What Education Can Learn From Regenerative Farming

A teaspoon of healthy soil contains up to 9 billion microorganisms. It’s alive. Absolutely teeming. It’s the most complex ecosystem on the planet that we know of.

We’ve managed to strip it bare. (We’re talking 60 growing seasons of healthy soil left on the planet.)

The plow was a catalyst for the Industrial Revolution. It brought a promise of more efficiency, of greater yield, of faster results. What it also brought was long-term depletion of those microorganism building blocks of life. Traditional farming practices, the regenerative ones that respected the biology of soil, were pushed aside. We were promised increased yields that would feed the world through chemicals, tilling, and technology.

The ground began to quiet. Rich topsoil replaced with dry dirt.

We lost the life in the soil, and with it the resilience.

We see this now with growing urgency in agriculture. What looked efficient on the surface turned out to be unsustainable. Our hubris that we knew better than nature has come at the cost of long-term health. We now see how this depletion of soil is linked to a depletion of our bodily health.

I can’t help but see the parallels happening in education.

Just as industrial farming depleted the microbiome of the soil, the industrial model of education has stripped learning of its life.

We once engaged in learning through biological, relational practices: curiosity, exploration, storytelling, play, and contextual real-world connection.

Then came the plow: standardization, efficiency, control.

Curriculum was boxed.

Learning was fragmented.

Students were batched by age and benchmark.

We traded biology for chemistry and tech.

We replaced the ecosystem with a spreadsheet.

Just like the farmers promised higher yields through Roundup and precision rows, educators were promised better results through testing, pacing guides, and rigid accountability.

There’s only one problem: it hasn’t delivered.

What looks efficient from a policy perspective often leads to shallow roots in practice. We have the appearance of learning, while harming the very conditions that make learning possible.

We till for aesthetics. Neat rows, data dashboards, and report cards, while the ecosystem that supports authentic learning is slowly eroding beneath us.

Biologists will tell you: in any ecosystem, diversity is a sign of health. Monoculture makes a system fragile. Diverse organisms make it robust and resilient.

After 14 years running an inquiry-based school rooted in the individual learner, I’ve seen this firsthand. Diverse thinking. Diverse approaches. Diverse timelines and paths.

It’s not neat. It’s not efficient.

It’s ALIVE.

Compare that with legacy school systems, where the ecosystem has been reduced to a narrow set of standards and single definitions of success. That’s not education. That’s extraction.

I fear that as AI begins to show up in more and more classrooms, that it will accelerate the depletion. We’re dropping it into an already depleted ecosystem.

If we don’t first tend to the health of the learning environment—if we don’t first consider how students are showing up, how teachers are empowered, how culture is formed—then AI just accelerates bad pedagogy. It deepens the rut.

But if we tend to the soil…if we remember the relational, biological, human nature of learning, then AI might be a tool that can support the health.

We have to stop putting our energy into how to get more out of the system. Instead, our energy should go into building a healthy ecosystem to begin with.

Learning, like soil, thrives in relationship, diversity, and proper care.

And when it’s healthy?

It yields something so much better than test scores.

It yields resilient humans. The kind who can navigate complexity. Who know how to learn. Who tend the soil of their own communities. Who are fully alive.

The work ahead isn’t about the next “fix.”

It’s about regeneration.

I’m writing a book about what it looks like when we step out of the box and into a Living Curriculum—sharing what we’ve learned at Anastasis about creating a regenerative ecosystem for learning that begins by honoring each learner. If you are interested in this deeper cultivation work, I hope you’ll subscribe and join the conversation!

|Kelly Tenkely| Crosspost from my Substack

Education Needs a Living Systems Approach

We keep treating education like it is a simple system.

A set of steps that, if we follow in the correct order, will give us the result we are looking for. Follow the recipe, and the results will look like the picture.

Curriculum companies often employ this simple system approach. Which might work if we were dealing with a homogeneous population of students, each with the same disposition. The same experiences. The same privilege. The same vulnerabilities. The same [fill in the blank here].

You get the picture.

Schools and tech companies often take the next step, understanding education as a complicated system. In a complicated system, there is a playbook with a deterministic outcome.

Of course, the problem with this approach is that we are still viewing students too narrowly. Sure, we might account for some differences, but we are still locked into a single playbook with a fixed outcome (namely, college and career-ready).

But every educator knows better, because we deal in humanity. We see students in their fullness every day and know that education isn’t a simple system with a simple solution or even a complicated system with a determined outcome.

Education needs a new systems approach. One that is living.

A complex adaptive system.

In a complex adaptive system, we can’t predict the outcome from the onset. Becuase it’s a living system with too many variables and components to create a set of steps or playbook from the outset that.

This type of living system is adaptive and responds to the real students, the real moment in time, and the complexity of learning.

When we name the system correctly and approach it with that energy, we can more appropriately design within it.

We designed Anastasis to be a complex adaptive system. Beginning with getting to know the students in our care. Designing and redesigning our learning and environment to meet them where they were each day, each moment. Honoring how they showed up and what they needed. Holding it all together with inquiry, where students could bring their whole selves to the learning, and the learning would meet them in that moment. We called this a Living Curriculum, as alive as the students in our care.

I’m currently writing a book about our process of creating a complex adaptive system and our Living Curriculum. My hope is that it can be a tool for every school to start designing its own complex adaptive system (that is, designing for its community and learners).

If you haven’t listened to Episode 10 of the Dreams of Education Podcast episode where Michelle and I talk systems, you can listen to it here.

Seeing the Systems We Carry:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

—Carl Jung

We don’t just teach inside a system; we carry that system inside us.

It lives in the stories we inherit, the assumptions we begin with, the traditions we replicate, and the cultural norms we unconsciously continue.

Plato called these doxa: beliefs so deeply embedded in our culture that they feel like truth. These invisible frameworks hum in the background of our classrooms, informing what we normalize, what we excuse, and what we never think to question.

But what feels normal isn’t always right.

What we assume is inevitable might just be what we’ve inherited.

If we never pause to name our assumptions, we risk mistaking tradition for wisdom.

Every one of us holds an unconscious worldview, and that worldview extends to our beliefs about education.

Growing up, I absorbed conflicting messages about learning.

At school, the message was clear:

Learning occurred in designated buildings (called schools), under the guidance of experts (called teachers), and was something to be endured for a future reward.

Suffer through the worksheets, tests, rules, rigid definitions of achievement, and the promise was that someday you’d be “ready” for life.

My worth as a student was tied to how much I could produce, comply, and perform.

At home, it was different.

Learning was everywhere. It was expansive, grounded in curiosity and wonder. Around the dinner table, we’d talk about the grain of wood in the table, the design of spaces, the scale of the universe, and the layers of language.

At home, learning wasn’t for a future life — it was life.

For the most part, my education at school felt small. Narrow. Built for a version of me that didn’t yet exist, and might never.

That early dissonance worked just under the surface and shaped the way I thought about school and learning.

When we started Anastasis Academy, we knew we didn’t want to recreate the system we’d inherited. But one of the things no one tells you about innovation is how hard it is to escape the gravitational pull of the old. Not because we agree with it, but because it lives in us.

“Beware of how you interpret the world; it is like that.” —Erich Heller

It turns out, real change doesn’t originate with a new curriculum or policy.

It starts with a new way of seeing.

I created a free online quiz to help disrupt this hidden curriculum we all carry. If we want to change education, we need to first take the time to notice those things we take for granted as “normal.”

The quiz is meant to help you explore questions like:

  • What do I believe about achievement?
  • How do I define “success” for my students?
  • What do I assume is true about what school must look like?

This Reflection Quiz has become part of our practice at Anastasis. We use it with staff, families, and anyone exploring a more human, responsive, and alive education.

When we take the time to name the stories we’ve inherited and hold them up to the light, we reclaim our agency to choose which ones to keep and which to release.

The future of learning begins with a new way of seeing.

|This was also published to my Substack. Consider following me there!|

Building What Language Hasn’t Caught Up To

We spent the last 15 years building a school from the ground up. A school unlike anything we’d ever seen before, but it was hard to tell people about because the language fell short.

Back then, we reached for the closest words available:

“Personalized”

“Individualized”

“Small teacher-student ratios”

“Learner-Centered” 

“Competency-based”

They were helpful…but not whole. Like calling the iPhone a phone. Technically true, but wildly incomplete. 

What we were doing didn’t exist in a category; we found ourselves constantly at the edge of what the language could hold. 

At Anastasis, we often found ourselves describing who we were by naming what we weren’t. We weren’t standard. We weren’t traditional. We weren’t test-driven. We weren’t built around efficiency, content coverage, or seat time. We weren’t using a boxed curriculum. 

It was easy to articulate our “south stars” clearly. Giving language to our North Star with fidelity? That was more difficult.

Over time, I started to describe what we were doing as a Living Curriculum. It made perfect sense to those of us who lived it, but still needed explaining to those who hadn’t seen it. 

What we were doing every day was alive. Built with our community. Rooted in the learners we actually had, not the hypothetical version that curriculum companies imagine. Driven by relationships. Powered by curiosity. 

To get it right, we had to think differently about all the typical education constructs, too—

How we assess.

How we build culture.

How we get to know kids deeply.

How we create rituals that anchor learning.

It’s funny how language is starting to catch up to what we built. Now, we have more precise terms, such as “microschool,” “Horizon 3,” and “relationship-centered education.” Now there are playbooks and organizations. 15 years ago, we were just a scrappy little group asking, “What would love look like expressed as a school?”

I’m writing a book about all of it, and once again, I find myself up against the limits of language. 

Is it a curriculum?

Is it a guide?

A manifesto?

A story?

All of the above?

This Substack is my attempt to name what we built at Anastasis, and to share what I’m learning as I try to translate something alive into something shareable.

In the midst of the book, I’m also working on converting all of it back into the piece of technology that started it all: The Learning Genome Project.

And, we’re building something new again. It’s called CultivatED Colorado—a space, an ecosystem, a network of support for the kind of innovative schools and educators that don’t quite fit the mold. Schools like Anastasis. For leaders who are building the future before language has caught up. 

Once again, the words feel incomplete. 

Because what we are doing is stepping into uncharted territory. It’s easy to define ourselves by the “south stars.” Not another initiative. Not a fellowship. Not just a network. 

Harder to name what we are actually up to—an attempt to create the conditions, the fertile soil, for educational innovation to take root, grow, and thrive. And there is SO much to that work. 

If you’ve ever felt like what you’re creating can’t quite be categorized—

If you’ve ever reached for language for what you are up to and come up short—

If you’re trying to build something innovative, and human, and new—

You’re not alone. 

P.S. If you’re building something that doesn’t quite have language yet, or if you’re just curious about what education could be, I hope you’ll check me out on Substack. Subscribe to follow along as I write this book, develop this technology, share stories from the edges, and explore what it means to cultivate learning that’s alive. 

Fast Food Education vs. A Nourishing Education

Fast food gets the job done. It’s quick, efficient, and fills you up.

But the people preparing it don’t know you. They don’t know your dietary needs, aren’t concerned with how well the food nourishes you, or what will sustain you long-term. Their goal isn’t your health.

What happens if that’s all you eat?

At first, it works. You’re fed. But over time, something starts to happen. The very thing that was meant to sustain you begins to harm you. Because it was never actually designed to nourish you- it was designed for speed, efficiency, and mass production.

How often does this model show up in education?

How often do we prioritize efficiency over nourishment? Convenience over connection?

Most schools are still powered by the fast food of curriculum and testing. The system is designed for scale, efficiency, and consistency, not for the unique needs of each learner. It delivers a standardized product that checks the box, but over time, it leaves students lacking any real nourishment they need.

I touched on this idea years ago when I compared education to the McRib. The McRib is a processed, molded imitation of real ribs. It’s shaped to look like something satisfying and fulfilling, but it’s really just a cheapened version of the real thing. Traditional education does the same. It standardizes learning, presses it into a one-size-fits-all mold, and drenches it in artificial flavoring-testing, rigid curriculum, scripted lessons-to make it seem like something substantial.

Only it isn’t.

Real nourishment, in food and education, comes from a place of love.

When you cook for someone, it’s an act of care. It’s intentional. You consider what they like, what they need, what will be good for them now and in the future. You slow down, you taste, you adjust, and you create something that not only fills them but also fuels them.

Education should be like that. It should be deeply relational, where the one preparing the learning experience knows the learner-who they are, what excites them, what supports them, and what they need to grow. It should be an expression of love where the goal isn’t just to get the job done but to truly nourish and sustain a lifelong learner.

At Anastasis, we designed a Living Curriculum, one that moves and breathes with the learners it serves. It’s not a static, prepackaged meal. It’s an ongoing act of care, connection, and responsiveness.

I’ve been working on a book to capture this-how education can be an expression of love. A curriculum that isn’t standardized but alive. One that doesn’t focus on efficiency but on nourishment.

If you’ve ever felt that traditional education isn’t serving students well, if you’ve seen the gaps, the disconnect, the way learning has been processed and packaged to meet standards rather than students, I invite you into this conversation.

Education should be more than checking a box. It should be something that truly feeds the soul.

|Kelly Tenkely|

The Lie of Efficiency in Education

There seems to be a lie of efficiency in education.

It seems like every tool, initiative, or policy introduced in education has the same aim: making education more efficient.

We’ve been led to believe that teaching kids in batches is efficient. That testing is an efficient way to assess learning. That lessons can be delivered efficiently to groups of students. That educaiton itself can be made efficient.

The reality is that while these methodologies might appear efficient on the surface, they are anything but efficient.

Recently, I read an article (that I’m admittedly late to) called What Do We Keep Getting Wrong in Education Policy? And it highlighted this lie of efficiency in a new way for me.

The article explores Nathan Hale High School, a school once labeled a “drop-out factory” that turned its outcomes around, achieving impressive graduation rates and a renewed sense of community. As can often happen in education, this successful turnaround became known and held up as a model of what other schools should be doing.

What did Nathan Hale do that was so remarkable to garner this kind of change? Breaking a large school into smaller learning communities. Each small community had shared classes, teachers, counselors, and administrators throughout the students’ four years. It became the centerpiece of education reform efforts. Cue all the money from foundations and the Department of Education to replicate the model nationwide.

It seemed like a simple solution. But the results fell short.

The lie of efficiency has us believing that by making a similar change, that we should be able to reasonably expect the same results.

What policymakers failed to recognize was that the changes at Nathan Hale were far more complex than simply creating smaller communities. The “smallness” was just one part of a much larger transformation.

At Nathan Hale, change was driven from the bottom up:

  • Administrators were given full control over the budget.
  • Teachers and administrators collaboratively asked, “How do we make this better?”
  • Staff had 90 minutes of collaboration time built into their weekly schedule.
  • Teacher evaluations were horizontal rather than vertical.
  • There was intentional work on school-wide culture.

These supporting components and structures were critical to Nathan Hale’s success, but they weren’t part of the reform efforts rolled out elsewhere. Instead, the easiest component of change – smaller learning communities – was replicated. It was the “efficient” component. The result? The magic didn’t follow.

When policies fail, we rarely take the time to understand why they didn’t work. Surface-level changes are easier, “efficient,” and more cost-effective than addressing the full story of what made the original model successful. But without those deeper, interconnected system changes, it’s not wonder the results aren’t replicated.

This is a pattern I saw from a different angle in time spent at Stanford’s d.school. At Stanford’s d.school, a bright red couch in their collaborative makerspace became iconic. I’m told that visitors often return to their own spaces, add a red couch, and then wonder why their team didn’t suddenly become design thinkers. The couch wasn’t the magic-the intentional culture and systems around it were.

Education reform is littered with discarded ideas that become labeled as failures. But often, these initiatives fail because they are implemented in isolation, without attention to the nuance and complexity that made them work in the first place.

Meanwhile, we spend less than 1% of the national research and development budget on education (in 2022). Compare that to the 51% spent on military and defense…it’s no wonder this pattern keeps repeating.

We’re looking for shortcuts in education, but shortcuts rarely serve us. Teaching kids in batches and advancing them based on a “best by” date isn’t efficient – it creates massive learning gaps. Testing as a form of assessment isn’t efficient when feedback arrives too late to be meaningful. Delivering one-size-fits-all lessons to a group isn’t efficient when half the class doesn’t understand but is too afraid, shy, or disengaged to speak up.

If education policymakers had spent the time to undersand why Nathan Hale’s changes work, the initial investment of time would have been less “efficient,” but the resulting policies might have been far more effective in the long term.

Too much of what we do in education is short-sighted, focused on quick wins like test scores or benchmarks. Real learning isn’t efficient. It’s a long game, one that requires investment, curiosity, and flexibility. Our work is deeply human, and those of us who work with humans know the lie of efficiency. We’re playing the long game. There are no short cuts.

In this week’s Dreams of Education podcast, Michelle and I explore the lie of efficiency in education. We talk about what made Nathan Hale successful, why surface-level replication rarely works, and frameworks that could create meaningful change (spoiler: they aren’t efficient).

Listen here: Dreams of Education Podcast

Naming with Specificity: What do we mean when we say learner-centered?

It seems like every school, curriculum, and educational technology website I visit proudly proclaims to be “learner-centered” or “student-centered.” I’m often disappointed when I can’t find evidence to support that it is learner-centered. Instead, I see systems designed around efficiency for adults, rigid standards, and curricula that dictate every moment of- not around the needs of the a teacher’s day kids in front of them.

When we don’t name with specificity, we tend to care less about it. We pass strangers in cars every day and unless they make us angry or let us cut in, we think nothing of them. But, if we see a friend pass in a car we feel differently.

A spark of recognition, care for them, memories, curiousity about where they might be headed.

Or, consider the differences between animals you see in the wild versus the pet who you name, feed, and sleeps in your house.

We care differently for those whose names and stories we’ve learned.

Caring about “nature” is different from caring about the “Highline Canal.” I walk my dogs on those sun-dappled paths of the Highline Canal.

We have a different level of gratitude and stewardship for the things we name with precision and learn the stories of.

I believe one of the largest issues in education is claiming to be learner-centered without the precision of naming. Those making decisions, writing curricula, or creating the edtech tool are disassociated from the children they are making decisions for. They don’t know the names and stories of children in your classroom. They can’t possibly accurately steward and make decisions for those kids because they’ve never met them.

Learner-centered education has to begin with the learner. Their unique needs, interests, readiness, and humanity. That may seem like an obvious statement but I rarely see this as the starting point. Instead, most claiming learner-centered start in the wrong place and impose predetermined standards, curricula, technologies, or systems.

To be learner-centered is to be deeply relational, focusing on knowing and honoring the learner in front of you, and not just as a student but as a whole person.

In a learner-centered environment:

*The learner’s humanity is prioritized: The physical, emotional, and developmental state of each child shapes the approach, recognizing that learning happens best when students feel seen, safe, and supported.

* Learning is adaptive and responsive: Teachers remain flexible, responding in real-time to the rhythms, needs, and sparks of curiosity that emerge in the classroom.

*Play and curiosity are central: Learning isn’t confined to rigid, preplanned lessons but grows organically from exploration, inquiry, and authentic engagement.

*The Process is valued as much as the product: Instead of focusing solely on outcomes, learner-centered education celebrates the journey of learning- observing how students think, make connections, and grow over time.

*Assessment informs, not defines: Assessment is a tool to understand and support the learner, not a final judgment. It emphasizes growth and feedback over grades or standardized benchmarks (more on this next week).

*The System supports the learner, not the other way around: Structures like class size, schedules, and curriculum flexibility are intentionally designed to serve the needs of students rather than adult convenience.

*Authentic connections matter: Teachers and students co-create the learning experience, with the teacher acting as a guide, partner, and advocate rather than a content delivery authority figure.

At its core, learner-centered education recognizes that every child is different and rejects one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, it creates the conditions where learners are empowered to show up as their whole selves and grow in their own unique ways.

This week on the Dreams of Education Podcast, Michelle and I unpack what it truly means to honor the humanity of every learner. We’ve touched on this topic before, but it’s one we keep coming back to because it’s at the heart of everything we do. Real learner-centered education goes beyond buzzwords. It’s about intentionally creating spaces where kids can show up exactly as they are and where their readiness, their rhythms, and their needs guide the learning, not the other way around.

This is the reason we started Anastasis. We wanted to create a space where kids are seen, known, and loved. We wanted to start with the learner and build out from there. We’ve seen first-hand what starting with the learner looks like. It isn’t easy. It requires flexibility, vulnerability, and a willingness to let go of control.

Learning is a deeply human act. It’s messy, relational, and full of moments that can’t be captured by a worksheet or measured by an algorithm. That’s why we’re so passionate about keeping the humanity in education and pushing back against the systems and tools that prioritize efficiency over kids.

The next time something is sold as learner or student-centered, I encourage you to pause and consider if it truly starts with the learner. Some questions we find useful:

*Does this tool/technology/practice begin with the unique learner?

*How does this tool/technology/practice activate the potential of this learner?

*How does this tool/technology/practice help me respond to the unique student’s needs and what is happening in the classroom today?

*How does this tool/technology/practice create the enabling conditions for students to bring their whole selves to the learning?

*How might this tool/technology/practice help us co-create the learning experience with the learner?

I love this quote from Stephen Harris of LearnLife: “A personal learning mindset aims to enable stronger agency and self-awareness as learners and the ability to generate their own learning pathway now and in the future.”

If you’ve ever wondered what it really means to be learner-centered, or if you’re frustrated by the disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality in education, this episode is for you. Michelle and I dig into the challenges, the joys, and the unexpected beauty that comes from putting kids at the center of their own learning. Listen here.

Executing Wonderfully on All the Wrong Things

Early in my teaching career, I executed wonderfully on all the wrong things.

Name tags that doubled as public behavior charts? Nailed it. They were a thing of beauty. Teaching math as a set of rules to be memorized? Flawless execution. Following the boxed, one-size-fits-all curriculum to the letter? Done like a pro.

I cringe as I write this now.

Those name tag/behavior charts? They led to unhealthy competition, finger-pointing, and division among students. Worse, they created unnecessary shame when a child’s behavior didn’t match my expectations in the moment. The one-size-fits-all curriculum? I justified it because it’s what my school provided and because it readied students to perform on tests (and hey, we were an award-winning school for those test scores!). All of this was done with good and pure intentions–I wanted to support my students’ learning.

I know I’m not alone in executing wonderfully on the wrong things.

In education, we’ve poured incredible amounts of time, energy, and money into developing systems and policies focused on the wrong things. We’ve built whole systems and frameworks designed for compliance, efficiency, and appearance rather than substance that are wonderfully executing on all the wrong things. Maybe this is why we can add technology to our classrooms (replacing a physical worksheet with a digital version) and convince ourselves we’ve done something heroic by introducing students to 21st-century tools. Meanwhile, nothing of significance has changed.

Our cause is just: we want kids to succeed. Our motives are pure: we’re doing our best with the tools we’ve been given. Our tactics are justifiable: we use the curriculum our schools provide. But when we assume our approaches are correct, we have no reason to change and lose sight of the bigger picture.

I wonder what would happen if we thought more intentionally about system-level change apart from those assumptions. What if we challenged those assumptions? What if we asked better questions about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it?

Scott Belsky, in The Messy Middle, says it well:

“A question informs the answer more than we realize…When you’re building something new, focus on asking the right questions instead of having the right answers.”

As a society, we’ve accepted the educational monoculture as truth. We’re so close to it that we can’t see it objectively from a distance anymore. We accept school practices as “normal” and “ideal,” which keeps us from asking the questions that matter.

We need a new orientation to education–one that creates systems of significance and purpose.

I’m not interested in schools that have adopted the “right” pedagogy or the “correct” beliefs about education. I’m interested in asking better questions, ones that lead us to transform lives and communities through our work.

It’s easy to cling to established beliefs and ideals in education. It’s easy to go on autopilot and continue doing what has always been done. Harder to ask the right questions and shine a light on our practices. Until we see students for who they are and what they need, our beliefs will fall short.

Over the last 14 years of running a school, I’ve become more convinced than ever that we have to embrace nuance, freedom, and paradox to meet students’ needs.

Take the current rush to integrate AI into classrooms. Companies and schools alike are scrambling to adopt AI tools, but in my experience, they’re still trying to solve the wrong problems–accelerated by AI. Instead of addressing the real needs of students, we’re executing wonderfully on all the wrong things again. We’re still starting in the wrong place. Worse, the rush to adopt AI risks stripping humanity further from our educational practices.

I want classrooms filled with more human, relational experiences. Technology, including AI, should be used to enhance those relationships, not replace them.

In this week’s Dreams of Education Podcast, Michelle and I explore how we approach math through an inquiry lens and dip our toes into what AI might mean for education. We discuss what it looks like to reimagine systems and practices to better serve students. You can listen here.

Where do you see education executing wonderfully on all the wrong things?

Less Compliance, More Meaningful Connection

I think all the time about how many kids hop into their cars at the end of the school day, and when asked, “What did you do at school today?” respond with a shrug and, “Nothing.”

The thing is, in many cases, they aren’t wrong. In classrooms bound by one-size-fits-all curricula, many kids aren’t doing anything meaningful to them. What did they learn? Another shrug.

As a technology integration specialist, I spent a lot of time working with curricula. What I saw (and experienced firsthand when I was a student) was that much of what students spend time on in schools doesn’t actually engage their brains. Tasks can often be completed mindlessly, without requiring any real thought or connection.

I’ll never forget the day I became fully disenchanted with the reading curriculum we were using. Students filed into my classroom, looking tired, bored, and disconnected. When I asked what was going on, they all groaned about how boring their reading assignment was. Some were frustrated that the accompanying packet of work was taking forever. Curious, I asked what they were reading.

“Charlotte’s Web. It’s so boring!”

I was shocked. How could they not love Charlotte’s Web? I adored it as a student and again as a teacher.

“Wait, you don’t like Charlotte’s Web?!” I asked, genuinely surprised. The collective groans were loud and clear.

“How far into it are you?”

Blank stares.

“I think we finished it?” one student guessed.

They didn’t even know if they’d finished the book.

I was baffled. These students had a phenomenal teacher—a master teacher I admired and learned so much from. She was well-loved by her students. So why were they so disengaged from this classic?

Later, as I was reviewing the curriculum, I understood the disconnect. The students hadn’t actually read the book. They’d been dropped into Chapter 3 with no context of the story or its characters. Their task for the week was to read this isolated chapter (multiple times with some close-reading exercises), answer a list of comprehension questions, memorize spelling words pulled from the excerpt, and complete sentences missing punctuation.

It’s no wonder they weren’t interested and had such distaste for Charlotte’s Web. They had no connection to the story.

Back to the car: they were truthful when they said they did “nothing.” Nothing was gained from that experience beyond compliance in finishing the task.

That moment stayed with me. It solidified my belief that when it comes to teaching reading and writing, it has to have meaning. It has to have context. Otherwise, what’s the point? Reading and writing are opportunities to make meaning, to understand our own thoughts, feelings, and desires, and to step into someone else’s perspective and imagination.

In our efforts to make education more efficient, we’ve stripped out the very things that give learning meaning.

At Anastasis Academy, we were committed to helping kids fall in love with reading and writing. That meant ensuring every reading and writing experience had context, meaning, and an audience beyond the teacher. We wanted reading and writing to be about connection—connection to ideas, to others, and to the larger world.

On today’s Dreams of Education podcast, Michelle and I dive into what reading and writing looked like at Anastasis. We share how we brought meaning back to these essential skills and how we helped students discover the joy of authentic learning in a living curriculum.

Cultivating a Benefit Mindset in Education
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At Anastasis, we believe education should be impact-oriented. Our goal is to help learners develop a benefit mindset—a perspective focused on contributing to the greater good, not just on personal achievement. Learning shouldn’t be confined to what individuals gain; it should also ask, How does this learning serve the world? How can it contribute to solving global problems? It’s for this reason that every class at Anastasis has a year-long partnership with a local non-profit organization.

It’s important that our learners discover who they are, identify their unique strengths, and then use those strengths to make meaningful contributions to causes bigger than themselves. As Buchanan and Kern (2017) describe, these contributions position actions in a purposeful context. It’s not enough to strive for individual success; we aim to raise learners who are “Net Givers,” as Chris Anderson of TED calls them—people who enrich their communities and the world through generosity.

This isn’t a goal for “someday.” To be effective global citizens, kids must understand that they have something to contribute right now, at any age.

“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.” – Herman Melville

Through service and experiential learning, students learn that we don’t have to be the same to share the same space. Our service partners help us shed unconscious assumptions that our worldview is universal. These partnerships breed cognitive diversity, broadening students’ perspectives, voices, and empathy while promoting new thinking and understanding.

Service learning transforms knowledge into responsibility in ways that are both beautiful and unexpected.

“Everyone can be great… because anyone can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

What I love most about service learning is how it empowers every learner. Regardless of how a child sees themselves, service learning reminds them that they have something valuable to offer—whether it’s a kind word, a listening ear, or simply their presence. Over the years, we’ve learned not to get too attached to what the outcome of a service opportunity will be; we’re not engaging in these partnerships for a specific outcome. Instead, it’s the experience of being present for the other.

Meaning comes from doing something significant for others. Service learning creates opportunities for students to find that meaning within a school setting. When we ask kids, What kind of world do you want to create? they realize they are active participants in shaping the future.

When I was in school, I believed education was about preparing to fit into the world as it existed. Through service, I discovered a different truth: I could actively participate in creating the world. I had a role to play, and it was uniquely mine.

Every learner should know this:

“What you do for yourself dies with you when you leave this world; what you do for others lives on forever.” – Sir Ken Robinson

In last week’s Dreams of Education Podcast, Michelle and I talked about what field trips and service learning looked like at Anastasis and shared some of our most memorable service moments.