As conversations about redesigning education grow louder (which I am here for!) and the immediate pressures feel complex and overwhelming, one idea keeps surfacing:
Katie, Great read! Looks like we share a lot on the "re-designing" schools front. This is my evolving vision and backstory for converting from schools to PLACES for Learning: http://tiny.cc/09uz001
Agreed. I'm optimistic that we might genuinely have an opportunity to create more human-centered learning environments—that the walls separating the learning students are doing inside the classroom and work "in the real world" can start to come down. For me, the true test comes down to agency at the school, educator, and student level.
This is exactly the right frame — redesign requires more than subtraction, and the ecosystem model is where the real work is. The six shifts you describe aren't aspirational; they're operational in enough schools now that we have real evidence.
What strikes me is that the bottleneck isn't vision or even will. It's measurement. The accountability structure still runs on what it always has — attendance, test scores, credits — and schools keep optimizing for what gets measured. The relationships, portfolios, and community impact you're describing don't show up on any compliance dashboard.
The ecosystem is possible. The question is what would have to shift in how we hold schools accountable before it could survive contact with the institution at scale.
I notice that you are not including that kids learn how the brain operates and how to direct it. I personally think these are key skills: getting into resourceful mode from survival mode, moving from judging failure to using information, and learning to use conflicts for mutual gain.
These are all teachable and learnable and they lead to self-regulation
Really interesting distinction between redesign as either subtraction or reconstruction, thank you. Your point about students still needing structure, mentorship and meaningful community seems especially important as well.
This is the reframe that changes everything. We spent decades optimizing school for information transfer, right at the moment in history when information became the least scarce thing on the planet.
What's actually scarce now is knowing what to do with yourself. Identity, contribution, resilience, the ability to sit with uncertainty and still move forward, none of that gets built by getting through content faster. And none of it shows up on a transcript.
The children who will thrive aren't necessarily the ones who learned the most. They're the ones who were given enough space, relationship, and real experience to figure out who they are while they're still young enough for it to shape them.
Great read, and Nick Hobar who commented above looks to be exploring structures🙌 I run a learning pod in Nairobi Kenya for my child and others, focused on finding the balance between what I call tech fluency and human fluency - based on connected learning, building autonomy, mastery and purpose - with dedicated time and understanding of thinking as opposed to merely memorizing. No standardized tests, but plenty of discussion, questions being asked, teaching each other and interpreting what things have meaning. Instead of book reports my son built a website to house his book reviews for teens.
We have written agreements on the ethical use of AI and we explore what that means.
They have internships and seek out lessons from experiences in the community.
I’m launching an AI platform that will build this for other pods (I believe small group learning is the way of education in the future) and become a “live curriculum” that introduces ideas and concepts but is shaping itself daily to the learner - not simply marching them through a standard curriculum but creating an integrated, wider view - and like Alpha, be intentional about what we do with the rest of the day. Keep humans in the loop.
I’ve been building in real time with real kids and in a most unconventional place, and it’s working.
I would love to connect with fellow changemakers, the next generation deserves more and better. Cheers
I strongly agree with you. But I don’t think you go far enough. Society is going to be changing so profoundly in the next few years that we still don’t have a good idea of how education is going to fit into it. One thing that seems quite likely is that education will no longer primarily be a manufacturing facility for corporate workers.
We need to have very hard discussions in which everything is on the table, including the value of decades of professional classroom experience. Are our educational experts still expert in what society needs? The question is so terrifying that I have scarcely seen it mentioned outside of my own postings. Nobody wants to think that their career is no longer valid.
Maybe a move to a 4 day week. A major shift into problem/project based learning as a larger % of a school day. The addition of "good cause" community activity. Not to be overly dramatic, but my sense of the future writ large suggests the most important thing we all, students included, need to learn is how to live together in support of one another. This may sound a bit trite but that version of the world is headed our way like a "bullet train".
An important detail on a shift to a four-day workweek is that, for hourly employees, that would require a 20% increase in pay. Without that, we would be vastly enlarging the permanent poverty class.
Good point. Maybe a solution is to have half the teachers/students on campus Monday -Thursday and the other half Tuesday - Friday, with no change to # pf hours worked.
Katie, Great read! Looks like we share a lot on the "re-designing" schools front. This is my evolving vision and backstory for converting from schools to PLACES for Learning: http://tiny.cc/09uz001
Agreed. I'm optimistic that we might genuinely have an opportunity to create more human-centered learning environments—that the walls separating the learning students are doing inside the classroom and work "in the real world" can start to come down. For me, the true test comes down to agency at the school, educator, and student level.
This is exactly the right frame — redesign requires more than subtraction, and the ecosystem model is where the real work is. The six shifts you describe aren't aspirational; they're operational in enough schools now that we have real evidence.
What strikes me is that the bottleneck isn't vision or even will. It's measurement. The accountability structure still runs on what it always has — attendance, test scores, credits — and schools keep optimizing for what gets measured. The relationships, portfolios, and community impact you're describing don't show up on any compliance dashboard.
The ecosystem is possible. The question is what would have to shift in how we hold schools accountable before it could survive contact with the institution at scale.
I notice that you are not including that kids learn how the brain operates and how to direct it. I personally think these are key skills: getting into resourceful mode from survival mode, moving from judging failure to using information, and learning to use conflicts for mutual gain.
These are all teachable and learnable and they lead to self-regulation
I agree with you. Not explicitly noted in this piece but extremely important
I concur wholeheartedly with everything said here. Let’s connect to continue the conversation 🤓🙏🏽
Really interesting distinction between redesign as either subtraction or reconstruction, thank you. Your point about students still needing structure, mentorship and meaningful community seems especially important as well.
The tilt towards more flexible and personalised learning approaches is an idea I have been particularly interested in lately, which I explored further in a recent piece of mine on the benefits of small schools: https://samuelkammin.substack.com/p/scale-anonymity-and-the-human-school
I'd be very curious to hear your take on it. Thank you again for sharing your work.
This is the reframe that changes everything. We spent decades optimizing school for information transfer, right at the moment in history when information became the least scarce thing on the planet.
What's actually scarce now is knowing what to do with yourself. Identity, contribution, resilience, the ability to sit with uncertainty and still move forward, none of that gets built by getting through content faster. And none of it shows up on a transcript.
The children who will thrive aren't necessarily the ones who learned the most. They're the ones who were given enough space, relationship, and real experience to figure out who they are while they're still young enough for it to shape them.
Great read, and Nick Hobar who commented above looks to be exploring structures🙌 I run a learning pod in Nairobi Kenya for my child and others, focused on finding the balance between what I call tech fluency and human fluency - based on connected learning, building autonomy, mastery and purpose - with dedicated time and understanding of thinking as opposed to merely memorizing. No standardized tests, but plenty of discussion, questions being asked, teaching each other and interpreting what things have meaning. Instead of book reports my son built a website to house his book reviews for teens.
We have written agreements on the ethical use of AI and we explore what that means.
They have internships and seek out lessons from experiences in the community.
I’m launching an AI platform that will build this for other pods (I believe small group learning is the way of education in the future) and become a “live curriculum” that introduces ideas and concepts but is shaping itself daily to the learner - not simply marching them through a standard curriculum but creating an integrated, wider view - and like Alpha, be intentional about what we do with the rest of the day. Keep humans in the loop.
I’ve been building in real time with real kids and in a most unconventional place, and it’s working.
I would love to connect with fellow changemakers, the next generation deserves more and better. Cheers
I strongly agree with you. But I don’t think you go far enough. Society is going to be changing so profoundly in the next few years that we still don’t have a good idea of how education is going to fit into it. One thing that seems quite likely is that education will no longer primarily be a manufacturing facility for corporate workers.
We need to have very hard discussions in which everything is on the table, including the value of decades of professional classroom experience. Are our educational experts still expert in what society needs? The question is so terrifying that I have scarcely seen it mentioned outside of my own postings. Nobody wants to think that their career is no longer valid.
I like the idea: how you change the school system is how you intend to change society -- it's why education is so difficult to significantly reform.
Maybe a move to a 4 day week. A major shift into problem/project based learning as a larger % of a school day. The addition of "good cause" community activity. Not to be overly dramatic, but my sense of the future writ large suggests the most important thing we all, students included, need to learn is how to live together in support of one another. This may sound a bit trite but that version of the world is headed our way like a "bullet train".
An important detail on a shift to a four-day workweek is that, for hourly employees, that would require a 20% increase in pay. Without that, we would be vastly enlarging the permanent poverty class.
Good point. Maybe a solution is to have half the teachers/students on campus Monday -Thursday and the other half Tuesday - Friday, with no change to # pf hours worked.
This concept applies across the employment spectrum—not just in schools.