Jenny Anderson and Dr. Rebecca Winthrop

THE DISENGAGED TEEN book empowers parents to become active participants in helping their children learn well by outlining simple yet counterintuitive parenting strategies for connecting with their child, igniting their curiosity, and building self-awareness and emotional regulation.

A shocking majority of teens are disengaged from school, simultaneously bored and overwhelmed. This is feeding an alarming teen mental health crisis. As kids get older and more independent, parents often feel powerless to help. Until now!

For the past five years, award-winning journalist Jenny Anderson and the Brookings Institution’s global education expert Rebecca Winthrop have been investigating why so many children lose their love of learning in adolescence. In their new book “THE DISENGAGED TEEN: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better”  they offer a timely and practical guide with evidence-based strategies to turn disengagement to drive, showing how parents can help their children engage better in school and beyond.

Based on extensive original research, THE DISENGAGED TEEN includes digestible advice and real-world stories of children who transformed their relationships with learning.

It identifies four modes of learning that students use to navigate the shifting academic demands and social dynamics of middle and high school. These modes, which shape the internal narratives kids develop about their skills, potential, and identity, include:

Resister: When kids resist, they struggle silently with profound feelings of inadequacy or invisibility, which they communicate by ignoring homework, playing sick, skipping class, or acting out.

Passenger: When kids coast along, they consistently do the bare minimum and complain that classes are pointless. They need help connecting school to their skills, interests, or learning needs

Achiever: When kids show up, do the work, and get consistently high grades, their self-worth can become tied to high performance. Their disengagement is invisible, fueling a fear of failure and putting them at risk of poor mental health. They need help taking on new challenges and encouragement that they matter beyond their achievements.

Explorer: When kids are driven by internal curiosity rather than just external expectations, they investigate the questions they care about and persist to achieve goals. This is the pinnacle where kids become resilient learners and build skills to help them thrive in an AI-dominated world.

Understanding a child’s learning mode is vital for nurturing their ability to become Explorers.

Join GPS for this enlightening conversation and discover a blueprint parents can use to communicate with and connect with their child in a way that’s tailored to the child’s specific needs.

Winthrop is the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. She and Anderson are the distinguished authors of the “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better”