In my last years in the classroom, I struggled with something that many teachers now face: We lost our students. Inconsistencies are everywhere, and if we continue to teach in the same way, we risk losing them forever. We have to find a way to bring them back.
“There are a lot of unmotivated students,” a Pennsylvania teacher recently told me, “and I’m learning that I don’t know how to support them all.
For 14 years, I taught grades 8-12 history, social studies, sociology, and psychology. I entered the field eager to rekindle the same passion for history and community involvement that inspired me. For a while, teaching the way I was taught seemed to work. But in my later years, no matter how hard I tried to have fun, the hard delivery of the content no longer connected. The students listened, and we fell into a cycle of frustration and disengagement on both sides.
Another study made this painfully clear. I spent many hours designing a gerrymandering project where students would redraw Pennsylvania’s districts accordingly. I expected heated arguments. Instead, the teams that responded to the maps either copied the district structures or left the job entirely. What I saw as interesting, hands-on work felt like busy work to them. At that time I suspected the students. It was only later that I realized that the real issue was teaching.
Ironically, during that time, I experienced the same level of disengagement as I was forced to attend a series of cookie-cutter, heavy-handed, “sit-and-get” professional development (PD) sessions.
Repeated class expulsions and PD expulsions angered me and led me to my current role at Penn State’s Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Initiative, where I now do professional learning. I wanted to be part of something different. Our teaching method positions teachers as the drivers of their learning through clinical inquiry, a process that enables them to investigate the challenges they face and the questions they need to explore. We guide their learning through three lenses: trauma-informed practice, asset-based thinking, and contextual responsiveness. Teachers practice their own journey. They decide what hard problems to tackle, come up with compelling questions, and gather data to inform their class proposal. Rather than prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions, our programs emphasize customization, collaboration, reflection, and implementation within each teacher’s unique context.
In this new role, I realized what was missing in my classroom—and what could happen if we shifted to student-centered teaching. True engagement only comes when students—teachers or students—are in the driver’s seat.
Two program participants I work with in Pennsylvania’s Keystone Central School District demonstrate this change. Both began with the same urgent concern:
How do I get my students back?
Mya Trauger, a 7th grade Keystone Central ELA teacher, wanted to deeply engage her students in becoming stronger writers. She hoped to go beyond basic ELA skills and help them develop empathy. Rather than following a standard script, Mya created a driving question: “How can connecting with friends affect students?” He contacted his colleagues at a nearby school and they started a year-long writing buddy project.
The results exceeded his expectations. Each month, students exchanged letters with their friends, discussed their stories, family traditions, and a variety of thinking. Trauger gave his students the identity of the exchange. Soon, they weren’t asking if they should write—they were asking when the next books would arrive. Writing became meaningful, joyful, and connected to empathy and social-emotional growth
Similarly, Keystone Central social studies teacher Sara Strouse reimagined her classroom, asking: “How can I create an inquiry-based Honors Early Civilizations class?”
Strouse shifted from delivering information about ancient history to designing a classroom where students asked their own questions, interacted with peers, and explored their interests. Guide students through the program in small, supportive sections. He found that student voice and choice were essential to engagement. His students even created their own rubric, taking ownership of the process and results.
Strouse’s class has changed. Student inquiry, in which students ask questions, became the heartbeat of the classroom through Socrasi seminars, guided projects like “Ancient Rome Netflix,” and daily lessons focused on curiosity. Sarah has transitioned from content sender to presenter. “I like to see myself as a facilitator—for students to discover things for themselves and build their own understanding,” he recently told me.
These stories and many others I’ve seen and heard on our shows point to a big truth: Being a great entertainer doesn’t work anymore. Readers are not engaged because we make the content live. They engage when we focus on their questions, their agency, and their curiosity. Collaboration isn’t about completely integrating all levels—it’s about creating an environment for exploration and discovery.
I wish I had learned that lesson earlier. In my classroom, I focused too much on integration and not enough on curiosity. Educators like Trauger and Strouse show us what can happen if we flip that script: Students are motivated not by compliance but by their own motivation to learn.
If inconsistency is a problem, doubling down on the old ways won’t solve it. We need a pedagogy that says to students: Your questions matter. You can do this now. Let’s think about it together.
We must reengage students in authentic ways that prepare them to be thoughtful, empathetic participants in our increasingly complex world.
