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What needs to change about the way we prepare educators such that they can fully embody scientific pedagogy, engage fully in their spiritual preparation, and bring about a world of equitable interdependence? This is a question that Taylor Henry, Kelly Jonelis, and I have been discussing together over the last few months. It’s led to us deciding to create a “Fellowship in Scientific Pedagogy” for Montessori and progressive educators. This fellowship is still very much in development; we wanted to take the process slowly and thoughtfully, and also to build it in public. Over the next few months, we’ll be recording discussions like these where we dig into some of the fundamental questions we’re grappling with about how educators should be prepared, and what kind of program we want to create. Along the way, we hope that you’ll chime in too- that you’ll share your insights, ideas, questions, and musings on this topic as well. And if you’re interested in being a part of our future fellowship, fill out this link below for us to get in touch with you! Thanks, Taylor for a great conversation, as always. And welcome to the “Three Timers Club” on Breaking the Paradigm! The conventional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. Check out everything we do at www.DevelopingEducation.org This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

There are some people who I could talk to about Montessori and how education must be transformed all day- and Emily Bloyd is one of those people. You may know her from her viral social media channels, where she goes by Montessori Miss Emily, or as The Montessori Mafia here on Substack. She’s someone who not only talks a big game about how we can bring Montessori to every child, but she also walks the walk. Yesterday, we had our first ever live stream collaboration. Despite some technical difficulties (which we adapted to, as Montessorians!), we had such an enjoyable conversation. It was great to see those of you who joined live and hear your reactions in the comments. If you weren’t able to catch us live, definitely check out the replay above. We’ll be going live again in mid-November, so let us know: What should we dig into next? What questions do you want us to tackle? What new ideas would you add to what we shared? Comment your ideas below! Thanks again Montessori Miss Emily for an awesome conversation- I’m looking forward to next time! The conventional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. Check out everything we do at www.DevelopingEducation.org This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

I am so excited to announce that Developing Education has a brand new website! You’ll be able to see all of our offerings where we take the ideas in this podcast and bring them to life. Go check it out at www.developingeducation.org - we can’t wait to see you there! Maria Montessori’s birthday, August 31st, corresponded with the first day of school for me, as well as marking 10 years in education. As I was driving home, I was inspired to take some time that evening to reflect on the last 10 years- what am I still holding on to? What’s actually most important as we kick off this school year? That first day was not perfect (hint: it’s not supposed to be), but seeing the seeds of multiple years of culture building and prepared environment curation manifest in new ways was a beautiful sign. Ultimately, I am left with this: We need to offer an education for a world that needed to change yesterday. What kind of courage would that take? What would parents say? Would our colleagues kick us out of the staff lounge? (Hopefully not!) I hope you enjoy these end-of-day thoughts. Lots more amazing podcasts in the lineup that are in the final touches of editing. If you are working with adolescents, or any age group for that matter, I wish you all the best in guiding human development. It’s the most important work! Want to see where our podcast ideas come to life? Check out our website at www.DevelopingEducation.org The conventional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

I am so excited to announce that Developing Education has a brand new website! You’ll be able to see all of our offerings where we take the ideas in this podcast and bring them to life. Go check it out at www.developingeducation.org - we can’t wait to see you there! There’s a single part of a teacher or leaders practice that (in my opinion) makes or breaks whether they will succeed in creating truly transformational experiences for their students. It’s not their credentials, years of experience, or where they went to school. It’s their ability to be a reflective practitioner- to do their spiritual preparation. In Montessori settings, spiritual preparation doesn’t refer to adhering to religious beliefs; rather, it is an invitation to look inward, reflect on who we are in relation to our students, and consider how we might continue to change ourselves to best serve the needs of our students. Without continuously engaging in our spiritual preparation, we fail to see the students in front of us, and we fail to understand how our behavior impacts them. I’ve seen guides with graduate degrees and AMI credentials that were ineffective because of their lack of spiritual preparation, and guides at the start of their careers be incredibly effective simply by constantly engaging in spiritual preparation and reflection. Over the past few years, I’ve given workshops on spiritual preparation at conferences at schools, and each time I hear the same comment: “This is the thing we most need - and also the thing that gets pushed to the side first.” This mini-episode is the “first period” of the most recent iteration of one of my workshops on spiritual preparation. It’s evolved as I’ve evolved- indeed, my own spiritual preparation is still ongoing. I hope that, if you are at the start of your school year, that this is your sign to focus on your spiritual preparation this year. In a time of chaos and contradiction, we need it more than ever. And if you want to bring this workshop to your school, reply to this email or fill out the Custom PD form on our website! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Solving the isolation that many adolescent guides feel by convening the first, bi-weekly forum for practitioners, leaders, and anyone who works with adolescents. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * All are welcome: Regardless of your credentials or experience, your voice and perspective is important! We hold space for experienced and new guides alike. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The conventional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

I am so excited to announce that Developing Education, of which this podcast is a part of, has a brand new website! You’ll be able to see all of our offerings where we take the ideas in this podcast and bring them to life. Go check it out at www.developingeducation.org - we can’t wait to see you there! It all started at a doctors appointment, as I was reading Things Become Other Things by Craig Mod. Someone across the room said “Excuse me- how did you get into reading?” This simple question sparked the episode you hear above. It’s not quite an argument about how to “teach” reading, and more an argument about the stance we must take when seeking to foster meaningful capacities in our students (whether with reading or otherwise): namely that without the tenants of self-determination theory (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), our efforts won’t have the effect we hope they will. Ultimately, it’s a reminder to myself about the power of giving our students space. In a time where adult anxiety is running high, we must call on ourselves to give our children and adolescents space to just be. It may be an anecdote, but I believe it’s instructive: My Montessori high school students, who are given lots of space and no assigned summer work, are reading for pleasure. When I attended an elite private school where we had lots of homework (both during the year and the summer), I never read for pleasure- and I can’t recall my friends reading for pleasure either. I hope this sparks some interesting discussion and would love to hear your thoughts. If you haven’t already, definitely check out the latest edition of Provocations “The Revolutionary Adolescent,” because it’s jam packed with ideas that will certainly invigorate your practice going into the next school year. You can check out this latest edition, and all past editions, by becoming a paid subscriber to this Substack. You can also buy all past editions (not the current one, but that’s coming!) as standalone downloads on our website, developingeducation.org. Be well and have a great start to the school year! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

I’ve spent my career being told that shooting for the “ideal environment” for adolescents is impossible; that we must be “pragmatic” and make compromises when necessary in our work. What if the problem isn’t reality but our understanding of if? What if the “ideal environment” wasn’t a state of finality or achievement, but a never ending process that could begin immediately? In this episode of Breaking the Paradigm, Taylor Henry joins the Two Timers Club for a session recorded live at Bovina Center Montessori School. Over the course of our conversation, Taylor and I trace a thread that starts with the fear adults carry into adolescent environments. Along the way, we wrestle with the tension between giving up control and still being expected to deliver outcomes (and how we might get away from that). We also examine what happens when adults, out of fear, conditioning, and a culture that has socialized imagination right out of us, preemptively control the young people we claim to be liberating. And while this conversation broke new ground for Taylor and I, many of the threads that came up have been ruminating in our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum, the first global community of practice made up of practitioners and leaders who gather to discuss how we can all live up to our calling to serve adolescent development. If you’d like to join our next session, check us out here! This is a conversation about patience, about the courage to let development unfold on its own timeline, and about living our ideal as a process, now. Thanks, Taylor, for a great conversation! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

Are you willing to be inconvenienced for someone else’s liberation… And your own? My guest, Suzanne Yatim, is a Palestinian-American actress, writer, filmmaker, and co-owner of Montessori Thrive. Her directorial debut, Breathe, filmed in Palestine, is currently in post-production. She’s also the bestselling author of Post Pardon Me, a dark comedy exploring motherhood and mental health. And when the genocide in Gaza began, she stopped everything she was doing and turned her full attention to getting people to understand what Palestinians have known their entire lives. Suzanne and I discussed the discomfort that solidarity requires and asks a question that we each must ask ourselves: how much are we really willing to change our daily life for collective liberation? We also dig into why neutrality is a myth and why Montessori herself would never have stayed silent in this moment. This episode is a continuation of our work with the third edition of Provocations Magazine, which centered Palestine and Montessori’s call for the liberation of all children. If that issue moved you, this conversation will too. Become a paid subscriber for full access to all issues of our paradigm breaking magazine! You can find Suzanne on Instagram (@TheActorvist) and learn more about Montessori Thrive at montessorithrive.com. Thanks, Suzanne, for a great conversation! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

What is the best way to support students with diverse learning needs? It’s the question that almost every educator I know is asking. There’s a massive apparatus of intervention and support built around labels, diagnoses, and deficit-based thinking that was designed for conventional classrooms where compliance and uniformity are the goals. It’s referred to as the medical deficit model. When that apparatus gets imported into Montessori environments, it doesn’t just fail to help our young people, it actively undermines the very things we know children need: autonomy, competence, and meaningful relationships. In this conversation, Dr. Paige Krabill and I explore what it looks like to reject that apparatus and to build something in its place that’s rooted in the Montessori philosophy, building on the strengths and gifts inherent in every young person while providing them the support they need to cultivate independence and autonomy. Dr. Krabill is a clinical and school psychologist, an AMI-trained Montessori educator, and founder of PDK Educational Consulting. She spent the first chapter of her career working within the traditional intervention and support system, and kept hitting a wall. It wasn’t until she walked into a Montessori classroom with her own child that she found the language she’d been searching for. That discovery eventually led her to develop the Power of Possibility framework and to begin building something new: the Montessori Institute of Northeast Ohio, a training center dedicated to reimagining what inclusion can look like when it’s rooted in Montessori philosophy rather than layered on top of it. In this conversation, we dig into the cycle that so many schools get stuck in: how a behavioral manifestation leads to a label, which leads to separation, which leads to disconnection, which leads us to say Montessori “isn’t for this child.” Paige names the myths that keep that cycle spinning and calls us back to something deceptively simple: presume competence, start with yourself, prepare the environment, and observe. Montessori can (and should) be for every child, if we are willing to prepare environments to meet their needs. What would it mean to stop educating diagnoses and start being in communication with the child in front of us? What becomes possible when we trade the language of deficits for the language of aid to life, and when we trust that the prepared environment can do what no checklist of strategies ever could? This is a conversation about our spiritual preparation as adults; the kind that has to be practiced daily, that works against the grain of enormous systems, and that changes everything when we commit to it. Thanks, Paige for a great conversation! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

I was honored to deliver the keynote at this year’s Montessori Educators of Alabama conference around their theme of “Better Together.” I wanted to use this time to sit with a question that’s been nagging at me for years: if Montessori education is so revolutionary, why haven’t we achieved the world of peace and justice that Montessori described? Why, nearly a century into this work, are we still so far from the equitable interdependence she believed was possible? That question led me back through my own journey: into my own childhood and adolescent experiences, some shocking revelations I had while working with 12-15 year olds, and into a hard look at what we might be unconsciously reproducing even in our most beautifully prepared environments. I wanted the room to wrestle with the reality that the dominant culture of modernity doesn’t just surround our schools, it lives inside each of us. And that meeting developmental needs, as essential as it is, may only be the starting point of our truly revolutionary work. Ultimately, this talk is about what’s becomes possible when we recognize the path we’re actually on: when we understand that Montessori didn’t leave us a recipe to follow, but a method to experimenting with. It’s about the new human that each of us is capable of becoming, and the courage it takes to walk that path alongside our students rather than sending them ahead alone. I’m grateful to the Alabama Montessori community for creating such a warm and generative space. After the talk, multiple participants wanted to share their Montessori origin stories with me. One school leader, who was a Montessori student at her mother’s school, said to me “I realize I am not just carrying on my mother’s legacy, but Maria’s too.” This is at the core of what I think needs to shift in our Montessori collective conscious: that we are carrying on Maria’s legacy and must act as she did- not as replicators of her end result, but of scientists of human development and radical social change. I hope you’ll give the talk a listen and share your thoughts. It was a labor of love to create, and so much was left on the cutting room floor. I hope it invites you to revisit your own origin story and consider how YOU are a part of this legacy too! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

There’s a quiet truth most schools are avoiding right now: our students are navigating AI, social media, and digital life every single day; and if we’re not in that conversation with them, something else is. Probably AI itself. That was one of the most clarifying moments from our recent webinar with Dana Anderson, Building a Positive Tech Culture at Your School (and Why It’s Not About AI Bans and Phone Policing). Dana, who comes to this work as a Montessorian with experience across all three levels and who is one of the most thoughtful voices on digital citizenship I know, didn’t come to give us another policy template or a tighter phone ban. She came to ask a harder question: Who actually gets a voice in how your school handles technology? Because right now, in most schools, the answer is “adults.” And that’s exactly the problem. The reactive playbook isn’t working Schools keep reaching for the same tools: ban the phones, block the AI. Write a stricter policy. Print it out. Post it on the website. But as Dana pointed out, a recent Gallup poll shows that 60 to 87 percent of teachers are already using AI for school-based work. Meanwhile, students in many of those same schools are told they can’t use AI at all, under any circumstances. This isn’t a policy problem. It’s a trust problem. And the fallout is predictable: young people circumvent the rules, hide their use, and stop bringing their real questions to the adults in their lives. Dana named it plainly: when students feel a tech policy has been imposed on them rather than built with them, the response is rebellion, not reflection. In a time when young people need to build discernment and critical thinking, not talking about technology is a disservice. What happens when we co-create rather than dictate? One powerful moment in the webinar came from Mara Weitzman, a Montessori educator who ran a service-learning program where her students used 3D printing and CAD design to create real replacement pieces, and entirely new materials, for other classrooms across her school. The students managed the projects, emailed the teachers, set up the meetings, and iterated until the material was right. The teachers ended up needing the students’ expertise. The students experienced themselves as contributors, not consumers. And the whole culture of the school shifted, not because someone wrote a better tech policy, but because young people were trusted with real responsibility. At Bridgemont International School, where Dana teaches, her AI literacy students are currently designing a professional development day on AI for the faculty. The students are teaching the teachers. That is what a positive tech culture actually looks like. Not surveillance. Not bans. Partnership. The paradigm we’re inviting you into As Dana reminded us, Maria Montessori wrote that education depends on a belief that the child has within themselves the capacity to develop into a being far superior to us, and that they will be the only ones who can show us a better way of living. Comfortable conversations don’t dismantle oppressive systems. Adult-only tech policies don’t prepare young people for a world saturated in technology they’ll inherit from us. The students are ready. The question is whether we are. What’s next! Dana and Developing Education are building something bigger around this work: a full course for educators and school leaders who are ready to stop reacting and start partnering with young people to build genuinely positive tech cultures in their schools. We want it to actually meet you where you are. If you’re even a little curious, we’d love your voice in shaping it. Share what YOU want to see in a course here! The revolution our students need starts with us having the courage to let them in. The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

What if the biggest obstacle in Montessori is moving past our fear? Kathy Leitch, executive director of the International Montessori Council, joins Breaking the Paradigm to explore what it really means to carry Montessori forward as a living, experimental method rather than a fixed recipe. With decades of experience in Montessori schools around the world, Kathy makes a case that’s both provocative and deeply generous: Montessori is for every child, even if every school, every classroom, and every guide isn’t yet ready for every child. What would change if we stopped treating the album as the method? What happens when we let fear: of parents, of imperfection, of breaking with tradition, drive decisions that should be rooted in love? And what does it actually look like to transform our own spirit before we try to transform education? Kathy names the energy of love as the most powerful and least explored dimension of Montessori's legacy: an organizing force that shows up in highly functioning classrooms and lingers in the adults those classrooms produce. She challenges the protective instincts that keep our movement small: the hierarchy, the gatekeeping, the insistence on perfection. And she calls us back to the inner work that makes everything else possible: the kind of spiritual preparation that doesn't just happen once in training but every time a child triggers something we didn't know we were carrying. This is a conversation about courage, energy, and the unfinished work Montessori left us, not as a limitation, but as an invitation. Thanks Kathy for a great conversation! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

What if peace education has nothing to do with teaching kids to be calm? Here’s the provocation from Tammy Oesting in her third Breaking the Paradigm apprearance: Peace education isn’t about mindfulness exercises or conflict resolution scripts. It’s not the “kumbaya approach” where we shield children from the world’s hard truths. Real peace education creates conditions that produce a new human who has embodied interdependence: who knows in their bones that they are part of a web, not standing above it. That’s systems-level work. That requires us to look at what we’re afraid to see. And then there’s the question we need to ask about Montessori teacher preparation: Is all our scaffolding: the affiliations, the compliance measures, the rigid fidelity requirements, supporting the rise of human potential, or is it a cage? Why are we so committed to structures that don’t reflect how adults actually learn? And why do we trust children to organize their own time and follow their developmental path, but then demand adults comply with preparation programs that look nothing like the way Dr. Montessori herself taught? At the heart of everything Tammy is asking us to sit with is this: What happens when we let go of control? What emerges in the chaos? Because from chaos comes emergence. This conversation won’t give you easy answers. It will give you better questions. Thanks, Tammy, for bringing the courage we all need right now! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

What if the most powerful thing Montessori educators could do for children right now isn’t in the classroom, but in the halls of Congress? Mixed-age groupings. The three-hour work cycle. Observation-based curriculum. Teacher preparation rooted in human development. Everything that makes Montessori transformative deserves to be reflected in the laws, funding streams, and regulations that shape what’s possible for schools and families. But when we’re not at the table, the language gets written without us; and that’s exactly what MPPI is working to change. In this special live episode, Kelly and I sit down with Denise Monnier and Vyju Kadambi of the Montessori Public Policy Initiative: a two-person organization with advocates in 45 states doing the essential work of making sure Montessori has a voice where it matters most. They’re not waiting for a crisis. They’re building relationships with legislators so public policy includes and uplifts our work in Montessori. This Thursday, as part of the AMS conference in Washington, D.C., MPPI is leading Montessori on the Move, a day of preparation, storytelling, and over 30 meetings on Capitol Hill. It’s the first time our community has organized something like this at the federal level, and Denise and Vyju want you there! It’s not too late to register. It’s not too late to show up for the afternoon. It’s not too late to be in that group photo on the Capitol steps (and get a cool Montessori hat while you’re at it!). And if you can’t make it to D.C., this conversation will convince you that advocacy is already something you do, and that the leap from advocating for a child in your classroom to advocating for Montessori in your statehouse is shorter than you think. You can find MPPI and get connected at MontessoriAdvocacy.org. See you in DC! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

What if depression and anxiety in young people aren’t signs that something is wrong with them, but proof that something is wrong with what we’re doing to them? This is a special three-part episode recorded before, during, and after the Student Power Summit in Los Angeles: a conference that truly and authentically centered student voice. Students from across the country weren’t just in attendance, they were active participants in sessions, pushing back on what adults were saying, and ultimately presenting their own vision for what education should look like. You’ll hear that in the final segment, and it’s worth the wait. Part one begins with my reflections on Johann Hari’s Lost Connections and the research showing that depression is not a chemical imbalance to be medicated away, but rather a response to environments that disconnect us from meaningful work, from each other, from our values, from the natural world, and from a hopeful future. Sound like any institution you know? Part two is a conversation with Jason Blair, an elementary art teacher from Columbus, Ohio, and Jennifer Goen, teacher and instructional leader at HB Woodlawn, a democratic school in Arlington, Virginia. Fresh off the first day of the summit and inspired by the partnership with Homeboy Industries, Jason and Jennifer dig into what happens when we start from strengths instead of deficits, why the arts hold a key that most schools throw away, and why efficiency may be the single greatest enemy of real learning. Part three is the students themselves, and I’ll leave that for you to experience firsthand. They share clearly what they need in order to thrive. I also want to share some key takeaways I had from the breakout sessions. Dr. Stuart Slavin, while leading a medical school, found that his students had skyrocketing anxiety and depression that only worsened each year. His response wasn’t to offer more counseling. He cut class time by 10%, made all courses pass/fail, freed up every other Wednesday for student-chosen pursuits, and reduced daily homework by one to two hours. Board scores rose. The failure rate was cut in half. Students left their first year of medical school less anxious than when they entered. His metaphor says it all: when the canaries started dying in the coal mines, miners didn’t give the canaries antidepressants. They got out of the mine. Our young people are the canaries. And yet we keep pushing deeper. Slavin also names the toxic mindsets these environments produce: performance as identity, toxic comparison, maladaptive perfectionism, imposter phenomenon, self-blame, shame, and what’s known as the Stanford Duck: being calm on the surface, but with your feet paddling like crazy underneath. These aren’t personal failures. They’re the predictable outcomes of top-down, compliance-driven education. I also had the privilege of meeting Nick Covington and Chris McNutt, cofounders of the Human Restoration Project, for the first time in person. Their work using empathy interviews to collect real-time data from students, and then using that data to reshape the experience of school in the image of the young people inside it, is incredibly powerful work. And they’re doing it in public schools that on the surface seem untouchable. When we change the kind of data we collect, and we have the right intention behind the reforms we pursue, remarkable things become possible. Huge thanks to Mike Nicholson for organizing this truly incredible conference; the first I’ve attended that pushed meaningfully on the systemic implications of our schooling system with this kind of depth and honesty. And a special shout out to Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang for a keynote that I hope to share parts of in a future episode. There’s more footage from the summit coming. But for now, listen to what happens when we stop talking about students and start listening to them. Want to hear more? Breaking The Paradigm will be LIVE, this afternoon, at 4:15pm! We’ll be talking with the Montessori Public Policy Initiative about their upcoming advocacy day as part of the AMS Conference here in DC. Tune in on Substack, LinkedIn, or Riverside! See you then! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe

What if the crisis we’re facing isn’t something to be solved, but something to be composted? Raj Chawla and Andrew Kutt joined me for a conversation that asks us to slow down long enough to feel what’s actually happening beneath the surface of our world, our systems, and ourselves. What Raj illuminates so beautifully is that the assumptions driving our global unraveling: separation, domination, the compulsion to control, aren’t just “out there” in our institutions and economies. They live in our nervous systems. They live in us. This is not a comfortable conversation. It’s not meant to be. What does it mean to truly unlearn something that has been passed down through generations of conditioning? What do we lose when we let go of control, and what becomes possible when we do? And what does any of this have to do with how we educate young people in a time of collapse? Raj doesn’t offer answers. He offers something rarer: a slowing down, a bearing witness, an invitation to compost what modernity has accumulated in us so that something new might emerge in the clearing. This is one of those episodes that will sit with you long after you’ve finished listening. Thanks Raj and Andrew for a great conversation! Are you a Montessori Adolescent educator or leader? Join our Montessori Adolescent Collaborative Forum! Our Purpose: Realizing Montessori’s vision of a new world starting with how we, as practitioners, transform through dialogue and community. Why join the MAC Forum? * Build community: Connect with fellow adolescent guides from around the world. * Co-create the forum: Your questions, observations, and experiments shape the discussion. * Access the archive: Can’t make it live? All sessions recorded and available. Forums are held virtually every second Tuesday at 7:00pm EST Join Today and Find Your Community! The traditional education system had its chance. Now it’s our turn. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit breakingtheparadigm.org/subscribe