"Across nearly four decades as a teacher, principal, superintendent, funder, and now leader of a large education nonprofit organization, the experience that most shaped my view of learning wasn't a grand reform or a shiny new program. It was a Friday physics lab in Brooklyn. My students predicted a graph that couldn't exist-a vertical line for velocity and time."
"What followed was confusion, debate, trial, and error. And then discovery: Velocity requires both displacement and time. That brief struggle taught me, the teacher at the time, more about how learning really happens than any policy memo ever has."
"I believe that learning is only powerful if it combines agency, purpose, curiosity, and connection to empower students for the future. What does that mean? It means that learners should pursue knowledge through action. Through choice. And through voice. They should have opportunities to develop authentic and meaningful contributions. They should explore new ideas and experiences to better understand their world. And they should make connections between ideas, experiences, and people."
An unforgettable physics lab showed that real learning emerges from confusion, debate, trial, error, and discovery rather than from neat, prescriptive steps. School should unlock inquiry, persistence, and the joy of figuring things out, rather than encouraging students to follow a recipe without understanding. Powerful learning combines agency, purpose, curiosity, and connection, enabling learners to pursue knowledge through action, choice, and voice and to make authentic contributions. Productive experimentation and recovery from mistakes build habits of mind. Emerging technologies can expand access to simulations, prompt inquiry, and support student-centered, inquiry-driven experiences.
Read at Fast Company
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