If you walked past my classroom at the college, you might think a fight had broken out. Students are shouting. People are standing on chairs. Someone is furiously drawing a funnel on the whiteboard.

This is what Real Learning looks like.

The Theory of “Healthy Chaos”

Traditional education says a good classroom is a quiet classroom. I disagree. Marketing is a collaborative, high-pressure sport. You don’t learn it by sitting quietly in rows.

I structure my classes around Micro-Sprints.

  • 00:00 - 00:10: I explain a concept (e.g., “The AIDA Model”).
  • 00:10 - 00:30: Teams have 20 minutes to create an AIDA video script for a specific product.
  • 00:30 - 00:40: Present and Vote.

The time pressure forces them to stop overthinking and start creating. The “shouting” is actually passionate debate about whether the “Attention” hook is strong enough.

The “Failure” Moment

Last semester, a student team spent NPR 2000 on an ad campaign that got zero sales. They were devastated. They came to me looking for reassurance. I didn’t give it to them. I said: “Great. You just paid NPR 2000 to learn exactly what doesn’t work. Write a report on why it failed.”

That report was better than any textbook they had ever read. They analyzed the copy, the audience, the landing page. They learned more from that failure than from 10 successes.

Conclusion

Real learning isn’t clean. It is messy, loud, and sometimes frustrating. But when I see a student’s eyes light up because they finally cracked the code—that is the best feeling in the world.