Matt, as a parent as well as an educator I so appreciate your honesty about how you fare on Wes’s litmus test. It’s a daily struggle. (Another way to view it is, if my own kids were in this class, would they be engaged by how I am teaching?)
Regarding your questions about specifically teaching math, I recommend reading Alfie Kohn’s book, The Schools Our Children Deserve. He devotes one of the chapters to math instruction and you will find it enlightening and geared to answering your questions. Great book!

My friction with this is, is there a realistic balance between “real” and “fake” learning? Can we turn everything into something so engaging that we would want to participate in, or are there some things that, at least for some students, are not going to be engaging but are important enough to learn.

I am thinking a lot about math lately, and many math activities might fit what you call “fake” learning. I know that my fourth graders need to learn their multiplication facts. Even with all this technology around us, multiplication facts are something that, I believe, people still need to know. Now, some student may be engaged by the way that I teach and we practice our facts, but for some, it just isn’t engaging. Does the benefit of learning sometimes outweigh the need to engage students? Do we just need to work harder to find a way to engage the students, or does the cost of doing so outweigh the marginal benefit?

Perhaps this is where games or competition might come into play. A video game might easily turn something rote like fact learning into something more fun and engaging.

Until then, I continue on the quest for real learning!

Our brand new superintendent, just hired this summer, has a PHD in differentiating instruction. I’m sure these ideas of differentiating and creating real reasons in the classrooms gel together. I would love to know of any other reading I could do about real learning experiences.