Thursday, October 1, 2026
You know the narrative. Today’s teenagers are checked out, phone-addicted and impossible to reach. I’ve heard it at Board of Education meetings, dinner parties and in the comments sections of a hundred education articles. After 27 years of public education, I understand where the frustration comes from.
But I walked into a classroom recently that made me want to push back on that narrative with everything I have.
Every single student was engaged. For the entire lesson. Not one phone. Not one wandering eye.
What I witnessed was the result of something a team of dedicated secondary teachers, led by Ms. Geiger, built together through our district’s Professional Learning Community model: an interdisciplinary, project-based learning initiative in Global 9 that is as ambitious as anything I’ve seen in nearly three decades in this profession.
Here’s how it works. Students “visit” 12 major eras of human history using children’s literature as an entry point, a deceptively simple idea that makes complex historical themes accessible without talking down to anyone. After exploring all 12 eras, small groups choose one, identify an enduring issue that still resonates today and analyze it through at least three disciplinary lenses, choosing from among culture, economy, government, society and technology.
They build a real thesis — a genuinely arguable, evidence-supported central claim. They conduct real research. They use Khanmigo A.I. writing coach for structured drafting and revision, and they culminate in a Socratic seminar in which ideas are tested in open dialogue with their peers.
This is not a worksheet. This is scholarship.
For those familiar with the Designing Learning framework our district uses, the architecture here is unmistakable. The unit begins with the end in mind: Students will understand that history is a living conversation, and that enduring issues demand enduring analysis. The performance tasks — thesis, research paper, seminar — are authentic assessments in the fullest sense, perfectly aligned with our desired results. The five disciplinary lenses are transfer goals, giving students an analytical habit of mind they will carry far beyond this course. The framework’s three pillars — desired results, acceptable evidence and learning plan — are not just present in this unit. They are seamlessly woven together.
The teachers were doing something I’ve come to associate with truly masterful instruction: moving quietly and purposefully between desks, listening before speaking, prompting without interrupting. It’s a practice sometimes called kikan-shido, the Japanese concept of deliberate, supportive circulation through a working classroom. It signals to students that the teacher is present without taking over; that help is available without dependence being required. It keeps the intellectual momentum with the students, exactly where it belongs.
And the students? They were discussing productively and generously about why civilizations rise and fall, how technology transforms power and what governments owe their people. Real questions. Serious answers. No one looked up when I walked in because they simply couldn’t afford to.
I want to say this plainly: the phone problem, the engagement problem, the discipline problem were nowhere to be found. Not because anyone had confiscated anything or issued any threats, but because the work was meaningful enough that nothing else competed. When students are asked to wrestle seriously with ideas that matter, they rise to it. Every time.
The credit belongs to Ms. Geiger and her colleagues, who designed this unit together through genuine professional collaboration, modeling the same inquiry-driven, evidence-based thinking they ask of their students. That integrity of practice is rare, and it shows.
We hear a lot about what’s wrong with teenagers. I’d rather tell you what I saw: a room full of young people thinking hard, working together and taking seriously the proposition that the past has something urgent to say about who we are today and who we might choose to become. That’s what school is supposed to do. That day, it did exactly that.
In 27 years, I may not have seen better.
Daniel Rehman is superintendent of the West Hempstead School District.
