How to help your kid find their spark

And what a story of popovers and beavers tells us about being an Explorer

Where it all began (2020). Photo credit: Mom

A friend in Miami reached out recently to wish me a happy birthday. I asked about her kids and she mentioned that one had qualified for a national level competition but needed to raise the funds to go. I asked what the competition was (it being America, I blindly assumed it was related to sports). It was food innovation. I asked how he was trying to raise funds for it—$2,000—and her answer had Explorer mode written all over it.

For a quick recap: our book identifies four ways kids show up in life and learning—Passenger, Achiever, Resister, and Explorer. Explorer mode is when curiosity meets drive and kids' intrinsic motivation ignites. It happens when interests meet opportunities and experiences, almost always with some scaffolding from adults, and through that, kids develop agency and resilience. Our book found two things:

1) Kids in Explorer Mode perform better, feel better and have better prosocial outcomes than any of the other modes

2) Only 4% of kids in middle and high school say they get the chance in school to be in Explorer Mode.

The story of Vicente’s popovers

Vicente is 12 and a sixth grader at Ponce de Leon Middle school, a Magnet school which is one one of the oldest middle schools in Miami-Dade County in Florida. The thing he loves most about his school? “Clubs and activities.”

He’s hardly alone. So many kids find their spark or passion not in class but in extracurriculars. That was a key finding of In Search of Deeper Learning a book by Harvard researchers Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine. They spent six years studying what made a successful American high school, visiting respected schools that were known not only for strong test scores but also for engaging learning experiences that sparked students’ curiosity. They ultimately concluded that engagement in school—even the best ones—was poor. But outside of traditional academic classes, it was everywhere. “Much of the most powerful learning seemed to occur not in core classes, but rather at the school’s periphery—in electives, clubs, and extracurriculars,” they wrote.

Vicente loves his classes and his extracurriculars. But qualifying for a national food innovation competition didn’t happen by accident. He started cooking during Covid, encouraged by his mom to stay connected to family and to friends. He learned how to make his “abuela’s” popovers and hosted a few Zooms to teach others—and interact with people. Having a bit of a grounding in it, he felt confident to sign up for a culinary class as a STEAM elective when he entered a new, very-large middle school. His teacher, Ms. Fraser, nudged him to enter the Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) food innovations competition. “She believed in me and encouraged me to register,” he told me.

(Score one for the mom for suggesting the cooking and encouraging it; one for the school for having cool electives and one for the teacher who gave the nudge.)

His first task was to develop a product and a marketing campaign to introduce it to the market. He developed Brain Gulp, and a slogan: “The Drink to Think.” “It’s a smoothie that improves brain power,” he explained to me (my brain mostly needs coffee for power, or that’s what I tell myself. But I digress).

He made a video presenting his product and sent it to a set of district judges. He received the highest score in the district and moved on to the state competition in Orlando. There, he presented again, having tweaked his presentation based on some feedback from the district judges. He got the highest scores again, this time at the state level, and earned a gold medal. That’s when he qualified for Nationals in Orlando in July.

His mom is a big supporter of his efforts but told him he needed to raise the funds to go: summer camp bills were looming and life is expensive. So Vicente decided to host a fundraising Zoom to teach not just his popover recipe but also his award winning Shrimp Scampi and Orzo. It’s happening Sunday.

Vicente loves to cook. That’s led him to delve into product development, put himself out there and take feedback and use it to improve his work. He’s learned to fundraise, and innovate, including when obstacles arise (that daunting $2,000 bill). He’s learned that cooking makes him happy. Finally, he’s experienced the thrill of accomplishment from putting in the hours. This is all life skills gold. I recently heard this quote from a nationally ranked female athlete: “Good things happen to those who wait. Better things happen to those who make them happen.” Vicente is making things happen.

My last question to Vicente was one of those super annoying adult questions that young people typically hate but often elicit some real gems. “How do you think your cooking and the competitions prepare you for what comes next in life?” (cringe, as my daughter might say)

Here’s what he told me: “I believe you can never be fully prepared for anything. There will always be something you haven’t accounted for. Was I expecting to do so many things in middle school? No! Was I fully ready for anything that happened in middle school? No! I mean, you could go on a camping trip, account for what you think is everything to keep your tent safe, but then a beaver comes from nowhere and thinks your tent is food, ruins it, and realizes it’s not. You realize beavers aren’t even in that ecosystem and you’re just standing, looking at your ripped and broken tent, flabbergasted, and thinking where the heck did that beaver even come from? What keeps me going is having a good attitude and letting things flow over me, like water and always ready to find solutions to problems that may come up.”

That’s Explorer mode, people. As Rebecca and I argue, in an age of GenAI motivation will matter a lot. When technology can do so much, motivation like Vicente’s will not be a nice-to-have, but an essential skill for thriving.

What can you do with this? Notice your kid’s spark, wherever it might come. Talk to them about it, and find ways for them to do more of it. Find “experts” including Claude or ChatGPT, but also: humans! Be interested in their thing, and be interesting about it, which means upskilling yourself in their spark to be part of it. Rebecca learned Minecraft, I learned cooking, netball and an array of strange British sports. Remember what it was like to have adults take a genuine, authentic, interest in you.

Do that.

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