Back to School 2025: How to Reignite Your Teaching Spark in the Age of Student Disengagement

Regaining Back Your Love of Teaching in an Era of Student Disengagement

By Catherine Patterson-Sterling, PhD, RCC

Back to School 2025 is that magical time of year again with new notebooks, fresh pencils, and the eternal question—how do you teach students who would rather be anywhere else?"

This is the era of student disengagement where teachers often wonder why are they working harder than the students?

Teachers are having to perform high engaging lessons to capture even the microsecond of attention of students, but even after such exhausting feats- this attention is gone!

The challenge is to stay in the learning game and not get discouraged.

Maybe this year will be different is the hope?

The underlying issues of screen time overload, student disconnection to the why of learning, and the fact that students are often up late or have online games and even social media to attend to gets in the way of SCHOOL.

School is in competition with a bunch of other priorities in students’ lives.

Approximately 40-50% of teachers leave the profession within their first five years. This high attrition rate is a significant concern for the education system.

Okay, so that was the dark side, but here is the light at the end of the tunnel and no it is not a train coming your way!

The Bright Light of Changing Eras

A great aspect of framing up student disengagement as an era is that eras change and out with the old while in with the new.

The new opportunity is help students get back their “why of learning” and to “set them up for success.”

Students need a north star or a bright light vision that inspires them in a future-focused direction. In other words, they need to put the screen down and work on building up their lives rather than escaping into technology. This means that they learn skills for how to navigate both the physical and digital world as a digital citizen and member of a real physical social community.

Also, students need to get back to basics with learning how to set boundaries with technology, build back up study skills, and clear their minds to be able to get back their bearings or direction in life.

This movement into the new era needs to be fun and engaging or what’s the point for them?

A New Resource

There is an opportunity you have to set yourself up for success this school year, by teaching soft skills to your class that will help them to be more focused learners, develop study skills, manage screen time digital overload, and also meet your core competencies for social and emotional learning.

One such way of skill building while creating targeted interventions is with the new program “Twenty” created by Catherine Patterson-Sterling, PhD, RCC (teacher and counsellor of over 20 years in Elementary as well as High School) who designed over 60+ modules supporting 20 indicators of healthy youth. Students are able to journey with six animated characters at “urschool” who struggle with similar issues of belonging, identity, screen time overload, social relationships and more. Students are able watch engaging videos of these characters and skill build by solving the characters’ challenges in particular social and emotional areas while also engaging in interactive quizzes and reflection exercises with ready-made materials all integrated into a learning management system. Teachers can utilize their own free copy or students may have their own individual login accounts. Such a program has broad-reach, instant implementation, and affordable scalability.

For more information and to access your Free Teacher Copy visit: https://www.softskillstrainingcenter.com 

This site also includes school-wide or even district-wide infographic implementation plans for quick reference and use amongst educators.

Your Call To Action

Get your free Teacher Copy of “Twenty” and pass along this article to every teacher you know so they can keep their love of teaching in tact while setting their learners up for success!

About The Writer:

Catherine Patterson-Sterling, PhD, RCC is an educator of 20+ years with diverse experience in all levels of elementary, high school, and post secondary education as a teacher, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. With extensive experience in research and counselling, she understands the impact as well as sources of disengagement as well as chronic absenteeism on learners at all levels. She is also the creator of this new innovative program “Twenty” sponsored by Soft Skills Training Center and Patterson-Sterling Consulting and Counselling Services.