

The Executive Function Playbook described how difficult it can be for kids to focus on the future. Using hindsight (looking back) and foresight (looking forward), which are key components of self-regulation, are challenges for many children. Students are more driven by immediate gratification and external stimuli; nevertheless, our goal for them is to develop self-control, including the ability to delay gratification. As research shows, self-regulation and self-control are critical indicators of future success. 

So, while our focus is often on math, literacy, and our students’ immediate behavior, we can never forget that executive function development of self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, and self-evaluation are equally, if not more, crucial for our students.

The article below focuses on Carol Dweck’s research about the benefits of our students having a growth mindset, which can help them look towards the future. Using the word yet can help them recognize that learning is a process that requires effort, perseverance, and time. The books above provide scaffolding strategies teachers can utilize to help students:

• Frequent reminders about how learning is a process of many small steps and that missteps are inevitable and vital to learning
• Mindfulness techniques, like taking deep breaths, to avoid instantly reacting to external stimuli can help students make more thoughtful, rational decisions
• At the start of the school day, have students close their eyes and visualize the many choices a student will make in a day
• Limit screen time at home and at school (the books agree that even in school screen time needs to be limited)

As teachers, we know we are preparing our students for the future. However, as they are prone to think mostly about the present, we need to remind them of the future, i.e., to be their executive function until they develop their own.

Joe

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A few weeks ago, my daughter burst through the door after school, ranting about her social studies teacher. “He’s making us label all 50 states on a map, and the test is in two days,” she fumed.  “I think he wants us to fail! I’m not even going to try.”

For teachers and parents, this is an all-too-familiar scenario. A task is set, it feels insurmountable, and, instead of embracing the challenge as an opportunity for learning and growth, our young scholars wave the white flag.

I can’t do it. It’s not possible. What’s the point in trying?

Carol Dweck, pioneer of mindset research, posed a powerful question: “Are we raising our children for now instead of yet?” 

To illustrate her meaning, consider a statement you’ve likely heard (or said yourself): “I’m not good at math.”

Presented this way, mathematical ability (or lack thereof) is as indisputable as eye color. But add one small word and the meaning shifts: “I’m not good at math—yet.”

In one of her early studies, Dweck and her team explored how different types of praise influenced students’ reactions to struggle. 

Fifth graders were asked to complete a simple set of problems, then randomly assigned to receive one of two responses: “You must be smart at this,” or, “You must have worked hard.” 

Next, they were given a far more difficult problem set. Predictably, they performed poorly and were told as much by the research team. 

Then, something interesting happened. The students initially praised for hard work wanted to keep at the tougher problems, attributing their struggles to insufficient effort. 

But the students praised for their smarts? As Dweck described it, their failure felt catastrophic. Their core intelligence had been tested and devastated. These students largely showed no interest in further attempts at the hard problems, blaming their lackluster scores on lack of ability. 

Lastly, the students completed a final problem set similar to the first they’d done well on. Here, the effort-praised students improved their scores, while the ability-praised students did worse.

Dweck concluded that ability-focused feedback had negative short-term implications on students’ motivation. Or, as she put it, “Instead of the power of yet, they were gripped by the tyranny of now.”

She went on to posit that repeated exposure to effort-focused feedback over time could help shape students’ core beliefs about their capacity to develop intelligence through hard work. 

For teachers interested in cultivating growth mindsets, yet is a simple, effective feedback technique that can be used in a variety of contexts to reinforce the changeable nature of one’s ability.

• I’m not a good writer—yet.
• I can’t draw—yet.
• I’m not organized—yet.

Yet acknowledges where a student is right now while refusing to accept it’s where they must remain. Paired with the right resources and support, yet can create the ideal conditions for growth and change.

Back in my kitchen, I agreed with my daughter that recognizing every state is hard—especially those small ones in the Northeast—and two days isn’t much time. But her teacher clearly believed she could do it, and so did I. “But, Mom, I can’t remember all 50 states in two days.”

“That’s true,” I acknowledged. “You can’t identify them—yet.”

And thus began the journey. An app was downloaded. Her first effort yielded 12 correctly identified states. I showed her how Michigan resembles a mitten and Louisiana a boot. 

Her dad tried his hand and scored a dismal 21. We Googled why there’s a North Dakota and a South Dakota and not just a Dakota, and where the word “Wyoming” comes from. 

Two days later, she burst through the door again. This time, declaring victory: “50 out of 50!”

The task didn’t change. The timeline didn’t change. The only thing that changed was her willingness to try—fueled by the power of yet.

Next time a student enters your classroom carrying a story about their ability, adding yet can interrupt their conclusion and invite them to keep going. Yet as part of your feedback repertoire helps create a classroom culture where learning is expected to be incomplete, mistakes are normal, and effort is part of the process—not evidence of some fundamental inadequacy. Over time, the echo of your yets may even take root in your students’ inner voices, ready to remind them that where they are today does not limit where they can go.

Strengthening Student SEL in English Class

 This week's article summary is How English Class Improves Social-Emotional Skills.

I feel very lucky to have attended a high school with an English department that emphasized class discussion and a syllabus of world literature. From ninth grade through graduation, I read short stories and novels from all around the world. I didn't necessarily know it at the time, but this exposure to non-Western literature expanded my world view and piqued my interest in and open-mindedness about different cultures. The literature I read and discussed helped me see beyond my homogenous, suburban life.

As an elementary school, Trinity provides ample opportunities in reading selections for our students to learn about others and to see themselves, i.e., windows and mirrors.

The article below directly connects the books students read with development of their social-emotional skills. In particular,  it's easier to use a book's plot, theme, character choices as a springboard to explore difficult, sensitive topics. As a student, I was much more willing to discuss how a book's character acted than sharing my personal feelings; those discussions in English class helped clarify the type of person I wanted to become.

As I'm sure most of us agree, student social-emotional development is optimized when integrated into all we do at school, including the books our students read and discuss--the more varied the better!

Joe

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Asking students to dissect the motivations of a character in a book is doing more than teaching them about plot and characterization. This exercise also helps students learn to see different perspectives, empathize, and examine another person’s emotions—as well as their own.

In short, experts and educators say, the English/language arts class can be a powerful forum for developing students’ social-emotional skills at all ages.

Stories connect social-emotional skills that can be abstract in isolation to realistic situations that students can compare their own experiences with, said David Adams, a social-emotional-learning expert.

“In education, we talk about mirrors and windows,” said Adams. “A mirror being, ‘how do I see myself in this context?’ And a window being, ‘what can I learn about somebody else?’ 

English/language arts classes can also provide a lower-stakes entry point into discussions on tough emotional and moral challenges, such as the death of a loved one or what to do if a friend is using drugs, without requiring students or teachers to reference their personal lives in class.

Students can hone social-emotional skills like social awareness, self-reflection, problem-solving, critical thinking, and conflict resolution through reading, analyzing, and discussing literature in ELA classes, experts say. Getting inside a character’s or the author’s head to discern their intent, for example, teaches perspective-taking.

“Why do you think this person is doing that?” Adams said. “It’s a very important skill, whether you’re reading a newspaper article, or having a conversation with your wife or your colleague..

Literature can help support healthy identity formation, Adams said, as students parse out what they care about, what their passions are, and who they want to be.

One strategy is to do less lecturing and allow for plenty of discussion, said Schwartz. Students can’t exercise social-emotional skills if they are passively listening to their teacher and not actively engaging with peers and ideas.

Literature can provide plenty of meaningful material for discussing social and emotional themes that doesn’t require teachers or students to share personal information, said Schwartz.

Literature also supplies discussion topics that can really stretch students’ social-emotional understanding, she said. Students’ social-emotional learning is stunted if SEL sticks to basic emotions or only happy topics, Schwartz added.

In literature, Schwartz said, “You see people making bad choices and dealing with consequences. You see people in really tricky circumstances. There’s so much to learn by getting a glimpse into someone’s life through literature, and even if the educator’s not asking students to make personal connections, that’s something that happens.”

Exactly how teachers should infuse SEL into their English classes will look different depending upon the age of their students.

Early elementary teachers, for instance, can incorporate social-emotional learning into read-alouds. In the early grades, teachers should focus on the feelings characters have, if students have experienced those emotions themselves, and how characters navigate conflict, said Adams.

In upper elementary, Katrina Sacurom, who teaches reading and writing to 5th grade students in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, makes sure to incorporate the character trait, such as honesty or self-control, that her school is emphasizing that month into her lessons. She also focuses on character—and by extension, student—relationships. Building and maintaining relationships are key social-emotional skills.

As students get older and are developmentally ready for more complex themes and character motivations, ELA class can help them make sense of their own conflicting feelings and sometimes tumultuous inner lives, said Schwartz.

There aren’t many SEL curricula developed with the specific needs of high schoolers in mind. And traditionally schools have invested less in SEL in the secondary level than in primary grades, even though experts say older students also need opportunities to develop their social-emotional skills.

“These skills that we’re talking about, by high school, are much better received through literature or project-based learning,” Schwartz said. “Something that’s asking the students to show up in their wholeness because they already have a lot of life experience. They have a lot to learn, too, but many of them have experienced things that perhaps not all of their teachers have.”

The History and Continued Importance of Black History Month

This week's article summary, The 100-Year History of Black History Month, is an interview with Harvard professor Jarvis R. Givens about his new book, I'll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month.

While many of us have grown up observing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, and recently Juneteenth, the origins of these observances are often overlooked. The article informs us that while Black History Month was officially recognized in 1976 as part of the U.S. Bicentennial, its roots trace back to 1926.

I have always felt conflicted about dedicated heritage months. Dedicating a single month to groups whose voices and accomplishments were historically minimized—much like the afterthought sections on women in 1990s history textbooks I used in my classes—felt like a insufficient fix for a year-round necessity, analogous to food pantry donations only during the holidays when the need is year round.

But this article shifted my position. Black History Month (held in February to honor the birth months of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass) serves today as reminder to resist becoming complacent. In the current polarized climate where even the Super Bowl halftime entertainment is controversial, it's critical for educators to guide students to be open-minded, to view the world through multiple perspectives, and to be inquisitive about others, especially those different from them. Without these important skills, our students will be more susceptible to the influence and manipulation of others. (As a native New Yorker, I consider my skepticism an asset in today's world.)

In an ideal world, the contributions and historic struggles and tribulations of all people would be integrated every day in our curriculum. While much progress has been made in my lifetime, we still have a long way to go. Until then, observances like Women's History Month, Native American Heritage Month, Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month, and Pride Month remain overt reminders to make space for those whose history has long been invisible.

Joe

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What do people get wrong about Black History Month?

Black History Month grew from the bottom up, from grassroots organizing and centuries of intellectual and political struggle. We only have this commemorative holiday because African American scholars and community members organized to create holidays like Crispus Attucks Day on March 5, beginning in the 1850s, and Douglass Day on Feb. 14, beginning in 1897. Negro History Week grew out of that tradition, and it was later expanded to Black History Month in 1976 during the United States’ bicentennial.

How has the way we think about and celebrate Black History Month changed these past 100 years

Early on, Negro History Week and Black History Month were mostly internal to African American communities. It formed and grew within an expansive segregated world of Black schools, colleges, churches, and institutions across the United States. However, with desegregation, Black History Month eventually became an instrument used to encourage racial tolerance for those in the United States who didn’t know much about Black people and Black cultures. 

Things are a bit different now. We live in a society where, for the most part, Black History Month or Negro History Week has always existed. And therefore, the urgency around the work of preserving and teaching Black history hasn’t been as present in more recent decades, at least not the way it was with the early Black history movement, when people had intimate knowledge and memories of Black history being absent in textbooks and school curriculum in this country.

I think the further we moved away from the period when people had to fight to create and celebrate Black history, the more comfortable our communities became with the idea that knowledge about Black history would always be readily available. But those of us who teach Black studies and African American history have always been aware of the precarious state of Black history’s inclusion in mainstream curricula and public memory. This moment is reminding all of us that this work continues to be both urgent and under attack.

How has Negro History Week/Black History Month, as an institution, survived and remained popular for the last 100 years?

First, it survived because Black communities created it and continued to value it through the segregated era, and in doing so, made it an integral part of Black culture and community calendars on an annual basis. It became institutionalized within Black organizations and, therefore, a central part of African American heritage. All of this occurred, again, before it was nationally recognized by the U.S. government. 

However, the staying power of Black History Month is also connected to major advancements in the field of African American history and Black studies in the post-civil rights era. The first wave of scholars of African American and African diaspora history were part of a transformation in higher education during the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Because of the impressive work of that generation of scholars, building on seeds planted generations before, there continued to be new waves of knowledge and content about the Black past, pushing us all to think about the world we inherited in more critical ways and to dream about the worlds we hoped to build with more mature, historically informed imaginations.

Another reason it has persisted is because political leaders saw value in holding up Black History Month as a demonstration of America’s inclusion of Black people as integral parts of U.S. society, though they often did so without recognizing past harms, instead using inspiring elements of Black history that could support narratives of American exceptionalism. This is obviously a very complicated part of the legacy, but it’s important to recognize, nonetheless.

What is one takeaway you would like readers to gain from reading the book?

I want people to remember that the struggle to preserve, study, and teach Black history is always about more than the facts, names, and dates of the past. It is about recognizing and disrupting the way power dynamics in our society shape historical memory and it’s also about studying the way historical memory shapes how we define ourselves as a people and the dreams we imagine for the worlds of the future. I hope readers will see, by looking at the African American intellectual tradition that informed the creation of Black History Month, that this ongoing fight to value the lives of Black folks in the past is part and parcel of an enduring war to value Black lives in the present and future.

 

The Math Wars Continue

This week’s article summary is Debates Over Math Teaching Are Heating Up.

In literacy, the debate is between Whole Language and the Science of Reading.

In math, it's about explicit instruction versus student inquiry.

As referenced in a previous article summary about top educational research studies from 2025, student inquiry in isolation does not advance student learning; similarly, explicit teacher instruction too often leads to disengaged students.

Like most debates in education, the best option in math is a balance of explicit teacher instruction and student inquiry/discovery/problem-solving--what is called Guided Inquiry.

As a teacher, I have always felt the need to have a multitude of teaching strategies in my quiver. If I found myself using too much of teacher-centered pedagogy (an easy trap for any teacher to fall into), I’d shift to more student-centered methods. While kids need structure, routine, and consistency in the classroom, they also need variety and novelty.

Visiting classrooms as a Head of School, I particularly enjoy math time: our students are learning the skills/concepts/procedures of numeracy, while also being given ample time to offer their observations when being introduced to new topics, to problem-solve with classmates, and to find multiple ways to solve and demonstrate their understanding.

Just like a recent Summary on SEL, Trinity continues to find the balance of best practices to the benefit of our students!

Joe

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Last December, several members of a national organization for math education leaders came together to issue a warning. A growing movement in the field was calling on schools to adopt an “impoverished” approach to math teaching that would strip students of their autonomy and relegate them to “mimicking their teacher.” This movement misapplying educational research, they said.

Debate over best practices in math education is far from new; it's been debated for over 100 years.

The stakes are particularly high now, as national math scores have continued to decline. 

One side of the debate comes from the Science of Math website, which promotes explicit instruction, a method in which teachers explain and model new concepts and procedures step-by-step and then ask students to practice them. It’s a myth, they say, that inquiry-based approaches boost outcomes for all kids. Explicit instruction lays a crucial foundation, especially for students who struggle, and can equip students with the skills they need to tackle more complex problem-solving.

The other side contends that while explicit instruction has some value in math teaching, it should be minimized. Instead, the predominant approach should be “guided inquiry, in which teachers provide structure and support in well-designed inquiry-oriented activities.” This side believes that explicit instruction is a “pedagogy of poverty,” arguing that it is more commonly used in schools in low-income areas, systematically denying these children opportunities for discussion and collaborative problem-solving.

Which side is right?

As usual, let’s find the middle ground through 'guided inquiry’ which should include moments of explicit instruction. Good explicit instruction should then incorporate time for meaning-making and student reflection.

But debates continue over how to prioritize and sequence these two types of teaching, and over the conceptual underpinnings of each approach: Are there foundational processes, like adding multi-digit numbers, teachers must explain directly before students can move on to more complex problem-solving? Or does doing so inherently short-circuit the development of problem-solving skills?

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that good math instruction includes some explicit instruction and some more student-led problem-solving.

“There needs to be a balance of both,” Ashley Davis, a 4th grade math teacher, said of explicit instruction and inquiry. “I don’t think one is right and one is wrong. When both are used properly, they’re both super effective—regardless of the students.”

Over the past 30 years, leading organizations in the field have promoted a more inquiry-forward approach to math. Popular curricula tend to emphasize problem-solving and discussion of mathematical ideas. Davis thinks these are good goals. She wants her students to be able to use math flexibly in their everyday lives.

There are times when she introduces a new concept through discovery, Davis said, like when she started a lesson about equivalent fractions. She gave students pieces of paper and asked them to fold them in half, and then in half again and again, and asked them what they noticed. Her students figured out that 1/2 was equivalent to 2/4, which was equivalent to 4/8.

“There are other instances where I can think of, where you have to explicitly teach something, so they can then use inquiry later on,” she said—how to use an area model for multiplication of multi-digit whole numbers, for instance.

Still, there’s often little guidance about how to negotiate and sequence these two priorities to lead to the best outcomes.

Some work has tried to fill that gap. Last year, for example, a group of researchers in cognitive psychology and special education published research-based recommendations to get students fluent with math facts, integrating both explicit instruction and what they describe as “cognitive reflection.” 

Getting this balance right is hard, and there’s not always a roadmap, said Star, the Harvard professor: “We as a field could be better at guiding teachers toward what that mix looks like.”