Reform

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.

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

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?

Perhaps the enemy of learning is content

It strikes me that we think of learning and what it means to be educated in very binary ways, in terms of right and wrong answers, success and failure, and making it or not. We are not patient with learning; we expect to have it right now.


A teacher has shared knowledge; the student should metabolize and be able to use the information…right now. This binary way of thinking limits learners; it makes them believe they are either in or out. They understand it, or they don’t. Ultimately, it can lead to the message of perfectionism, “I always have to be correct,” or shame, “Something is wrong with me, I’ll never get it.” It is limiting and doesn’t help learners see that all learning is connected.


We have a lack of patience in learning. Look at our desire to have kids reading at younger and younger ages, mastering content at younger and younger ages. Is this lack of patience in learning what has led us to be content with reducing education down to bite-sized content? We decide that a child has been properly educated when they can repeat the learned content to us. Our education system has conditioned us to view learning as a commodity rather than helping learners see that it is all connected and we are connected. Perhaps this is why students are content to read the Cliff Notes version of a classic for the correct answers rather than engage that patient pursuit of reading and engaging the text in such a way that they might be moved and changed in some way as they read it. Perhaps this is why we are content to reduce the beauty of the mathematical world down to formulas to be memorized rather than a new way to see the interconnectedness of the universe’s inner workings. This may be why so many schools and districts are terrified by the prospect of AI and Chat GPT; it reveals the truth of what we’ve done with learning. It indicates that we’ve reduced learning (and, with it, the universe) into binary understandings. Easier to pretend it doesn’t exist and ban it from the classroom.


The truth is that to learn is to be fascinated and surprised on a continual basis. Nothing is static. The universe is in a constant process of change. A static education goes against the nature of the universe we find ourselves in. How is it that we’ve become comfortable with content being the driver of education? (And yes, it has not passed by me that in English, we use the same spelling for content and content, perhaps it’s a clue.) If learning is entering into the flow of fascination, surprise, curiosity, exploration, experimentation…all things that require patience, how might we create the conditions for learning in schools? What might our focus need to be on? What skills might students need to learn well?


Maybe AI and Chat GPT aren’t the enemies of learning. Perhaps the enemy of learning is content.

carview.php?tsp=

Making the educational unconscious, conscious

Each of us is a composite of our influences and backgrounds encoded by society, media, and our home lives. It’s no different in education. Each of us has inherited an educational atmosphere that exists as part of our unconscious worldview. These systemic and embedded messages are hard to see because everyone is enmeshed in the same thing. We take the messages around us for granted and as our truth. It’s Plato’s idea of “Doxa,” opinions so saturated in our culture that we can’t recognize them for what they are.

Consider the practices in your school experience as a whole; what were the dominant messages you received about learning?

Did you pick up on the message that learning (especially at school) was something to be endured or that it was an adventure you got to be on? 

Was the animating energy of your school experience one of scarcity or abundance? 

Was it free and expansive, or closed and limited? 

Was it animated by questions and curiosity or by knowing the correct answer? 

Was the message you received risk-averse or that all learning happens as a result of risking not knowing? 

I grew up with conflicting messages. In school and the culture at large, I picked up on the message that school was the place where learning happened. Learning got directed by an expert (also known as the teacher) and was something to be endured. I routinely got the message that by surviving school now, my life would be successful and more fulfilled someday. Everything I learned was supposed to prepare me for my imagined someday future. While in school, my job was to endure the disconnected facts, worksheets, busy work, homework, and tests. My worth as a student got tied to how much I could achieve, accomplish, produce, and comply. I had glimmers in school that learning could be about more, but primarily, outside of 1st, 3rd, and 5th grade, my experience was small. Risk-averse. Narrow. About someone that I was not today. Movies and TV shows reinforced this message, bringing to mind Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Saved by the Bell, or Boy Meets World as examples.

At home, I got the opposite message. Learning wasn’t for the far-off future; it was to solve an immediate problem, indulge curiosity, and do something expansive and discovery-driven. My parents were endlessly fascinated by the geeky nuance of learning just for its sake. In my family, we would talk about wood grain, words, space, design, places, and crazy big ideas. At home, learning was something we got to do, an adventure and journey we were always on for today and someday. 

Most of what I see in education policy, curriculum, instruction design, and school design is preserving the current system default. It isn’t innovative because the design exists within the same atmosphere of unconscious bias about what school must be. 

How do we make what is unconscious become conscious? How do we become aware of our default conditioning and stop seeing today’s educational experience as the norm? 

I think a starting point might be identifying what is in each of our educational atmospheres. I designed this short quiz to make what is invisible visible. Take it here before you read on to discover your own unconscious messages.

What was in the atmosphere that was your school experience?

What was the animating energy?

Do you still think about education in these ways?

When you think about school, are these still the images or words that come to mind? Or, maybe you’ve experienced a “culture of encounter.” Neuroscientist Dave Eagleman says, “Each time we have an experience, we alter the circuitry of our brains.” Have you had an encounter that offers a glimpse that there might be more than what is in your current atmosphere? Several in my life gave me enough distance to see that maybe the way we’ve done school isn’t THE way to do school and learning. I had conflicting encounters with learning that provided epiphanies of insight and destabilized the atmosphere I took for granted.

I’ve noticed to dominant messages about school and learning through my destabilization process:

Message 1:

In school and the culture at large, the dominant message was that learning in school was something to be endured. The animating energy of school was that of scarcity and lack. 

School was a place where learning happened to us. Teachers directed it, and classwork, busywork, homework, and tests (“learning”) were something to be survived. A bank of knowledge was the most important; that is what got taught in school. Someday in the future, the learning would have a payoff; we could be successful as a result.

Within this dominant message, we learned compliance at the expense of self. Your worth came from what you achieved/accomplished/produced. Success was measured by the same, often in a zero-sum game of winners and losers. Only some will reach the top; “good” colleges have a few spots available. School is about safety and security in the future. Failure is unacceptable; perfectionism is the aim. 

Some of the unconscious messages you may have about systems of education:

*Assessment is about winners/losers, compliance, perfection, based on a bank of fixed knowledge, guess what the teacher is thinking.

*Grades/Scores are about competition, scarcity, lack, risk-averse, fear, anxiety, based on averages, worth and success based on accomplishment.

*Classwork/homework/subjects are supposed to be tedious, a slog, one correct answer, conformity, rigor, grind, obligation, narrow/shallow understanding, facts to be memorized, teacher giving learning importance, grind, duty, a sole-pursuit.

*Detention/demerits are about compliance, fear-based, disempowerment.

Message 2:

The animating energy of school and learning was largely abundant. An adventure that you got to be on. Learning was expansive and ever unfolding. Learning was a journey based on curiosity and discovery. 

You likely enjoyed ownership and freedom in your learning journey and had plenty of opportunities for creativity, community, and belonging. Learning was not something you endured for a payout in the future; learning had relevance for you in the present and future. 

Rather than being limited to one body of knowledge and one set of answers, you experienced learning with richness and depth. You found the whole experience endlessly fascinating. 

Your learning environment was one of freedom and trust. It was relational and connected; you know the beauty of collective intelligence in a discussion. You often found yourself in a state of flow in learning.

The message you received was that school and learning are joyful. It let you know that your worth as a human is inherent and evolving, not based on your achievements or success. 

Your unconscious messages are rooted in learning as life, something you get to do and love to do, as something ever unfolding. You are rooted in curiosity, creativity, and connection. 

You likely find yourself questioning the way most schools approach learning. For you, the traditional school system doesn’t match what you know about learning. You experienced cognitive dissonance between how the mass culture depicted learning and how you experienced learning. 

What might change in education if more of our atmosphere was animated by the second message? Could we dream different dreams for school and learning?

The Myth of Learning Loss

Over the course of the last year, there have been numerous articles and news stories speculating on the “Learning Loss” that will result from this pandemic. I’ve noticed the fear in both parent and education groups as well; all are asking the same questions: what toll will this take on learning? What will be the learning loss? Did the last year cause lasting damage to our youth?

As I read through these white papers, articles, and posts, I see the fear. I see curriculum companies rushing to the rescue with remedial remedies, parents clamor for a summer full of tutoring, and teachers debating the best way to catch kids up in the next school year. I wonder if the fear is causing us to rush for answers responding to the wrong question? 

Learning loss is a construct that only exists within the education framework focused on a scripted curriculum where learning happens in a predetermined way at a predetermined time and has standardized test goals and outcomes. It’s easy to become obsessed with the wrong outcomes without questioning if this is even the right goal. It strikes me that in most of the conversations around learning loss, the focus is finite, the short-term impact on the test score rather than the infinite, the long-term growth and learning. It seems that scarcity is the animating energy of the “Learning Loss” conversation. Students within a finite education system where the score is the desired outcome may have the appearance of learning loss because they are compared to an unmoving goal that doesn’t recognize things like personal development, the impact of trauma, or a pandemic. The rigidity of such a system of education cannot work in a world that is in a constant state of change. The Covid-19 pandemic acted as a prophet, revealing what was inherently broken in astonishing detail. 

Learning loss is not a concept within a framework where the learner is at the center of a living curriculum. Learning loss can only exist in a system that never started with the learner at the center to begin with. Within a living curriculum, the learning meets students where they are. Learning is a process, not an event. Abundance is the animating energy of a living curriculum. It is always asking, inviting, growing, and adapting to the changing world and the changing learner. A living curriculum ensures that we are meeting students in this movement of time. It puts the learner in the place of being an active participant in learning and not a passive consumer. It tells students that they matter, that all of what they are experiencing in their lives can be part of their learning experience. If we are to prepare children for life outside the classroom fully, their education has to be more living, a moving river rather than a stagnant pool. Every day is a brand new opportunity to meet the student where they are. 

So, back to the beginning, are we asking the right questions? Let’s take a closer look at the assumptions inherent in the “learning loss” conversation:

  • Assumption 1: learning equates to how much of the curriculum we were able to get through this year compared to previous years.
  • Assumption 2: seat time and passing tests are accurate measures of learning.
  • Assumption 3: Correct responses reveal learning gain, and incorrect responses indicate a learning loss.
  • Assumption 4: what has been lost will show up on a test when comparing it to aggregate data of previous years.

As education researcher Alfie Kohn points out, “But as numerous analyses have shown, standardized tests are not just imperfect indicators; they measure what matters least about teaching and learning.” 

We know that coverage of curriculum does not equate to learning. Test scores are not proof of learning; as friend and author George Couros states, “If you can write in a report card that a student can do something in October that they can’t do in January, is that report card still relevant?” 

I worry that too many schools won’t know the individual child well enough even to begin to identify and address “learning loss.” Aggregate data comparisons to previous years can’t possibly tell the story of who a child is and what they need today.

At Anastasis, we’ve worked hard to ensure that every child is the center of a living curriculum, and their growth forward is the goal. We meet them wherever they are and keep them moving forward, not just this year, every year. Knowing each child well means that we can take advantage of the untestable, newly learned skills that were also part of this year. The adaptability, resilience, problem-solving, new modes of communication, scheduling, and technology skills can become part of their forward momentum and growth. The learning journey at Anastasis continues as one of abundance. 

“The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.” -Jean Piaget

Cross Posted at https://anastasisacademy.com

Here’s to throwing our hat over the wall…

There is this story, attributed to JFK’s grandfather, that as a boy, he and his friends would walk along a stone wall in Ireland on their way home from school and, as kids do, they dared him to climb over the wall. The wall was tall, formidable, and scary. He decided that the only way he could guarantee completing this challenge was to throw his hat over the wall so that he would have no choice but to go after it. The hat was part of his school uniform, and he couldn’t go home without it.

We are in a throw your hat over the wall moment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that we are all capable of massive change in the short term. Nearly overnight, we went from our usual way of life, to teaching and learning online, working from home, social distancing, wearing masks in public, grocery shopping differently, and adapting to a new way of life. Eight weeks into this pandemic and we see that we are capable of really significant pivots.

So often in education, I hear how resistant some educators are to change. If this moment is teaching us anything, it’s that we are capable of throwing our hat over the wall. Teachers all over the world have done this. How can we capitalize on this moment? How can we define a new normal with new priorities? How can we involve students in the re-imagination?

What we choose to do next matters, we can double down on our efforts to keep the broken status quo, or we can use the opportunity to re-imagine our system.

Who and what will we choose to support? Kids, families, and teachers? Or curriculum companies, tests, and bureaucracies?

There’s nothing sacred about spelling tests as a way to learn spelling, flash cards to learn math facts, curriculum as a way to teach, testing as a way to collect data. There’s nothing sacred about most of what we do every day in education, and yet we hold tightly to these institutions as we make decisions about what school will look like. These constructs have been put into place to accomplish certain goals; namely to get kids to pass a test, have a certain GPA, and go to college.

When we consider how to do education better, how to make it more equitable, more meaningful, we often do so from the vantage point of old constructs.

As if they are sacred.

As if they are worth preserving.

This is an opportunity to engage in design thinking that will forever transform our schools. Where does this design thinking begin? With empathy. With what is actually sacred: the students.

This moment in time has reminded me how essential this step is (unfortunately, it’s one we regularly leapfrog in education). Who are our students as individuals? Who are their families?

When we refocus our organizing principals around the actual students in our care, when we begin from a place of empathy we can anticipate meaningful changes in our education system. Post pandemic I hope that education doesn’t look the same. I hope that we have taken a step back and hung question marks on the things we take for granted.

What might starting with the student (empathy) look like?

*Class sizes will be smaller. Part of this will be out of health necessity, but I hope the bigger driver of this decision is that we’ve considered the individual student first. With small class sizes, we can offer dynamic, student-focused learning that is tailored to the learner rather than the static curriculum currently being spoon-fed.

*Curriculum will be dynamic and living. We’ll focus less on what content has been covered and focus more on critical thinking, problem solving, discernment, research, and creative expression. Curriculum will meet students where they are rather than demand everyone be in the same place.

*We’ll step away from siloed subjects and engage students in inquiry. We’ll consider that students live in a world that’s subjectless and ask that learning be immersive. We’ll recognize that financial literacy, digital literacy, and statistical literacy are vital.

*We’ll remember that learning is so much bigger and more beautiful than the meaningless data battles we’ve insisted on in the past. What was one of the first things to go amid pandemic? Standardized testing. Students will be better off as a result. Learning isn’t about the data we collect, or how much content was memorized. Learning is immersive and relational. Assessment practices will be for the student. We’ll return to the Greek root of the word assessment (asidere) to sit beside. Assessment will be used to guide learning and as a way for students to self reflect.

*I’ve seen many politicians, parents, and educators voice concerns about students being behind in learning as a result of the pandemic. Should they repeat the grade level? What will we do to catch them up? The pandemic is shining a light on a problem that’s been true the whole time. Students have ALWAYS developed at different rates and in their own time. Nothing about this moment is actually unusual. What is different is that we have a spotlight on the inherent flaws in our systemized one-size-fits-all approach to education that promotes kids to the next level because of their age. What a wonderful opportunity to completely lose grade levels as a way of advancement and instead, let every student advance as they are developmentally ready. How do we organize classrooms? Based on social/emotional maturation. Who is their peer group? Who can they be vulnerable in learning with?

* We are being reminded that social-emotional literacy isn’t something to tack on to school policies or a curriculum, rather it’s the life force within the system. After physical needs are met, emotional needs are very next in the pyramid that makes it possible to learn. When students come back to the classroom, we will be met with complex emotions and unique forms of trauma. We’ll find ourselves in charge of these wonderful, fearful, joyful, exuberant, grief-stricken, complicated, anxious, lovely, overwhelmed children. This has always been the case but, I suspect as we return to school, we are going to be met with the complexity that all of these emotions can exist simultaneously. We’ll be more acutely aware of them. Kids and families will be looking to educators for help, stability, and understanding. How will we meet them? How will we commit to navigating this together? We need to know our students (empathy) and their families well so that we can meet their unique needs. Educators know it’s never been about just teaching kids. As educators we are connected to every single part of society. How families eat, work, access heath care, are supported in mental health, the jobs they hold. All of humanity intersects in the classroom and it impacts how we do what we do in the classroom. This pandemic has given us more awareness of this reality than ever before as educators scramble to fill the gaps that society generally overlooks because “someone” is taking care of it. The way that this crisis impacts society is going to impact our classrooms and the learning available on any given day as we navigate base physical and emotional needs that haven’t been met. The only reasonable response is to begin with empathy. We will need to be stronger advocates than ever before and we’ll have to consider the whole child in every decision made.

Here’s to throwing our hat over the wall. Here’s to remembering who is sacred in education and designing around them.