|
|
|
If you are like me, you need several versions of the same document to get the gist of an idea. Since Dewey is so dense, I thought I would create shorter outline version of my ideas to accompany my blog post. Just a warning, it is AI generated, so spellings are not always the best (especially the spelling of my name). The AI thinks I am a dude, because my name is spelled Lou. How rude! I hope the guide helps you to get the big idea easily, because I tend to ramble.
0 Comments
Welcome to confession number 167. My name is Lu Gerlach from thinkchat. This episode is starting a new book club series, because you know I love a good book club.
The Stoics and the GOATs of Education This summer, while traveling, I've been diving deep into podcasts and books that have genuinely shifted how I see the world. One author in particular has really resonated with me, a fellow Texan named Ryan Holiday. His podcast, The Daily Stoic, and his books draw fascinating connections between ancient Stoic philosophy and the challenges we face today. I've found myself captivated by figures like Marcus Aurelius, who, despite being one of history's most powerful rulers, spent his life wrestling with the most human of questions: What is the whole purpose of why we're here? He wasn't just a conqueror or a statesman. He was a thinker, someone who looked at the world around him and refused to stop asking why. This curiosity led me down a rabbit hole. I started exploring what Plato, Socrates, and the other great minds we've heard about our whole lives actually had to say about how we should live and how we should learn. The recurring theme I keep encountering is this: life has always been hard. It has always been a challenge. But those who rise to meet it are the ones who come out the other side stronger, wiser, and more grounded. This seems to be the throughline in everything the Stoics wrote, no matter the century, no matter the context. Right now, I'm reading a tiny but remarkable book called How to Be a Stoic by Penguin Books. Don't let the size fool you. It is dense with wisdom, the kind of nuggets you can sit with for days and still find new meaning in. I'll be transparent: I don't know how to pronounce half of the philosophers' names, but that's okay. What matters is what they're saying. One of them wrote something that stopped me completely in my tracks: "An impression is all you are, not the source of the impression." Think about that for a moment. When I consider the world we live in today, flooded with impressions from every screen, every platform, every advertisement and algorithm, all of it quietly shaping what we want and who we think we are, that idea feels more urgent and more radical than ever. We are not the things that influence us. We are how we respond to them. The same philosopher also writes, "Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want. Welcome events in whichever way they happen. This is the path to peace." Simple. Profound. Surprisingly hard to actually practice. But isn't that the whole point? The Stoics weren't offering easy comfort. They were offering something much more valuable: a framework for navigating a world that will never fully cooperate with our plans. John Dewey Here's where my brain did what it always does: it made a leap. If these ancient Stoics were the philosophers of life, then who are the Stoics of education? Who are the all-time greats, the true GOATs, who forever changed how we think about learning, about the rights of children, about what it actually means to teach? My brain started percolating. Naturally, names like John Dewey and Vygotsky rose to the top. These are people we reference constantly in education circles, people whose ideas form the backbone of so much of what we believe about how children learn. Here's my honest confession though: even after years in this field, I've been guilty of grabbing light, contemporary snippets of their work rather than going back to the source. We all do it. We'll take a quick quote, a brief summary, a secondhand interpretation, and we move on. We lean toward the contemporary and the convenient rather than sitting with the original OGs and really wrestling with what they actually said. So this summer, that's exactly what I decided to change. My personal inquiry project became this: go back to the roots. Read what these people actually wrote. Understand them deeply enough to apply their ideas to the world we're living in right now. I started with John Dewey's Experience and Education, originally a lecture series he delivered for Kappa Delta Pi back in 1938. Now I want to give you a little background on this man, because he deserves it. John Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont and earned his PhD from Johns Hopkins University, one of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. He went on to teach at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, and before his death in 1952, he produced a body of work that continues to shape how we think about learning to this day. He is, without question, one of the most influential American philosophers in the history of education. One of the things I've come to appreciate most about Dewey is that he placed the learner at the absolute center of everything. That's probably why so many educators have clung to his ideas across generations. It took me a while to fully arrive there myself, but I'm a believer now. Reading his actual words, rather than summaries of his words, made all the difference. Experience and Education In Experience and Education, Dewey emphasizes experience, experimentation, purposeful learning, and freedom as the cornerstones of what he called progressive education. Here's what strikes me about that: this was nearly 100 years ago. Nearly a century has passed, and we still have schools all over the world where children sit in rows, learning in subject silos, being talked at rather than engaged. On a large scale, we have not moved the needle. Why? Dewey's work points toward an answer, and it's a challenging one. It comes down to teachers. Not students. The students are ready. They have always been ready. It's the systems, and the people within those systems, that have resisted. Right from the preface of this book, Dewey sets the tone with clarity: "All social movements involve conflict, which are reflected intellectually in controversies. Thinking about things that are an important social interest, such as education, were not also an arena of struggles, practical and theoretical." In other words, any time we try to push education forward, we should expect resistance. We should expect theoretical clashes, pushback from colleagues, pressure from administrators, skepticism from parents. That's not a sign that we're doing something wrong. It's a sign that we're doing something that matters. He then says something I found both humbling and strangely comforting. “Developing a true philosophy of education is extraordinarily difficult, because every movement toward new ideas eventually faces a gravitational pull back toward the familiar. When life gets hard, when the workload becomes overwhelming, when we don't know what we're doing, we retreat. We reach for the tools and methods we already know, even if we've outgrown them.” My Personal Connection I felt that personally this past school year. I walked into my classroom managing three curricula at once, two of which had been so heavily revised they felt completely new to me. Half the time, I genuinely didn't know what I was doing, and I'll freely admit that. So what did I do? I reached back into my toolkit and pulled out inquiry-based practices I'd trusted for years. Not because I was abandoning new ideas, but because I needed something solid under my feet while I found my footing. I needed a foundation. Dewey would understand that impulse completely, because he writes about it. He acknowledges that sometimes the pull toward the past isn't weakness. Sometimes it's wisdom, as long as we don't stay there. What I find remarkable is that even in 1938, Dewey was being labeled a progressive educator, and people were already fighting about it loudly. Traditionalists insisted on keeping to the old ways. The new school movement said tear it all down and start over. Dewey, wisely, refused to align himself fully with either camp. He warned that when any movement becomes an -ism, it gets so consumed by reacting against other -isms that it loses its own integrity and its own purpose. Progressivism stops being a genuine philosophy and becomes a thing, a target, something for opponents to dismantle rather than a set of ideas that are simply good and true and worth fighting for. We see this everywhere today, in politics, in media, in school board meetings. The moment you attach a label, you invite a war. Dewey saw it coming nearly a century ago. This brings me to the passage that genuinely stopped me cold, and I want to remind you that I'm only on page 17 of this book. Dewey writes: "Mankind likes to think in terms of opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of either-ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities." Read that again. He's describing with perfect precision what we see playing out today in every corner of public life. You're either with the traditional model or against it. You either believe in structure or you believe in freedom. You're either a rigorous teacher or a permissive one. There is no room for nuance, no space for complexity, and that rigidity is precisely what keeps us stuck. He points out that this either-or thinking is especially dangerous in education, because those in power use it strategically. When educators try to move ideas forward, it becomes very easy for opponents to frighten parents, frighten voters, and frighten anyone who might otherwise be open to change. You're either teaching children to read or you're letting them run wild. You're either preparing them for the future or you're coddling them. The nuance gets lost, and the children pay the price. Dewey describes what he sees as the core belief of traditional education, and I want you to sit with this: "The subject matter of education consists of bodies of information and of skills that have been worked out in the past. Therefore, the chief business of school is to transmit them to the new generation." The job of the teacher, in this model, is to deliver the past into the present. That's the whole role. Take what has already been figured out, package it, and hand it to the next generation. Dewey is not dismissing the value of that knowledge. Facts matter. Foundational skills matter. But he is asking us to consider whether transmission alone is truly education, or whether it's something closer to imitation. He's also clear that the answer isn't to throw tradition out entirely. He says that both are essential. We need the content, the knowledge, the skills that generations of human beings have worked hard to develop. We also need purposeful learning, genuine experience, student agency, and the freedom to make meaning. When we strip out either one, we commit what he calls a miseducation. We short-change the child. The problem isn't tradition versus progressivism. The problem is the insistence that we must choose only one. Dewey Application So as you sit with all of this, whether you're a teacher, a school leader, a curriculum coordinator, or a parent, I want you to ask yourself something honest: are you promoting new thinking, or are you simply packaging the past? Are you creating space for children to inquire, to collaborate, to construct meaning, or are you delivering information and calling it learning? These are not easy questions. They're not meant to be. John Dewey wasn't offering easy answers in 1938, and the questions he raised are still unresolved today. This is exactly why I want to keep unpacking this book with you. I'm only in the introduction, and already it's reshaping how I think about my own practice. In the next episode, we're going to do a real deep dive into chapter one and explore what Dewey says about traditional versus progressive education in much greater detail. For now, I just want to leave you with this: go back to the GOATs. Don't settle for the secondhand summary or the social media snippet. Read what these people actually said. Understand them in their own words. Because the more deeply we understand where these ideas come from, the more powerfully we can apply them to the classrooms and communities we're building right now. I love you all. Keep doing the amazing work you're doing. This book is inspiring me, and I hope it inspires you too. See you in the next episode.  Nothing makes me happier than to see a learner create something with their own hands. There is something magical about it.
This past week was so joyful. We had awards ceremonies, Genius Hour presentations, and a parent showcase. Most of these experiences were very learner-driven, which is what made is so memorable. In particular, the parent showcase was something we will remember for a long time. Our last units for math and language were on area and perimeter and animal research. We decided to combine the two to create an animal sanctuary architectural plans. In the picture above, my learners had already calculated the area and perimeter of each building and were in the process of measuring walls to house the animal enclosures. This is where the ideas began to fly. My learners wanted to ensure that the walls reflected the height in real enclosures to ensure all animals had the space they needed. They carefully measured each side to to make sure they were equal. On the day of the showcase, the parents assisted in transforming the 2D plans into 3D structures. This took their and brought them into life. One parent commented that this is what architects do everyday, which made my learners feel very proud. The morale of my story is that learners apply more by making and doing than writing. This project was one of the favorites of the entire year. When I asked my learners what was so impactful, they told me it was because they controlled the design. There were so guidelines, but the look, the feel, and function were all up to them. This circles back to our prior discussions about learner agency. When we give learners the opportunity to use their hands to make, it helps the learn to apply thinking differntly. We call this kinesthetic or somatic processing. We are processing ideas through physical use of our body and mind together. If this is how some of our learners process information, where is there opportunity for this to happen in our classrooms?  We've heard alot about learning walls within the past couple of years. It's only a natural response to making thinking visible in the classroom.
I know my documentation process has come a long way, since I understood the process of learning. The picture above is from a classroom I had over 15 years ago. I like going back into my catalog of photos, because it reveals what we valued at the time. To be honest, I have always been a visual processor, so bright designs that have enough white space as been key. This display gave me the anxiety when I was in it. There is too many things on teh wall and jumbled together. For others, this is perfect, because it is a display of learner's work. On this note, I agree. Now, I am finding purpose for my walls. What type of work is going up? I don't have great work walls anymore...I know that is going against everything we were taught in teacher's college. Instead, I have walls that speak to grounding concepts and guiding questions of my unit. For those PYP teachers, I turn my line of inquiry into a question, because it is easier to answer and collect documentation. What transforms a space that collects work samples versus how learning happened is the intention. What are putting it up for? Who is it for? I stopped collecting and posting work for my parents and school leadership along time ago. Instead, I post it for my learners. I want my learners to see evidence of their learning joruney and how it has changed and progressed during a moment in time. They help me put ideas together based on their knowledge and connections. They decide what is worthy of being posted and what is not. As I have engaged in the conversations, everything has changed. Are you willing to make the change with me?  In one of my school's we taught about the impact of coal, oil, and gas on the environment. As we progressed through the unit, we discussed how people either harvested rainforests for their resources and burned them down to graze cattle. We researched that the land that was once lush rainforest became a desert within five years due poor soil composition.
This broke my little 4th graders hearts. They couldn't believe that people would cut down beautiful rainforests to graise cattle. When we explored the impact of methane gas, this took them over the edge. Shortly afterwards, I was contacted by an irate parent. They did not appreciate that I told their daughter to become a vegitarian. This comment stopped me in my tracks. When had I ever advised anyone on their dietary requirements? I was puzzled. The parent relayed a story where the young girl was so impacted by our learning that she made a personal boycott of all beef products. When the family went through the McDonald's drive-thru, she refused to order anything. She was becoming a vegetarian, because of the harm cows were putting onto the environment. This is the power of inquiry. It provokes us to feel something to make lasting change that goes beyond the classroom. This is what we hope will happen as learners leave our doors. How do we create these situations to naturally occur? We provoke. We compel. We make our learners feel something so big that it cannot be contained. Then, we go within and beyond our borders. As we are learning content, how do we get our learners to think about the issue or idea within their local community? How do we take something like poetry and give it relevance to a third grader? We get them to see where poetry lives in the world through songs, jingles, and other uses of figurative language. We expose them to multiple versions of the same poem from people with different life stories and cultural backgrounds. This is where the voice of the poetry comes to life. Providing a single story of an issue, problem, situation, or viewpoint is boring. The depth of learning comes when we are seeking out patterns.
Now we are bridging from just my point of view to our shared perspective. What will you do to invite local and global connections into your teaching? Are you reading for an irate parent to call you to respond to your teaching? To be honest, it was a bit shocking, but afterwards it made me smile. I had provoked a child to think and act on their own. This is what teaching is all about.  Are we teaching for mastery or to tick it off the checklist? There is a big difference?
Coverage is a completion task. Transfer is a design task. When a teacher teaches for coverage, the question driving planning is: what do students need to know by the end of this unit? When a teacher teaches for transfer, the question is: what will students be able to do with this understanding in a context I have not designed for them? These produce completely different results. A sign of coverage is when learners pass the end-of-unit assessment, but three weeks later they remember almost none of it. Not because they were not paying attention. Because the learning was organized around the unit, not around an idea that matters to the learner. Transfer begins with identifying the concept underneath the content. Not the topic, but a big, transferable idea. A unit on the water cycle is not really about the water cycle. It is about systems, cycles, and interdependence. Those ideas transfer to economics, to ecology, to human relationships, to history. A teacher who knows that is teaching for transfer from the first lesson. A teacher who does not know that is teaching the water cycle. Wiggins and McTighe call this uncoverage, which is going deep on an idea that transfers rather than going wide across the content area. This requires genuine intellectual courage, because it means leaving things out. Coverage anxiety is real. Passing the end of the year exam is real. The argument is not that coverage does not matter, but transfer matters more. Yikes, did I just say that?! Yes, I did. Transfer in assessment asks learners to apply understanding to a situation they have not seen before. This means that they must solve a new problem in a different subject area with the same process. There has not been any coaching by the teacher. Let's be clear, it is not a harder version, just different. It may feel harder to the learners, because they are being put into productive struggle withouth their knowlege. This is how they remember and grow. Think of your next unit of inquiry or next term. What is the concept underneath the content? Where else in a learner's life will that concept appear? Design the last assessment first. Make the context different than you have ever taught before. If the learners can apply it, you know it transferred. Good luck and comment here with your progress.  When I think of competence, I can't help to think of the word confidence. This image is of a confident young person. When I look at his smile, it reminds me of learners who know what they know and know what they don't know. Even still, they are fine with it.
A skill is something a learner can perform when the conditions are right. This happens when a teacher sets up a task, provides the scaffolding, and tells the learners when it's time to use a strategy or tool. They are growing in their understanding of how to use the skill with accuracy every time. A competency is something a learner reaches for independently when conditions are wrong, ambiguous, or completely new. Competencies are a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes about the task or idea. This is completely different, because the learning has gone through the process of meaning making. Building a competency requires something much harder: designing conditions where the learner has to decide whether, when, and how to apply what they know, without being told. A learner who can write a beautiful literary essay in a structured writing lesson, but cannot construct a coherent paragraph in a science discussion is not competency. The skill was taught, but the competency was never built. We call this learning transfer. To help our learners transfer their learning, it means we have to intentionally design for it and not just teaching the skill hoping it carries over. To be honest, this happens all the time. I've been guilty of it, especially when time is crunched and I have little understanding of what is the purpose of the skill. At these moments, we have to ask ourselves and our learners these questions:
If your assessments only measure whether learners can perform a skill in the context you taught it, you have never actually measured competency. You have measured recall under familiar conditions. This is a useful thing to measure, but It is just not the same thing. In the PYP, educators regularly assess the difference between teaching approaches to learning skills as isolated items on a checklist versus genuinely developing them as transferable, self-directed capabilities. The checklist produces skill performances. The genuine development produces competent learners. Take one skill you teach explicitly in your classroom. When did you last design a situation where learners had to decide for themselves whether to use it?  Playfulness is not something you either have or you do not. It is a cognitive disposition that can be practiced, developed, and deliberately brought into professional life. Just look at any innovator in history and you can see that playfulness was at the center of their learning.
The belief that playfulness is a personality trait is one of the most damaging ideas in education because it lets serious, skilled, deeply committed teachers off the hook for never creating genuinely playful learning conditions. It becomes: that is just not who I am. Parker Palmer would say: then look more carefully at who you are. Playfulness is a process. Playfulness means approaching problems with curiosity, holding multiple possibilities, and finding genuine delight in not yet knowing. Those are cognitive skills. They can be taught and practiced. A teacher who is genuinely playful tries things they are not sure will work. They make mistakes in front of learners and treat those mistakes as something interesting, rather than shameful. They bring genuine curiosity to their role, rather than performance of expertise. They design learning tasks that have no predetermined correct output. They laugh, because something is actually funny or surprising. Stuart Brown's work on play shows that play deprivation in adults produces rigidity, depression, and loss of adaptability. Brené Brown connects playfulness directly to vulnerability and courage. Neither of them is talking about craft activities on a Friday afternoon. They are talking about a fundamental orientation to experience that either opens or closes the capacity to learn. Take a moment to reflect: When did you last try something in your classroom that you were not sure would work? How did the learners react to it?  Most classrooms have inquiry-shaped activities but not genuine inquiry. The difference is who owns the question. When the teacher owns the question and students investigate it, that is structured discovery. When the learner owns the question and the teacher's job is to resource, provoke, and get out of the way, that is genuine inquiry. These look similar from the outside. They feel completely different from the inside. I chose the image above, because it makes me happy and sad at the same time. There is a something within the child's eye in the upper left hand corner. He is genuinely curious. He wants to paint like everyone else, so he ventures to look around the group to see what everyone else is doing. He is not creating for himself, but for approval. His teacher owns the quesiton and he does not have the answer. This means we have to take a step back, so learners can choose the pathway for their inquiry. This is very difficult for us, because we don't want anyone to fail. I get it. I am have warm and fuzzy heart too. But, the teacher who steps back from inquiry is really guiding from afar. This is a chance for learners to really show us what they know and do not. This is not about replication. What does this mean for you and me? It means that we have to resist the urge to direct our learners when the inquiry goes somewhere unexpected, asking questions and not answering them, making resources available without prescribing which ones to use, and tolerating the visible messiness of genuine thinking without tidying it into a neat product. Teachers often make the mistake of stepping back in the moment the learning looks most alive. They get fearful, because chaotic learning is messy, loud, and usually off course of curricular objectives. What they don't know is this is the point where real learning happens. When did you last let go of the set objective and allow your learners to create for themselves?  This was one of my favorite experiences during the 2025-26 school year. My class was in charge of hosting the monthly assembly and they decided to focus on holidays around the world with a common theme of light.
As a class, we explored why so many cultures use light as a central focus, especially in the winter time. They were surprised at how this was a common theme in religious practices and cultural hero stories. This group above learned about St. Martin of Tours, a 4th-century Roman soldier who famously shared his cloak with a freezing beggar. This story resonated with them and they wanted to recreate it through a self-made dramatic play. I helped with some of the writing, but all of the ideas were their own. I've never seen a group of boys so happy to act out a play before, especially Leo who was the horse. Just like the legend, they shared the message that giving charity and warmth to others brings light into our own lives. As we reflected on this experience, they shared how much they appreciated the opportunity to create everything themselves. It was their production, not mine. This has stayed with me over the past year. There is no magic structure for designing agency in our schools. It's about giving space to our learner's to make their own choices, testing them out, failing at times, and reflecting on the process. This is how we grow as humans, so why should it not be the same in schools? With this being said, agency is also about skill development. Learner's need to have the prior skills to achieve the task or they get frustrated. I had already taught about cultures usage of light in holidays, the magic of reader's theatre, and the impact stories have on cultures. From there, they were able to weave the pieces together to create something that was their own. How are you doing this for your learners?  Agency is something that is in all of us. Sometimes teachers say, "You need to give them more agency." This is close. What they mean to say is, "You need to create the conditions, so agency can naturally happen." But what happens when a school purposefully blocks agency due to their systems? Now we have a problem. When you look at the image above, what do you see? I see a school that is blocking learning agency from happening. How can I tell in one picture? It's written all over the space and the materials being used.
A picture can tell you alot about what the school values and how they see their learners. This picture tells me that the school honors compliance, achievement, and rankings. The learning is focused on completing tasks, rather than illiciting honest learner voice. How do we overcome the block? The answer is simple, get out our your learner's way. They are smart and capable. If the school system is blocking the way, advocate with your leadership team. This is part of our role. We can do this in simple ways. Let's be innovative.   Have you ever had those moments that when you opened your mouth and nothing changed?
This is how I felt about a particular student who still lives in my heart. He was a quiet, lovable soul, but he refused to complete some of tasks presented to him. I provoked, nudged, pleaded, scolded, and begged this child to change their behavior, but nothing worked. This reminds me of Parker Palmer's argument about learning is not about teaching techniques. It is about the person doing the teaching. His central claim is that good teaching cannot be reduced to method, because it emerges from the identity and integrity of the teacher. His catch phrase is: we teach who we are. This moment made me reflect on who I was as a teacher. I was practically begging this child to be the model learner, but I had yet to discover the reason behind his behavior. This connects to Palmer's thoughts about identity and integrity. Identity is not your job title. It is the crossroads between the forces that have made you who you are: your lived experiences, fears, loves, wounds, and convictions. It is the self you bring into the room whether you intend to or not. Integrity is not morality in the conventional sense. It is integration to the degree to which your outer life matches our inner one. A teacher with integrity is about being authenthic and is not performing who they would like to be to their students. This made me really think about myself. Am I should show authentic identity at school? Are my learners given the space to show their authentic selves? My learner was being his authentic self in my classroom and I was not honoring it. Instead, I wanted him to act according to my identity and sense of integrity. This awakening really had an impact on my behavior going forward. One of the things I began implementing was giving the learner two choices of activities. This was the hook. Soon, he was creating more work than I had seen in several months, because he felt like he has some choice. At times, he voiced how he wanted to do it and I let him. The change was not in my learner, it was in me. I had to let go of my identity of the learner and lean into his.  I've been reflecting on my own learning journey this year and there have been so many wonderings. A question that keeps popping up in my mind is: what does it look like when a learner can evaluate their own choices honestly? I chose the image above, because it speaks to me about the natural process of evaluating our choices. This young learner knows that crossing the street safely has consequencs. There are so many things to consider: the activity on the sidewalks, the amount of traffic on the road, where is the best crossing to use to get to where I need to be. All of these questions percolate in our minds as we are making our own decisions. Yet, what is happening in the minds of our learners who don't get to make those decisions. How do they get to evaluate their choices if they don't make any at home or school? This has been a condition that has been set by society, which trickles down into school. Here is how it might manifest with a teacher with a fixed mindset about their learners.
This type of fixed mindset is only benefitting the teacher. It limits what is possible in words and deeds in hopes that learners do not require teachers to be put in an unknown situation. A space where they do not know how to guide what the learners want to do. This is a teacher's nightmare. Yet, the moment choice becomes genuine self-direction rather than preference, it transforms a learner. They begin to see that they hold the power to choose their own pathway and determine the outcome. This knowledge is transformative. As an educator, it is not my call to say if the learner can or cannot transform. This is a basic right of a child. As I bring these ideas to light, I am not exempt from this conversation. I've been reviewing my own thought process and actions this school year. Some of the things that have happened were not my best moments. Yet, I did try to allow agency to shine whenever possible. The piece that I still need to work on is getting learners to self-assess their process. This is a goal for next year. How about you?  As the school year comes to a close, I've been doing a lot of thinking about those times when agency just doesn't work out the way we hope. This has been weighing on my mind as I look back on everything I navigated this year: moving home after living in Europe, readjusting to American culture, and stepping into a brand new teaching position in January. On top of all of that, I inherited three new curricula at once, which, honestly, was a lot. When you're still figuring things out yourself, it's incredibly hard to create the kind of space where student agency can truly flourish. Once again, I was reminded that agency does not look like Instagram. I genuinely admire those teachers whose classrooms are spotless at the end of the day, every display perfectly aligned, not a hair out of place. Meanwhile, my classroom is "tidy at best," and I've got gray hairs coming in faster than my box dye can keep up with. If you know, you know. Those Instagram classrooms where kids are working beautifully in small groups, no conflict, no chaos, pure collaboration? I've started reminding myself that Canva has stock images and videos, and honestly, that helps me breathe a little easier. The truth is, we are all working toward giving our learners more freedom, and sometimes it just doesn't happen. One thing I keep coming back to is this: if a teacher doesn't have agency, the learners won't have agency either. That feels really important to sit with. So I'm trying to be kinder to myself as I reflect on this second half of the year. I did my best. My students knew I cared about them. Sometimes, that really does have to be enough, at least until summer vacation gives us the space to breathe, reset, and dream up what's possible for next year. Is anyone else feeling this way?
When I returned to school for the final two weeks, the mishaps kept coming. I even sprained my ankle on our Summer Thrill field trip. Still, as I look back on it now, I do not feel guilty for focusing on my well-being. We are often told to push through, to show up no matter what, but I have to ask—at what cost? When does pushing forward start pulling us away from our health, our clarity, our joy? Choosing to pause and listen to what my body was trying to tell me was one of the hardest decisions I made all year. I wanted to be there every moment for my learners. Yet as I hobbled onto the stage on the last day, I knew deep down that I had made the right decision—for myself, for my students, and for the future I want to walk into with intention. So now I ask you gently and honestly: How are you honoring your well-being? Not just in moments of crisis, but as part of your rhythm and your practice. Because you matter too. My word for 2025 has been intentional and I've trying to make it happen each day. This single word has helped me to take a step back at how I think and act on a daily basis. I've had so many wonderful experiences lately, but I haven't captured them yet, because I'm trying to be more intentional with my time. My friend Misty Paterson advised that I focus in on my one passion and go all in. This means other things will have to take a back seat like my regular posts and my podcast. They matter so much to me, but I have to focus on this project. This is where you come into the experience. Only if you want to, of course. I've decided to go all in to help librarians. It might sound strange, but in my home country they are under attack. The funding for public and school libraries is so vital for the growth of our young people. For many, it's one of the few places where they can find respite from the pressures of daily life. It's also the one place that holds the truth about events that have happened in the past, so we don't make those same mistakes in the future. For this reason, I am leaning into the various roles that a librarian has to take on to stay relevant in a digital world such as: education researcher, library media specialist, interior designer, maker master, literary expert, and teacher librarian. This sounds like a lot, but it's the combined roles that transform a space into an inquiry learning hub. How do I know? While being a PYP Coordinator, I also became the head librarian that re-organized a collection of over 16,000 books from an empty shell into something that was meaningful for the learning community. I've also replicated this process elsewhere and have talked about it at Toddle TIES and in webinars. Now I am creating meaningful materials that will help librarians to re-think and grow too. I think the library is one of the most important places in the entire school. It sets the tone for the rest of the campus of what authentic learning can feel like and what the school values. Yet, it's often the one place that is neglected, particularly, the role of the librarian. I'm trying to change this, but I need your help. If you are a librarian, PLEASE SHARE WITH ME YOUR NEEDS AND WANTS! I want to address them head on. I want to learn from you and talk about what is working in your space and what needs to change in your role, so you can evolve. I am creating a community of librarians who want to join some webinars to talk about different topics and share what they need and we can problem solve ways to make it happen. If this sounds interesting to you, please fill this form and I will be in contact with more details. Thank you for all that you do. You are helping our learners in more ways than you know. Cheers, Lu P.S. Here is the first page of my new guide that I'm currently creating. What would you like to see in it?  We all have learning moments that are so powerful that they stay with us for quite some time. Mine is an Edu-Retreat with Misty Paterson in Brussels, Belgium. I wanted to revisit this moment and see what has stayed the same and evolved, since this magical expeirence. I've known for quite some time that Misty Paterson is rather brilliant. Anyone who has read her book, Pop-Studio: Responsive Teaching for Today's Learners, will find plenty of examples of this in action. But, there is a difference between reading Misty's book and attending one of her in-person workshops. My respect for her creativity and intuition went up 1000% after attending her Edu-Retreat. Extending an Invitation
Learning intentions are everything. Materials play a powerful part in setting those intentions. As I reflect on a recent workshop with Sean Walker and Anne van Dam, they talked alot about loose parts, intelligent materials, and intentional proposals. I see the ink engagement as an invitation to be playful. Personally, I wish we had more of these moments throughout the day in upper pimary/elementary school. Imagine how it might help learners to reduce their anxiety while increasing their enthusiasm for learning. As a participant in the workshop, you might consider it a fun activity. This is where a pedagogical artist like Misty sprinkles her magic. She has an intention for our playful encounter and will use it wrap up and synthesize the experience. I know you want to skip to the end now, but her process is equally important to understand. Setting Learning Intentions
After observing these materials, I went on a hunt around the room and noticed simple touches that made the setting more responsive. There was shimmery ribbon covering an ugly pole in the middle of the room. Plants were strewn everywhere to bring the outdoors inside. There were ample and varied materials for us to use with different textures, sizes, and colors. As I sat back to observe the workshop in progress, I couldn't help but to see the CME model in action through our experience and the intentional use of materials. Misty knew how to curate experiences that would allow for natural connections to be made. For those who are scratching their heads, the CME model is a balanced approach to using concepts, materials, and experiences to helps learners deeply understand ideas. The concepts help learners to tell the story of how the materials are use to shape the experience. I know this sounds abstract. You can listen to my linked podcast for more information or better yet buy a copy of Misty's book. She has so many examples from early years to high school. She also offers alot of tools on her website. Making ConnectionsTo be honest, when I was packing for the Edu-Retreat, I didn't know what to expect. All I read was that it would be a more personalized workshop experience. Misty definitely set the tone by asking us to bring the following materials.
Being an inquirer, I naturally had my own set of questions that raced through my mind busily packing for a trans-continental trip to Europe.
Funnily enough, we used all of the materials in different ways than I intended. For instance, we used our personal artifact to connect with eachother as learners, teachers, and dreamers. I rather enjoyed using a ball of string to literally connect to someone else's experiences. Whenever I made a connection, I had to write it down on a small piece of paper and put it on the white line. It taught me how to carefully listen to details about other people's stories and seek ways to connect. The power of this web is that we went beyond our individual connections by searching for patterns. When there was an aha moment or a generalization about a bigger idea, we would write it on colored post-it notes, like this one above. This was a powerful tool that we kept coming back to again and again throughout the two days of learning. Once it was finished, it was amazing to see how our learning and conceptual understanding evolved. What are you already doing to help your learners to come to those AHA moments with each other and on their own? How do they know it is an AHA? Synthesizing our LearningLearning transfer is one of the hardest things to master. As a trainer, you want your participants to walk away with tools that they can use right away, but also build up to a deeper understanding of an idea. The beautiful masterpieces that we created in the beginning of the Edu-Retreat with the ink were cut into strips as shown here. I won't lie, I gasped. My masterpiece was cut up and handed out to other people to enjoy. Once I got over my shock, I finally understood Misty's genius. If we want to create a beautiful work of art in our classrooms, we have to experiment. We have to let go of the old picture in our mind of what "good teaching" looks like. Instead, we need to take a chance and chop up ideas together, so it allows for more learner voice to be added to create something even more beautiful.
To synthesize the learning experience, we took some time to read a part of Pop-Up Studio and write down lines that resonated with us. Then, we wove the strips together to create a tapestry of ideas. We highlighted the bits that literally stuck out to us and wrote a generalization or main idea statement. How often are we doing this with our learners? Letting them decide what it might look like? This is definitely something I plan to use next week with my learners. How might you adapt these ideas to help your learners to synthesize and come up with their own big ideas? Coming TogetherSean Walker One of the best things about the Edu-Retreat was about making meaningful connections with others. There was special something about meeting people in-person that you had admired from afar for so long.
On the second day, I plucked up the courage to introduce myself and he was like, "You are that Lu." I think that was the moment I knew he was a keeper. Youri and Rafa The hosts of the Edu-Retreat were Youri and Rafael. They are co-directors of Bogaerts International School North Campus. They are situated next to NATO on the outskirts of Brussels, Belgium. Now, they are my co-directors.  Little did I know at the time this photo was taken that I would work at Bogaerts with these leaders. I love having Rafa so close to bounce around ideas and go into a concept-based rabbit hole together. We can still talk for hours about pedagogy. The best part, he gives the biggest hugs with his whole heart. Youri has introduced me to Kriek and lots of Belgian chocolate. I'm kinda boushie now because of his influence, which is okay with me! It's wonderful to be back in the classroom again and in place where I can create magic on my own, while being inspired to challenge my thinking and teaching. I've grown so much in such a short period of time. As I reflect on this experience, I'm going back to ideas that I want to try out with my learners this year. What is something that has caught your eye?
I feel truly blessed to have been invited to this event. It was a magical time of growth and discovery about myself as a learner. Misty has a gift of storytelling that is unique. When I walked into this experience, I came as a friend. When I left, I was a participant that felt full of ideas and enthusiasm to make change in my practice. This is when you know you have just dont through a magical experience. If you want to have a similar experience, consider joining an Edu-Retreat. Misty is beginning to host them all around the world. She is always looking for schools who are willing to partner. I know that I will join one next school year. I just hope it is somewhere warm! For more information, about Misty's Edu-Retreats and professional offerings, be sure to visit her website. If you love the blog post, then you will enjoy listening to the podcast even more. The blog is the script that I have written, but the golden nuggets are in my ramblings on the podcast. As you might have guessed, I am a rambler and will remain so for the rest of my my days.  This really brings forward the question of what stories are you sharing? Are you doing it through strictly facts? Do you add some personal touches? Do you ramble like me? The stories that we share make a huge impact on young learners. What stories are not being told, because of our bias or cultural lens? This is not a bad thing, but we have to realize that there is more to our limited viewpoint. If you have a differing story, what is it? How does it reflect who you are and your place within the world? These questions will be explored in the current podcast episode. Just click over to the podcast link on this webpage for a free listen.
One thing I’ve been hearing over again by everyone that inspires me is that learning is intentional. How are you being intentional with international mindedness as a specialist and supporting teacher? Remember, we are trying in to look at the curriculum through a different lens to get the maximum amount of potential from our learners. Let’s share some storiesStorytelling is one of the ways that we can really get our learners hooked into our content. It makes the ideas more relatable, because they are required to feel with their hearts, instead of think with their heads. It’s not so hard, but it requires practice. If we don't share the unique stories, learners might find ones of their own that are not as well-crafted or misleading.  Let’s learn how to storytell through PZ visible thinking routine: Stories. Stories Consider how accounts of issues, events, people, society, etc. are presented; what has been left out, and how you might want to present the account.
Example in ArtWhat is the story that is presented? What is the account that is told? Let’s engage with an image, video, or piece of music. Ask learners to share that story that is presented from their point of view. Then, share the account that is told from the perspective of the artist and the time they were living. Since artists often respond to social conditions, it should be relatively easy to determine the muse. What is the untold story? What is left out in the account? What other angles are missing in the account? Have learners examine the text again and try to determine the hidden story of the text and what it is trying to tell us based on stylistic choices, the lighting, focal point, etc. Learners try to interpret the piece of art based on their prior understanding and connect it to issues at the time. They can also connect it with present-day issues and how it reflects the patterns in society. To deepen the thinking, they can share what they think is missing from the story.
What is your story? What is the account that you think should be the one told? Thinking about the text being used, how can we connect it to the story of our learners? Ask your learners to find connections to their everyday lives. Find a story that they are willing and feel safe to share with the class. Having been in a similar situation with learners, it’s amazing how it just opens up the group and builds bonds. Allowing learners to share their stories really helps them to see that they are the focus of the curriculum and not an end product of it. Reflect back: when was the last time that you used storytelling in your teaching? No matter the content area, bringing about connections through stories is a powerful tool that learners respond to easily. It’s about choosing the right hook and the right story. Other ApplicationsAs I am pondering the use of the Stories routine, I am finding several connections to other specialist and supporting roles.
ICT/ Computer Lab As learners begin keyboarding the first time, share your personal experience with typing. For me, it would have been on an electronic typewriter. My typing teacher would not allow us to use correct film, so we had to perfect the typing assignments. What lesson did this teach me? How does it impact my life today? For one thing, I am able to type regularly without looking at the keyboard. I can type about 50 words per minute with some errors. In a world of talk to text features, this is something to celebrate. What is something that you are learning in a computer lab that is difficult, but you believe it will help you in the end? How are you feeling about completing it? Music When we explore various genres of music, we can uncover how the blues got its name. What about this music brings about a sense of melancholy and the desire for the past. What is our personal connection to music that makes us feel blue. What genre makes us feel this way? Any particular song that gets us at the heart? Science Lab Let’s look at the fifth state of matter and how a young Albert Einstein was ridiculed by his peers so badly that he rescinded his findings all together. Only 20 years later, there was another team that replicated his procedure and proved that his theory was in fact correct. How might this connect to our world today? How would you feel if you were mocked on social media for your ideas and everyone in your school knew about it. How would you deal with this situation? Would you hide like Albert or would you fight? What might be the hidden message in this story? PE The stories of team sports and how it brings a group of people together to achieve one goal. What is the goal of each learner as they play team games? What is the story that is being shared, hidden, and our personal connection. Now that you can see how it is used, consider how it might be adjusted for your next week’s lessons. What will you change to make it more open-ended? One thing that I am constantly doing is getting caught up in the details of life. But, I often wonder if the things that I choose to focus on are really the things that matter. Becoming more intentional. A goal that I have made for this year is to invest my energy in building up others in small, simple ways. This can be a simple smile, a tea break, or a long walk in the park. It doesn't have to cost much money, only the investment of time and being present. Being more intentional.
Another moment that filled my heart this weekend was watching a special boy in my life play football. He is passionate about the game and it made me happy to cheer him on in the crowd of parents and family members. Nothing is better than cheering on a child. They have so much passion for what they do, but it's about continuously supporting them when the energy wains and frustration sets in. These are the moments when a kind word of encouragement matters the most.  This was my first football match in over a year. As I reflect on this simple fact, it makes me want to invest more into his joy. Being more intentional with how I spend my time.
I still tend to get caught up in the silly things like fear and uncertainty. An instant cure is to get out of my head by helping others. It used to be that service was in fashion. People helped each other, because it was the right thing to do. I'm trying to make it more part of my life. Emulating intentional behavior.
What is something you want to be more intentional about that will bring more joy to others? As the new year comes about, there are heaps of people on social media that share their word of the year. I find it quite amusing, because it has become a new type of resolution, but you shout it out to the world to hold you accountable. This year, I took a slower approach. I gave 2025 time to find its feet before committing to my word. It's amazing how it just finds you through numerous ways. My word this year is intentional. I have heard being spoken at my school from planning sessions and our NEASC visit last week. Prior to that, I heard it at my workshop with Sean Walker and Anne van Dam in Berlin about creating responsive learning spaces.  My goal for this word is to be an example of intentional decision-making. Less scrolling on my Facebook video feed for tidbits from the Graham Norton show to creating ideas to share with my community. We humans are great at wasting time and procrastinating on the things that really matter. This is not the year to do that for me. I plan to use my time wiser. Make more informed decisions, which means waiting and being less impulsive. Take more time to invest in quality relationships at work and within the greater community. More importantly, build a deeper love for myself and pursue a wider range of ways to showcase my talents and abilities. Not to share with the world, but for my personal development. What is your 2025 word? I'm curious.
Although this is opening ourselves to the world, this is not authentic international mindedness. Instead, we are talking about opening our minds to different experiences that bring about intercultural connections of understanding. This is going to mean something different for every person based on their unique backgrounds and exposure to other people’s ideas. I guess that is the point. Are we open enough to listen to other people’s ideas and be willing to change our own. This is much deeper than trying a plate of paella while holidaying in Spain. Possibility #1: Local and Global ContextsWhen I think of the specialist and supporting roles, the easiest thing for me to do is make connections to the local and global issues that matter. In each of your roles, you are going to be exploring how to do something whether it be hand-eye coordination, keyboarding, sketching, or sequencing pictures to create a story. One of my favorites is making local and global connections. It’s a lot easier than it looks, but that’s from my perspective. So bear with me as I try to make this mental image. Here are two examples... 1. For the Science Lab Teacher As you are trying to connect to climate patterns, have them look at trends around the world. Try to determine the climate of certain areas based on their location to the equator. Usually, the more northern you are, the colder the weather and more severe precipitation. While the south is usually warmer with more balmy weather with mild winters. This trend is usually happening at the same latitude. Then, examine areas that defy the climate patterns and assess the reasoning. Below is a picture of the United States last week. Notice how the most southern parts received snow storms, including my home in Houston, Texas. This weather pattern is defying what we usually see during this time of year in the southern part of the United States. This type of investigation my pose these questions:
 Why study these patterns? It helps learners to identify trends that impact the human experience. This is the entire reason that we learn in school. We are trying to determine the rules and see where they apply to all, many, and a few. When the rules change, we are seeking to determine the cause, so we can be prepared in the future. 2. For the PE Teacher My brain naturally went to PE. I think the PE teacher is the most left alone in the school. This can be good and bad. You are given the autonomy to teach however you want, but you also have to create everything on your own. Oftentimes, I hear PE teachers tell me that they struggle to authentically connect with the PYP. I get it, your curriculum is so different that it’s hard to connect. BUT, there are ways that you might have not considered. One possibility is through local and global connections. What do I mean by this? Imagine you are talking about team sports and why it’s important that everyone has their role. You go through several types of sports that play with their feet and compare and contrast their features. Something you can do next is survey your learners to discover the most played sport or game at recess. Depending on the region, it might be football or what we Americans call soccer. This makes sense, because it requires very little equipment. You can show images and videos of different places around the world and the conditions they play in. This can help to shape the idea that no matter where you come from, you still have the opportunity to play the game. Next, you can chat about games that have similar features, but don’t necessarily follow the same outcome, such as baseball and cricket. I’m not going to break down all of the features, but this would be an interesting exploration for learners to go through.  By exploring different ways that people play with similar equipment, we get learners to compare and contrast between regions to discover why they are the same or so different. This is the type of thinking that we want learners to go through as they connect between two similar sports, exercises, or experiences. How can you take what you are doing and apply it with your content or curricular focus? Possibility #2: Projecting Across TimeIf you have listened to my podcast, you will know that I am obsessed with Projecting Across Distance, a visible thinking routine by Project Zero. Just pop over to my website: thinkchat2020.com and complete a search. I’m sure you will see it in several posts, because I absolutely love it. In preparing for this episode, I decided that I needed to branch out and find another visible thinking routine that would allow for local and global exploration without it being the same routine. Variety is the spice of life or so I’m told. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered Projecting Across Time. I instantly became fascinated and eager to get my hands dirty. Let’s unpack this visible thinking routine and see how it might look in practice. Pick a topic . Then, consider it using the following prompts:
What do we know about bullying already? It is a power imbalance between someone stronger/weaker; not always physical There is fear involved by the weaker party Demands are usually placed that can be uncomfortable or dangerous The person being bullied can feel isolated and alone in dealing with the issue 10 years ago We had bullying in school, but the kids were a bit more physical and not quite so emotional. It was usually in search of lunch money, snacks, favors, etc. Now, it’s about friendship groups, mean girls thinking, and isolating people. It feels more psychological. 100 years ago When I did some research, because I don’t know off the top of my head, bullying in the 1920s was generally physical (or verbal) harassment that usually related to a death, strong isolation, or extortion in school children. Yikes, it feels like the bullying of today is much lighter compared to death threats. I’m glad I didn’t live back then. 1000 years ago In medieval times, people mostly lived in small villages and farmed the land. There were only a few big cities, so everyone knew the comings and goings within the community. There was only one way to live, which was usually directed by the ruling lord and the church. If anyone was mysterious, strange, or unconventional, they were often labeled by society either through outcasting or putting them to death. 10 years from now We will see the surge of cyber bullying with the full power of AI technology ruling our lives and governing how we live. There will be much more surveillance by our comings and goings by the government. There will be little or no secrets in our public life, similar to 1000 years ago. Bullying will be even greater with people having access to technology where they can simulate events into photos and videos that never existed. 100 years from now People will have full integration between AI, robotics, and human life. There will be no hiding in the world. Everything will be up for scrutiny. Bullying will come in the form of societal conformity and the lack of personal identity. Society will judge how we act, think, and feel. 1000 years from now I have no clue. I’m just glad that I grew up in the 1980s to remember when life was unplugged and bullying was emotional or physical. Should I be glad for this? I know I went deep on this issue, but you can see how this might challenge your learners to think deeper about content. Get them to make predictions based on the trends in the present day. There are so many possibilities. How might you adapt these two ways to your practice? How might this stretch the learning in your classes? After redesigning the physical layout of our classroom, my learners decided it was time to take on more reponsibility. They wanted jobs. I was fine with this, because I was ready for them to take a more active role in maitaining the systems of our classroom. We made a list of jobs that would help our classroom run smoother. My learners came up with most of the list. If there were roles that were overlooked, I would prod, but not require them to be added. When we finished with the job list, we determined the next salary based on how often the job would be performed. The only condition that I set was rent. Every two weeks, they would have to pay 800 Euros for their seat, just like in the real world. At first, they were a little shocked, but quickly set the salary and chose their first job.
The class decided to remove their name tents off their desks, because they would be allowed to move every time the jobs changed. This allowed them the opportunity to sit in a variety of places and work with different people. They agreed to the idea whole-heartedly. When designing our job list, one of my learners suggested using our name tents for the chart. I thought it was a brilliant idea, since they were no longer being used. I made the chart that afternoon and put it up on our window. Of course, my clever learners wanted to know how they might be paid. I went back to an old-fashioned check register. They were shocked to hear that they had to manage their own money. HAHA. I laughed out loud at that one.  The real surprise was when they figured out how little they might have after paying for their rent to buy things from our class store and privileges. As a teacher, it was one of those moments you wish you could bottle up, because they were so intrigued, scared, and interested all over again. Naturally, the next conversation that came along was actual money to shop. This had me backpeddaling and shopping for money templates on Canva. I ended up putting my face on the dollars, which was tons of fun. If I had thought about it more clearly, I would have changed the background for each demonition. You live and learn. Here's how it turned out.
We came to a consensus that we would change jobs every two weeks and they had to pay rent at that time. The class store would open one time every two weeks. The cost of all items would be listed on the the front of the class store bin. I labeled all of the items and put things into bags, so it was easier for the shopkeeper to manage the goods and money. Everyone agreed that they had to complete all the jobs before repeating them again. To me, this is the fun part of learning. What is the thing that you love doing with your learners? I've learned a big lesson this week about over committing again. This is a condition called OCA, coined by myself. I have been suffering from OCA for too many years to count and I realize that the only person who is going to stop the cycle is me.  This past week, I nearly fell physically apart while managing report cards, preparing for parent conferences, getting reading for a NEASC visit, testing student reading abilities, and facilitating on an intensive online workshop. As you might have guessed, it is Sunday and I've been working all day long. For the first time in my working career, I am going to under commit. This does not mean that I am not going to work hard or do my best. I am going to say no to taking on extra, because it's too much. Many of us overcommit. It's something that we have been conditioned to do, but it only serves a few people. I believe we overcommit, because we don't want to:
As I look at this list, I have been guilty of all of them. But, I realize that my work performance is not as important as my health. It's not as important as yours either. Whatever you are overcommitting to in your life, consider taking a step back. I'm tired of feeling tired all the time, because I just can't say no. Choose the things that will bring you joy using the least amount of energy as possible. This will bring you greater reward. Let's stop overcommitting to others and begin committing to ourselves. After my learners reset their tables, we had an earnest conversation about the rest of the furniture. They felt that the rest of the bookshelves were too cluttered and they could not find the materials that they needed. This was one of those moments that you realize that your learners are not feeling independent in their learning space.
These pictures are from my last post and as you can see, there is a small eight cube stand next to larger sixteen cube stand. To the quiet observer, the classroom would look organized and quite user friendly. This was not the feeling of my learners. The big cabinet in the back was behind a group of desks, which posed an issue for learners trying to get to their materials. The entire class would flock to the back of the classroom at once, which would cause a major traffic jam. We had an eight cube stand in the front of the class and the learners came up with this plan.  We put everyone in ABC order and put half of the class into these cubbies. Each learner has their own labeled space. Above it, we dediced to put our snacks in the basket, devices in the plastic tub, tissues and wet wipes for emergencies. Brilliant!  The remainder of the class decided to put their materials on bottom two rows (except one) of the big shelf. This allowed us to put shared art materials, after-school club yarn, and other craft materials in the blue bins.
This minor switch of moving cupboards made a huge difference in the flow of our systems, accessing materials, and making it a more independent learning space. We are not done yet! I can't wait to share what my learners wanted to do after that in my next post. |
Categories
All
Archives
June 2026
|
RSS Feed