My son, a November baby, entered preschool at 2-years-old. He was so curious, with wide blue eyes and a secret smile, but very young. Over the year, I heard reports from his teachers. “He doesn’t make eye contact.” “He has a hard time with transitions, when directed.” They tossed around the word ‘autism’ and suggested an evaluation. So, at just turned 3, Will was put through a series of tests, from a psychologist and social worker, to determine causation. We braced for the outcome. The diagnosis? Our son was ‘fine’. He didn’t make eye contact, the psychologist confirmed, because he was learning the letters on the wall, and at two, he had taught himself to read. He didn’t like transitions because he was so deeply engaged in what he was doing that he couldn’t move on until he saw his task through. What the psychologist said then stuck with me until this day (sixteen years later). “School will most likely not reward your son.” She said sympathetically. “But I hope life will.” My son is now 18, in college — wonderful, kind, social and academically engaged in his game design major. But he suffered through the years. For instance, in first grade he begged me, day after day, not to go to school because the teacher spent so much time sounding out letters. I coaxed him, and he complied, and I carry the guilt of that.

I share this story because it and the many stories of my four children’s educational experiences, along with similar ones shared by my students, have informed my teaching philosophy. Beginning preschool, my son was curious and engaged in his own way, and yet he was seen foremost as non-compliant because he didn’t want to move on when instructed. What I found from this and other incidents (e.g., my first-born left class when he was bored and wouldn’t come back) was that school from Pre-K to 12^th grade was structured to reward compliance and appeared ill-equipped to foster authentic engagement in non-compliant’ students, ironically making those students even less likely to comply meaningfully. More so, schools rarely adequately determined why students might be non-compliant, and too often non-compliance was categorized as behavioral issues.

Ironically, my sons did well by school measurements, but still were not fully invested in their learning experiences. My oldest saw high school as something to be endured so he could play football, unless some special teacher stimulated his interest. My other son watched cooking videos when he was supposed to be engaged in Do Nows for Math. Their friends would joke about the books they were assigned and the many creative ways they could avoid reading them and still do well in the class, or how homework ‘sharing’ was commonplace. (And to quell potential assumptions, these were academically achieving students in one of New York City’s Specialized High Schools.) Sitting at a school leadership meeting, I listened as the principal told us that cheating had gotten so bad, that they were relaxing deadlines. My third and most compliant, followed rules, got good grades but couldn’t put two Spanish words together in conversation with me, until two years of study.

After years of watching my sons’ levels of engagement rise and fall like pediatric seismographs, I returned to school for my PhD — not for English but for Literacy, because I came to believe, it is not primarily the content we teach students that matters most, but how we teach students that will foster deep learning. And while teachers might hyper-focus on quantifiable, measurably cognitive skills, I embraced an inquiry into the metacognitive stimuli which make students want to learn. Curiosity, Resilience, Perseverance, and most importantly to me, Interest. In my mind the point is not to create compliant students, but self-actuating life-long learners, the kind of learners who grab hold of an idea and want to know more, not students who find creative ways to avoid effort and still get good grades, or who don’t remember what they have learned six months later.

But how often do we as teachers, mistake compliance for engagement? And more deeply, how often have the ‘non-compliant’ students who enter our classrooms, come from a place where their attempts at engagement were brushed aside as peripheral to the lesson objectives? And when they enter our college freshman classrooms, how closed off have they become because of years of enforced rote memorization and denied curiosity, starting as far back as preschool?

My research niche is in student interest, and in my current inquiry I have been asking students in my classes over two years what makes them willingly engage in their learning experiences. I have identified certain truths. First, teaching adolescents and young adults is not like teaching young children. Young adults and teens, as a very natural part of their developmental trajectory, will shut down engagement if they come to believe their teacher (or parent) does not value them or what they value. Second, authentic engagement begins by building trust, community, and mutual respect, where students are willing, and even eager to authentically share their truths. Third, we as teachers need to take time to hear and absorb the shared truths of our students’ lived experiences, both past and present. Fourth, Students engage most deeply when they can relate to what they are being taught, and teachers should be able to convince any student why the subjects they are learning matter in their lives. Otherwise, those teachers risk losing student engagement before instruction even begins.

The best learning occurs where our students take subjective ownership of their learning experiences for their own authentic betterment. In nature, all animals are driven to learn, not to be compliant with nature, but to foster their own personal goals and sustain their well-being. Curiosity and Interest are manifestations of that drive, the primary stimuli engaged within the classroom to foster valuable learning outcomes.

That psychologist who assessed my son Will sixteen years ago knew the sad truth behind an outdated model of education which has persisted beyond its shelf life. School will most likely not reward your son. But I hope life will. What a sad observation, and one I did not fully understand back then. But now I have made it my mission to inspire curiosity in students to stimulate deep engagement. Once students are curious, they are open, and once they are open, that is when deep learning occurs, ultimately the only learning that matters.