Giving Compass' Take:

•  Beth Hawkins, writing for The 74, interviews al Mehta and Sarah Fine about their research and book called,  In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School.

• The authors' findings show that deeper learning is present in classrooms when teachers and students feel connected to the learning material. How can educators foster this connection early on in the school year?

• Read about how you make a great teacher. 

Inhabit the halls of enough schools and you’ll likely end up wondering: Why aren’t these classes better? Efforts to remake the American high school go back decades. So why, even in supposedly innovative schools, is so much of what has been described as the grammar of school — teachers talking, students listening, or not — still on display? Why aren’t students motivated to dig further into the topics at hand? Where’s the passion?

After visiting 30 schools and observing hundreds of classes, authors Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine have some answers. In a new book, In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School, they drill down on what’s happening in classes and activities where students are intrinsically engaged. Deeper learning, they conclude, isn’t the product of a type of high school or a curricular model, but something that flourishes when students and teachers are connected to subject material in meaningful ways.

In In Search of Deeper Learning, the two authors take readers on deep dives inside four high schools assigned pseudonyms that signal their school model: IB (International Baccalaureate) High, No Excuses High, Dewey High (which looks an awful lot like High Tech High) and Attainment High, a traditional comprehensive high school. In each, they find trade-offs, pockets of brilliance and a disproportionate share of student engagement in electives and extracurricular activities rather than in the classroom.

Read the full article about what the best high school classes have in common by Beth Hawkins at The 74.