It’s been so long since I wrote, that I forgot my own website address.
It’s not that there haven’t been things to share, it’s more that I don’t know where to begin. That I have lived back home in Denmark for four years now, and been a teacher here for nearly three, and yet still feel like Bambi on ice. Trying to find my footing but knowing that I am more than likely spinning in circles and sliding farther away from my intended target.
So instead of trying to catch anyone up, don’t even know if there is anyone to catch up here, I am simply beginning again.
Hello and welcome to my thoughts about teaching, about life, about being a mom, a woman and living in this world right now with all its complications and wonders.
I am supposed to be the one that teaches children to read and write in my first grade classes. This is a burden I never wanted to have and yet the puzzle of trying to make the pieces click into place, of trying to help children find their way into story, and place their stories into the world, is one I relish. Will this little thing work? What if we do this? Try this? Stop this?
My students are both willing and unwilling participants; while happy to be in school still, they don’t get to choose that they should learn how to read or write. Like so many other things, that choice has been made for them.
But how we do it, together, that can be rife with choices. Some we are exploring cautiously, some we throw ourselves into just happy to try something new.
There is so much we can do together that I feel paralyzed at times. The weight of this wondrous world of literacy so heavy that I am not sure of what is best, what to do, what to keep. Imposter syndrome at its finest.
Because am I enough for everyone? Probably not. But can I show up and try my best, yes. Can I plan something every day that is one part of an expansive path that will expand these readers and authors? Can I teach strategies, offer practice, and pull them into the magic of what it means to read and write and leave the door so wide that even the most cautious of children can bumble through. Yes. Always yes.
I can observe, and tweak, and dream, and wonder and try. I can try again when it didn’t work. I can offer myself grace when it feels like too much to do and not enough me.
Because the power we have to experiment and pilot cannot be removed when we sit in our classrooms. We are allowed to try again again and again.
Because that’s really all this great big thing is. Whether it be life or teaching. An invitation to show up every day and try again. To leave knowing that you tried something. To leave in a way that makes you want to come back.
So I may not always know what I am doing, or even how to do something well, but I know how to show up. And for now, that’s going to be good enough.
As if that is the only reason I need in order to understand why being part of the learning is not the priority. An honest answer, but also one wrapped up in so many questions.
What does boredom mean to you? I hear myself say that this is school, it cannot compete with a screen and it was never meant to. That school will be boring sometimes.
And yet I cringe at my own words. How am I agreeing that something I have meticulously planned for fun, movement, and understanding is boring? How have we gotten here.
But I hear it more and more. This idea that because I am bored I can tune out, do whatever I want, and it is up to us, the adults, to fix it. So we tinker and we attempt and yet nothing can beat the thrill of a classmate’s attention to whatever goofy decision is being made, nothing can beat the pull of the device handed back at the final bell.
We are losing every single day and killing ourselves in the process.
Because as we stand with all of our best ideas, honed sometimes from years of experience, we are also inevitably met with a feeling of worthlessness. Why bother when they don’t care anyway? And whatever happened to being invested in school?
I have been sitting with these questions for a while. And I think what we are missing is not a better lesson plan or a stronger behavior system. What we are missing is an honest reckoning with what has happened to the brains sitting in front of us. Because here is the thing about boredom in 2026.
It is not the same boredom we grew up with.
The boredom we knew had nowhere to go. So it turned inward, into daydreams and doodles and the slow work of figuring out how to tolerate discomfort. The boredom our kids know now has an immediate exit. And that exit has been engineered to be as compelling as possible.
The research on dopamine tells us something important here. The brain does not spike on reward. It spikes on the unpredictability of reward. Variable reinforcement. The same mechanism that makes a slot machine hard to walk away from is the same mechanism driving the scroll, the refresh, the check. (Schultz, 1997)
And it is the same mechanism driving the kid who just made a choice in your classroom that you cannot quite explain.
The classmate’s reaction IS the notification. The disruption IS the dopamine hit.
We are not just competing with a device. We are competing with a neurological loop that has been deliberately engineered to be almost impossible to interrupt.
In many ways, we are teaching kids whose brains have been conditioned the same way any addiction conditions a brain. I want to say that carefully, because it is not an excuse and it is not a diagnosis. But it is honest.
And when we understand it that way, two things shift.
The behavior starts to make sense in a way it did not before. And the shame we feel for not being able to reach every kid every day starts to lift a little. Because you would not expect a single teacher to be the sole intervention for any other kind of addiction.
The weight we are carrying is real. And it is not ours alone to carry.
There was a time when recognition meant something different than it does now. A nod from a teacher. A reputation built slowly among peers. Being known in a community that stuck around long enough to remember who you were last October and who you had become by June.
Integrity mattered because the same people would be there tomorrow, and they would carry the memory of you forward.
That ecosystem of recognition, earned and witnessed and slow, was one of the most powerful forces in a child’s world. And for a long time, it shaped everything.
Then something shifted. Quietly and without warning, an entire industry rewired what recognition feels like. Not just for our kids. For all of us. The brain has been rewired to need a flood. And we are standing there, with everything we have got, offering a drip.
So when he tells me he is bored, I have to be honest with myself about what I am actually hearing. Some of it might be that the environment genuinely does not fit what he needs right now. That is always worth listening to.
But some of it is also a brain in deprivation. Reaching for stimulation the only way it knows how in that moment. A brain trained to chase instant recognition that can no longer easily feel the slower, deeper kind. (Wilmer, Sherman and Chein, 2017)
Those are two different things. And they need two different responses.
We cannot keep treating them as one.
And here is the part that should stop us cold. The device being in or out of the room does not change this. The retraining has already happened. The brain sitting in front of us is already craving, already reaching, whether we can see the device or not.
This is not a conversation about screen time policies.
This is about what has happened inside the very kids we are trying to reach.
And yet the message to us keeps being the same. Do more. Be more. Engage harder. Make it more stimulating. As if the problem is our craft and not a neurological system that has been hijacked by an industry that has never once been held accountable for what it did to our kids.
We are not dopamine dispensers. We were never supposed to be.
And we cannot keep absorbing the weight of a societal problem as though it is a teaching problem.
The worthlessness we feel at the end of a hard day? That is real. But it is not evidence that we have failed. It is evidence that the playing field has changed and nobody told us.
So what do we do with that?
We stop trying to compete. Because we were never going to win that race and it was never ours to run.
Instead we look at our behavior data differently. Not as a report card on our classrooms, not as a list of kids who need fixing, but as a map of what has happened to the brains in our care. And we start asking better questions.
Not what is wrong with these kids.
What can we offer that the algorithm structurally cannot.
Because a screen responds. It does not know us. It offers instant recognition but it cannot build a reputation worth having. It performs community but it cannot witness character developing slowly in a room full of people who are also becoming something.
That ecosystem of slow, earned, witnessed recognition still exists in our schools.
Our job is not to compete with the algorithm. Our job is to help kids rediscover what it feels like to be inside something real.
That starts with naming those moments out loud when they happen. Because some of our kids have genuinely lost the reference point for what real belonging feels like, and they need us to point at it and say: this, right here, this is the thing.
Are we asking what is wrong with these kids?
Or are we asking what it looks like to build real community in a room full of brains that have forgotten how to feel it?
Because once we shift that question, everything else begins to shift too.
If you are wondering where to start, I have put together ten practical ideas below. Each one small enough to fit inside the day you already have and grounded in the research that helped me understand what we are actually up against.
Next week, in my 3rd grade Danish class, we’re starting something new — or maybe something old, just done differently.
We’re bringing the Thinking Classroom to our literacy work. I have seen the excitement from it in math, which made me wonder; how can we model the same concept but within ELA (or DLA in my case 😊).
So in true Pernille fashion, I asked if anyone was interested in seeing the slides with prompts I had made in either Danish or English, and it turned out that, yes! Many were interested, thus this blog post. I’ve made about 40 slides filled with open-ended prompts — things that make kids talk, think, argue a little, and notice patterns together. They’ll work in groups of three at whiteboards with pens in hand, no right answers in sight.
Some prompts are silly. Some are uncomfortable. Some might just stay half-finished on the board — and that’s fine. The goal isn’t to finish, it’s to think.
We’ll spend 15–20 minutes at a time exploring ideas like the rules of horror, what truth really means, or how emotions might have colors. The work will shift with them — from laughter to silence to something that feels almost like discovery.
I can’t wait to see what happens next week when we start.
If you want the Danish slides, join my Facebook group: Læselyst i Danmark.
When I first moved back to Denmark, I had the privilege of working in marketing—a completely different field from teaching, but somehow familiar. Everything was new: teams, assignments, routines. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and, unexpectedly, deeply thought-provoking when I considered my work as a teacher.
One of the first things I had to learn, fast, was how to ask questions. I knew very little, every day I was surrounded by people who knew far more than I did, even those fresh out of school. My gut and past experience were all I had to rely on. And so I asked questions—constantly. Not because I wanted to seem smart, but because I wanted to learn, to understand, to avoid assumptions that could lead me completely astray.
Even now, I ask a lot of questions. I would rather ask and realize I already know, than assume and be wrong. It’s a habit I try to bring into my classrooms every day.
We tell our students the same thing: ask questions, share your ideas, don’t be afraid. And yet, we also know it’s not easy. It’s hard to speak up when everyone else is silent. It’s hard to admit you don’t know something, especially when you’re unsure if your peers will be kind—or if they even care. And in a world dominated by AI answers, misinformation, and polarizing rhetoric, the courage to wonder, to experiment, and to be wrong can feel more vulnerable than ever.
This is why we continue to focus on questioning as a core part of learning. Not just the act of asking, but creating spaces where students feel safe enough to risk it. Where curiosity is valued above correctness. Where play and collaboration make questioning something natural, not intimidating. Because the ability to ask, to wonder, and to explore ideas is not just a classroom skill—it’s an essential part of growing up in a world that constantly challenges what we know and what we believe.
So how about a few ideas that do just that?
Curiosity is at the heart of all learning—and asking questions is the brave part of that. When we give students the space to wonder, to take risks, and to speak up, we’re teaching them far more than facts. We’re teaching them how to think, how to explore, and how to navigate a world that often values certainty over wonder.
As teachers, our job is to make that bravery feel possible. By using play, collaboration, and experimentation, we can help every child see that their questions matter, their ideas are valued, and their curiosity is worth showing—even when it feels scary. Because when students feel safe enough to wonder, that’s when real learning happens—and the joy of discovery follows them long after they leave the classroom.
One of my driving questions for the past 15 years has been a simple one; at the end of the day, would I like being a student in my own classroom? And as I have one month left of school, I feel the question pressing in on me as I think of next year and both the joy of continuing with my current class, as well as becoming the classroom teacher for a different class.
Would what we do make me feel safe? Help me engage? Make me feel like my voice was heard and respected? Would the way we learn, grow, discuss, and assess make sense to me?
This question is a conversation starter, an invitation into meaningful reflection where you get to craft the path for what you may need to shift or tweak your day-to-day practice. Because ultimately it is about creating conditions for shared power as a way to show children just how much power they can have over their own bodies and minds, even within the confinements of a publicly mandated and government decided educational system.
In fact, this question is at the core of my newly published book, Passionate Learners – How to Engage and Empower Your Students, now in its 3rd edition! But it’s not the only question, I ask. In fact, the books has more than 100 reflection questions embedded throughout, some big, some small, all meant for you to carve your own path into a more sustainable, meaningful practice.
But as a way to get you started, I decided to pull together a reflection sheet for you, modeled after questions in chapter 2 of the book. It’s 3 pages with 12 questions, that can be used by itself, as part of a larger reflection, or a book study, individually or with others. You can do some of the questions or just a few. You can write, discuss, or simply think. It’s a tool, use it as such and make it work for you.
And if you are interested in diving deeper, I highly recommend my book. I poured my heart into it, making it a practical invitation into co-created spaces that are not exhausting to be in. And right now, it is on sale.
The book is written as a companion to the practice you already have. It is not meant as a long list of abbreviations or new systems, but instead a way to help you reflect, while also offering up a major array of practical strategies and tools that you can use the very next day. It is meant as an affirmation, while also giving you access points to grow your practice so that you may feel better about the time you spend teaching, the students feel like what you do together matters, and that everyone is given tools to continue being critical questioners and thinkers outside of your learning space.
We know feedback matters. I think of all the ways I have grown because my students, my husband, my editor, and so many others have bothered to share their wisdom with me. Sometimes it stings. Sometimes it sits in the back of my mind, waiting for the right moment. And sometimes, it changes everything.
And yet, when it comes to students, we often act as if feedback is something we do to them rather than with them. We spend hours writing comments, circling errors, suggesting revisions. But how often do students actually use it? How often does our feedback feel more like judgment than guidance?
Maybe it’s time to rethink who gives feedback, how it’s given, and why it even matters. And maybe we can shift our feedback practices in ways that actually work for kids—without adding more to our plates. Here are four shifts that put students in charge of their own growth.
1. Ditch the Teacher-Only Feedback Model
We shouldn’t be the only ones giving feedback. In fact, we might be the worst at it—too rushed, too generic, too focused on what we think matters instead of what they care about.
💡 New idea: What if students got more feedback from peers, younger students, real-world audiences, and even AI tools—and less from us?
👉 Try this:
Have students share their writing with a younger class. It’s wild how quickly they’ll simplify, clarify, and revise when they realize a first grader is their audience. I have done this for years with speeches and even our nonfiction picture book unit, it alters the entire process.
Use AI to generate feedback alongside human feedback—then have students compare. What’s useful? What’s missing?
Create a “feedback portfolio” where students collect and analyze all feedback received (not just yours) and decide what’s worth acting on.
2. Scrap the Grade—But Not for the Reason You Think
We talk about “going gradeless” to reduce stress, and to make learning more meaningful, but removing grades doesn’t matter if students still see feedback as punishment.
💡 New idea: It’s not about eliminating grades—it’s about making assessments feel like coaching instead of judgment.
👉 Try this: Instead of “no grades,” try collaborative grading. Sit down with a student and decide their grade together based on evidence of growth. Let them argue their case. Shift the power.
I have done this for many years, not just with student self-assessments but also their report cards. The conversations you end up having as a way to figure out where to land offer immeasurable insight into how kids see themselves as learners.
3. Let Students Give YOU Feedback First
What if every piece of feedback we gave students had to start with them giving us feedback first?
💡 New idea: Before turning in a project, students answer:
“What’s the best part of this work?”
“Where did I struggle?”
“What specific feedback do I want from you?”
👉 Try this: Make a rule: no teacher feedback without student reflection first. If they can’t identify a strength and a challenge, they’re not ready for feedback yet.
4. The One-Word Feedback Challenge
Ever spend time crafting detailed feedback, only to have students glance at the grade and move on?
💡 New idea: What if our feedback had to fit in one word? Instead of writing long paragraphs that students ignore, we give a single word that sparks curiosity: Tension. Clarity. Depth. Risk. Precision.
👉 Try this: Give students one-word feedback and make them consider what it means. Have them write a short reflection: Why did my teacher choose this word? How does it apply to my work? This forces them to engage with feedback before receiving explanations.
Feedback shouldn’t feel like a dead-end—it should be a conversation. When we shift the balance, when students take ownership, feedback stops being something they receive and starts being something they use. And isn’t that the whole point?
