Nearly six years have passed since I published my article Maslow before Bloom and, in that half-decade, many classrooms have felt like triage centers: Pandemic aftershocks are still felt in attendance records. Chronic absenteeism ( ≥ 10 % of school days missed) leapt from ~15% (in 2018-19) to 31% (in 2021-22) and eased only to 28% in 2022-23. Twenty states still reported ≥30% of students chronically absent in 2022-23. Community food banks are operating at record pace. The B

Walk into a classroom built around concepts supported by self-determination and self-directed learning, and you might notice something unusual. Instead of students all completing the same worksheet or reading the same passage to learn the same concept or skill under the watchful eye of a single teacher, you see children choosing to learn something that day because they know it will help them prepare to do something bigger they want to master; you see students posting reflecti

I asked ChatGPT 4.1: "what is the difference between the capacity of students to respond to teacher-assigned tasks and prompts at each DOK Level 1, 2, 3, and 4, and the capacity of AI to respond to user-assigned tasks and prompts?" I found its response illuminating. My thoughts about this response are below. Here is the ChatGPT 4.1 response (with zero edits).

If schools aspire to nurture lifelong learners who take ownership of their growth, they must go beyond equipping students with individual skills. They must design school cultures and systems that develop agency at all levels—students, educators, and leadership—through structures that reward collective growth, collaboration, and purposeful autonomy.