Do Behavioral Challenges Inhibit Innovation?

So as I've been out on the road talking with folks about my new book from Reopen to Reinvent, one question I've gotten a few times from educators is, yeah, reinventing sounds great, but oh my gosh, the challenges we're having with behavior right now of kids just makes it impossible to even think about. So the question is, do we have to wait to get behavior okay from students before we can innovate? And on the one hand, I mean, look, this is a real challenge right now. It's taking up a lot of bandwidth. Students are clearly still struggling, coming out of the pandemic, struggling with mental health. Social media is not helping. It's a major cause. It seems there's a lot of challenges going on. I wish I had the answers. It seems setting bright lines, holding boundaries, clear consequences, those are all important. And I would argue still being stuck in the traditional system, that's not helping things because it doesn't send rewards for effort, for perseverance. A time based learning system says it actually doesn't matter if you have a growth mindset because we're going to label you anyway in a fixed way. A time based learning system stuck in the old says it doesn't matter how hard you work at something, we're going to move on to the next concept regardless. And a mastery based environment where they get to collaborate with their friends in pursuit of learning and get to actually have fun in the classroom itself, that can create outlets for this social energy. It creates an opportunity to talk to people about what appropriate behavior looks like in the context of the learning in a way that accrues social reward to them. And so look, it's not going to solve all your problems by any stretch of the imagination. But I argue that to really make advances for students right now, despite all the troubles we have to reinvent.