In classrooms across the country, something subtle but powerful is taking shape. Amidst the distractions, the surface-level shortcuts, and the pressure to speed everything up, I’ve seen students quietly shift from passive to active. They’ve gone from compliant to curious and from distracted to dialed in.

These moments don’t always get the spotlight, but they’re signs of deeper learning taking root. In this post, I share a story that captures that shift—a student teacher, a veteran mentor, and a group of students who went from tuning out to thinking deeply. Even if you haven’t used the term deeper learning, that’s exactly what is going on. And if you want to dig deeper into this idea, I’m offering a free download of the first chapter of The Depth Advantage.

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A Snapshot of Depth

A team of fifth graders huddle around a table, completely absorbed in a design challenge rooted in permutations and probability. They test outcomes, argue their reasoning, revise their models, and defend their thinking with real mathematical evidence. When they transition to silent reading, the shift is seamless. No reminders. No redirection. Just quiet focus. A half hour later, they push their desks into a circle for a Socratic Seminar in social studies. The conversation is raw, thoughtful, and occasionally messy, but it is real. These students are not just participating. They are thinking critically, listening actively, and engaging with big ideas.

This is a sharp departure from last August. Back then, this same group struggled to stay focused for more than a few minutes. They gave up quickly when something felt hard. During group tasks, they talked over one another or checked out entirely. Often, one student did the work for everyone. Silent reading was more like silent fidgeting. Any attempt at deeper conversation barely made it past surface-level responses. My student teacher was discouraged and wondered if the group just was not ready for anything beyond basic engagement.

But the growth is real, and it is not magic. It comes from a quiet, steady commitment to depth. My student teacher works closely with a veteran educator with 24 years in the classroom who continues to evolve and adapt. The journey has been challenging and when I talk to her, she feels exhausted.

When I talk to her, she feels like she is failing. But she is not. Her classroom is an oasis of depth in a sea of shallow. So, what’s her secret?

“I can’t compete with smartphones. It’s why I’m glad they’re gone. But what I try to offer is a compelling alternative,” she tells me.

She is not trying to out-entertain TikTok or compete with distractions by going faster. She is offering something more valuable: depth, meaning, and relevance. And although it doesn’t look perfect, her students are showing us, day by day, that this is what they have been craving all along.

You’re Not Imagining It. Things Are More Challenging.

You planned the lesson with care. The objectives were clear. You built in time for student talk, added scaffolds for language learners, differentiated the tasks, and even embedded a moment of reflection at the end. But somewhere in the middle of the lesson, you caught it. There’s a sea of glazed-over eyes. A student asks, “Is this graded?” Others are quietly flipping between tabs when your back is turned.

I see this trend as a professor working with pre-service teachers. I’ll teach a model lesson or co-teach along with a member of my cohort and I’ll experience it firsthand. I see the difference in real time of what works, what falls flat, and where the magic happens. But then, I’ll see how a strategy that should work simply doesn’t work at all. I’ll feel how much energy it takes to engage students.

What I keep seeing is hard to ignore. Teachers are planning thoughtful, creative lessons. They’re differentiating, building relationships, doing everything right. But students still check out. They drift. They reach for devices, stare past the teacher, or go through the motions without really being present. It’s not a lack of effort on the teacher’s part. It’s something deeper.

As a frequent keynote speaker and workshop facilitator, I get the chance to talk to teachers at every level from so many different spaces. Whether it’s a teacher in a rural space where kids choose 4H or FFA at a young age (and where the school season corresponds to the hunting season) or an urban enclave where students walk to school surrounded by noise and movement and skyscrapers, teachers are all sharing the same thing. Something has shifted. It’s not just where I live in America. I’ve seen this when doing workshops overseas.

The Issue Is Bigger Than Distractions

Students seem more distracted than ever before. When given an assignment, they struggle to get started or to stick with it over time. Many of them lack the endurance to continue reading for longer than five minutes, even when they are reading for fun. As one teacher noted to me, “I can’t compete with twenty-second videos where you can swipe away if it doesn’t capture your interest in a nanosecond.”

This sense of distraction has led to a cascade of additional challenges. Students don’t seem as self-directed as they need to be. They struggle with self-starting and self-management. They aren’t developing the necessary metacognitive skills to determine what they know, what they don’t know, and what steps they need to take next. Many students give up at the slightest hint of failure. Which leads to the next big challenge.

Teachers have noticed a distinct lack of resilience in recent years. Students are not sticking with challenging problems. High achievers seem scared to make mistakes. They can’t handle a mediocre test score. Meanwhile, other students aren’t turning in work at all and are quick to raise their hand and ask for help the moment an assignment requires any level of mental effort.

It’s no surprise, then, that so many students are now using generative AI to complete assignments. As one teacher described it, “I used to know if a student was cheating by doing a simple Google Search. Then we had tools like Turn-It-In. But within a single semester, I started noticing this sort of bland AI-generated essay. I can’t pinpoint it, but I could feel it when I read these papers. And it just made me sad.”

It’s not that students are incapable. It’s not that you didn’t plan enough. And it’s definitely not that you’ve stopped caring. This isn’t a moment to “remember your why.” You’re doing thoughtful, responsive, engaging work. But something still feels off. It’s like you’re designing for depth while the system keeps dragging everything to the surface. Note that this isn’t all students. I’m actually pretty hopeful by the spaces I’ve seen where students are bucking this trend. But still, this trend is real.

The problem isn’t with your effort. It’s with the systems and structures around you. It’s the culture we’re navigating, built on speed, efficiency, and instant answers.

That’s why so many programs miss the mark. They offer new tools, new terms, new strategies. But they don’t address the deeper shift we need. What if we didn’t start with a new initiative? What if we started with a new mindset? One that affirms what you’re already doing and guides it toward something that lasts?

It’s Not About Effort. It’s About Environment.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen teachers doing some of the most creative, student-centered work I’ve ever witnessed. They’re scaffolding projects, looping essential questions, adding reflection protocols, and adapting every lesson for wildly diverse student needs. It’s not for lack of effort.

And yet, the dominant message still persists: “Make it more engaging.” Or, “Try another strategy.” The implication is that if students are disengaged, it must be the teacher’s fault.

But here’s the truth: we’re teaching in a culture of swipe speed and shortcut hacks. Nearly every one of us holds a device with an attention casino heavily engineered to hook us into apps through instant dopamine rush.

It’s no surprise when the default for students is to skip songs halfway through, cruise through a stream of videos in 10-second increments, or ask AI for immediate answers. Attention grows fragmented. Curiosity gradually flattens. We live in an economy of distraction, and it’s reshaping how our students experience learning.

Our educational systems often mirror this speed. Rushing through standards. Pushing bell-to-bell pacing in a frantic speed out of a fear of “learning loss.” Relying on coverage over comprehension. Buying gamified learning systems that mirror the same attention casino as the apps on an iPad. These systems cram knowledge into shorter and shorter units. It’s the pedagogical equivalent of an energy drink with a quick spike and a long crash. When the learning doesn’t stick, the solution is often more of the same interventions: more testing, more tracking, more gamified programs.

This system rewards shallow success. Quick answers. Tidy data. Fast results. But those wins are short-lived. They don’t translate to long-term growth, transfer, or resilience.

The Good News? You’re Already Doing the Hard Work

You’re not coasting. You’re not phoning it in. You’re crafting lessons that are responsive, inclusive, and intentional.

You’re planning collaborative activities with purposeful roles. You’re embedding reflection without giving up instructional time. You’re adjusting pacing based on what your students need – not just what the pacing guide says. You’re giving second chances, offering formative feedback, looping back when students aren’t ready to move on. You’re modeling vulnerability, encouraging curiosity, and making space for student voice.

And still, you’re watching students tune out. They’re doing just enough to get by. They’re glancing at the clock halfway through an activity you thought would be electric. It’s frustrating because it’s not laziness. It’s conditioning.

Students are moving through a system that rewards quick wins, surface compliance, and shortcut solutions. They’ve learned to skim instead of dive, to complete instead of connect. It’s not a lack of ability. It’s a lack of depth in the design around them.

But there’s a silver lining as well. You also see the sparks. You notice the little wins. A student who never speaks up suddenly leads a group discussion. Another who gave up on writing last semester asks to revise their work because they want it to be better. A quiet kid lingers after class to show you their design prototype. These moments are easy to overlook because they seem so normal, but there’s nothing normal about them. These are deeply counter-cultural in a culture of shallow. These are the signs of something deeper taking root. Even if you haven’t used the term deeper learning, that’s exactly what is going on. Students are shifting from passive to active, from compliant to curious, from distracted to dialed in. And that’s worth noticing and celebrating.

Deep Challenges Require Deep Solutions

Here’s where deeper learning makes a difference. Deeper learning isn’t a trendy program or a flashy new curriculum. It’s not a magical formula or a quick fix solution. Instead, it’s an approach to learning that focuses on depth in a culture that often defaults to the shallow.

Deeper focus, deeper engagement, deeper resilience, deeper mastery. It’s the notion of learning the content in a way that sticks while also developing the habits, mindsets, and skills that they will need as they navigate the maze of an unpredictable world.

Deeper learning begins with a bold premise. Empower teachers to empower students. It recognizes that creative teachers don’t need an instruction manual so much as a set of tools.

Here’s the tension: depth doesn’t always look impressive. It’s slower. Quieter. Sometimes messier. It doesn’t always show up on a rubric. But it lasts.

Note that it doesn’t always look perfect. Okay, it rarely looks perfect. Case in point, in a school I visited last month, students had just completed a STEM challenge. It hadn’t gone well. Their designs failed. Their calculations were off. But instead of moving on, the teacher paused the class and said, “Let’s figure out what went wrong.” That moment – full of reflection, discussion, and revision – was where the real learning happened. It wasn’t efficient. But it was effective.

This is why deeper learning matters. It shifts the focus from performance to process. From speed to substance. From getting it done to making it stick.

And it doesn’t just help students academically. It supports focus, agency, self-direction, and resilience. These are the very qualities we say we want for lifelong learners. In a culture of shallow, depth is a radical act. And it’s one that starts with teachers.

It’s Not About a New Program

Deeper learning isn’t a fix. It’s a philosophy. It’s not a box to check or a product to adopt. It’s a way of thinking about what learning is and what it could be.

Deeper learning invites students to linger with ideas, make connections across disciplines, solve authentic problems, and wrestle with uncertainty. It requires focus, reflection, and creative risk-taking. And that doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when teachers build systems of depth with one small move at a time.

Deeper learning addresses some of the biggest challenges we face in education right now.

Current Challenge	Competency	Deeper Learning Solution
Distraction	Focus	Deeper Attention in a Distracted World
Instant Answers	Mastery	Deeper Understanding in the Age of Instant Answers
Over-Reliance on AI	Problem-Solving	Deeper Thinking in a World of Smart Machines
Information Overload	Curiosity	Deeper Discovery in a Sea of Information
Passivity	Self-Direction	Deeper Drive in a Changing World
Setbacks and Adversity	Resilience	Deeper Effort when Faced with Big Challenges
Isolation and Disconnection	Collaboration	Deeper Connection in an Isolated World
Homogenized Expression in a World of AI	Communication	Deeper Divergence in a Sea of Sameness

And here’s the good news: you’re already doing parts of it. That reflection protocol at the end of the week? That student-led discussion you tried? That rubric you co-designed with your class? These aren’t extras. They’re the real work of deeper learning.

This isn’t about overhauling your practice. It’s about naming what’s already working and guiding it toward something deeper. Not louder. Not faster. Just deeper.

What’s Already Working?

One of the coolest parts of being in so many classrooms is the sheer variety in how deeper learning plays out. I’ve seen deeper learning take root in places where students are building businesses, running mock trials, redesigning school spaces, and filming documentaries. I’ve seen it in choice-driven silent reading and in loud chaotic makerspaces. Sometimes it’s a quiet moment, like a student staying behind to tweak a lab report or a group reworking their prototype after a failed test.

In these moments, I realize I am still a student of deeper learning. I’m discovering, yet again, what this looks like with the question, “What can I learn from this?” My goal has never been to evaluate or prescribe, but to observe and analyze. And to be inspired. I want to find these pockets where depth is happening despite the pressure to speed up, standardize, and shallow out. These are the exceptions that prove what’s possible.

What I’ve found is that deeper learning doesn’t fit neatly into categories like modern versus traditional or pro-tech versus anti-tech. Sometimes it looks like a Socratic seminar around a worn-out novel. Other times, it’s a group of students using AI tools to build a multimedia presentation. It’s not about the surface features. It’s about the mindset behind the design. It’s about the commitment to thinking, creating, questioning, and connecting.

Before we chase the next innovation or overhaul the next unit, we need to pause and ask a better question.

How am I already promoting deeper learning? How can I build on that?

Where do your students show signs of focus? When do they lose track of time because they’re absorbed in something meaningful? What have they remembered, weeks later, not because it was on the test, but because it mattered?

A teacher gives students five minutes to journal at the end of class—not about what they learned, but about how their thinking changed. Another builds student checklists for project work, where students identify their own success criteria. I’ve watched eighth graders peer review each other’s work using sentence stems like, “What made you curious?” and “Where did you push your thinking?”

These are small moves. But they point to something deeper. They invite reflection, ownership, and interdependence.

This isn’t about scrapping your curriculum or starting from scratch. It’s about zooming in on the pieces that already point to deeper learning, and turning up the volume.

That group work structure? Add a self-assessment element. That end-of-unit project? Build in checkpoints for feedback and revision. That discussion strategy? Hand the questioning over to students. For me, it’s a reminder that innovation is often about iteration. It’s about the small tweaks we make that lead to significant improvements.

Deeper learning is often built in the margins – in those small moments that feel purposeful but don’t always get spotlighted. But when we identify them, amplify them, and structure around them, they stop being side notes. They become the center.

When we build on what we already know works, we create momentum without burnout. We design depth into the day-to-day.

It doesn’t require a revolution. It requires intention.

Depth Without Burnout

For the last two years, we have heard bold pronouncements about how a new AI tool will revolutionize learning forever. Just choose the right app and students will have on-demand learning at any time, anywhere. This isn’t a new phenomenon. We heard this refrain with the internet. Just hop on the information superhighway and get all you need to know. You can just Ask Jeeves. You won’t even need a teacher. Later, it was the overhyped promise of one-to-one devices, then interactive whiteboards, then adaptive learning programs, and later mobile devices and then virtual reality and . . . you get the point.

But this fails to recognize a key aspect of learning. It’s not just about content delivery. It’s deeply relational and contextual. It’s highly creative. Which is why, as we think about deeper learning, the future of education begins with teachers.

You’re already teaching for more than test scores. You’re already doing the work that matters—even when it doesn’t get recognized. That makes you a champion of depth.

But it’s hard to keep going when the system around you rewards surface-level success. It’s easy to feel isolated, like you’re the only one pushing for something deeper. You’re not.

That’s why I wrote The Depth Advantage. It’s not a one-size-fits-all framework. It’s not a scripted curriculum. It’s a flexible guide designed to name what you’re already doing—and help you deepen it. It’s grounded in real classrooms, written for teachers who care about what lasts.

This work isn’t flashy. It’s slow. It’s quiet. It’s powerful. And it’s worth doing—because students deserve learning that sticks. That stretches. That shapes who they become.

So if you’ve been searching for a way forward—not a program, but a path—I hope this book can be a companion. Not a map, but a compass.

Let’s make room for focus. Let’s design for mastery. Let’s cultivate resilience, curiosity, and connection.

Get the First Chapter of The Depth Advantage

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