I never know what students will be up to when I visit the after-school program at Brightworks, a K-12 school in San Francisco where students drive their own learning. Sometimes, they’re slacklining between two redwood trees. Other times, they are hard at work in the art studio, making graphic novels with friends. Or deep in a chemistry set with an after-school collaborator, watching things fizzle, foam, and ooze. One day, I showed up to find a seven-year-old rollerskating in a celestial velvet tutu dress while flying a dragon kite, completely unbridled and free.
Brightworks makes this environment possible because they: 1) fundamentally believe in kids’ capacities to drive their own learning; 2) create a liberatory, collaborative partnership between students and teachers—who they call collaborators—and challenge the traditional power hierarchy between adults and kids; and 3) design an environment bubbling with provocations that spark wonder and curiosity amongst the learning community. It also doesn’t hurt that their after-school program isn’t beholden to academic standards or curriculum requirements, allowing them to let a child’s interests lead without traditional school restraints.
Following unbridled curiosity is the central work of children. And, contrary to what industrialized education might demand of us, enabling the deep work of childhood to flourish is the actual central work of educators, school leaders, caregivers, and anyone bestowed with the honor of raising and educating young people.
Kids are so capable. They are innately curious. They come to us bubbling with ideas, curiosities, questions, and passions. And it is our job to listen.
When we adults trust in children and their capacities, when we create safe, kind, unhurried environments full of interesting provocations, and when we give them support to take their curiosities as far their interest and burgeoning skills can go, we are doing right by children and childhood—we are living out the work of raising kind, free people.
That orientation fundamentally shifts the traditional role of an educator away from disseminator of information to collaborator in a child’s learning journey. Disrupting the power hierarchy between adults and children—and instead letting children’s curiosities lead—is the paradigm-shifting, necessary work needed to raise kind, connected, self-directed, voracious learners who become kind, connected, self-directed, voraciously curious adults.
When I taught fifth grade in West Harlem just out of college, I joined a progressive public school with strong leadership, incredible educators, and robust funding. Our school leadership had a holistic view of education, and built partnerships with local organizations to give our students access to progressive education and the arts—from Rosie’s Theater Kids for theater, Teachers College for weekly literacy professional development, and a strings program partnership where Yo-Yo Ma himself came and worked with our students.
Yet for all the work of our administration and educators to build a holistic, progressive school, everything always felt on fire because of pressures imposed on us by a district entrenched in a system of industrialized schooling. We were told our students were behind before they walked through our doors—before we even knew their names. We were told we had to cram them full of social studies knowledge before their first standardized test in November, then cram them full of math and literacy content before their standardized tests in April.
Sometimes, beneath the frenetic cramming, I’d come up for air long enough to really see my students—how Jonathan loved to existentially philosophize, how Nicole could see math in a million different ways in her head, how Jeremy’s worksheets were always covered with incredible comics of his own making—but most of the time, these moments of noticing were diluted as we were all forced to drink from a fire hose that neither my students or I particularly wanted to drink from. Only when testing was done in May did it feel like we could get out from under the pressure enough to begin to connect to the things that made each child’s curiosity come to life—and by then, the school year was nearly over.
Who is this fire hose serving? Why do we all feel so beholden to it? And what if we just reached over together to turn it off?
In my first years teaching, I quickly learned that running radical, countercultural experiments within a system entrenched in rigid hierarchies and punitive responses to experimentation is an uphill battle, and I’m constantly reminded of that with examples: in San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic, a beloved principal at the diverse K-8 school, Rooftop, was reprimanded by the district for responding to the community’s request to create equitable pandemic pods to better serve all students within the school. Even with the most countercultural, dedicated staff, the system itself penalizes innovation and demands conformity. And that is fundamentally anathema to what best serves students and their learning.
When I became a mother nearly a decade ago, I decided to run radical experiments outside of traditional systems in search of an answer to the question, “How do we approach learning in a way that truly honors and centers children and childhood?”
That question led to a decade of facilitating, organizing, and supporting countercultural parenting and education communities—from co-founding a Forest Preschool Cooperative for my eldest, leading a connection parenting playgroup (focused on relational-based, non-coercive ways of parenting young children) for my youngest, serving as an active community member of Brightworks School, and advising and collaborating with other people and teams looking to challenge the fundamental constructs around children and their learning.
It’s not lost on me that opting out of traditional public systems of education to radically experiment in alternative systems is a privilege. Doing so in the Bay Area, where socioeconomic disparities are so glaring, is even more so. And while some of us are opting to run these experiments outside of traditional public schools, many parents and educators are doing so within them. Both approaches feed each other. Whether we are working to change the system within public schooling or outside it, together we create an ecosystem where we can learn from and share our collective experiments in service of creating an educational paradigm that actually honors children, their curiosity, and their capacity.
So where do we go from here to collectively experiment with paradigm-shifting ways to serve kids?
I believe the answer lies in radical dreaming.
Radical dreaming—collectively visioning new possibilities that don’t already exist—is our first and most important tool in designing new and more hopeful paradigms that better serve children. When we collectively come up for air to imagine alternatives to what our society has normalized—but is not normal—for our children, we better equip ourselves to forge new pathways that truly center children and their capacities. We cannot create what we cannot dream, so we have to dream audaciously and unapologetically.
Here’s a radical dream—an experiment I wish we could collectively run. What if temporarily, say for six weeks or so, we all agreed to turn off the fire hose. What if we paused together to take out a proverbial box, and we put all the state standards in there. Then, we tucked away all the grades, assessments, and tests. We piled on top all the knowledge deemed urgent for every child to know, then put away all the punitive, reward- and punishment-based systems to get students to do what we want.
With all those things temporarily tucked away, what if we decided that our role as educators and caregivers was simply to:
What might school look like if we tried this for six weeks? How might our understanding of children and childhood shift? How might our understanding of learning shift? What feels impossible about that scenario? What support might we need as educators, caregivers, and school leaders to make that sort of experiment possible?
I know firsthand that taking six weeks to shove the standards in a proverbial box can feel daunting, especially for folks working within entrenched systems. Radical dreaming is supposed to feel a little daunting for us: it forges a pathway into the unknown. It challenges the current system’s constructs, and in a system that penalizes innovation, that can feel uncomfortable, if not straight up impossible. But in the discomfort, we stretch our capacity to say “what if,” and birth new possibilities together for what can be—possibilities that actually center what’s best for our kids, not what’s best for an ingrained system.
Maybe right now, running that particular experiment en masse feels impossible. But now that we have named it together, what smaller experiments might feel more possible in the spirit of that dream? Maybe we can’t collectively run this experiment for six weeks, but we could run this experiment for two hours each day in our schools. Or maybe we run it each Friday afternoon. Or maybe we can run it in May, after testing is behind us. Or maybe we individually begin to experiment with changing the power dynamic between us as educators and our students in our daily interactions with them, and notice what happens when we do.
I wonder what we’d all learn together, carving out pockets in our days to explicitly shift the purpose of our roles as educators and caregivers like that. I wonder what we’d find absolutely necessary to pull back out of the proverbial box. I wonder how many things might just be better staying in there, if we ran the audacious experiment to let children’s curiosity lead.
I don’t know the answers, but I’m here with you, committed to asking the questions. Let’s radically question, dream, and run some experiments together.
I never know what students will be up to when I visit the after-school program at Brightworks, a K-12 school in San Francisco where students drive their own learning. Sometimes, they’re slacklining between two redwood trees. Other times, they are hard at work in the art studio, making graphic novels with friends. Or deep in a chemistry set with an after-school collaborator, watching things fizzle, foam, and ooze. One day, I showed up to find a seven-year-old rollerskating in a celestial velvet tutu dress while flying a dragon kite, completely unbridled and free.
Brightworks makes this environment possible because they: 1) fundamentally believe in kids’ capacities to drive their own learning; 2) create a liberatory, collaborative partnership between students and teachers—who they call collaborators—and challenge the traditional power hierarchy between adults and kids; and 3) design an environment bubbling with provocations that spark wonder and curiosity amongst the learning community. It also doesn’t hurt that their after-school program isn’t beholden to academic standards or curriculum requirements, allowing them to let a child’s interests lead without traditional school restraints.
Following unbridled curiosity is the central work of children. And, contrary to what industrialized education might demand of us, enabling the deep work of childhood to flourish is the actual central work of educators, school leaders, caregivers, and anyone bestowed with the honor of raising and educating young people.
Kids are so capable. They are innately curious. They come to us bubbling with ideas, curiosities, questions, and passions. And it is our job to listen.
When we adults trust in children and their capacities, when we create safe, kind, unhurried environments full of interesting provocations, and when we give them support to take their curiosities as far their interest and burgeoning skills can go, we are doing right by children and childhood—we are living out the work of raising kind, free people.
That orientation fundamentally shifts the traditional role of an educator away from disseminator of information to collaborator in a child’s learning journey. Disrupting the power hierarchy between adults and children—and instead letting children’s curiosities lead—is the paradigm-shifting, necessary work needed to raise kind, connected, self-directed, voracious learners who become kind, connected, self-directed, voraciously curious adults.
When I taught fifth grade in West Harlem just out of college, I joined a progressive public school with strong leadership, incredible educators, and robust funding. Our school leadership had a holistic view of education, and built partnerships with local organizations to give our students access to progressive education and the arts—from Rosie’s Theater Kids for theater, Teachers College for weekly literacy professional development, and a strings program partnership where Yo-Yo Ma himself came and worked with our students.
Yet for all the work of our administration and educators to build a holistic, progressive school, everything always felt on fire because of pressures imposed on us by a district entrenched in a system of industrialized schooling. We were told our students were behind before they walked through our doors—before we even knew their names. We were told we had to cram them full of social studies knowledge before their first standardized test in November, then cram them full of math and literacy content before their standardized tests in April.
Sometimes, beneath the frenetic cramming, I’d come up for air long enough to really see my students—how Jonathan loved to existentially philosophize, how Nicole could see math in a million different ways in her head, how Jeremy’s worksheets were always covered with incredible comics of his own making—but most of the time, these moments of noticing were diluted as we were all forced to drink from a fire hose that neither my students or I particularly wanted to drink from. Only when testing was done in May did it feel like we could get out from under the pressure enough to begin to connect to the things that made each child’s curiosity come to life—and by then, the school year was nearly over.
Who is this fire hose serving? Why do we all feel so beholden to it? And what if we just reached over together to turn it off?
In my first years teaching, I quickly learned that running radical, countercultural experiments within a system entrenched in rigid hierarchies and punitive responses to experimentation is an uphill battle, and I’m constantly reminded of that with examples: in San Francisco during the COVID-19 pandemic, a beloved principal at the diverse K-8 school, Rooftop, was reprimanded by the district for responding to the community’s request to create equitable pandemic pods to better serve all students within the school. Even with the most countercultural, dedicated staff, the system itself penalizes innovation and demands conformity. And that is fundamentally anathema to what best serves students and their learning.
When I became a mother nearly a decade ago, I decided to run radical experiments outside of traditional systems in search of an answer to the question, “How do we approach learning in a way that truly honors and centers children and childhood?”
That question led to a decade of facilitating, organizing, and supporting countercultural parenting and education communities—from co-founding a Forest Preschool Cooperative for my eldest, leading a connection parenting playgroup (focused on relational-based, non-coercive ways of parenting young children) for my youngest, serving as an active community member of Brightworks School, and advising and collaborating with other people and teams looking to challenge the fundamental constructs around children and their learning.
It’s not lost on me that opting out of traditional public systems of education to radically experiment in alternative systems is a privilege. Doing so in the Bay Area, where socioeconomic disparities are so glaring, is even more so. And while some of us are opting to run these experiments outside of traditional public schools, many parents and educators are doing so within them. Both approaches feed each other. Whether we are working to change the system within public schooling or outside it, together we create an ecosystem where we can learn from and share our collective experiments in service of creating an educational paradigm that actually honors children, their curiosity, and their capacity.
So where do we go from here to collectively experiment with paradigm-shifting ways to serve kids?
I believe the answer lies in radical dreaming.
Radical dreaming—collectively visioning new possibilities that don’t already exist—is our first and most important tool in designing new and more hopeful paradigms that better serve children. When we collectively come up for air to imagine alternatives to what our society has normalized—but is not normal—for our children, we better equip ourselves to forge new pathways that truly center children and their capacities. We cannot create what we cannot dream, so we have to dream audaciously and unapologetically.
Here’s a radical dream—an experiment I wish we could collectively run. What if temporarily, say for six weeks or so, we all agreed to turn off the fire hose. What if we paused together to take out a proverbial box, and we put all the state standards in there. Then, we tucked away all the grades, assessments, and tests. We piled on top all the knowledge deemed urgent for every child to know, then put away all the punitive, reward- and punishment-based systems to get students to do what we want.
With all those things temporarily tucked away, what if we decided that our role as educators and caregivers was simply to:
What might school look like if we tried this for six weeks? How might our understanding of children and childhood shift? How might our understanding of learning shift? What feels impossible about that scenario? What support might we need as educators, caregivers, and school leaders to make that sort of experiment possible?
I know firsthand that taking six weeks to shove the standards in a proverbial box can feel daunting, especially for folks working within entrenched systems. Radical dreaming is supposed to feel a little daunting for us: it forges a pathway into the unknown. It challenges the current system’s constructs, and in a system that penalizes innovation, that can feel uncomfortable, if not straight up impossible. But in the discomfort, we stretch our capacity to say “what if,” and birth new possibilities together for what can be—possibilities that actually center what’s best for our kids, not what’s best for an ingrained system.
Maybe right now, running that particular experiment en masse feels impossible. But now that we have named it together, what smaller experiments might feel more possible in the spirit of that dream? Maybe we can’t collectively run this experiment for six weeks, but we could run this experiment for two hours each day in our schools. Or maybe we run it each Friday afternoon. Or maybe we can run it in May, after testing is behind us. Or maybe we individually begin to experiment with changing the power dynamic between us as educators and our students in our daily interactions with them, and notice what happens when we do.
I wonder what we’d all learn together, carving out pockets in our days to explicitly shift the purpose of our roles as educators and caregivers like that. I wonder what we’d find absolutely necessary to pull back out of the proverbial box. I wonder how many things might just be better staying in there, if we ran the audacious experiment to let children’s curiosity lead.
I don’t know the answers, but I’m here with you, committed to asking the questions. Let’s radically question, dream, and run some experiments together.
