Your epic learning journey · Stop 8 of 10 · Explore Roles
Field Journal · Roles Quest
This quest works differently. There is only a question, a provocation, an experience, and a decision. That is what learning looks like when roles genuinely shift.
Before you begin
Culture first, because you cannot build anything without understanding the environment you are building in. Agency second, because you cannot ask learners to take ownership of something they do not yet feel safe inside. Roles third, because only when the conditions are established and the learner has genuine agency can you ask both teacher and learner to fundamentally reimagine what learning looks like.
If you have not yet explored Culture and Agency, this is not the place to begin. The quest will be here when you are ready.
Leading with the Heart · Mission: Pose a Question
Here you will take some time to think about this question or go talk with someone else about it. There is no right answer yet. The point is to notice what it stirs up in you.
Feel this
Think of a moment in your teaching life when a learner taught you something you had not planned for. What did that feel like? What did you do with it?
Think this
When did you last design a lesson around a concept rather than a topic? What was different about how learners engaged with it?
Do this
Find a colleague today and ask them: what is your job in this classroom? Then ask a learner the same question. Write down both answers.
Leading with the Hands · Mission: Warm-Up Activity
This task is open-ended on purpose. Choose the level that puts you in productive struggle. Not the hardest one to impress anyone. The one that genuinely challenges you right now.
□ Accessible
Sort It
Drag twelve classroom practices into two groups: Serves the Learner or Serves the System. Notice where the tension is. There are no clean answers.
Play Sort It□ Stretching
Rank It
Eight classroom practices. For each one, decide where it sits on the spectrum from strongly serves the learner to strongly serves the system. Your score reveals where your thinking aligns.
Play Rank It
Uncertain
Examine It
Take your own next unit plan. What is the concept underneath the content? Where else in a learner's life will that concept appear? Design the final assessment first. Use the worksheet to guide your thinking.
Download Worksheet
A note
You may have noticed this quest feels different from Culture and Agency. There is a reason for that. Keep going.
Leading with the Head · Mission: New Information
Choose the format that meets you where you are right now. You do not need to consume everything. Choose what speaks most urgently to your context.
Heart: feeling and purpose
Listen · C8
Agency Drives Inquiry
Why genuine inquiry and genuine agency cannot exist without each other.
Listen · C76
Play versus Playfulness
Play is an activity. Playfulness is a disposition that transforms how learners think.
Read
What Does Genuine Inquiry Look Like When the Teacher Steps Back
The moment a classroom stops being teacher-directed and starts being learner-navigated.
Book · Misty Paterson
Pop-Up Studio
Find one strategy for following learner inquiry rather than leading it.
Head: thinking and understandingListen · C119
What Key and Related Concepts Live Here
How do you choose the concepts that genuinely belong in a unit?
Read
What Happens When We Teach for Transfer Instead of Coverage
What changes when the goal shifts from finishing the unit to building an idea that outlasts it.
Read
Documentation is Not Evidence: it is Thinking Made Visible
The difference between collecting work samples and capturing how understanding developed.
Book · Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano
A Guide to Documenting Learning
Find one documentation strategy you have never tried and bring it to your next unit.
Hands: doing and makingListen · C63
Choosing Sub-Skills for our Units of Inquiry
What changes when you plan for competency rather than coverage?
Read
Making is a Way of Knowing
What happens when learners build something to understand it rather than understanding it before they build.
Book · Ellie Beck
Mindful Thoughts for Makers
Find a quote that changes how you think about what counts as understanding.
Pause here
What did you encounter that unsettled something you thought you already knew? Hold that before moving on.
Heart and Hands · Mission: Play with Ideas
This is not a performance. It is a prototype. Choose one way to make your thinking visible and shareable.
Outline
Take an upcoming unit.
Sketch
Draw your classroom when roles have genuinely shifted.
Model
Create a one-page visual model showing how one concept moves across multiple units in your subject.
Design Your Own
You have seen three ways to play with these ideas.
Heart, Head, and Hands · Mission: Reflect
Use the hexagonal thinking tool to arrange the concepts from this quest and see how they connect. Move the tiles. Notice what sits next to what. Notice what surprises you.
Hexagonal Thinking Board
Open the board, move the concept tiles into an arrangement that makes sense to you, and notice what connections emerge. The board is shared — you will see how others have arranged the same ideas.
Open the Hexagonal Thinking BoardOpens in Google Drawings. Move the tiles into an arrangement that reflects your thinking. Changes are visible to all participants.
The reveal
You just worked through the thinkchat lesson cycle.
You posed a question. You warmed up your thinking with your hands. You encountered new information with your head. You played with ideas using your heart and hands together. You reflected with all three.
This is not a quest structure. It is a teaching structure. The same one that can transform what learning looks like for every learner in your classroom. Now go use it with them.
Share your biggest insight from this quest. What shifted? What are you going to try first? What question are you still sitting with?
This is the Roles Quest community space. Responses are visible to others in this community. They are not public and not searchable beyond this space.
When you are ready, reveal the password below.
Your field mission
Design one lesson using the thinkchat lesson cycle. Start with a question, not a topic. Notice what happens when the question drives the learning rather than the content.
Bring back what happened at step two, the warm-up activity. That is the step most teachers skip and the one that changes everything. One sentence is enough.
The Roles Quest is complete. What feels right for you right now?