The reaction was loud. Senators, a big-city mayor, parent groups and Common Sense Media all weighed in within days. I’ve been reading the coverage all week, and I keep coming back to one thought.

The default just moved from Google’s desk to yours. Is your district ready to make that call?

What Google actually announced

In a Nov. 3 post on Google’s blog, Chris Phillips, Google’s VP and general manager of education, wrote that access to Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom and Google Search “will be entirely off for K-12 student accounts until school administrators explicitly turn them on,” with more specifics to come “in the coming months.” The same post introduced Guided Learning, an AI coach built to walk students step-by-step through problems instead of handing them answers. It is rolling out in Google Classroom now, with a Search pilot in select U.S. schools this month.

Education Week’s Grace Jiang reported the part that set off the backlash. A traditional Google search with no AI summaries will not be an option. Phillips put it plainly in a virtual meeting:

If a school is not comfortable with that and simply wants AI off, then they have the choice to not have Search on at all.

Chris Phillips, Google, as reported by Education Week (Nov. 3, 2026)

He also said “Search and AI are deeply integrated.” According to Education Week, Google says districts will be able to set things differently by grade level, so younger students could have AI and Search off while older students get the full search experience with AI summaries. Any group with AI banned loses Search too.

The critics have real points, and I want to state them fairly. Yvette Renteria, chief program officer at Common Sense Media and a former teacher, principal and district administrator, told Education Week that “Having Google Search without AI search is the best option,” and that it’s “unfortunately an option that Google is not providing.” She also worried that cutting off Search eliminates an opportunity for critical thinking in the classroom. Education Week noted that in July, Common Sense found Google’s AI Mode produced full answers to all 180 homework assignments its testers tried. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Google is “once again prioritizing profits over people.”

K-12 Dive’s Anna Merod gathered voices from districts and advocates. Lila Byock of Schools Beyond Screens called it a “hostile ultimatum.” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote that “No corporation should have the power to dictate how we teach our children.” A small district in New York is wrestling with a more practical version of the problem: its ed tech director, Alana Winnick, said Gemini is the only major AI model that meets New York’s student data privacy laws, “However, this does not mean that it’s appropriate for every learner or every task.”

But not everyone sees a villain here. Erin Mote, CEO of InnovateEDU, told K-12 Dive that schools have been “overwhelmingly” asking for more control, and that the change “invests in the trust of educators.” Her organization’s model policy for pre-K through 5th grade already calls for generative AI to be off by default until a district authorizes it for instruction.

All of this lands in a year when New York City paused student-facing AI in elementary and middle schools and Los Angeles Unified paused AI tools for students districtwide.

Off by default is right. Now the decision is yours.

Let me start with what I like. Turning AI off for student accounts until a district says yes is the right default. Tools showing up switched on overnight, in front of second graders, with no conversation, is exactly how you lose the trust of teachers and parents. Renteria said the default-off setting “partly fixes” that problem. I agree with her.

And I’ll admit the Search bundle bothers me too. If a district has decided its youngest students shouldn’t see AI summaries, it should be able to give them a plain search engine. That seems like a fair ask, and I hope Google keeps listening on it.

Here’s the thing, though. The bundle also tells us something true about where these tools are going. When the company that built the search engine says Search and AI are “deeply integrated,” the off switch is getting harder to find everywhere, not just at Google. A third-party filter here, a browser extension there…. We can keep chasing it.

I’ve seen this movie before. Back in 2019 I wrote that whack-a-mole is not a classroom management strategy that works. Block one thing and two more pop up. Banning and blocking teaches nothing. Teaching does.

AI on or off is the wrong question for Google AI in schools

The headlines frame this as a switch. On or off. Take it or lose Search. But inside a school, the real questions sound different:

• Which grade levels, and for which tasks?
• What do we want students to do themselves, and where does AI help them learn?
• How will teachers see what students are doing with it?
• How are we teaching students to question an AI summary instead of just copying it?

That Common Sense finding, AI Mode answering all 180 homework assignments, gets used as a reason to turn AI off. I read it a second way, too. If a tool can complete every assignment we hand out, that tells us something about the assignments. As I keep saying with school leaders, “AI didn’t break school — it exposed it.” Turning the tool off doesn’t change the homework.

Guided Learning is Google’s answer to the shortcut problem: coach, don’t answer, and let teachers read the chat transcripts. Will it work? I don’t know yet, and neither does anyone else. Renteria told Education Week her team hasn’t tested it. That is a reason to pilot carefully with teachers in the room, not a reason to pretend we can keep AI out of students’ lives. Adults have a choice about these tools. Our students don’t. Their future requires them. Our job is preparing students for their future, not our past.

When I co-facilitated the creation of Washington State’s K-12 AI guidance, I wrote about it in Washington State Releases K12 AI Guidance. What I keep telling districts now: get your own thinking in place before a vendor’s settings page forces the decision. In Human Still Required, I argue that the tools can draft, summarize and analyze, but judgment, relationships, trust and accountability stay with people. Deciding what an eight-year-old and an eighteen-year-old should each do with AI is exactly that kind of human work. Different tools. Same leadership work.

What school leaders can do this week

• Find out what’s on right now. Ask your tech team which AI features are currently enabled for student accounts, in Google and in every other platform you use.
• Decide by grade band, in writing. Draft what elementary, middle and high school students should be able to do with AI and Search, and why. Have that rationale ready before the settings change early next year.
• Bring teachers and families in early. A default decision made quietly in the admin console will feel like the same surprise people are angry about now.
• Teach students to read an AI summary critically. Where AI Overviews are on, build lessons on checking the summary against original sources.
• Pilot before you scale. If you try Guided Learning, start with a few willing teachers who will read the transcripts and tell you what they see.

Frequently asked questions

Is Google turning off AI in my child’s school?

Google says Gemini and Google Search will be off by default for K-12 student accounts, and administrators must turn them on. Google says the changes start early next year, with more details for schools in the coming months. Whether your child has access will depend on what your district chooses.

Can a school keep Google Search but turn off AI Overviews?

Not under the plan Google announced. Districts can turn Search on without Gemini, but Search for students will include its AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. Some districts use third-party filters or browser extensions to hide AI content.

Should elementary students use AI at school?

Thoughtful people disagree. Some districts and groups, like InnovateEDU’s model policy, keep generative AI off by default for the youngest grades until a district authorizes specific uses. The key is a clear, grade-appropriate plan that teachers and families understand, and teaching students how AI works, not leaving it to a default setting.

I don’t think Google gets a pass here. Schools should have a real choice about Search. But I also don’t want us to miss the bigger signal. The decision about how students learn with AI now sits squarely with school leaders, and that’s where it should sit.

If your district is working through this before the switch flips, this is the work I do with school leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So when that setting lands in your admin console, what will your district decide, and who will be in the room when you decide it?

Sources

• Google’s New Rules Hand Schools Hard Choices About AI and Search — Education Week, Grace Jiang, Nov. 3, 2026
• Google will turn off its search engine for schools by default. Is it an AI ‘ultimatum’? — K-12 Dive, Anna Merod, Nov. 5, 2026
• Designing responsible AI for learning — Google (The Keyword), Chris Phillips, Nov. 3, 2026

The post Google Made AI Off by Default. Now Schools Have to Decide. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Neither story says bans are a failure. Neither says they’re a miracle. What they say is more interesting: students are drawing a line that a lot of adults aren’t, and the habit we’re trying to build doesn’t stop at the school door.

Here’s the thing…. If we want kids to manage their phones, at some point we have to teach them how.

What students are saying about cell phone bans in schools

The poll comes from Hopelab, working with Data for Progress, in a report titled “What If Something Happens?” FingerLakes1 covered the findings on November 5. According to that coverage, the survey reached 1,473 young people ages 13 to 24 between June 24 and July 10, 2026, and the report focuses on the 487 high school students in that group, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points for that subgroup.

The headline numbers:

• 64% of high school students support banning phones during class.
• 80% oppose all-day bans, including 59% who strongly oppose them. Only 17% support an all-day ban.
• 42% said their school already has an all-day ban, 38% a classroom-only restriction, and 19% no ban at all.
• Support for classroom bans was higher where students already live with one: 68% at schools with classroom restrictions, compared with 49% at schools with no ban.

The part that stopped me was the why. When students who opposed all-day bans explained themselves, half of them (50% of 173) said they needed a phone for emergencies. On its own summary of the report, Hopelab describes the most frequent theme as fear: of school shootings, of medical emergencies, of not being able to reach family in a crisis. Another 15% said phone use should be fine outside of class, and 10% pointed to trouble contacting family. Hopelab also reports that 12% of students who opposed classroom bans said they need their phones for classwork, things like calculators, digital textbooks, translation tools and reading aids.

And the students who support bans? They gave the reasons you’d expect: fewer distractions, better focus, less cheating. One student put it this way:

it truly does help people focus, even if they don’t want to admit it.

High school student, Hopelab survey

Another, on the other side:

I think the idea of not having a way to communicate is dangerous.

High school student, Hopelab survey

Both of those students are being reasonable. That’s the point.

I want to be fair about what this poll is and isn’t. As the FingerLakes1 piece notes, it measures attitudes, not whether bans improve learning or safety. It isn’t a before-and-after study. And the same article points out that New York’s own positive numbers on its statewide policy, which covers lunch, recess, study halls and passing time, come from educator observations. Opinions on all sides are still running ahead of the outcome data.

Meanwhile in Finland, the scrolling moved

Finland’s national restrictions took effect on August 1, 2025, in comprehensive schools. As NordiskPost reported on November 5, pupils can’t use phones during lessons unless it’s for learning, personal health care or as an assistive device, and each school sets its own rules for breaks and meals. Some, like two schools in Mikkeli, ban phones during breaks and meals as well.

Eini Karvonen of the Finnish Road Safety Council told the public broadcaster Yle that pupils were using their phones more on their school journeys after the restrictions, which raises real attention concerns in traffic. One of the Mikkeli headteachers described a near miss with a young cyclist looking at a phone. The other said pupils pull their phones out quickly after school but that he hadn’t heard of any phone-related dangerous incidents on the way home.

NordiskPost is careful here, and I want to be too. This is one expert’s observation. There are no figures measuring the increase, nothing showing the ban caused it, and no reported rise in accidents. But the Road Safety Council’s guidance is telling: it suggests families agree with their kids on when to check messages (in the schoolyard after lessons or at home, not while traveling) and agree on those rules with other parents.

Read that again. The fix they’re recommending isn’t another ban. It’s a conversation and an agreement. That’s teaching.

A ban buys time. Teaching builds the habit.

I’ll admit it: I understand why schools are doing this. Teachers are tired of competing with a notification. A classroom where phones are put away during instruction is a reasonable thing to want, and according to this poll, most students agree. I’m not saying throw that out.

But here’s what the headline leaves out. A policy that removes the phone for seven hours doesn’t teach a student what to do in hour eight. If the habit hasn’t been built, it just shows up somewhere else, maybe on a bike, maybe on a crosswalk, maybe at 11 p.m. in a bedroom.

I wrote about this back in 2013 in What Does It Mean To Disconnect?, and the question hasn’t changed: do our students know when to disconnect, and do they understand why? We have to teach both sides of that, when to connect and when to put it away. Locking the phone up answers neither question for them.

And look at what students told us. Their biggest worry isn’t missing a group chat. It’s “what if something happens?” You can think that fear is out of proportion or you can think it’s completely rational. Either way, a policy that ignores it isn’t going to earn student trust, and a policy without trust turns into a daily game of enforcement. That’s the whack-a-mole problem all over again.

In Human Still Required, I make the case that the hard parts of school leadership are still the human parts: judgment, relationships, trust. Phone policy is a perfect example. The pouch is a tool. Deciding what the policy is for, explaining it, listening to students and adjusting it when it isn’t working is leadership. Different tools. Same leadership work.

Preparing students for their future, not our past. I keep coming back to that line because it matters here. It means students leave us able to manage the device that will be in their pocket for the rest of their lives. That doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t happen in a locker.

What schools can do this week

Hopelab’s own recommendations line up with a lot of what I’d tell a school leader. Here’s my version:

1. Treat classroom limits and all-day bans as two separate decisions. Most students already support the first one. Don’t assume that support carries over to the second, and evaluate them separately.
2. Answer “what if something happens?” out loud. Put your emergency protocol in writing for students and families: how a student gets help, how a parent reaches their child, and what happens during a lockdown.
3. Bring students into the room. Ask a group of students to review your policy and tell you where it doesn’t make sense. Co-design beats compliance.
4. Build in the learning exceptions. If students rely on phones for translation, reading aids or as a calculator because the school laptop is broken, solve that first.
5. Teach the after-school habit. Spend one advisory period on when and where to check messages, including on the way home, and send the same conversation starters to families.

Frequently asked questions

Do students support cell phone bans in schools?

Many do, during class. In the Hopelab and Data for Progress poll, 64% of high school students supported classroom phone bans. Support drops sharply for all-day bans: 80% opposed them and only 17% were in favor.

Why do students oppose all-day phone bans?

The top reason was safety. Half of students who explained their opposition to all-day bans said they needed a phone for emergencies, and Hopelab says the most common theme was fear of school shootings, medical emergencies or being unable to reach family.

Do phone bans improve learning?

This poll can’t answer that; it measures student attitudes, not outcomes. Some states report positive results, but those reports are often based on educator observations. The honest answer is that schools should track their own data and keep teaching healthy phone habits alongside any policy.

Where this leaves us

I keep coming back to how sensible these students sound. Put it away in class? Sure, it helps. Take it away all day with no plan for an emergency? That scares them. That’s not a generation that can’t handle technology. That’s a group of young people asking adults to think the policy through.

If your school or district is working through its phone policy, or the bigger question of what students need to learn about technology, this is the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So I’ll ask you: has your school asked students what they think of its phone policy? And what did they say?

Sources

• Students support classroom cellphone limits but still oppose all-day bans, report finds — FingerLakes1.com (Staff Report), November 5, 2026 (reporting on Hopelab and Data for Progress, “What If Something Happens?”; Hopelab report)
• Finland’s school phone ban may mean more scrolling on the way home — NordiskPost, Veera Lahti, November 5, 2026

The post Students Back Phone Limits. All-Day Bans Are Another Story. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Here’s the thing. For years we’ve prepared students to describe themselves on a single page. A list of classes, a GPA, a club or two, maybe a part-time job. Now that page gets read by an algorithm first, and the entry-level job on the other side of it expects more judgment than it used to.

So what will our graduates actually be able to show?

What’s happening: AI is in the hiring room

On November 1, Northeastern’s Institute for Information, the Internet & Democracy released AI in the Hiring Room: What America’s Hiring Decision-Makers Think About AI, by John Wihbey, David Lazer, Ata Aydin Uslu and Alisa Zomer. It draws on a nationally representative survey of 38,375 adults fielded this summer and zooms in on the 8,174 people who said they can hire staff or significantly influence hiring.

A few findings stood out to me:

• 47% of hiring decision-makers say AI has changed how they hire. That’s a lot, but it also means the shift is not universal, and the report says so directly.
• 54% use AI tools to screen résumés at least to some extent. At employers with 500 or more workers it’s 68%. In information and technology it’s 83%.
• Among those whose hiring has changed, 26% are hiring fewer entry-level workers because of AI and 7% are hiring more. Another 28% are hiring about the same number but expect entry-level staff to do more, or higher-level, work with AI. 38% report no change.
• If a candidate had used AI for all of their writing or coding assignments in school, 40% say that would encourage them to hire, 21% say it would discourage them, and 39% say it would make no difference.
• 38% say a college degree is now more valuable for entry-level hires since the rise of AI. 40% say it’s about the same, and 16% say it’s less valuable.

Northeastern Global News reporter Katya Poltorak wrote up the findings on November 2 in a piece on how AI is changing what’s in store for new hires and managers. Wihbey told her, “The fears around entry-level jobs are real.” The same article quotes employment lawyer Gary Friedman of Seyfarth Shaw, who put the choice in front of employers about as clearly as I’ve seen it: “AI can hollow out the bottom rung of the ladder or it can turn it into an escalator.”

A few days earlier, on October 28, Axios hosted a live event here in Seattle on the same question. In Axios’ recap of how employers are rethinking AI’s role in entry-level work (October 30), Microsoft corporate vice president Katy George described automating traditional “grunt work” and said, “What we can do instead is to redesign the early career to, frankly, make them more interesting jobs.” Then came the catch: “But it requires [entry-level workers] to actually level up in terms of judgment and perspective much faster.”

To be fair, Axios also noted that Microsoft is reportedly offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its global workforce, so the “we’re still hiring” message comes with some tension. And Laura Ruderman of the Technology Alliance said something on that stage that every school leader should hear: “I hear a lot from educators now that critical thinking and all of those soft skills are coming back into vogue.”

Why student digital portfolios matter more now

Let me be careful here. This survey does not say the résumé is dead, and it doesn’t say employers are asking for portfolios. Most hiring decision-makers report no change or steady entry-level hiring. Plenty still value a degree. Nearly half (46%) say they don’t even look for AI skills. If you’re a school leader who reads this and thinks “so not much has changed,” I understand that reading.

But put the pieces together. Software is often the first reader. The applications are piling up (the Northeastern article cites Greenhouse data showing application volume has more than doubled since 2022). And when the job is redesigned, the person in it is expected to bring judgment sooner. A one-page list of what a student took doesn’t show judgment. Work does.

I’ve been saying a version of this for a long time. Back in 2010 I wrote about blogs as web-based portfolios, and in 2013 in Millennials and the Job Market I argued that a public digital portfolio and real work for real audiences would matter more than a paper résumé. The tools have changed. The argument has only gotten stronger.

When an algorithm and then a busy human both have a few seconds with you, what helps is a body of work someone can actually look at. A project you built for a local business. A data analysis you presented to the school board. A piece of writing that went through four drafts and you can explain why. That’s the evidence a résumé can only claim.

Preparing students for their future, not our past, means preparing them for a hiring process where they will be read by software, asked to show judgment early, and expected to explain their work.

The AI question every graduate will have to answer

The finding I’d put in front of every high school staff meeting is that 40 / 21 / 39 split. Employers do not agree on what it means when a student used AI for all their schoolwork. Some see it as a plus. Some see it as a red flag. A big group doesn’t care.

What does that tell us? I’d argue it tells us the question isn’t really “did you use AI?” It’s “how did you use it, and can you explain your thinking?” A student who can say, “I used AI to get a first draft of the code, it broke in these two places, and here’s how I figured out why,” is showing exactly the judgment Katy George was talking about. A student who can’t explain how their work was made is a risk no matter which camp the employer is in.

This is where schools have real work to do. In Human Still Required I argue that “AI didn’t break school — it exposed it.” Hiring is exposing the same thing. If our assignments can be completed without judgment, they can be completed without the student. Portfolios that show process, drafts, decisions and reflection are one of the best ways I know to make the thinking visible again.

What schools can do this week

1. Pick one course or grade level and start a portfolio habit. Not a once-a-year showcase. One piece of work a month, posted with a short reflection: what I made, who it was for, what I’d change.
2. Ask students to document their AI use. A simple line on each assignment: what tool, what for, what I changed, what I checked. Practice now means a confident answer in an interview later.
3. Find one real audience. A local employer, a city department, a nonprofit or your own district office. Ask for one problem students can work on and present back.
4. Review your graduate profile against the evidence. If your portrait of a graduate says “critical thinker” and “communicator,” where does a student show that? If the answer is a transcript, that’s a gap.
5. Invite an HR or hiring manager into a staff meeting. Ask them how their résumé screening works now and what they wish candidates could show. Then listen.

Frequently asked questions

Do employers actually look at student digital portfolios?

Some do and some don’t, and the Northeastern survey didn’t ask about portfolios directly. What it does show is that AI often screens résumés first and that many employers expect entry-level hires to bring more judgment. A portfolio gives a student concrete examples to point to in an application, an interview or a conversation with a mentor.

Will using AI on schoolwork hurt my child’s job chances?

Employers are split. In the Northeastern survey, 40% of hiring decision-makers said heavy AI use in school would encourage them to hire, 21% said it would discourage them and 39% said it made no difference. The safest skill is being able to explain how and why you used AI and what you did to check its work.

What should a high school portfolio include?

Real work for real audiences, with the thinking showing: drafts, decisions, feedback received and what changed. Projects with community partners, internships or work-based learning, and a short reflection on each piece are a strong start. Quality and explanation matter more than volume.

I don’t think the sky is falling on entry-level work, and this survey doesn’t say it is. But it does say the first rung is changing, and the first reader is often a machine. Our students deserve to walk into that with more than a list.

If your school or district is working through what a graduate should be able to show in an AI-shaped job market, this is the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So here’s my question for you: if an employer looked at your students’ work tomorrow, not their transcripts, what would they find?

Sources

• AI in the Hiring Room: What America’s Hiring Decision-Makers Think About AI — Institute for Information, the Internet & Democracy, Northeastern University (John Wihbey, David Lazer, Ata Aydin Uslu, Alisa Zomer), November 1, 2026
• Fewer jobs, new opportunities: AI is changing what’s in store for new hires and managers alike — Northeastern Global News, Katya Poltorak, November 2, 2026
• Axios Live: How employers are rethinking AI’s role in entry-level work — Axios (via Yahoo Finance), Claire Moberg, October 30, 2026

The post Software Reads the Résumé First. What Will Your Graduates Show? first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

And here’s the thing: according to a new survey covered by Fortune, it mostly doesn’t pay off. Only 8% of workers said being available after hours won them a promotion.

So why do so many workplaces still run on it? And why is it Gen Z, the generation we keep being told lacks commitment, that is the first to question the deal?

What the new research on performative availability says

On November 2, Jeff LeBlanc, a lecturer at Bentley University, wrote a column for Fast Company titled “Gen Z is challenging ‘performative availability.’ Why aren’t Millennials and Gen X doing the same?” He defines performative availability as the compulsion to demonstrate commitment through visibility rather than through the value of your work, and he puts it plainly: “If you respond to a message at 9 p.m., you’re a dedicated employee.” That’s the unwritten rule he says too many workplaces still follow.

His column draws on a survey of 1,006 American workers from Software Finder, a software comparison platform. In that survey, 71% of respondents said they felt pressured to be available outside of working hours. The pressure was higher for Millennials and Gen X (72%) than for Gen Z (65%).

Then on November 8, Fortune’s Cordell Jones reported more of the same survey’s findings. 69% said after-hours availability has not meaningfully improved their careers. Only 8% credit it with a promotion and 12% with a raise or bonus. Meanwhile, 40% said it worsened their work-life balance, 38% said it raised their stress, and 32% said it worsened burnout. Workers the survey describes as “always on” were 2.8 times as likely as boundary-setters to report worsened burnout.

To be fair to the other side of this, the always-on group was much more likely to say availability helped them: 57% said so, compared with 8% of boundary-setters, and 17% of always-on workers credited availability with a promotion. And 49% of all workers said they worry that setting boundaries could hurt their careers. That worry isn’t irrational. Fortune also pointed to a 2025 study in which managers rated employees who unplugged after hours as more productive, but less committed and less deserving of promotion, even when their performance reviews were identical.

A quick honest note on the data: this is one survey from a software company, and the coverage doesn’t give much detail on methodology. I wouldn’t build a policy on any single number in it. But the pattern lines up with something much larger. Fortune notes that Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, with more than 22,500 respondents in 44 countries, found 48% of Gen Zs and 45% of Millennials saying they feel burned out.

Gen Z isn’t lacking commitment. They’re questioning the proof.

I hear some version of this in almost every session I run with leaders: “Young people just don’t want to put in the time.” I understand where that comes from. Many of us built careers in workplaces where being seen was part of the job. Answering fast was how you showed you were serious.

But look at what the data actually says. The group feeling the least pressure to perform availability is Gen Z, and the people LeBlanc says may be reinforcing the expectation, often without meaning to, are the Millennials and Gen X leaders now running teams. His conclusion is one I agree with: “It’s a managerial issue.”

That’s not a knock on Millennials or Gen X. It’s a knock on a system that taught all of us to use responsiveness as a stand-in for quality, because quality is harder to see.

In The Next Turn, I argue that this is exactly what’s breaking right now. When AI can produce a draft, a summary or a slide deck in seconds, effort and activity stop being reliable signals of value. Being online at 9 p.m. tells you even less. What leaders actually need to see is judgment: what someone decided, why, and what happened because of it. “The standards remain. The proof system changes.” Performative availability is an old proof system, and a lot of people are still paying for it in burnout.

And yes…. this is also why I keep saying “Gen Z is not the problem. Gen Z is the clearest signal.” When the youngest people in your organization push back on a norm, they are often just the first ones to say out loud that the value exchange doesn’t add up.

This starts long before the first job

I can’t write about this without thinking about schools. For years I’ve argued that we need to teach students when to connect and when to disconnect, and to talk with them about why. I wrote about it back in 2016 in The power of disconnecting. Disconnecting isn’t anti-technology. It’s a skill, and it’s one adults in workplaces are clearly still learning.

Here’s my question for schools: are we teaching students that the quality of their work is what matters, or that being responsive is? When a teacher replies to a student at 11 p.m., or a learning platform pings a kid on a Saturday night, what habit are we modeling? Our students are watching how the adults around them handle being always reachable.

Preparing students for their future, not our past, means helping them build healthy boundaries with technology and the confidence to show the value of their work, so they don’t walk into their first job believing a fast reply is the same as a good one.

What leaders can do this week

• Name the real after-hours needs. LeBlanc’s advice is to separate actual performance needs from performative expectations. Write down which situations truly require a response outside working hours. Everything else can wait until morning.
• Set and say team communication norms. Put them in writing. If you send messages late because that’s when you think, tell your team you don’t expect a reply until the next workday. Better yet, schedule the send.
• Audit what you praise. Look at the last few times you publicly thanked someone. Was it for the quality of a decision or a contribution, or for being quick and available?
• Make contribution visible. Give early-career employees clear ways to show their thinking: short project debriefs, decision logs, portfolios of work. If you want them to stop performing availability, give them a better way to be seen.
• Check your promotion conversations. If “always there when we need them” is showing up as a reason for promotion, ask what results sit behind it.

Frequently asked questions

What is performative availability?

Performative availability is the pressure to show you care about your job by being visible and reachable, such as answering messages late at night or on vacation, rather than through the value of the work itself. Bentley University lecturer Jeff LeBlanc used the term in a November 2026 Fast Company column.

Does answering work messages after hours help your career?

For most workers in a recent Software Finder survey of 1,006 U.S. employees, no: 69% said it hadn’t meaningfully improved their careers and only 8% linked it to a promotion. Workers who were “always on” were more likely to say it helped, but they were also far more likely to report worse burnout.

How should managers handle Gen Z employees who set boundaries?

Treat boundaries as a conversation about expectations, not a sign of low commitment. Be clear about which situations truly need an after-hours response, and evaluate people on the quality of their contributions. Clear expectations help every generation on the team, not only the youngest employees.

The bottom line

Being available isn’t the same as being valuable. It never was, but in a world where AI is changing what work even looks like, the gap between the two is getting harder to ignore. Gen Z just happens to be the first to say it out loud.

If your school or organization is working through how to lead across generations while AI changes how work happens, this is the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So let me ask you: what does your organization actually reward, the work or the reply time?

Sources

• Gen Z is challenging ‘performative availability.’ Why aren’t Millennials and Gen X doing the same? — Fast Company, Jeff LeBlanc, November 2, 2026
• Gen Z pushes back on ‘performative availability’ as only 8% of workers say it won them a promotion — Fortune, Cordell Jones, November 8, 2026

The post Availability Isn’t Performance. Stop Rewarding It Like It Is. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Same researcher. Same general idea. Opposite outcomes.

Here’s the thing… if you only read one of those studies, you could write a very confident headline either way. Read them together and the story isn’t about the tool at all. It’s about design.

What the two AI tutor studies found

Jing Liu directs the Center for Educational Data Science and Innovation at the University of Maryland. According to Barshay’s Proof Points column, Liu wanted the two studies released together precisely to show that AI in education is neither all good nor all bad. I appreciate that. It’s rare to see a researcher put a positive and a negative result side by side on purpose.

Study one: a middle school math tutor. About 6,000 middle schoolers in Deer Valley, Arizona, used an AI math tutor called Goblins during the 2025-26 school year. It offered step-by-step help through text chat, a virtual whiteboard and spoken conversation, and could work in Spanish and six other languages. Students who solved at least two problems a week scored significantly higher on a year-end math test than similar students who used it less or not at all. Accelerate, the nonprofit that commissioned the study, estimated the 0.11 standard deviation difference at roughly three extra months of learning.

Important caveats, and the researchers say them out loud: students weren’t randomly assigned, so more motivated students may have both practiced more and scored higher. Accelerate is planning a randomized controlled trial. And only 6% of students used the tool for at least half an hour a week. Most of the use came through work teachers assigned.

Study two: a college course assistant. Before rolling out an AI course assistant to about 40,000 students, University of Maryland Provost Jennifer King Rice asked Liu to test it. In fall 2025, 15 of 30 professors were randomly assigned to add the assistant to their courses. It was available 24/7 inside Canvas and trained on the syllabus, readings and assignments. The result, written up in a randomized trial posted to EdWorkingPapers: about 1,100 students with the assistant earned lower grades than about 1,200 students without it, by an average of 0.11 points on a four-point scale. They also engaged less with course materials and were less likely to go to office hours or meet with instructors and peers. The negative effects were larger for first-generation students.

Only 15% of students in those classes used the assistant, and most asked it for answers rather than tutoring. Liu and Rice suspect the tool’s constant presence signaled that AI use was encouraged, which may have pushed students toward outside chatbots too. They are clear that they can’t confirm that.

AI tools “could exacerbate inequities in learning outcomes.”

Jennifer King Rice, University of Maryland provost, quoted in The Hechinger Report

Let’s give credit where it’s due. Maryland tested the tool before rolling it out to everyone, and then made the bad news public. That’s exactly what we should want from every school and university buying AI right now.

Here’s what the headline leaves out

If you’re someone who believes AI is making students lazy, the college study looks like proof. And I want to be fair here: it’s a randomized trial, it’s a real negative result, and the finding that first-generation students were hurt most should worry all of us. I’m not going to wave that away.

If you’re someone who believes AI tutors will finally personalize learning for every kid, the middle school study looks like proof. But it’s correlational, and most students barely used the tool.

Neither camp gets to declare victory. Also worth saying: these are different students in different settings, middle school math and college courses, so this isn’t a clean head-to-head comparison. What we can do is look at what was different about how each tool showed up in students’ lives.

In one, teachers decided when and how to use it, assigned the problems, and the district recommended it as a supplement, not the core. In the other, the tool was simply there, all day and all night, next to every assignment, and students were mostly left to figure out what it was for. So they used it for what most of us would use it for when no one has taught us otherwise… getting the answer.

That’s not a technology finding. That’s a teaching and design finding. I wrote about this back in 2009 in What’s the purpose of going 1:1, when schools were handing out laptops and hoping learning would change on its own. It didn’t then. Handing out an AI tutor and hoping won’t work now either.

This is why I keep saying, and why I wrote Human Still Required for school leaders: AI didn’t break school — it exposed it. If our courses already let students get by on answers, an always-on answer machine will expose that fast. The tool can explain, summarize and give feedback. Deciding what the learning is for, and designing the task so students actually have to think, is still human work.

The question is the skill

A second piece in The Hechinger Report this week connects right to this. Hiranya K. Nath, an economics professor at Sam Houston State University, wrote a Teacher Voice essay on teaching students to ask better questions. He asked his students to act as financial journalists and write three questions for a senior Federal Reserve official, and told them he would grade the questions, not the answers. Students who were comfortable explaining concepts hesitated. Others thought harder than they had all semester.

His point is that AI’s output depends on the quality of the questions we bring to it, so asking good questions becomes more valuable, not less. Two lines from his essay stuck with me:

“The tool does not define the problem. We do.” … “We are preparing students for a world of answers while they are entering a world of questions.”

Hiranya K. Nath, The Hechinger Report

Put that next to the Maryland result. Students who asked the assistant for answers got answers, and grades went down. That’s not a surprise. It’s what happens when we never teach the difference between asking for an answer and asking for help understanding.

Preparing students for their future, not our past, means teaching that difference on purpose. Their future includes AI tutors, AI assistants and AI everything. Banning the tools doesn’t teach that skill. Leaving them lying around doesn’t either. Teaching does.

AI tutors in schools: what to do this week

• Ask who decides when the tool is used. In the study with positive results, teachers assigned the work. If your AI tutor is just “available,” ask what students are actually using it for.
• Pilot before you scale, and measure it. Maryland tested before a 40,000-student rollout. Pick a few classes, compare, and be willing to share what you find, good or bad.
• Look at who is helped and who is hurt. The college study found bigger negative effects for first-generation students. Break your own data down by student group before you call anything a success.
• Teach the “help, not answers” move explicitly. Model prompts like “Don’t give me the answer, ask me a question that helps me find my mistake.” Have students reflect on how they used the tool.
• Grade a question. Borrow Nath’s idea. Once this week, assess the questions students write instead of the answers they give.

Frequently asked questions

Do AI tutors improve student learning?

The evidence is mixed. A study of about 6,000 Arizona middle schoolers linked regular use of an AI math tutor to higher test scores, but it can’t prove the tool caused the gains. A randomized trial at the University of Maryland found an always-available AI course assistant was linked to lower grades and less engagement.

Why would an AI tutor make grades go down?

In the Maryland study, most students who used the assistant asked it for answers rather than tutoring, and students engaged less with course materials and office hours. The researchers suspect the tool’s constant presence signaled that AI use was encouraged, but say they can’t confirm that.

Should my school stop using AI tutors?

Not necessarily. These studies suggest the design matters more than the tool: who assigns the work, what the tool is for, and whether students are taught to use it for understanding. Pilot carefully, measure results by student group, and adjust.

The tool was never the point

We’ve had this conversation with every new technology I’ve seen come into schools in my 27 years in education. Interactive whiteboards, laptops, tablets, now AI. The tool gets the headline. The design decides the result.

I’d love to see more schools do what Maryland did: test, measure, and share the results even when they’re uncomfortable. If your school or district is trying to figure out where AI fits, this is the work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So here’s my question for you: if you looked at how AI tools are showing up in your classrooms right now, would you say they’re designed in, or just left lying around?

Sources

• Same researcher, opposite results — Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report (Proof Points), November 2, 2026
• The Effects of Course-Integrated AI Tutoring on Student Performance and Engagement: A Randomized University Trial — Jing Liu, Jennifer King Rice et al., EdWorkingPapers, October 2026
• TEACHER VOICE: In the age of AI, we are teaching the wrong skills. Let’s shift to teaching them more about how to think — Hiranya K. Nath, The Hechinger Report, November 2, 2026

The post Two AI Tutor Studies, Opposite Results. The Tool Wasn’t the Point. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Award-winning author Amy Sarig (A.S.) King joins Tricia to discuss her latest novel, It Came From the Creek, and what it truly means to foster rebels, revolutionaries, and creative thinkers in a world dominated by standardized testing. From students overturning a massive 3,000-book ban in Pennsylvania to late-night FOIA document deep-dives into 1970s chemical dumping, King pulls back the curtain on how real-world outrage transforms into middle-grade fiction.

Key Takeaways:

• Youth Activism in Action: How students in Central York School District succeeded in reversing a massive school board book ban when adult appeals fell flat.

• The Creative Crisis in Classrooms: Why standardized testing pushed creative writing out of 90–95% of American public schools—and why viewing writing as “puzzle-solving” gives young people lifelong agency.

• The Anatomy of an Idea: How a demolished haunted house, childhood friendships, and an EPA chemical dump converged to form It Came From the Creek.

• Digging Up the Truth: King’s obsessive research process, scouring thousands of pages of EPA records and uncovering toxic waste cover-ups to mirror the realities young readers face.

• The Power of Lifelong Friendships: Why navigating friendships across gender lines, growing through self-doubt, and nurturing authentic bonds remains at the core of human storytelling.

Resources & Mentions:

• Books mentioned: It Came From the Creek, Attack of the Black Rectangles, and Me and Marvin Gardens by A.S. King; The Pigman by Paul Zindel

• Central York School District student-led book ban challenge

• EPA toxic waste reporting and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) research

Check out this episode of Shifting Our Schools

The post Raising Rebels one Great Read at a Time | A.S. King first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

What can a collapsible water bottle, a portable washing bag, and a multi-iteration laptop stand teach students about the future of work? In this episode, Jeff Utecht and Tricia Friedman reconnect in person to break down their favorite travel and remote-work gear—and explain how educators can use these everyday innovations to inspire authentic student entrepreneurship, design thinking, and marketing lessons.

From analyzing packaging design and social listening to projecting the gear needed for emerging careers like drone pilots, Jeff and Tricia share practical ways to bridge the gap between classroom inquiry and real-world innovation.

Want to check out the special page for our Business/Entrepreneurship learning?

https://www.shiftingschools.com/pack-for-a-job

What We Discuss in This Episode:

• Real-World Innovation in a Bag: How the Scrubba wash bag and Matador flat-pack bottles demonstrate sustainable design and solve modern traveler pain points.

• The Iteration Journey: What students can learn from the Roost Laptop Stand’s evolution from a Kickstarter project to version 3.

• Branding & Consumer Signals: Why packaging, hidden messages (like Bellroy’s internal tags), and temperature retention (Fellow Carter Move Mug) create loyal brand fans.

• Classroom Challenge: How to challenge students to identify niches, reverse-engineer viral products (like Dutch Bros or Takis), and price their own solutions.

• Future Literacy & Emerging Jobs: Anticipating the travel and productivity tools required for the next generation of careers.

Check out this episode of Shifting Our Schools

The post From Kickstarter to Classroom: Teaching Entrepreneurship Through Everyday Gear first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

What will it actually take—mentally, physically, and socially—to send humans to Mars and bring them back?

In this episode, host Tricia sits down with Dr. Mark Shelhamer, former Chief Scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program, Professor at Johns Hopkins University, and author of Are We Ready for Mars?. Dr. Shelhamer shares his journey from biomedical engineering to astronaut healthcare, diving deep into the unexpected psychological and behavioral hurdles of long-duration space travel. Together, they explore why technical engineering is only half the battle, what the “Earth out of view” effect does to the human mind, how crew autonomy is forged under intense isolation, and why learning to deal with the unexpected in deep space holds profound lessons for human resilience right here on Earth.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The path to space healthcare: Moving from pacemakers and vestibular balance research into NASA human spaceflight .

• The commercial space era: Why private and government collaboration has shifted Mars from science fiction into serious mission planning .

• Expanding the human experience: The philosophical and scientific incentives behind tackling a multi-year planetary mission .

• The “Earth out of view” effect: How profound isolation, communication delays, and total autonomy reshape astronaut psychology .

• Resilience & the unexpected: Why preparing for what you cannot predict is the single biggest operational lesson of spaceflight .

• Generalists in extreme environments: How music, calculated risk-taking, and interdisciplinary thinking foster adaptive teams .

About the Guest: Dr. Mark Shelhamer is a Professor of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the former Chief Scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program . His upcoming book, Are We Ready for Mars?, examines the critical biomedical and psychological challenges standing between humanity and the Red Planet .

Check out this episode of Shifting Our Schools

The post What Sending Humans to Mars Teaches Us About Human Resilience first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Then, three days later, Harvard published a piece that looked at the same problem and came back with a much longer list of causes. Same crisis. Very different story.

Here’s the thing… both of these can be true at the same time. And if we only listen to the first one, we’re going to fix the wrong thing.

What’s happening with reading decline and technology

The Connecticut story, written by Livi Stanford for the Hartford Courant and republished on October 26, draws on a Connecticut Education Association survey of 113 teachers. More than half agreed it is harder to get students to finish a chapter book than it was five years ago; only 10 disagreed. Teachers described students who lack the stamina for longer texts and the vocabulary for complex ones. One called some students “functionally illiterate.” Another said AI is “sealing the deal” on reading problems that started with phones.

CEA president Kate Dias put it plainly: “We cannot produce students that can read and understand if they don’t actually read.” English teacher Meghan Hatch Geary said that “putting kids on screens, from phones to devices, has really had a detrimental impact.”

I want to be fair here. These are experienced teachers describing what they see every day, and I believe them. The article also notes some encouraging signs: nearly nine in ten of these teachers still assign three or four books a year, and Connecticut’s average English Language Arts score edged up, from 64.7 to 65.0, still short of the state target of 75. But it is worth being clear about what the piece is: teacher perceptions and open-ended comments. It is not a study that tested what is causing the problem.

On October 29, the Harvard Gazette’s “U.S. literacy crisis keeps getting worse” by Liz Mineo talked with researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The numbers are sobering. NAEP reading scores have trended down since 2013 for eighth graders and since 2015 for fourth graders. Only 31% of fourth graders were proficient or advanced readers on the 2024 NAEP. And the share of eighth graders reading for fun almost every day fell from 27% in 2012 to 14% in 2025.

When the Gazette lists the causes, it says the decline “has myriad causes,” including “pandemic disruption, chronic student absenteeism, fewer resources to support struggling readers,” “and the rise of smartphone technology and artificial intelligence.” Professor Phil Capin says “smartphones are taking opportunities away from children to read” and that “AI, when used inappropriately, replaces opportunities to read and write.” Professor Paola Uccelli points out that the students who read for fun almost every day and the students who miss no days of school score highest on national reading assessments.

Notice that phones and AI are on the Harvard list. I’m not going to pretend they aren’t. But they are on a list.

Here’s what the headline leaves out

When the story becomes “technology is destroying reading,” we end up with one villain and one fix: take the devices away. I understand the appeal. It’s visible, it’s simple, and you can announce it at a board meeting.

But look at what else is on that Harvard list.

Pandemic disruption. The students in middle and high school right now were learning to read, or learning to read to learn, when school went sideways.

Chronic absenteeism. A student who isn’t in the room isn’t reading in the room. I wrote about this a few weeks ago in Before We Blame Screens, Let’s Count the Empty Desks, and Uccelli’s point about attendance lands right on it.

Fewer resources for struggling readers. If a 7th grader can’t decode a grade-level text, no phone policy fixes that. Reading specialists, interventions and time do.

And one more thing worth sitting with: NAEP scores started sliding in 2013 and 2015. Smartphones were spreading among teens around then too, so I get why the timing feels convincing. Timing is a reason to ask the question. It isn’t the answer.

Here’s the distinction I keep coming back to. Back in 2010 I wrote about Active vs Inactive Screen Time. Scrolling short videos for three hours and reading a long article on a tablet are both “screen time.” They are not the same thing. When we lump them together, we lose the ability to teach the difference.

Yes… students are choosing short over long. Adults are too, most of us included. The reading habits kids see modeled at home and in the world matter, and that’s not a school problem schools can solve alone.

Reading is a skill we have to teach, not a habit we can protect

What strikes me most about the Connecticut teachers is what they are already doing about it. They’re breaking books into smaller sections, reading aloud, partner reading, and using shorter texts to build up. That is teaching. That’s the work.

Taking a device away doesn’t build stamina. It removes one distraction. Stamina gets built the way it always has, by reading, a lot, with support, in school, where we can see it happen.

And if students are going to spend their lives reading on screens (they are), then reading well on a screen is a skill we have to teach too. I argued back in 2014 in Replacing Skills that schools need to be intentional about the skills we’re adding as the world changes. Digital reading, knowing when to slow down, knowing when to close the tabs and go deep: those are skills. Banning teaches nothing. Teaching does.

The same goes for AI. Capin’s words matter: “when used inappropriately.” If a student uses AI to skip the book, that’s a problem with the task as much as the tool. In Human Still Required, I make the case that AI didn’t break school — it exposed it. Assignments that could be completed by reading a summary were always a little fragile. AI just made that obvious faster.

It comes back to the line I keep returning to on this blog: Preparing students for their future, not our past. Their future has more text in it, not less. Much of it on screens. Much of it written or summarized by machines. The kids who can read deeply, and who know when they need to, will have an enormous advantage.

What schools can do this week

• Protect real reading time in the school day. If most reading is assigned for home, find out how much is actually getting done, and move some of it back into class where you can support it.
• Look at your attendance data next to your reading data. Which students are missing the most days, and how are they reading? Start there.
• Ask what your struggling readers need. Is it decoding, fluency, vocabulary or motivation? Each one has a different fix, and none of them is a phone policy.
• Teach digital reading on purpose. Have students compare reading the same piece on paper and on a screen, and talk about what changes and how to focus.
• Redesign one assignment that a summary or an AI tool could complete without reading. Ask students to do something with the text that only a reader could do.

Frequently asked questions

Is technology causing the reading decline?

Technology is one factor researchers name, but not the only one. The Harvard Gazette lists pandemic disruption, chronic absenteeism, fewer resources for struggling readers, and smartphones and AI together. The evidence supports a multi-cause explanation, not a single villain.

Should schools ban phones to improve reading?

A phone policy can reduce distraction during the day, but it does not teach reading. Stamina, fluency and comprehension are built by reading a lot with support. If a school adopts a phone policy, it still needs a plan for reading time and help for struggling readers.

What can parents do at home?

Make reading visible and normal: read in front of your kids, talk about what you’re reading, and give them time and space to read things they choose. Pay attention to the difference between passive scrolling and active reading, on paper or on a screen.

I’m grateful to the Connecticut teachers for saying out loud what so many teachers feel. The frustration is real. My worry is that we answer a complicated problem with a simple fix, then wonder in five years why the scores didn’t move.

If your school or district is working through reading, AI and device decisions right now, this is the kind of work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So I’ll ask you: when your school talks about reading, how much of the conversation is about what to take away, and how much is about what to teach?

Sources

• “‘It is disheartening’: Teachers say technology is destroying students’ academic ability”, Livi Stanford, Hartford Courant (via Jefferson City News-Tribune), October 26, 2026
• “U.S. literacy crisis keeps getting worse”, Liz Mineo, Harvard Gazette, October 29, 2026

The post Teachers Say Tech Is Killing Reading. The Story Is Bigger. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.

Here’s the thing. For a long time K-12 schools have treated experience as something that happens later. College will handle it. The first job will handle it. But what if the line for that first experience is now so long that a lot of students never get to the front of it?

What’s happening with internships right now

Three pieces landed this week that, read together, tell one story.

First, Lisa Chambers’ October 14 Forbes piece on why internships matter for every major looks at Bennington College, where students have done a required Field Work Term since 1932. The article pulls together some strong data. NACE found that 43% of graduating seniors who applied for jobs this spring had at least one offer before graduation, compared with 55% of those who had completed a paid internship. Research from the Burning Glass Institute and Strada found students who completed internships in college were nearly 50% less likely to be underemployed five years out. And then there’s that Handshake number: 27 applications per internship posting in 2025, up from eight in 2022.

Second, Times Higher Education reported on October 14 on the Institute of Student Employers’ annual survey in the UK. Applications for university-level internships rose 27% in 2025-26 and applications for undergraduate placements rose 15%, while internship and placement hiring fell 8%. To be fair to the full picture, overall graduate hiring in that survey actually rose 4% this year after an 8% drop the year before, and the ISE described the early-career market as showing “some signs of recovery but remains challenging.” The survey also found 92% of employers suspected or confirmed students were using AI in assessment and selection, up from 85% the year before.

Third, Getting Smart’s October 13 recap of its New Pathways convening in Chicago profiles schools that aren’t waiting. At Oak Park and River Forest High School, students in entrepreneurship classes build business pitches through Uncharted Learning’s INCubatoredu program and use consumer research to test their ideas against competitors and customer needs. Student projects ranged from ski apparel to an AI highlight-reel tool for coaches. A culinary class runs a student restaurant and food delivery service. At Fenton High School, students can combine AP classes, work-based learning and dual enrollment with the College of DuPage.

So on one side: demand for experience is going way up and the number of formal slots isn’t keeping pace. On the other: some high schools are creating experience instead of waiting for someone to hand it out.

Experience is the new entry ticket. Why are we handing it out so late?

I want to be careful here. The data doesn’t say the entry-level job market has collapsed. The UK numbers show graduate hiring recovering. Most of the internship data is about college students, not high schoolers. And part of the jump in applications may simply be that applying has gotten easier. When you can apply to a posting in a few clicks, or let an AI tool help you churn out applications, the count goes up whether or not the number of serious candidates does. That ISE figure on AI use in applications is a hint that something like that is going on.

But even if you take all of that into account, the direction is clear. Employers are leaning harder on proof of experience, and the formal doors where students get that experience are crowded.

Here’s my question for K-12: if the first real experience is the thing that opens doors, why do we wait until students are 20 to start offering it?

I wrote about this back in 2013 in Millennials and the Job Market. My argument then was that a public digital portfolio and real work for real audiences would matter more than a paper resume. I think that’s even more true now. When a hiring manager is looking at 27 applications, or 141 for a UK graduate role, a list of courses doesn’t stand out. Work does. A business pitch tested against real customer research does. A restaurant service you helped run does.

And with AI in the picture, the bar for “real” goes up. If an AI tool can polish a cover letter, the cover letter stops telling an employer very much. What it can’t fake as easily is a track record: projects you built, people you worked with, problems you solved and can talk about. That’s the part of the work that’s still very human. In Human Still Required, I argue that judgment, relationships and trust are the work machines can’t do. Those are exactly the things students learn by doing real work alongside real people, and they’re hard to learn from a worksheet.

This is what I mean by “Preparing students for their future, not our past.” In our past, experience came after school. In their future, it may have to come during school, or a lot of students won’t get it at all.

High school internships aren’t the only door. Schools can build experience.

When I talk with school leaders about work-based learning, the conversation almost always goes straight to internships. And then it stops, because placements are hard. There aren’t enough employers. Transportation is a problem. Liability is a problem. Schedules are a problem. All true.

What I like about the Chicago examples is that they don’t start with “Where can we place a few hundred students?” They start with “What real work can students do from here?” A student business that has to compete for customers is real work. A student-run restaurant is real work. A pitch that gets tested against customer data is real work. None of those require a company to find hundreds of internship slots.

That matters for equity too. Internships have always leaned toward students who already have networks, transportation and the ability to work unpaid. The Forbes piece notes that Bennington gives need-based stipends to make its field work possible. If high schools build experience into the school day, every student gets a turn, not just the ones whose parents know someone.

I’m not saying every high school needs to become a startup incubator. I’m saying “experience” is a much bigger category than “internship,” and schools have more control over it than we tend to think.

What schools can do this week

• Audit your experience gap. Ask: how many of our seniors will graduate having done work for a real audience outside the classroom? Not “could have,” but did. Get a real number.
• Turn one existing project into a client project. Pick one course and find one local business, nonprofit or city office with a real problem students can work on. Start small.
• Count student-run work as experience. A school store, a media team, a tech help desk or a student restaurant is work. Help students document it and talk about it like work.
• Start the portfolio in ninth grade. Have students collect evidence of what they’ve built and done, with reflection on what they learned. By senior year they should be able to show, not just tell.
• Talk to employers about what they actually look for. Ask your local hiring managers what proof of experience they trust now that AI can polish an application. Then build backward from their answer.

Frequently asked questions

Are high school internships worth it if they’re hard to find?

Yes, but an internship isn’t the only way to get experience. Research cited by Forbes shows college internships are linked to more job offers and less underemployment. High schools can build similar experience through work-based learning, client projects and student-run businesses, which don’t depend on finding an outside placement for every student.

Why are internships so competitive right now?

Handshake data cited by Forbes shows the median internship posting got 27 applications in 2025, up from eight in 2022. In the UK, the Institute of Student Employers reported a 27% rise in internship applications alongside an 8% drop in internship and placement hiring. Easier online applying and AI-assisted applications may also be pushing the numbers up.

What counts as real work experience for a high school student?

Work done for a real audience with real stakes. That can be an internship or apprenticeship, but it can also be a student business, a project for a local organization, a school help desk or a student-run restaurant. What matters is that students can show what they did and explain what they learned.

The line is long. Let’s get them in it sooner.

The young people heading into this job market aren’t the problem. They’re doing what we told them to do, and then finding out the door is more crowded than anyone warned them. We can keep telling them experience will come later. Or we can start building it now, inside the schools we already run.

If your school or district is working on career-connected learning and wants to think it through together, that’s the kind of work I do with leaders every week. You can find me at JeffUtecht.com.

So I’ll ask you: what is one piece of real work your students did this year that you’d want an employer to see?

Sources

• Many Humanities Majors Shun Internships, But Not At This College, Lisa Chambers, Forbes, October 14, 2026
• Employers cut student work experience roles as demand rises, Georgia Luckhurst, Times Higher Education, October 14, 2026
• Bridging Passion and Possibility: Chicago’s Approach to New Pathways, Getting Smart Staff, Getting Smart, October 13, 2026

The post The Internship Line Is Getting Longer. High School Can’t Wait. first appeared on The Thinking Stick.