5 brain-based ways to help kids who shut down in class

In this article + podcast episode, Dr. John Spencer is helping us uncover five brain-based ways to help kids who shut down in class. John is a former middle school teacher and current college professor on a quest to transform schools into bastions of creativity and wonder. His goal is to see teachers unleash the creative potential in all of their students so that kids can be makers, designers, artists, and engineers. He shares what he’s learning in books, blog posts, journal articles, free resources, animated videos, and podcasts. If you like Truth for Teachers, you will almost certainly enjoy what he’s doing over on The Creative Classroom podcast, so that’s a great place to get familiar with his work.

Through my conversation with John below, you’ll learn practical, research-backed strategies to re-engage students and foster their independence:

1. Intentionally cultivate self-empowerment (the ability to self-regulate and self-direct.)
2. Introduce creative constraints when kids are overwhelmed.
3. Use the gradual release model to slowly acclimate students to more self-directed work.
4. Think diagnostically, looking for root causes beyond those related to behavior.
5. When you notice a significant number of students struggling, consider calling an impromptu workshop.

Listen to episode 312 below,
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Sponsored by Opportunity Gap and Brisk Teaching

1. Intentionally cultivate self-empowerment (the ability to self-regulate and self-direct.)

ANGELA: So, John, in a recent article you wrote, right now, coming out of the pandemic, I’ve noticed that one of the biggest challenges teachers are facing isn’t student engagement so much as student empowerment. Many students are struggling to be self-directed learners who can self-start and self-manage.

In the article, you embedded this Venn diagram you illustrated with two sections: self-starter and self-manager. The overlap in the middle represents self-direction.

I thought that was such a powerful way to think about this idea of student empowerment rather than engagement, really focusing on the overlap between being a self-starter and a self-manager. Can you talk to us about that?

JOHN: I want to begin by saying that one of the phrases I use there, which I know can be a little controversial, is “coming out of the pandemic.” I want to recognize that COVID is still around; people are still getting it. I don’t want to deny that it’s over. When I use the word “pandemic” in that moment, I’m referring to the health definition of a pandemic. So, coming out of that, and as we think about self-direction, there are some reasons why we saw this. In talking to teachers all around the country and actually around the world, I’ve noticed that the pandemic led to this sort of upside-down bell curve.

This binomial area where some students left resilient and strong and self-directed, and we were amazed by their maturity. They are so great at getting started and self-managing. Something about their environment, something about the way they were taught, in some cases, helped them learn how to get organized, own their learning, focus, and do all of those things. Another group—this could be due to trauma, low expectations, excusing missing work, environmental factors, or not getting the right scaffolds and supports—came out of this period and just don’t know how to be self-directed.

They don’t know how to self-start. They don’t know how to self-manage. So, the way I think about this is that a self-starter can say, “What needs to be done? What do I want to do?” and then they get started. There’s no delay; there’s no procrastination. They just get started. A self-manager is able to say, “How do I sustain that? How do I keep going? How do I manage my own learning?”

A self-starter who doesn’t self-manage is that student— and you’ve experienced this before—who jumps at the start of a project, gets excited about it, and then stops working. They can’t focus for extended periods; they don’t know how— and I know you’ve done some great work, Angela, on flow— they don’t know how to achieve a state of flow, right?

A student who is great at self-managing but struggles with self-starting is inconsistent. But once they get started, they move into a state of hyperfocus.

So, the goal is: how do we build that self-direction in our students?

Part of where this is coming from for me, working at the university level, is that our students on academic probation are not who you would think. The traditional assumption is that they might be first-generation college students who aren’t used to college, who don’t have a support network, or who come in on academic probation and have low skills.

But that’s not the case. A lot of them are former valedictorians. They’re people with a 3.5 to 4.0 GPA. They are students who were good students when someone was watching them. When someone was focused on their engagement, they played the game of school. And they were the students whose parents were using ParentVUE all the time, nagging them about getting work done.

Now they’re on their own, navigating university life independently, and they’re not getting started. They’re not showing up to class. They’re struggling for the first time ever in a class, and they’re not self-managing. They lack some of that metacognition, and they’re giving up and withdrawing. So, I think the hidden piece of our discussion about student engagement is that it’s not just about student engagement; it’s about student empowerment.

Student-centered learning sounds great in theory. Here’s how to make it work in reality.

You know, it’s interesting to think about that with college students because I had the opposite experience. I’ve talked before on the show about how I was a terrible student in high school, and it was because I was being micromanaged, and I rebelled against that. I do not like people checking up on me, asking, “Did you do it? Did you finish it yet? Why aren’t you doing your homework?” I rebelled against all of that and wanted nothing to do with it.

Then, when I went away to college, all of a sudden, I was in charge. I got to decide if I was going to class, if I would take notes, and how I would take notes. Suddenly, because I had that autonomy, I was able to step into my own power, really. I am one of those kids who had both self-direction and self-management; I needed the space to be able to do it.

It’s so interesting to see how different people’s personalities react in those ways. I remember my parents asking, “Why are you doing so much better in college? College is harder. Why is your room neater? Your dorm room is neat, and your bedroom at home was a mess.” Well, it’s because I had the autonomy. I really thrived in that kind of environment. You’re right that this is going to be the case for some kids. I think I would have been one who probably thrived during remote learning; I would have loved that opportunity. I don’t think most kids experience that.

Interestingly, all three of my kids thrived in remote learning. We always raised them to be self-directed. The rule in our house was that in third grade, you start doing your own laundry. That was a small example of my parenting philosophy. I did not want to be the cliché snowplow parent, taking barriers away from my kids. What that meant was I allowed my oldest to skate by with a 3.0 GPA, which was slightly weighted and probably lower than that in some of his classes. But then, he went to community college, played baseball, and got a 4.0. Suddenly, he was taking challenging classes, being unafraid to enroll in them, and assuming he’d get a C in a class but not freaking out about it. There’s something about that freedom to fail that helps with self-direction.

The way I describe it is like giving slack to develop grit. I set a high standard but allow for mistakes along the way so that they eventually reach that standard.

I think what you’re describing is exactly what I saw with my own kids. Some of it might be due to having two parents who are entrepreneurs, which probably plays into it. Before the podcast, we were talking about the entrepreneurial autonomy that seems to be part of our DNA or something. But I do think it’s something that teachers can cultivate in students and work toward, really focusing on building that self-direction.

One of the strategies I love is asking yourself and doing an audit of your classroom, asking, “What am I doing for students that they could be doing for themselves?”

I’ve done that with teachers at all grade levels, and it’s interesting to see that sometimes an early childhood educator will say, “My kids aren’t capable of that because they’re still so young.” I’ll say, “Well, have you visited a Montessori preschool? Have you visited a place where there’s tons of self-direction?” It can work in the younger grades. Then I’ll hear high school teachers say, “We teach so much content that’s idealistic.” And I’ll say, “Okay, but what are you doing for them that they should be doing for themselves?”

When I took that audit, it included everything from classroom jobs to self-assessment to scaffolds and supports. There are many areas where we’re doing too much of the work for students, which robs them of the opportunity for self-direction.

For the kids who are like me, they wither under that pressure and crumble because there’s no room for self-expression. For the kids who don’t have those skills, it’s not being cultivated for them. You’re so right that these skills can be taught; even if you’re not a self-directed learner by nature, you can still develop those habits. That’s really a lot of what we’re going to be talking about today.

2. Introduce creative constraints when kids are overwhelmed.

The tie-in to creativity is really interesting. I know you are a big advocate for creative constraints and having limits, and how that can function as the starting point for creativity.

So, when we’re thinking about how too much choice or self-direction could be hard for a lot of kids, why is that? What do we need to understand about that from a neuroscientific standpoint and from your understanding of how creativity works?

I think some of it connects to the idea of cognitive load. From a brain science standpoint, your working memory can only be taxed so much, right? Some of it might deal with executive function skills as well, but let’s just focus on working memory for a second.

If you give students too vague of a project or assignment, and on top of that, have unclear expectations, they’re going to have a lot of what’s called extraneous cognitive load on their working memory just to figure out what to do. It actually gets in the way of learning.

I experienced this myself the first time I did a Genius Hour project. I was like, “Learn whatever you want, and then you’re going to explain it however you want.” It was a nightmare. What it taught me was that we have to provide choice in a way that does not lead to choice paralysis.

There’s an older TED Talk called “The Paradox of Choice.” We see it all the time, right? Too much choice overwhelms us. What’s happening is we’re hitting cognitive overload. Kids are going to hit choice paralysis if you give them too many choices and if you make things too open-ended. So, I think it’s really important from the neuroscience standpoint to say, how do we reduce cognitive overload? There are a few ways we can do this.

The first thing we do is break a big project into phases and use protocols that are predictable. From project to project, we reuse protocols so students aren’t having to learn new protocols all the time.

If you’re thinking that feels less authentic than just an open-ended project, no. That’s what people in industries do during projects.

If you’re doing something like a regular creative assignment, it means limiting the number of choices you have and being very clear about what’s expected. It means having both loose and tight parameters for any kind of creative assignment.

For example, in my Genius Hour, the loose aspect was that students could choose whatever topic they wanted. The tight aspect was that it had to be in a specific format: a blog post, a listicle, a how-to, or a persuasive piece. They would also have an optional choice where they could select from three different options. Do you see what I mean? There’s a balance of loose and tight.

What that does is provide support for the student who is super self-directed, has a clear idea, and is excited about the topics, allowing them to run with it. For students who need extra support and are overwhelmed by choice—those who say, “I just need the teacher to tell me what to do”—it gives them clear parameters.

How to motivate students to take ownership of their learning

3. Use the gradual release model to slowly acclimate students to more self-directed work.

Let’s walk through the gradual release model. You’ve written quite a bit about that, and you have a really good article that I’m going to link to for this post about how to help prevent students from shutting down due to overwhelm or lack of empowerment.

There are four different levels of autonomy and choice, and your recommendation is to stay at levels 1 and 2 for a while before gradually integrating levels 3 and 4 activities. So, let’s talk about these levels of student choice and what it might look like to work through them.

One way we can imagine this is to remember how I said we do a choice audit for our classroom. We can break those into categories and then create a year-long plan for when to integrate new aspects of choice. So one thing we can do is a year-long plan. We start there. As a teacher, I can say, “Look, I’m not going to have students select their scaffolds and supports.” I love universal design, and I want to run with that, but not on day one.

I’ll pull small groups and then later, in the third or fourth week of school, I’ll start making all of those supports available to all students. Eventually, in the second semester, I’ll tell students we’re switching from small groups to workshops, or you can take a gradual approach throughout the school year. You can say, “Later in the school year, I’m going to allow students to select their scaffolds and supports. But on day one, I am going to give them options to choose their topic.”

What you’re doing is mapping out these areas—whether it’s assessment, choice menus, topics, strategies, or project management—so you don’t overwhelm students with too much choice at the beginning.

You can do this as an individual teacher, as a team if you’re in a middle school, or as an entire school if you’re in an elementary school. You can ask, “What does it look like to gradually add more self-direction from kindergarten through eighth grade?”

I’ll give an example from my own experience. I could not do classroom jobs on day one; that was overwhelming for kids. That was something I integrated in the second quarter, along with a classroom economy and classroom jobs.

But then, for key areas, you can take a gradual release approach from levels 1 to 2 to 3, and finally to 4.

For example, when it comes to choice menus or selecting a topic, you start out at level 1 by giving students three options for their warm-up today. That’s pretty comfortable.

At level 2, you give them a Tic-Tac-Toe board in elementary school, where they get to choose the assignment, but you’re all working towards the same learning targets.

At level 3, you implement something where it’s a choose-your-own-adventure format, and students select which learning targets they want to pursue. You send them a curation of three resources, and they select which of those three they want to engage with, and then they choose their end product.

Level 4 would be something like a Geek Out blog or a Genius Hour project.

What we’re doing is that gradual release. Another example of gradual release would be to conduct a design sprint or a divergent thinking challenge. You give students four objects and ask them to create any kind of children’s toy with those four objects in 45 minutes. You’re going to walk them through the design thinking process quickly, and then you’ll move into a week-long project, followed by a full-scale design thinking project later in the year. That’s a gradual release approach.

One last example of gradual release would be in a research context. Kids don’t know how to research when they’re in fourth grade; they’re just beginning to learn how to do online research. On day one, everyone reads the same article, and you model for them how to conduct research clearly and explicitly. Someone walking in might think it’s a traditional approach, and there’s nothing wrong with traditional methods.

I love traditional sometimes; I’m all about vintage innovation. On day two, however, you give them an option between three different articles to choose from, and you have them complete a graphic organizer that you select. You do this on day two and maybe day three as well. Then, you expand it to five different articles and provide options for two or three different graphic organizers that they can use.

You model again, guiding the practice, and offer peer feedback on how to answer their own questions using a Google search and a graphic organizer. By now, they’ve moved into independent research that they actually own along the way. Notice that this gradual release approach helps guarantee that students who need learning support receive them. It also shows that even if students require learning supports, such as language scaffolds for neurodiverse students, they can still own their learning and self-direct it because we’re all working toward that goal.

4. Think diagnostically, looking for root causes beyond those related to behavior.

That’s going to lead to a lot fewer kids shutting down and feeling overwhelmed or just not sure where to take it— that decision paralysis we’ve talked about. It makes sense within the context of this conversation, but often when we see kids shutting down or not working in class. We’ve given the assignment, they know what to do, and they’re just sitting there, we often assume that the problem is behavioral, so we reach for behavioral solutions. However, the way the lesson is explained, presented, implemented, structured, and assessed can all be powerful aspects to tweak.

So when it feels like the behavior management tools aren’t working, and you’re in that place where it’s like, “I’ve tried everything,” maybe it’s not the behavioral toolbox we need to be reaching into.

Perhaps some tweaks to the lesson design would really impact student empowerment. What strategies can teachers tap into in situations where they have scaffolded learning, the level of choice is appropriate, and the majority of the class is able to be successful, but there are still kids who are just sitting there?

That’s a challenge, and I want to recognize that there’s no magic formula here.

One of the things I’ll say is that when we think about students shutting down, we need to ask the question as a diagnostic approach: what are all the reasons why a student is shutting down? One reason could be fear of failure and low self-efficacy. They want to do it, but they just don’t believe they can. So what do you do in that moment?

You might have to restructure the assignment to create early wins and build momentum. It could be that there’s a mismatch in efficacy between the challenge of the task and the skill level. That’s where I think AI is really powerful in modifying assignments based on a student’s skill level.

Now, I mean, differentiation is a game changer. It’s going to reduce teacher stress and make differentiation feasible. I am seeing this already. Use those tools—it’s not cheating to use those tools to design scaffolds. Sometimes it’s a lack of clarity; they don’t know what is being asked of them. In that moment, I think it really helps to do a UX design audit.

I’m not going to spend too much time talking about it, but are you using consistent language? Are you using visuals that make it clear what students are supposed to do? Do you have simple action verbs? Have you put things into bullet points? Sometimes it’s an attention issue.

They care about the assignment, but they’re not staying focused. Create a to-do list for them, and the list includes the first five options that are easy wins they’re going to cross off. I have my materials. I’ve turned to my neighbor and said, “I will blank.” What it looks like when I’m done is blank.

What you’re doing is building metacognition and helping students think visually about time, which students with low executive function skills or students with ADHD tend to struggle with. So what are we doing? Simple strategies with a to-do list and a quick turn-and-talk, which is just a great strategy. I always have students turn to their neighbors and explain. If there’s a lack of clarity on what to do, it could be that their working memory is taxed.

What you’ve done is give multi-step directions without embedding practice into it.

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My example is this: I can hear multi-step directions in writing, and you can spend 45 minutes telling me what to write. I’m good to go; I won’t even take notes. I’ll remember it. If you give me a three-step dance move, I’m lost. People are like, “This is what the Electric Slide…” and I still don’t know the Electric Slide. I have been at weddings for 20 years. I mean, come on. For kinesthetic activities, like things that I have very little life experience with, like dancing, I need Step 1: practice, Step 2: practice, Step 3: practice.

So it might be that you need to break down those directions. If you can’t do that for all students, a quick hack is to make your directions a Screencast video. We tend to over-explain in person and simplify when we do a Screencast video; it forces you to use visuals. A student who needs to rewind and listen again or a student with language acquisition can slow it down to 0.5 and literally listen, pause, listen, pause. I’m telling you, for me, I would say 25% of my students who were not getting started began to get started once they had those Screencast videos when I was a middle school teacher.

For me, that was like, “Oof, I should have been doing this all along.” Notice these are small tweaks that we can make that lead to a big difference. That being said, sometimes it’s still just spatial proximity. Walking in the room and telling kids to get on task, I’m not going to lie, even as a college professor, sometimes for me, it literally is still nagging. Like, it’s still being, “Get to work. What should you be doing?” This still happens.

I think that’s important to acknowledge. Again, there is no magic fix, and I’m not even saying necessarily that there’s something wrong if a student is not working. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, your lesson, or them. We’re humans having human experiences. It’s normal sometimes for humans to stare, daydream, or have difficulty focusing that day.

Thinking about these different tools is really helpful. What about in the moment? If a lesson has been well designed, or maybe if it hasn’t been well designed but you’re in the middle of it right now, you’ve already given the directions, and you have this kid who is struggling to participate. How would you respond in the moment? What is your actual response to the student?

I think a quick redirect question is really helpful—something that allows them to save face. Literally getting down to their level, kneeling down at their level, and using a quiet, approachable voice. Don’t treat it as a discipline issue; don’t use your authoritative voice. Just with an approachable voice, say, “What should you be working on right now?”

Then they tell you what they should be doing. If they go, “I don’t know,” then that becomes a conversation for clarification. “Alright. Tell me what piece you’ve gotten started on. Tell me where you’re stuck. Where are you confused?” In some cases, that might be a moment where we say, “Alright. You know what? We’re going to make a to-do list. We’re going to make a checklist.”

I have the students start making a checklist; Item number 1 is literally “I made a checklist.” If they aren’t getting started because they’re failing to be self-starters and it’s purely based on a lack of focus, there’s a lack of clarity on the directions. That’s a moment to rewatch the video if you need to or clarify the directions. These are short, simple conversations that just begin with that. If, on the other hand, it’s something different, that’s when it’s going to take some work, and it might be motivation.

“I don’t want to do this.” Alright. What about it? Why is it not interesting to you? Explain to me that lack of motivation. I love frameworks in these moments. You know I love self-determination theory and the notion of how to get people from extrinsic, external regulation or interjection—doing this out of a feeling of guilt or feeding my ego—to a place of identified regulation, which is I’m doing this out of a sense of purpose, or even integration, which is I’m doing this because it’s who I am, or intrinsic motivation, which is I’m doing this out of fun.

Sometimes I just keep that mental model in mind of where they are in their motivation. And sometimes — I won’t lie — I am going to use extrinsic motivation in that moment and just say, “I know you don’t want to do this. Can you at least do this?” There will be a reward.

I used to be one of those people who said rewards are bad. Don’t use rewards. No. The reality is sometimes kids absolutely hate the task they’re doing, and you’re going to have to start with that reward and then get them to a different place.

So I think in the moment, that’s it—short conversations at their eye level, approachable, and really the goal is reflective questions.

What’s your approach when it’s not just a handful of kids—the usual ones who fall prey to this? What happens when you’re gradually releasing them to do a task? Let’s say you’re doing a level 2 in terms of independence, and you’re noticing that a good third of the class is confused.

It’s not making sense to them, and they’re asking, “Wait, what are we supposed to do?” What’s your go-to strategy in that moment where you realize there’s a large number of kids you need to adjust as a whole class or more than just one or two?

I immediately break it into one of two categories: either the directions are unclear, or they don’t know how to do it. If the directions are unclear, that’s easy. I simplify the directions. I say, “Alright. I showed you the video; it was unclear. I’m going to explain the directions to you and have you practice something related to it, and we’re going to take 10 minutes.” Kids are on board with that. I’m just open, and I say, “Hey, I can tell people are confused. I didn’t do a very good job. Give me a scale of 1 to 5 visually for you.”

I actually do this all the time even now. “On a scale of 1 to 5, how confused are you? If you feel confused, raise your hand.” If half the class raises their hand, I know I need to break things down, and I’m going to walk around while I’m simplifying the directions.

If it’s more of an issue of them just feeling confused about how to do it, that’s when I do a small group. I say, “I want everybody to work on this part of the assignment. I want to pull together a small group of you who are not getting started. We’re going to work together right now for 10 minutes on this to clarify.”

What that means is I’m just creating more options, which is also important for engagement. As you scale up independence, you want to create opportunities for them to collaborate with one another. If it’s possible, put them in pairs or groups; they might feel better having someone to ask a question to, or maybe they can actually chat about something they’re doing.

Sometimes, we are a little too strict with group work, and we forget that they need to ask each other what they’re doing. I think this is a really helpful conversation, though, about getting kids unstuck.

5. When you notice a significant number of students struggling, consider calling an impromptu workshop.

If it’s an issue of not knowing the academic concepts, that’s when I call an impromptu workshop. I say everyone can continue working on their project, but what I’m going to do is, over in this corner of the room, bring your computers or paper with you, or whatever. We’re going to do a workshop, and I’m going to guide you in how to do this—re-explain how to do it, whether it’s video editing, solving two separate equations, or using supports to back up your topic sentence.

I’m going to run a workshop. Anyone can join this workshop, and you’re not going to be punished in terms of missing the work you were doing. I let them know, “Alright? We’re going for it.”

There’s some flexibility here. I’m pulling you aside and I’m running this as an optional workshop. What that does is allow everyone who knows the material to keep going, while anyone who doesn’t gets immediate scaffolding and support.

I’ve found that when you do that with younger students, there’s an added bonus because it means more time with the teacher. If the rest of the class is working, you can say, “Come over to the rug; I’m going to workshop this.” I called it a small group, but I like the idea of a workshop a lot better. That sounds fun and interactive.

There are kids who often understand, but they want that extra time with me. They want that extra support, and why not? I would have kids also walk away afterward. They’d start for about five minutes, say, “Okay, I got it,” and then head back to their seats.

That’s fantastic. That is self-directed learning. And I love that. I think I never did that, but I should have. I should have said, “Once you get it, you can take off.” It’s a great, simple approach.

All of these strategies can be things you do quickly on the fly, and they should be manageable and feasible. They should not be overwhelming for you.

Right. It’s going to be a lot better than just continuing because sometimes we feel so pressed for time that it’s like, “I gave the directions; they need to just get started.” But taking that time to say, “Okay, I have a fair amount of students here who are not ready to get started or are not diving in,” and pulling them over for that workshop can help get things back on track. This way, you’re not wasting time redirecting each and every individual student.

I’ve found that if I’m asked the same question more than twice, I’m probably going to stop the class. I really hate interrupting people when they’re learning and working, but if I keep getting the same question, I will stop everybody because it’s clear that this issue is going to come up. I’ll say, “Let me just have your attention for one second. Several people have asked about this. I didn’t do a great job clarifying; let me explain. I meant this, this, and this,” and then let them go back to their work.

I’ll make a note for myself for next time in the lesson plans, saying, “Hey, make sure when you release them to do this, you clarify this first.” Really honing in on giving super clear, specific directions is crucial.

Sometimes it’s those on-the-fly small things, like re-explaining concepts with a small T-chart on the board. For example, we were doing lesson planning with my class the other night, and they were learning how to lesson plan for the first time. The lesson plan format they used has objectives and learning targets. I explained how to turn an objective into a learning target, but a bunch of them were confused about the difference between a learning target and an objective. Mhmm.

So, literally all it took was a quick T-chart where I wrote: “Objective is for the teacher; learning target is for the student. Objective uses complex language; learning target uses student-friendly language. An objective can be referenced but is not always said out loud; a learning target always is.” Right? It clicked.

And these are adults—pre-service teachers. It was just a simple T-chart. I used to have to do that all the time with middle school students. Sometimes it was vocabulary that got confusing. Our brains experience something called interference, where we get confused between two different ideas or what this means compared to what we learned last time.

A small T-chart, a Venn diagram, or just reworking a problem on the board for a second—these don’t always have to be massive reteaching efforts. One of the pitfalls, especially for new teachers, is they might think, “That didn’t work; stay the course and reteach it tomorrow.”

But I think it’s really important to say, “Okay, we don’t need to reteach it tomorrow. Let’s redo it now in a way that really focuses on empowerment.”

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I think it’s super important not to just keep going forward if something isn’t working; instead, adjust on the fly. Of course, it’s a lot easier to make these adjustments when you’re experienced. For example, you were able to think of that T-chart because you have so much teaching experience, but it’s harder when you’re new.

However, you don’t need a lot of tools in your toolbox; just a couple of effective strategies will suffice. Even that workshop strategy, for instance, is something that can be really effective.

6. Use artificial intelligence tools to scaffold, differentiate, tutor, and support students who frequently shut down in class.

We touched briefly on the role of AI, and I see AI as being incredibly powerful in this context. The way you can have a chatbot tutoring students and actually guiding them through concepts is remarkable.

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For instance, students can read a differentiated article and then interact with the chatbot. If you have students who respond well to that, they might feel embarrassed when you walk them through something, but they won’t feel that way in front of the bot. They can ask what they think might be a dumb question, like “What does this word mean?”

There are so many great AI tools that require minimal work for the teacher while providing substantial scaffolding support and differentiation. It’s powerful. Do you want to speak to that? What are you seeing that is working well?

It’s exactly what you said. There are lots of AI tools available. You can hop onto Magic School, Diffit, or use Conmigo with students to have a chatbot that is actually developmentally appropriate. It’s also about using existing tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to create a to-do list for students or provide scaffolding and skill practice. Sometimes you may just need a sort of old-fashioned worksheet, and I think it’s worksheets.ai or sheet.ai that can help with that. I believe you were the one who told me about it, and when I played around with it, I thought, “This is amazing!”

Having an arsenal of tools at your disposal is crucial, but it’s important not to be tool-driven. Instead, focus on being task-driven, on how to build self-direction, and then use those tools to give students what they need to develop self-management and a self-starter mindset.

I’ve found that tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are excellent at simplifying and rewording directions. Yes, I use them all the time for that. I might say, “Define this word for a 5th grader” or “How do I explain this concept to a 3rd grader?”  If you give a paragraph of instructions and ask the tool to break it down into bullet points, it will do that for you. This way, you don’t have to modify the instructions yourself.

This is new; it has only been happening in the last couple of years, and many teachers aren’t aware of how much these tools have developed and what you can do for free without having to pay for them. They allow you to be proactive in helping students become self-directed and providing them with the supports they need without you having to reinvent the wheel and do everything yourself.

I want to close the show with a takeaway truth, something for folks to remember for the week ahead. What’s something that you wish every teacher understood about what we talked about today, about student empowerment?

I think my big takeaway that I hope you would get is this:

Student empowerment is not a free-for-all. It involves teachers actively working with students, using protocols, using structures, creating systems. It requires you as a teacher to be empowered yourself. I truly believe that empowered teachers empower students. How can you design the systems, the scaffolds, the supports, and that gradual release approach in a way that’s structured but at the same time builds that student ownership?