Unschooling School: Why School Sucks and How Teachers Can Do Better in a System That Won’t

December 12, 2025 / Oskar Cymerman

Every afternoon, after the yellow bus rumbles away and my eleven-year-old son climbs into the back seat, I ask the same question parents have asked since the dawn of report cards:

“How was school?”

And every afternoon, I get one of two answers. “Boring.”

Or, on a good day, “Mid.”

That’s it. One word. Every day. No detail. No spark. Just the dull thud of indifference. I wish I could say that at first I thought it was just him being a kid, but even though Adam is pretty gifted at learning, when it comes to liking school he’s not an outlier. He’s the norm. His reaction is the collective shrug of this generation—and many before it—legions of kids trapped, trained, and tamed by a system that confuses compliance with learning and busy work with growth. The kids aren’t broken. The system sucks.

But who am I to make this claim? Who am I to dare write about unschooling school?

I’m not an academic who spent his life researching important topics in education. I’m not a philosopher full of education-altering wisdoms. I’m definitely not a self-help guru capable of solving education’s problems with a catchy slogan-turned-acronym and a bullshit morning routine.

I’m a teacher.

I’ve spent my life inside the educational system—first as a student trying to learn and now as a teacher constantly learning how to learn, teach, and help my students learn. Above all, I’m continually hard at work unlearning the teaching habits that get in the way of my students’ learning and reimagining the educational policies that stunt their growth.

For the last forty years, I have had the front row seat to the tomfoolery that is modern day schooling and my soon-to-be-released new book Unschooling School: Why School Sucks and How Teachers Can Do Better in a System That Won’t is the next step on my journey to unraveling its motives, challenging its methods, and offering teachers a way to fight and counteract its shortcomings from within their classrooms.

I did not know it at the time, but my journey through the educational system began in the communist Poland of the 1980s where school was mostly about obedience, order, and mindless memorization of way too many facts. You didn’t question. You weren’t supposed to wonder. You just followed instructions, memorized facts, and learned to stay invisible to avoid “odpytywanie,” or being called to the board—a frequently practiced psychological torture tactic utilized by teachers to show students how unprepared for adulthood and self-determination we were. If a teacher didn’t like you, they’d ask questions so specific a “1”—the Polish version of an F—was guaranteed.

A typical class in the Polish elementary school of my youth involved the teacher doing most of the talking and students silently copying information from the blackboard or the textbook into our notebooks. Any student interaction was met with harsh teacher disapproval (or punishment) and questioning the teacher was out of the question.

Fast forward to my Chicago arrival in 1992, I expected something radically different. And in a way, it was. The posters were brighter, the desks newer, and the creativity quotes more prevalent. But the teaching and the learning were the same. Compliance over curiosity. Control over wonder. Efficiency over creativity.

Call it what you want—academic rigor, high standards—it was still obedience, order, and the same old mumbo jumbo designed to keep the adults comfortable and the kids compliant, packaged in a shinier wrapper. Different system, same trickery.

And then, I became part of the problem. Not a cog—by design this distinction is reserved for our students—I, like so many teachers, served as the grease that helps the machine that is the established educational, political, and socio-economic order run as intended; smoothly, predictably, efficiently.

My debut in the profession occurred in 2003 as an Environmental Science teacher in Chicago Public Schools—fitting, since I was completely unfit to read the needs of my most immediate environment: my students. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I had a lesson plan template and the kind of idealism that makes you easy to break in. Plying this noble (or so they say) trade in a Black Belt high school I observed, though did not realize at the time, how schools were not designed for minority nor disadvantaged students. I did what I was trained to do: follow the standards, enforce the rules, deliver the content. I expected my students to comply with whatever I was taught to comply with. I expected them to follow the same rules I was forced to follow. I expected them to tough it out, because I toughed it out not too long before they had to. Maybe I was a cog after all and the grease to boot. I struggled as both.

Four years and a 2007 Minnesota transplantation later, I continued as an Earth Science teacher at something called the “On Track Program,” which sounded encouraging until I saw it and realized it was a haphazardly assembled holding cell for maybe forty, mostly minority students deemed unworthy of passing eighth grade. In an unprecedented move, St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) labeled them “not ready” for high school until they were steered onto the “right track.”

I, of course, had zero clue what that track was—though I killed it at the job interview, being well-indoctrinated into the machine. I did not even know that I didn’t know what the right track was, because by then I was well-experienced in the “right way” of removing individuality, promoting obedience, and forcing compliance with torture tactics... I mean consequences such as isolation and exclusion from activities that made school barely bearable. So I did what every good teacher does when lost: I implemented these tried and true methods and wondered why they didn’t work. The struggle was real.

The next year, I leveled up—or so I thought—to teaching eighth-grade Earth Science, regular and IB (International Baccalaureate), at a proper SPPS junior high. The schedule was standard-issue and so was the job, but I started to realize that the kids never are. “Why would we treat them as such?,” I thought. Five years in, purporting I was making a difference, I began to suspect I might just be oiling the gears of futility.

For one, how were the students selected into the regular vs. the advanced IB track? The SPPS website states the pathway is open to all “motivated” students, which is commendable, but in reality, access is often limited by circumstances many minority and low-income students face such as poor academic preparation, working or caring for siblings after school, or the implicit school bias. As a result, existing inequities are perpetuated, despite best intentions.

My two IB classes modeled this; they were made up mostly of white, well-off kids with “adequate” Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) scores. The three regular science classes I taught consisted mostly of lower-income Hmong, Hispanic, East African, and African American students. They weren’t any less capable—just never given the same invitation to the IB table. I still struggled, but at least I was starting to understand how the system works.

After a shitty, stressful summer of 2009 that began with me being pink-slipped by SPPS due to budget cuts, I crushed another job interview and was hired by the South Washington County Schools to teach high school science. I remember the since-retired principal mentioning something about good PR and the science department chairman telling me that she frequently reiterates to him “she doesn’t want her phone to ring,” meaning the principal did not want to have to deal with dissatisfied parents or other bad PR. That’s when I learned that as long as it looks good in the public eye, a school will be seen as “good”—and my job was more about keeping up this illusion than actually teaching students.

A school might even earn the title of “one of the best public schools in America” from outlets that wouldn’t recognize real learning if it hit them in the ass—U.S. News, for instance—using measures like state test scores and “college readiness,” mostly defined by ACT or SAT results. In lieu of such a groundbreaking achievement, a school might plaster a giant poster of the recognition by the main entrance to shout its “top” status. Alas, twelve or so years into my career, I finally grasped the holy grail of teaching: becoming a “good” teacher isn’t about the skills my students acquire or the understanding they gain—it’s about how efficiently and effectively I can train them to jump through standardized-test hoops to make the institution they attend look good.

Now, as a science teacher who’s spent the last ten years of my 23-year teaching career studying, applying, and writing about learning theory and evidence-based strategies, I can tell you that what we call “education” has very little to do with how people actually learn. Our schools were built and are still wired for industrial-age outcomes, not for 21st-century humans. While curiosity and inquiry are preached, classrooms are optimized for predictability and teachers are trained to maintain order.

We plead with our students to think critically but reward remembering rather than reasoning. We measure performance, not understanding. We confuse grades with growth. And worst of all, we train teachers—good, caring, intelligent people—to perpetuate this compliance porn because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

But here’s the truth: while we cannot fix the system, we can unschool schooling. Individual teachers can rebuild their classrooms around how the human brain really learns—through emotion, curiosity, connection, and purpose. We can create classrooms that make kids want to come back the next day—not because they have to, but because their minds are stimulated. We can stop wasting the most powerful force in the world: the natural human drive to make sense of things.

Because the educational system won’t do it. It can’t, because it is a behemoth that requires a complete overhaul; a revolution. It’s grown too large, too familiar, too comfortable. It’s protected by federal, state, and local level redundancies. No one person or a group of individuals can undo it.

But while we may not be able to fix schooling at large, we can debug our students’ learning experience. We can, in the words of Mark Twain, refuse to let “schooling interfere with [their] education.” We can raise thinkers and owners of their own destinies in spite of the system built to produce followers of someone else’s agenda.

That’s what my new book Unschooling School is about—turning student miseducation and frustration with schooling into teacher action. It’s not just another rant about what’s wrong with modern day education.

It’s a roadmap for making learning less about what the system demands and more about what our kids need to make smart, thoughtful, and more impactful decisions.

It’s for teachers who know there’s more to this job than testing, grading, and managing behaviors.

It’s for teachers tired of witnessing kids’ spark for learning turn into apathy toward school.

Most of all, it’s for those asking the question: Can we do better?

We can.

We must.

We bear the responsibility to unschool our students’ education before the system drives curiosity and wonder out of another generation—before another kid answers “boring” or “mid” to a question that should light up his eyes and spark her smile.

Thanks for reading this excerpt from my new book: Unschooling School: Why School Sucks and How Teachers Can Do Better in a System That Won’t coming out at the end of Summer 2026.

Please let me know what you think about this idea in the comments below.

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categories / Science, Earth Science
tags / teaching teens, parenting teens, deeper learning, independence, lifelong learning, simplicity, skills, success skills, learning, making life easier, kids

Why Teachers Just Need To Have Fun

September 16, 2025 / Oskar Cymerman

Teaching is hard. And for about a decade, I made it even harder.

I was too serious. Too strict. Too focused on meticulously following the “true educator” script. Too “not who I actually am,” and not enough me.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if my 9th grade Environmental Science lessons were dry enough to start a desert. They definitely deteriorated the environment of the classroom….

The struggle was real.

Being the “textbook teacher” did not allow me to see the simple teaching truth that if you're bored teaching, your students are even more bored learning.

I wish I could tell you I had an epiphany—something anyone could use to snap out of their funk—but the truth is I do not remember any single moment that helped me realize I was going so hard against the grain it nearly completely eroded my joy of teaching.

I was lucky not to become a burnout statistic.

At some point I figured out how to teach better and be happy doing it.

Below, I share a few strategies I use to mix it up, shake it up, and fun it up in my science classrooms. Most can be applied in any subject.

I hope these ideas help others who may be struggling, struggle less and find joy in this very hard—but very rewarding (and dare I say, fun)—profession.

If You’re Having Fun, They’re Having Fun

Luckily, energy and fun are just as contagious as apathy and boredom. Here are 6 quick ways to renew your classroom and rejuvenate your teaching:

1. Convert Slides Into Stories

Ditch the bullets. Teach content as a story with characters and drama. Students remember narratives way longer than lists. All you need to do is get rid of most text and throw images that represent the content and its major players onto those dreaded slides and Ted Talk it all. Students will see images and hear your explanation of these images and be able to effectively process what’s happening rather than be forced to try to read, listen, and take notes all at the same time.

But if storytelling does not come naturally to you, let students create their own stories with the content they are learning. Ask them to turn content into comics, animations, or videos.

Studies show the human brain is optimized for such multisensory learning as we have evolved and live in a multisensory environment. And if you’re going…. but text is visual…. STOP IT, because our natural environment did not involve the processing of textual information for close to two hundred thousand years of the Homo Sapiens evolution. I’m not saying you should’t use text. I’m just saying there’s a lot more to effective learning than text. You know what I’m saying?

2. Gamify It

Turn practice into a game show, scavenger hunt, escape room, or a game of trash ball where the team that gets a question right gets to shoot a balled-up piece of paper for an extra point trash can free throw. Even a basic quiz competition beats another fill-in-the-blanks worksheet or multiple-choice quiz.

Digital platforms such as Gimkit, Blooket, or Kahoot! are nice too when used sparingly.

3. Role-Play Ridiculousness

Have students be the content—Newton arguing with gravity, or a mitochondrion campaigning as “the powerhouse of the cell.” Silly = sticky.

One time, I had my students make skits about different forms of alternative energy. When the “poop to power” group presented, we all got a front-row seat to the imagined future of cars—where you could take care of your basic need to expel digested food and power your vehicle at the same time. I doubt that will ever be a thing (though the car freshener industry might have been licking its chops for a minute there). Still, the students learned that we can, in fact, burn cow, and other manure for energy.

4. Move It!

Gallery walks, walk and talks, going outside, spinning the wheel of death (or names, I forget) to choose speakers—anything that gets kids out of chairs keeps brains switched on.

A few times a year and when weather allows I take my students outside and have them use sidewalk chalk to complete activities that involve drawing out concepts or solving problems. You can also launch things and play community-building or educational games, such as kickball review (whoever catches the ball gets to answer a question I taped to it).

Walk and talks can be as simple as giving your class a topic to discuss while they partner up and follow you on a short trip through the school building. You can periodically stop and give them a different prompt if you wish and come back to the classroom after 5 to 10 minutes.

5. Flip the Script

Students create mini-lessons on key topics: skits, demos, raps, or poems.

Take a boring topic, like mining, assign different kind of mining to small groups of students, and ask them to go to town writing and recording a rap or poem that explains in-situ leaching, or block caving, or fracking.

Then, put the videos in a Google or Schoology or some other learning system folder, give students some guided notes to fill out while watching each mining-themed performance, and allow the different groups to interact to clear up anything they missed or any misunderstandings.

They’ll talk, and they’ll stumble, and they’ll laugh, and they’ll own their learning.

6. Hollywood Style It

Classroom debates, shark tank challenges, and CSI-style mysteries is what I’m talking about. Sure—they take some time to create—but once you do, you have templates to reuse in the future and you multiply the learning fun.

Use your friendly, digital-neighborhood AI to help you with these. First, come up with a topic you’d like your students to debate, innovate with, or solve. Then, write a prompt for chatGPT or Gemini that contains the basic parameters for the project. Once the AI generates (roughly) what you want, you can use the software of your choice (Google slides or docs etc.) to clean it up and modify to suit your purposes, classroom, and style.

Mindshifting Away From No Pain No Gain

Teaching doesn’t have to feel like crawling through cement. If you’re having fun, odds are your students are too. And hey—anything is better than watching 40 cognitive-overload-causing slides roll by or filling out another critical-thinking-demise-inducing worksheet or packet.

If you’re asking: When am I supposed to do all this new prep when I have a pile of stuff to grade, a family, and club to run, or a team to coach? I get it and I say: Figure out how to grade fewer things so you can focus on creating learning experiences your students enjoy.

Because if they enjoy and learn from them, they’ll actually willingly participate in these new activities and you will not have to grade them, because they will be the meaningful—as opposed to the busy work—variety. You know—the stuff students must actually learn, because it will show up on the next test. It’s also helpful to communicate that if they don’t participate they’re screwed.

So….

Teaching will always have its tough moments—but it doesn't have to be a you against them battle. Make it fun and you will find fun in it. It’ll be a game changer for you and make a big difference in your students’ learning.

Also, your students will like you. Just tell them SDAs* are still not okay.

Thanks for reading my thoughts! I hope they help you in your teaching game and bringing out the best in your students. Check out my shop if you need some science teaching help or swag.

*SDAs = Sudden Displays of Affection

BOOKS & TOOLS

EQUITY Poster

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Introduction to Earth and Space Science - 5 Phenomenon-Based Projects

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Climate Change Debate: The Earth Science Intellectual Thunderdome

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Periodic Table of Students: A Fun Back to School Chemistry Classroom Activity

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Climate Change Debate: The Earth Science Intellectual Thunderdome

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[Earth & Space Science] Cosmic Scene Investigation: A Case of the Kilonova

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[Earth Science] Terraforming Mars: The Red Planet "Shark Tank" Innovation Challenge

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Cooking Up Success in Your High School Classroom: The Positive Learning Environment Recipe

September 07, 2025 / Oskar Cymerman

The Positive Learning Environment Recipe for Your High School Classroom

We've all been there: standing at the front of the classroom, pouring our hearts out about the quantum mechanical model, only to be met with a sea of blank stares, the occasional yawn, and the rhythmic tapping of a phone hidden just out of sight. It’s enough to make you wonder if your carefully crafted lesson plans are actually just serving as very expensive lullabies.

But fear not, transforming your classroom from a snooze-fest into a hub of actual learning is within reach. You can indeed - witchcraft not required - swap those deer-in-the-headlights expressions for genuine smiles and energy-filled learning sessions. And if you have doubts; I get it.

Considering that high schoolers are basically oversized, highly caffeinated, instant gratification fueled toddlers with more complex emotional lives and an inexplicable aversion to doing stuff that requires actual effort, you’d be excused to just tell them to open to page 173, read through page 187, and answer 1-46 on pages 188-190.

But this simply won’t do! You want them to learn because you’re better than this.

Luckily, the secret sauce to end all apathy and get them to learn has only four ingredients.

1. Pretend to Like Them (aKA Building Relationships)

So, ditch the "sage on the stage" routine and actually try to connect. Ask about their weekend, pretend to understand their TikTok references, talk about this player cooking and the other selling, and feign interest in their footwear or T-shirt slogan.

When students feel like you're not just there to torture them with quadratic equations or Merchant of Venice, they're less likely to hide behind their Chromebooks and more likely to, you know, actually participate. Plus, a little genuine rapport goes a long way when they whine about how hard the last test was.

2. Kill Chaos (aKA Having Clear Expectations & Consistency)

Teenagers are like cats: they secretly crave routine, even if they spend most of their time pretending to be aloof and independent. Without clear boundaries, your classroom will quickly devolve into a Weasley twins' common room experiment, but with more bathroom pass abuse and significantly fewer intentional explosions.

So, lay down the law early. Co-create rules, or at least let them think they're co-creating them. And, stick to your guns. If you say "no phones," and then immediately let half the class scroll through Instagram, you've just taught them that your rules are more like "loose suggestions." Consistency saves.

3. Let Them Pick Their Own Poison (aKA Fostering Autonomy & Ownership)

High schoolers are at that weird age where they simultaneously believe they know everything and absolutely nothing. Tap into this sense of independence.

Give them choices, even if those choices are just "write a five-paragraph essay” or “present a five-slide presentation." It makes them feel empowered, like they're not just cogs in your educational machine. Let them pick a project topic, or decide which method of torture (er, assessment) they prefer.

When they feel like they have a say, they're more likely to actually put effort in, rather than just staring blankly into the middle distance while contemplating the meaninglessness of existence. Plus, it occasionally leads to some surprisingly creative work.

4. Don’t Be a Textbook (aKA Designing Engaging & Relevant Lessons)

Let's be real, a monotone lecture about Continental Drift is the fastest way to make teens’ eyes drift toward the backs of their heads inducing a collective coma in a science classroom. Your job isn't just to transmit information; it's to make them care. Hey, I didn’t make these rules. I’m just sayin’.

So connect trigonometry to video game design, or analyze Shakespeare through the lens of modern pop culture, or have students create news reports based on past earthquakes, tsunamis, or volcanic eruptions pretending they just happened and explaining how different tectonic plate interactions caused them.

And If they ask, "When will I ever use this?" you better have your “Really, bro?” look well-prepared and a snarky, yet relevant, answer ready.

But maybe avoid these forever annoying questions altogether by infusing your lessons with always awesome activities – Phenomena-based Projects, Class Debates, CSI-style Mysteries, Escape Rooms, and Shark Tank Innovation or Engineering Challenges.

Finishing The Positive Learning Environment Recipe

So there you be my teacher brethren. The four ingredients to making your class da bomb without your students’ losing their limbs or their brains exploding:

Build Relationships
Provide Structure
Give Choices
Create Engaging Learning Experiences

And remember to sprinkle in some hype and a whole lot of humor. Because if you're bored, they're practically comatose. Your energy is contagious, so aim to infect them with something other than a desire for the bell to ring.

Is there more? You bet your ass! But the secret is to start with a few things and add new ingredients one at a time. And if something spoils the taste? Think of it as too much salt in your guacamole; you can’t fix it now, but you can make the recipe better the next time.

Because only crazy teachers don’t like guac. Or, a positive classroom. Or, sanity. But that makes sense ‘cause they’re crazy. But you’re not crazy, are you?

Thanks for reading my thoughts! I hope they help you in being more ready for the impending doom of the new school year.

Check out my shop for some fun and engaging science lessons. I try to keep the prices reasonable, but if you cannot spare the fee, please email me, and if it can be emailed, I’ll email it to you for free.