The Self-Driven Child
Helping parents raise kids with healthy motivation and resilience in facing life's challenges. Oh, and having more fun while doing it!
The Self-Driven Child
The Disengaged Teen Part 2
In this follow-up episode, I continue my conversation with Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson, authors of The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better. We dive deeper into the strategies parents and educators can use to support kids who feel stuck in “passenger mode.” From fostering autonomy to the importance of relational health, Rebecca and Jenny share actionable insights grounded in science and their own life experiences.
We also explore what it takes to help kids move from disengagement to becoming true “explorers,” igniting curiosity and confidence. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or simply passionate about education, this episode offers powerful takeaways on how to redefine achievement, support mental health, and create environments where kids can thrive.
Episode Highlights:
[0:00] - Kicking off Part 2: How nagging impacts kids’ learning and why relational health matters.
[2:29] - Tips for parents to help kids stuck in “passenger mode.”
[5:09] - The importance of pursuing interests—even if it’s crocheting or skateboarding.
[7:50] - A pottery class transforms one student’s approach to learning and growth.
[13:05] - The role of relational health in building resilience and curiosity.
[17:37] - Technology, sleep, and setting boundaries at home.
[21:23] - How curiosity can help kids engage deeply in school and beyond.
[30:58] - Easy, practical strategies for teachers to support autonomy and agency in classrooms.
[34:08] - Final reflections on creating an environment where kids can learn, feel, and live better.
Links & Resources:
Rebecca and Jenny's book: The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better
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If you have a high school aged student and would like to talk about putting a tutoring or college plan together, reach out to Ned's company, PrepMatters at www.prepmatters.com
At what cost is your child sleeping? Can they handle minor setbacks? You know, is a 98 a devastating blow. Are there opportunities for growth? You know, I think as soon as a child is seeing their achievements as their self worth, they define themselves by their performance, their grades, their GPA, their spot on the varsity team that is only who they are, is their outcomes versus they are a valued team member. They are, you know, a loving granddaughter. They are, you know, an essential contributor to a family. I think it's, it's really trying to separate. I think what parents need to be looking for is, does that child define themselves only by their performance, and if they do, you are ground zero of starting to help them define themselves as all the wonderful things that they are, a wonderful sister, an incredible granddaughter, a good neighbor, a helpful Cook, all of these things to help them see that they are not in your eyes, only a set of grades or only a GPA.
Ned Johnson:Welcome to the self Tiffin child podcast. I'm your host, Ned Johnson and co author with Dr William stick shirt of the books, the self driven child, the science and sense of giving your kids more control over their lives. And what do you say? How to talk with kids to build motivation, stress tolerance and a happy home engagement, the secret sauce that helps kids get the best out of their learning and develop the best of themselves in their lives. Welcome back to part two of a conversation with Jenny Wilson and Rebecca Winthrop, authors of the disengaged teen, helping kids learn better, feel better and live better. When we left, there were shoes all over the house. We learned why nagging feels good to us, even if it doesn't feel good to our kids and doesn't work, and we discussed why far too many kids are not engaging, not only in chores, but in school and in building their lives. Take a listen as we pick back up with what helps passengers, the 50 plus percent of students who are just coasting along, either over or under, challenged in school, and what we can do to help them. I'm Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. So while we're here talking about passengers, can you share just a couple of takeaways for parents who I mean, the book is wonderful, and we're not going to go through every page on here, because six hour podcasts aren't really that engaging. Engagement is important. But you have a tip or two for parents who feel that they've got a kid who's who's stuck in that, in that, you know, neutral, not going passenger mode. Sure.
Rebecca Winthrop:Jenny already brought one up. Stop nagging and we argue. And this is your life's work Ned channel that nagging, because nagging fuels procrastination. Channel it into teaching them how to learn. So planning, organizational skills, study skills, reflecting on, Ooh, did that study strategy work? If not, how would you adapt? All you know, again, this is your life's work. Parents can help kids learn that sort of learning, to learn skills which is going to be much more productive from getting them out of the nagging procrastination loop. So not Do you have homework 17 times a night? If they're like, yeah, yeah. Did you do it yet? I mean, I speak from experience. I too, and I tested all these tips on our own teenage children.
Jenny Anderson:They hate they hate this book.
Rebecca Winthrop:What an eye rolling. But what's your what's your plan for getting that homework done? How much time do you think it'll take? You know, etc, yeah, the other piece that's super important for kids who are coasting, and it's counterintuitive, and it's also applies for kids in resistor mode. We all think, oh, gosh, these kids aren't focused on their academics. They're not doing, you know, they might, they might, by the way, be doing great. They might be bringing home good grades, and we don't even know they're coasting, which is also not good because they're not developing the learning muscles that they're going to need as we know, brains develop the way they're used. But they might be bringing home bad grades, not try, not care, and we're like, focus on your classes, and naturally parents and schools take away interesting activities. You know what you can't do soccer or drama club or be in the you know science fair, you know science competition, or you model you in or whatever, because your grades aren't good enough. Absolute opposite thing that these kids need. They need a spark of something that they are interested in, that they can pursue, and it doesn't matter what it is like, crocheting is equally good as Model UN it literally is that they are practicing learning skills about something they're exciting, diving deep and hitting frustrations and roadblocks and getting muscles to explore and navigate learning something new. It also when they have a spark and interest, it spills over to the rest of their lives. It it spills over to their academic achievement, not right away, not in every class, but they start liking school more. They start feeling more confident in the. Selves, there's a whole sort of positive cycle. So this idea of allowing and supporting kids to pursue their interests is incredibly important. I
Ned Johnson:love that. And three points that I'd add to that. One is back to the brains are developed in ways that they use or use, right? And so one of the things that's incredibly useful to developing brains is to work harder and harder to get better and better at anything that you care about. My wife and my daughter are both knitters, and I watch them knit, and it'll be an hour, and then they'll realize they made a mistake, and they'll tear the whole thing out and do it again. And I'm looking at them like, are you nuts? I mean, who cares if it's you know, but, but they're committed to having it be the way that they want. And you think about the frustration, the stress tolerance, right, which we need perfectionists to have more of, and they pull it back out and say, I'm going to make it right. The second thing to your point, back was such a good one of the spillover effect, as you noted in your book, because so many kids who are in the passenger mode are ADHD, right, and it's hard for them to care about things they don't care about, but dopamine, the neurotransmitter that fuels drive, is released in the anticipation of reward. So you can be sitting there the whole day, it's English, it's social studies, whatever, but you know that you've got magicals to get to, or you've got soccer, you've got tech crew or whatever. And just the thought of, once I get through these things, I have that to look forward to. Can fuel the brain with more dopamine and make it not that kid will now love social studies, but he has a little bit of room to pay attention there. And the last thing you talked about in the book, I forgot that is a Cullen who talked about earned prestige Yeah, and that kids can develop, you know, part of being a teenager, right? Is they both want to fit in and they want to stand out, right? Which is really complicated place to be. And as you, as you say, so well that this very, as Jen, as you noted, this very kind of narrow path that all kids seem to be on, and when we allow kids to develop their expertise in, you know, crochet or something that. Well, I'm not sure the colleges are looking for that. Oh, stuff it right
Rebecca Winthrop:all the time. Is skateboarding equally good as math
Ned Johnson:championship? Yes? For brain development, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and
Rebecca Winthrop:yes. And for identity, like to your last point, there's the spillover effect, because kids are excited about something, but there's also a I am a skateboarder that is who I have something special about me. I'm good at it. I try really hard, and I have this identity that is constructive and positive. Now the line we would draw, Jenny and I draw is if an interest is really harmful to themselves or to other people. No, don't let them do that. But other than that, let them go
Ned Johnson:for it. Yeah, I love that. I
Jenny Anderson:want to tell just a super quick story, but I don't think the story ended up making an end to the book the characters or but this particular story didn't. Is a very disengaged student. Her name is Stella. Had loved Elementary School, very disengaged middle and high school, and her father saw this, and he encouraged her to do a pottery class. And she resisted, resisted, resisted. I don't want to do pottery. I'm a swimmer. I'm an athlete. I'm not interested. Anyways, he convinced her, by hook or by crook, to do this pottery class, and she took to it, but then she kind of got discouraged, and he encouraged her to stay in it. And he was watching these little pots, really crappy, really not nicely shaped pots get better and better and better until they started to resemble a pot. And he could say to her Stella, this is you this is you improving. This is you growing. This is you getting better. And she fell in love with pottery. She was also able to use that as a metaphor for her own learning, right? She could see like, oh, sometimes it takes time, and sometimes I get stuck, and sometimes the pot looks like crap. It doesn't actually even look like a pot. But it was such a powerful story in that like that visual manifestation of growth and improvement is so hard to see for a kid in the moment of their learning, right? It is so invisible, and it just feels you're never you're never gonna get fractions. You're never gonna get it. So I give up or never gonna get it. So I'm not gonna try, because it doesn't look cool to try. But like, that's just advice we give over and over again, like, focus on the practice and the growth and the improvement, because that's gonna be the fuel that they really need, especially these kids in passenger mode a little bit better at the interest or in the thing that they're struggling with is just, gosh, monumental, way more important than the A
Ned Johnson:Oh, I love it, you know, and it's so beautifully in line with Carol Dweck and the growth mindset, right? I mean, to take something I have a student worked with, who's in her first year of college now, and her parents came to me when she was in eighth grade, and she attends arguably the most elite Independent School here in DC, and already super perfectionistic in a bunch of I mean, and watching friends going down really bad mental health paths, and they're trying to figure out what to do, and they were stuck in some ways, because they wanted her to achieve at the highest level and go to highly selective, highly rejected colleges. Let's. Be honest. You know, on and on it goes. And was involved in activities, many of which were, you know, great for college resumes. But among other things, she was as she showed me that could show me this art, unbelievable. I mean, I was just gobsmacked this stuff that she'd made in sixth and seventh grade. I mean, just stunning. And I said, we talked about a whole bunch of things about school, I said, but one thing that I would encourage you is, don't allow her to do art for competition for at least a few more years, right? And this is Daniel Pink work, I mean, to have something that she engages in and gets better for her standards, right? And because she enjoys it, and she makes those pots go from, you know, back to like, whoo, it's actually something, yeah, I love that. Is Stella doing great now, is she? Is she? Is she still pulling pots, I guess is the term
Jenny Anderson:she is. She's studying to become a teacher, which I think, is very excited. She's gone to university. She got into the University, top university of her choice, and she did a lot of research on her own to figure out which colleges were going to prepare her the way she wanted to be prepared. I mean, she, you know, she got granular. She didn't do the brand name thing at all. She did the thing that made the most sense for the things she wanted to do. So I love it. Her dad helped her get into explorer mode. I mean, to me, that was, I needed to be convinced more than Rebecca did. She's an academic. She saw all the academic papers. Was like, you know, it's there. And I'm like, Ah, I got my life experience. Take that research. You know,
Rebecca Winthrop:these kids need to be in achiever mode. What do we do if they're not? Yeah, yeah,
Jenny Anderson:no. I'm just being honest. I think a lot of people operate like me. I think it's, you know, you take your K, your n, of two, and you're like, Well, that's all I need to know. These talking to these teens over the course of three years for this book. I mean, it's like I saw it before my eyes, like every you know, I saw the evidence really come to light in people like Stella.
Ned Johnson:I have to say, really quickly, when we were writing our second book, what do you say? Like you, we were talking to all these young people, and one of the questions we asked them was, who do you feel closest to in the world? And some, my mom, she's just a bash, my dad, but sometimes my older sister, cousin, yada yada. And Bill asked them, What is it about them that makes you feel so close to them? And the two answers that everything fell into kind of one and two buckets. Either they listened to me without judging me. Why are you doing croquet That's so stupid? Why don't you join Model UN Right? Or they don't tell me what to do all the time. Shouldn't you be studying more? And it's so important, because we know that that close connection is the closest thing to a silver bullet against effects of stress in developing brains. But also, if you look at self determination theory and develop intrinsic motivation, you guys do a beautiful job talking about intrinsic motivation that we know the closer a child feels to a parent or another caregiver, the more the child will naturally take up right as as his or her own right, and it will naturally integrate the belief system of that parent, right? So, so parents, when they're trying to pound, pound some sense into that kid's head, they're actually working against the likelihood that the kid finds what the parent has to say sensible. We
Rebecca Winthrop:talk in the book around this evidence around relational health, which is what you're talking about, yeah, which is basically a close relationship with a parent, an aunt, an uncle, you know, an adult in a child's love. And how much that does for kids flourishing, for their curiosity, for their sort of persisting and hard tasks, for their emotional awareness, and ultimately, for their engagement in school and their achievement in school. And this is available to any parent. So the more relational health you have, even if you have high relational health and you're facing lots of problems in your life, you've lost your job, maybe you have to move home. Maybe a relative has died, like really serious things that kids face. If you have someone where you have strong relational health, those kids are going to do better than a kid who has everything provided for them, financially enough, food, no big traumatic events in terms of, you know parental addiction to drugs or death or anything terrible like that, but has low relational health with their parents or caregivers. Those kids are doing worse. So this is available to every kid, every every parent, no matter what your family circumstances. And it's really, really important for kids to flourish, but also to like, do well and engage in school.
Jenny Anderson:And I just love that it is truly kind of, it's available to all of us. And really, what we're asking of parents isn't to sort of shore up on their chemistry or, you know, kind of lay down the iron fist. What we're asking of them is to be the sort of safe space for that kid. There's a quote in our book by a guy named Thomas Curran who studies perfectionism, and he said expectations are so far beyond what these kids can do. You know, imagine if they come home and they're facing even more of that, right from you, the people that they sort of love and will be with them forever, right? You know, hopefully. We can provide some shelter from the storm rather than fueling the storm. And so I think that, just to build on Rebecca's point about relational health, I think about that expectations are so far beyond what they can do right now a lot. And think just that, not here, not in my home, when I
Ned Johnson:was reading the part about current and the perfectionism, I found myself thinking about Jenny Wallace's book, never enough, where she foregrounds the great work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that people haven't read it, that after poverty, trauma and discrimination, the greatest source of stress and anxiety in young people is excessive pressure to excel. And of course, to your point, Jenny, it's so easy. Of course she can do it. It's like, Well, how could I know, right?
Jenny Anderson:They can do it until they can't, right? And so don't push that boundary.
Ned Johnson:Well, yeah, I love you. Because you, you guys talk about that with the achievement that we all love, the the oh my gosh, she's so brilliant, he's so amazing. But you talk about the fine line between happy and unhappy achievement, What should parents know, how should they navigate that? Jenny,
Jenny Anderson:I mean, I think I go back to the point I just said, you know, at what cost is your child sleeping? Can they handle minor setbacks? You know, is a 98 a devastating blow. Are there opportunities for growth? You know, I think as soon as a child is seeing their achievements as their self worth, they define themselves by their performance, their grades, their GPA, their spot on the varsity team, that is only who they are, is their outcomes versus they are a valued team member. They are, you know, a loving granddaughter. They are, you know, an essential contributor to a family. You know, I think it's really trying to separate. I think what parents need to be looking for is, does that child define themselves only by their performance? And if they do, you are ground zero of starting to help them define themselves as all the wonderful things that they are, a wonderful sister, an incredible granddaughter, a good neighbor, a helpful cook, you know, a useful all of these things to help them see that they are not in your eyes, only a set of grades or only a GPA. But I do think the sleep one is always a really, really good indicator. And I say this from experience, my own life experience, and as a parent of one of these kids, I have a kid who, if I did not encourage her, ie forcefully make her go to bed every night, take away the phone, make her go to bed, you know. And I'm hoping it becomes a habit, and I'm hoping that the you know, but there's always more. There's always always more studying that can be done, always more friends that can be chatted with, always more, you know, it's like, no, I want you to sleep.
Ned Johnson:I would make if kids have spending money or allowance make that contingent on the phone is not in the bedroom. For me, my phone is always downstairs in the kitchen. Almost every teenager I work with at this point uses cell phone as an alarm clock, and so the kitchen is just a bridge too far to mix metaphors. So what I often ask is whether they could charge their phone in their bathroom, so at least it's, you know, so it's not quite as
Rebecca Winthrop:disruptive. Or get an analog alarm clock. That's what I get my buy. I
Ned Johnson:was just gonna say I buy probably two alarm clocks a month for students of mine. I've got Amazon Prime, so, yeah,
Jenny Anderson:I always love when they say I have to have it in my room because of the alarm clock. And it's like, okay, well, this is a learning moment. There are these things called alarm clocks. They've existed for a long time. They're very reliable. I also, by the way, Ned, I just love the line. Like I paid for the phone. I can take the phone away at 10pm like, it is really that simple, right? Like, excellent
Rebecca Winthrop:point, my phone. Like, your phone, yeah, sleep is the
Ned Johnson:glue that holds us together.
Jenny Anderson:Yeah, that's a Lisa damore quote, and I really love that quote.
Ned Johnson:She's got a lot of good, a lot of good insights. So let's talk for a few minutes before we slide over to talking for about technology for just a moment the explorers, right? So these are people who are highly are highly engaged, and have high agency. Tell us a little bit about what that looks like, and how, if we have a kid who's maybe in a lower quadrant, what are some of the things that we as parents or educators can do, or they can do for themselves to kind of up shift into that upper quadrant? Yeah, the first thing
Rebecca Winthrop:for parents to know is kids can be in explore mode, in school or out of school, and they're still building explore muscles, such an important point, and given that less than 10% of kids say they have an opportunity to truly explore in school. We parents have a huge role to play here, and so it is often in electives, after school activities or their or their passions, and oftentimes so the very first thing is, if you see them having some funky passion, we have a character in the book Diego, who's, like, obsessed with making paper airplanes, and, like, getting to the fly right and tweaking their the wings and putting paper clips on them and all this stuff. And it's annoying for the parents, because it's all the house is littered with the paper airplanes, but they let him do it like fly from the top of the stairs, like fly from the kitchen, like, so if you see a kid just. Getting into something. Don't stop them. Ask them about it. Encourage them not encourage like, please make more paper airplanes. But hey, what's going on? Why are you adjusting it like that? In and of itself, is just do that. If you want to do one thing, just do that. Because so often, out of love and care and worry really, for the future of our kids, we say, why are you spending all this time making airplanes Stop? Stop doing that. That a you're making a mess. And in our minds, we're also thinking, it's not a value you. Yeah, you should be a studying or maybe you should go practice your basketball or whatever it is. So that, in of itself, is something we can do as parents. And the other thing that we talk a lot about is shift the types of conversations you have at home. So there's a lot of conversations, and you don't want to give up on this entirely about performance. What did you get on the test I see you got, you know, not such a good grade. You know, consequences beat it out. How did you do on whatever out of love. How did you do? How did you perform? Versus tell me about what you're learning in science, and so do a tiny little bit of homework. Look at their schedule, because sometimes they have science three times a week. And if you're asking them about science on the day they don't have science, it doesn't result in such good conversations. But really just talking about the content of what they're learning and why it's interesting to you, or why it's interesting to them, and if they're like, giving you the cold shoulder of like, nothing, nothing was interesting. Oh, really, did you, you know
Ned Johnson:what's the cool thing side? Did Jenny set herself on fire again? Right? Anyway? Or, or
Rebecca Winthrop:have them teach you about concepts? My kids love telling me about stuff, and fortunately, I don't remember most. So I'm very authentic when I'm like, oh, chemistry. Do you
Ned Johnson:know Nadine Burke Harris? Do you know that name? Yeah, so, so the deepest well, and she's one of the big people on a scores. And Paul Tough foregrounded a lot of her work in his in his fantastic book How Children Succeed. But I saw her give a book talk at a local bookstore here in DC when she was on the tour for for the deepest, well, fantastic book. And she talked about her father, who I believe had immigrated from Jamaica, but he could only get a job as a custodian, because, you know, this was the 60s, or whatever it was. And she said he would come home from a long day of work. And there would be her brothers making paraplanes, you know, screwing around, throwing them all over the house. And my said, my father would immediately go, this is fantastic. And he would grab a stopwatch and say, let's see how long they are in the air, and then use the forms to calculate the distance. And like did all the stuff in physics, she said had the effect of one, making my brothers immediately stopped making paper airplanes, and two, made me want to become a scientist. And, of course, she's, you know, physician, brilliant. Anyway,
Jenny Anderson:yeah, yeah, I would just, I would just to sort of summarize a lot of what we're saying here, like kids aren't meant to be mini CEOs. They're not meant to be productive to an end that we think is important all the time. And I think it's hard, because things are more competitive than they've ever been, or at least in our lifetimes, than they've ever been. And so we feel that, and we think be productive, but you know, they're not. That is not how we want their brains to develop. Just to the end of getting to the goal, to get into the thing and doing the thing and doing everything you need to do to get to the thing like that's not how we want them to develop. We want them to be curious. We want them to know themselves. We want to we want them to be able to regulate themselves. And that is going to require some less productive activities.
Ned Johnson:Such a good point, and
Rebecca Winthrop:just to give parents confidence to do this, because often we also hear, Well, I just want to make sure they get the best grades possible, so they get into a good college and then, you know, they can do what Jenny is talking about. The problem is that if we push them too hard in that achiever mode, all the evidence shows that they actually drop out of college after the first year and struggle mightily. There's a pretty rigorous study, longitudinal, very large, that shows that kids who are in unhappy, unhappy achiever mode, so not the happy ones who are doing well, pushed enough to be excellent, but the unhappy achiever mode kids and the kids in resistor mode when they get to the second year of college are enrolled at the same rates, and we just found that over and over in our qualitative research as kids who've been in achiever mode, who never had the opportunity to explore, because to explore, you have to unders, have some self awareness and be recognizing in yourself what you're curious about. And no one when you get to college is telling you exactly what to do, and they flounder and feel lost and and leave, hmm, I'm
Ned Johnson:going to invoke a line from your book where you say, learning requires courage. We show you how to help them be brave, right? And any good explorer, right? Yeah, has to be brave. You don't have braver in the absence of fear, right? You know. And. And doing things before we stopped on this call. We're talking a little bit about Jonathan heights book, the anxious generation. I think all of us are worried about our kids get enough sleep, you know, use of technology, blah, blah, blah. But I would like to talk not about the cell phone, but rather the point that a lot of people, I think, forget the first half of the book. They forget by the time they get the second half of the book. And he makes the point that we've replaced a play based childhood with a phone based childhood. And I'd like to just make one little alteration, since we're talking about your wonderful book, and make the point that least we are in the States, seemingly have replaced a play based childhood with an achievement based childhood, and which all the things you talk about so eloquently and the endless research, and I'm grateful for doing that, because that's not the brain that I got. So those studies are wonderful that if we focus on the things that support kids natural curiosity, it's good for everything, right? And as it subtitle points out, it'll help kids learn better, feel better and live better. So for kids, for parents, who are, what are the top two things you have both have for mind, for helping, making life for children, as long as we can just be more about the play and ways that drive them naturally to want to continue to be explorers. I mean,
Jenny Anderson:I mean, I think we've touched on this, but I'll just reiterate it. I think following their interests, yep, and giving them a little bit of autonomy. So I think again, to this sort of achievement based childhood. That achievement based childhood is busy, and so in that busyness, it is hard to figure out, who am I and how, what do I want to contribute to the world that requires a tiny bit of experimentation and a tiny bit of time and reflection. I think it's very hard to find any of those things in a lot of kids, not all kids, but a lot of kids schedules these days. And so I think we can help them create time and space for some self discovery, for some experimentation, for some not so productive looking things, not dangerous things, just not necessarily productive things. And really take a little bit of follow their lead. I mean, I really, you know, kids are naturally curious, and, you know, we've both looked into the brain science like they're meant to be exploring that is actually biologically what they should be doing so they can figure out who they want to be in the world. That requires some testing and experimentation, and otherwise they're just pretty much, you know, I absolutely love Alison Gopnik work, and this idea of, are we gardeners? Are we carpenters? Are we chiseling them to be exactly the thing we want them to be? Or are we tending to the soil such that they can become what they are meant to become like. I'm firmly in that camp, and I think that means letting them be in explore mode, and that means following their interests and giving them some space to and it's going to be messy, so and being okay with that messiness, which here for the fact that that's hard,
Ned Johnson:and I will gently say one as a boy and two as a fan of Peter Gray's working give her tullys, let them play with fire and 50 other dangerous things. Play, by definition, should be involve a little bit of danger and risk. I may have a higher tolerance for that. When my son was he might have been seven or eight, and he said, Hey, can I sled down the front stairs in our house, you said, Yes. My immediate reaction was, can we find a helmet? And he looked at me, and he looked at me like, I don't think this is a good idea, dad. I'm like now, if you change your mind, let me know.
Rebecca Winthrop:The one thing I would add ned to what Jenny said. And it's easy for us all to do, but we forget about it is to model the thrill of learning. That's something we can do as parents. Because when you are learning, deeply immersed in learning, something, anything that you're interested in, it is engaging. It's exciting. It that's what you do when you're playing. And we can encourage that just by modeling it, things we're curious about they were interested, narrating over, asking questions, engaging them in this, in this dialog, not a let me quiz you. I know you have a chem test, but oh my gosh, we have the story in the book about a parent who's like an amateur physicist, and he's not a physicist. He just thinks it's interesting. Oh, I learned about gravitational time allocation. Like Time moves slower when you're at the top of Mount, and then it does the bottom. Isn't that weird, like whatever it is in your life, and it doesn't have to be nerdy like that. It could be something else, you know, around culture or communities or whatever. So I think that will go a long way.
Jenny Anderson:Yeah, the less nerdy version of that for slightly less physics oriented parents is, how did this get here? You know, why is this here? Why is it that we need light or aluminum, or aluminum?
Ned Johnson:Jenny is dialing in from the UK people. What is going on?
Jenny Anderson:Yeah. Why do people say aluminum? No, anyways, so I yeah, like, I think all level of. Yeah, questions are incredibly powerful for opening up conversation. And, I mean, you guys wrote a whole book on it, so you are, you know, you are deeply steeped in this, and you've spent the time doing the hard work, but just the power of a question, you know, an open ended, genuinely curious question is amazing. And that's again, we can all do it accessible
Ned Johnson:Well, curiosity and modeling. And modeling curiosity and their book, to put a pin on it, models all of that so beautifully. So lots of great advice of what parents can do, what teens themselves can do, and but because both parents and teens are deeply interested in students getting the most out of the learning. And so our teachers and administrators, can you walk us through some what are the easy, practical things from your research and experience that teachers can do, to implement in their in their classrooms, to have kids be engaged in well, as you describe agentic learning,
Rebecca Winthrop:absolutely and the good news is that teachers don't have to quit their schools and go to a big picture learning school or an expeditionary learning school, or any of these schools which are good and have in the core of their design student agency and explorer mode. So we wish there would be more schools like that, but there is lots of evidence to show that even within your traditional public school that has all the confines that teachers deal with, teachers can make a huge difference inside their classrooms. This evidence, again, comes out of the autonomy supportive teaching literature and Reeves, who I mentioned before, and is his colleagues, have found, again, over two decades, 18 countries like this is 35 RCTs. This is serious research, that there are seven different shifts in style, basically, that teachers can do seven different teaching practices. Disciplinary approaches don't have to change less, tiny bit of tweak to lesson plan. But lesson plans in their substance, don't have to change. Curriculum doesn't have to change. So what are they at the center of all of them? And you will appreciate this Ned, because you guys, this is a core of your work is centering respect for kids and their perspectives. So small things. Let's give three different options for homework, as I mentioned before, and kids can choose one. All of a sudden, kids have to reflect for a moment. Oh, which one do I want to do it? It forces them to connect internally with a desire, because they have to choose one love that's a tiny fraction of a moment. And then you can embed those moments throughout the day. Another one that's incredibly powerful is perspective taking we see teachers do this either at the end of a lesson, where they have an exit ticket, or they can just have note cards and say, Hey, was there a question that didn't get answered or that you're curious about from today's lesson? Write it down, give it to me, and then, importantly, teachers have to address it the next day or right at the beginning of a lesson, you can start and say, hey, you know, today we're talking about photosynthesis. Before I start. You know, get a little background on photosynthesis. Kids Won't it won't be a surprise. What are you curious about? About photosynthesis? Is there something that interests you? Do? You have any questions about it before you start? You know, like, is it only plants, or do animals have it? You know, like, why is the sun whatever? Like, can it be done, whatever it is? Almost
Ned Johnson:like curiosity matters for learning. Wow. Anyway, that
Rebecca Winthrop:Mo, yes, exactly. And that, and really, what it is, is giving a moment for kids to stop, pause, think about what they're curious about. That is autonomy right there, and just the act of thinking, what is a question I have about this subject automatically more deeply engages them, rather than the passive waiting to receive. Then teachers have to, you know, start, start with what they're curious about, talk about, and then you can flow into the lesson. So there's five other practices, but those are two
Ned Johnson:i Well, two thoughts. I love how practicable these things are, that this isn't doesn't need to blow the whole system up and build and rebuild it. It's these, to your point, these subtle shifts in energy and how we respect kids that can have these profound impacts. And the second thought is, I think we need to get this book in the hand of every educator in America right, because teachers want to feel effective, yes, and taxpayers want ROI on tax dollars, and students want to feel like they're being respected. It's a good use of their time. So, I
Rebecca Winthrop:mean, one of the wishes I have is that, you know, every district leader reads it and then supports their their educators, their classroom teachers, to go through a autonomy, supportive teaching workshop that exists and the materials are online. That's. Would be great
Ned Johnson:here, here, here, here, preaching to the choir. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. Rebecca, that's fantastic. I am really grateful for you guys for writing this really exceptional book. I think it will help a lot of folks, parents and kids and educators who feel a bit stuck and wondering how to help kids do better. It really is terrific. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
Jenny Anderson:you. Thank you for having us. This is such a great conversation. It's such
Ned Johnson:a pleasure. You guys are gonna have so much fun on your book tour.
Rebecca Winthrop:We hope so. We're planning to it's been great. It's been great rides so far. I'm
Ned Johnson:Ned Johnson, and this is the self driven child podcast. Hey folks, Ned here, over the past 25 years, I've talked to countless parents of high school age students who care deeply about their kids' education and how they deal with stress and the pressure to succeed. It can help parents to work with a team they trust won't just pile on more pressure to achieve better scores and grades. That's why I founded prep matters in 1997 to create a different kind of experience for test preparation and academic tutoring. This podcast and my books with my friend Bill sticks root reflect our company philosophy and approach to helping students. If you have a high school age student and would like to talk about putting a plan together, please get in touch with us. Visit our website@prepmatters.com or while your kids may only text, you might want to actually talk with a person, if so, you can reach us at 301-951-0350,
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