Substack

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

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.