Critical Questions in Education Conference 2026,

The Personal Creed Organization

San Diego CA, February 2026 – Developmentally Nourishing Curriculum to Revive Our Students’ Engagement in Learning?

When your roof leaks in one or two places, it may just need repairing. If it springs more leaks each
year, chances are it’s time for a new or redesigned roof. We start this session with the assumption that
curriculum as our students experience it is a roof that is failing, leaving them more exposed to the
elements and perhaps the main contributor to their plummeting engagement in learning each year. In
the May 2025 issue of California English, editor Carol Jago notes a marked worsening of the
disengagement problem, even since the worrying decline reported by NPR the previous year:

“Teachers across the country are reporting that their students are disaffected, disengaged from
school, barely putting in seat time, stuck in neutral.” (5)

In our session we further assume that student disengagement begins with our outdated notion of
curriculum — with our failure to recognize that we and our students are not static but developing
beings.

Together we explore this question: Could a curriculum that genuinely nourishes young
people’s development also help them revive their engagement in learning?

Introducing our most current and complete understanding of child development, we imagine a
developmentally nourishing curriculum together. We then consider how effectively such a curriculum
might restore students’ engagement compared to other approaches being used today.

Teachers and schools today take a range of worthwhile approaches to address the disengagement
problem. We build better relationships with students, make learning relevant, offer choice and
autonomy, and prioritize mental health and basic needs. Each of these and others frequently
employed are important steps we certainly need to take to rejuvenate engagement. But prioritizing
any or even several of these approaches alone risks leaving other roof leaks to appear or worsen, while
overall student engagement continues to collapse. Could a developmentally nourishing curriculum
redress multiple causes of disengagement?

In this engaging, interactive session participants will:

• View and discuss a student presentation for a project that points to a new design of curriculum
  built around students’ developmental needs.
• Overview and discuss a comprehensive understanding of child development that a) illuminates
  what children innately need in each period of their development, and b) suggests how teachers,
  parents and other adults in their lives can nourish those needs.
• Consider in pairs or teams how redesigning curriculum to support both children’s academic
  progress and nourish their developmental needs might help teachers and schools redress 11
  specific causes of student disengagement. (See over)
• Divide into teams according to their roles in education to brainstorm how we might apply what
  we’ve learned today.
• Consider connecting further with the presenter about next steps for teachers, departments,
  schools or districts.