Totally. When I started my career it was pretty common for teachers to strategically plan an easier lesson by setting some sort of extended task involving research and then perhaps a group presentation. Could take up the whole lesson. You just had to keep an eye on things. Not any more.

Ha I remember doing that for my back-to-back Fridays

Right. When I first went to Ark Soane I was completely convinced but major concern was “how are we going to get teachers who are 60 doing this for 5 hours a day?”

Exhausting for the YP as well!

I don’t think so - only in the sense that thinking hard is harder than not thinking hard

Yep. More cognitive labour all round. This is a bigger ask for some inds & groups than others - eg YP who are already maxed out in schools.

Just to be clear, are you saying learning is cognitive labour that sone young people should be doing less of?

demanding/depleting in and of itself. How the (additional) cog burden of the actual lesson content lands on these YP will vary according to eg teacher communication style, the intrinsic interesting-ness of the topic, accessibility of the learning resources, nature of task etc etc. Ime it’s not

easy for eg neurotypical teachers to have an instinctive feel for how these cumulative demands will be experienced/how much/what kind of labour we’re actually requiring. So no, I’m not saying cog labour is a bad thing - obvs it’s necessary. But I am saying we need to recognise how close YP may be

to capacity for more demands, esp over time (eg because of #burnout risk). Like many, I find #spoontheory super helpful with this. Hacks are always possible - eg thru #reasonableadjustments. But #pacing & having boundaries re additional demands are also important strategies.