without a spark? executive function coaching can help.

Finding a spark is the easy part; executing on it is where most teenagers stall out.

Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson look at the difference between “Explorers and “Passengers” in their new book The Disengaged Teen. Fewer than one in ten of the 5,000 students they surveyed were actually “getting after it,” shaping their own learning as explorers. Most (the passengers) were coasting politely through a school day.

Generative-AI threatens to widen that gap. Tyler Cowen and Avital Balwit warn that the distribution of real-world agency is about to go bimodal:

“You’ll either work with the AIs and achieve all the more….or turn large chunks of your life over to the models and become passive.”

Hand an average tenth-grader GPT and Claude and it’s never been simpler to stay in Passenger mode. First, let the model write the essay, next “humanize” it with a browser plug-in, then turn it in. No friction, no spark required.

Bigger picture, there are four issues with “finding a spark.”

1. Motivation is uneven, and teens sit at the dip

Conscientiousness (the Big-Five workhorse that turns intention into follow-through) drops in early adolescence and only recovers, slowly, across the 20s and 30s.

In Soto et al.’s one-million-participant cross-section, average Conscientiousness falls about a third of a standard deviation between ages 10 and 16 before clawing back later in life.

A glance at the bell curve (see the shaded tail in the figure above) means 63 percent of teens are below the adult mean. And this was from 2010! Layer on phones and easy-mode AI, and how many sparks survive?

2. Passion needs infrastructure

Winthrop’s rare Explorers are system builders. The sophomore who swoons over dahlias has to locate a plot, order seed packets, run soil tests, calendar watering, and keep caring when blackfly hit in week six. The would-be YouTuber needs a publishing cadence! They need a thumbnail workflow, and the stomach for nine views on the first fifty uploads.

Those are executive functions (planning, sequencing, inhibitory control) and they, too, need support.

3. Your spark is an opportunity cost

One of my students (“John”) spent thirty-plus hours whipping up a 1,000-respondent survey for AP Stats (pure joy for him, a true spark!) and watched his Physics grade sag by two letter grades. Time is zero-sum; every side project drags a GPA somewhere.

If we want spark, we have to reduce the crazy incentives to ALSO get good grades.

4. Even sparks need scaffolding

Another client’s AP Euro teacher tried to ignite curiosity with a graphic-novel assignment. The kid poured 90 percent of his energy into panel layout and almost none into the Peace of Westphalia. Spark? I’m not sure, actually. He was mostly frustrated by the assignment. But content mastery? Definitely not.

Apprenticeship or direct instruction are still necessary. Most kids don’t know how to do stuff unless you teach them!