ZENgaged: An Educator's Guide to Teaching the Anxious Generation Paperback – September 1, 2025

Are your students constantly distracted by their devices? Are you exhausted trying to compete with notifications, memes, and viral trends just to get their attention? You are not alone...and you are not powerless.In ZENgaged, educator and author Carl Hooker tackles one of the most pressing challenges in today's classroom: the battle for attention and student anxiety. This book directly tackles concerns raised in The Anxious Generation and shifts the conversation from bans to balance, offering educators real, classroom-tested strategies for helping students reconnect with learning and themselves.This isn't just another book lamenting the evils of smartphones. Instead, it's a hopeful, practical guide for teachers who want to help students thrive in a connected world without being consumed by it. Rather than pushing for blanket phone bans, ZENgaged equips educators with practical strategies to foster student focus, build trust, and promote self-regulation in a tech-saturated world. Through interviews with educators and different activities, the book provides a way to create a healthier digital culture, partner with parents, and shift the conversation from distraction to connection.This book is for the educators who still believe in wonder. Who know that behind every distracted scroll is a curious, creative mind waiting to be invited back into the moment. Read more