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Urinals and toilet stalls: they have something to teach us about teaching.

In recent years, we’ve seen something new in public restrooms: advertisements. They’re on the wall above a urinal or on the doors of toilet stalls. Why? You’re a captive audience. Someone realized that your eyes were going to be fixed on that spot for a short period of time. (Unless you’re checking social media while you’re doing your business. But you wouldn’t do that . . . or would you?) So they sold a mini billboard to place there.

Restroom advertising counts on your attention. And attention is hard to get these days. Notifications keep our cell phones buzzing and dinging, begging us to look at them. Social media is designed to keep our eyes on it—and our fingers scrolling. Online videos and TV use short scenes and segments so we won’t click away.

It’s hard for advertisers and social media to keep our attention. It’s infinitely harder for us to retain attention in the classroom! I’ll bet you’ve seen the results: glazed-over eyes, easily distracted students. Plus, when teaching’s perceived as a drag by our students, it weighs on teachers. This sense of drudgery has contributed to a massive teacher shortage in the United States. “There is no sign that the large shortage of credentialed teachers—overall, and especially in high-poverty schools—will go away,” write researchers in an Economic Policy Institute study (Garcia and Weiss 2019).

This raises an important question: how can we expect students to remember what we want them to remember when class is so forgettable?

Let’s ditch the forgettable and embrace the memorable. When class is memorable, the classroom atmosphere is electric. Students enter the flow state described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1997) where their focus causes them to lose track of time and their surroundings. Learning is fun—for students and teacher!

It’s all about the lens we see learning through. If our focus is we have to learn this or it’s on the test, it’s drudgery. But looking at class through the lens of memorable experience can transform everything! A response to a writing prompt becomes a live news report from the scene. Being asked to demonstrate your two main takeaways feels more like recording a fun YouTube video to share with friends. The question becomes: What lens will you look through today to make class memorable?

When we have our students’ full attention, they’re learning in powerful ways they weren’t before. Memorable teaching. You don’t even need to put anything in a toilet stall to get it.