Teachers on Fire ATTENTION as CURRICULUM: Designing Schools as Walled Gardens - with Andrew Cantarutti
→ Why must attention become the curriculum of our schools?
→ How are classrooms disrupting student attention and learning?
→ What is the important choice that our schools and districts must make?
Welcome back to another episode of the Teachers on Fire Podcast, airing live on YouTube most Saturday mornings at 8am Pacific, 11am Eastern. My name is Tim Cavey, and my mission here is to warm your heart, spark your thinking, and ignite your professional practice.
About this guest, Andrew Cantarutti
Andrew is an educator and writer with over a decade of experience teaching in public and private schools across Canada and the world. His work bridges classroom practice with educational theory, drawing on insights from philosophy, developmental psychology, and cognitive science to reimagine how learning environments can cultivate focus, depth, and intellectual resilience.
Connect with Andrew Cantarutti
on LinkedIn,
on X @walledgardenedu,
on Instagram @walledgardenedu, and
at https://walledgardenedu.substack.com.
In This Conversation
0:00:00 - Andrew Cantarutti is an educator and writer with international experience
1:12 - Imagining schools as walled gardens for deep attention and critical thinking
4:54 - Teacher reactions to "Why Attention Must Become Curriculum"
7:38 - How are we disrupting student attention in the classroom?
12:49 - Why schools must avoid the Marketplace Mirror Model
16:29 - Gamification of learning, "engagement"
18:22 - How do we make attention the curriculum itself?
27:19 - Andrew on the role of AI in schools
34:29 - The choice facing schools today
37:56 - Where to connect with Andrew Cantarutti online
Visit the home of Teachers on Fire at https://teachersonfire.net/.
Song Track Credit: Tropic Fuse by French Fuse - retrieved from the YouTube Audio Library at https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/.