Dear Fellow Insightful Educator,

When we send children to kindergarten, we're sending them, quite literally, to a "child's garden” (kinder - garten)

This to me is a profound reminder that education has always been about cultivation, about human formation in its most critical years

And here's the beautiful truth:

Your students aren't products to be manufactured; they're living beings with potential waiting to bloom

I’ve said it this way for years:

The work of education is to turn acorns into oak trees!

Which is why, in this newsletter, I am inviting you to think of your learning community as more than a building with a set of classrooms. As more than bricks and mortar. As more than desks and rows.

I’m inviting you to think of your learning environment as a living ecosystem…and then to ask yourself this honest question:

Just as ecologists study how organisms interact with their environment, we must examine how every element of our schools shapes the students growing within them. 

The research on school ecology reveals something hopeful: 

When we intentionally design the interconnected parts of our system—leadership structures, behavioral expectations, physical spaces, and interpersonal relationships—we profoundly influence student outcomes.

These aren't separate concerns. They're the soil, water, sunlight, and nutrients of your garden.

Remembering that we have living human beings in our care fundamentally shifts how we approach education. 

It allows us to think of schooling not as mechanistic but as organic.

It moves us from asking "How do I deliver content efficiently?" to "How do I create conditions for human flourishing?"

Most importantly, it invites us to think of genuine education not as something for the brain first…but for the heart

Here's what the ancient Greeks understood that we've largely forgotten: 

Education is fundamentally about disciplining our desires toward the right ends

Love, says Socrates, is the prime mover that causes us to desire and to seek the Good. 

The problem, of course, is that most people desire things without knowing what will actually satisfy them. They chase after temporary pleasures, never finding fulfillment.

This is why Plato insisted that the purpose of education is "to teach us to love what is beautiful"—to cultivate in students rightly ordered desires. 

Not to fill their heads with information, but to form in their hearts properly ordered loves

This means education isn't just about cognitive development—it's always first and foremost about the formation of the entire person. 

And formation happens through relationship, through community, through the thousand small interactions that make up a school day.

Thinking of schooling in this way reminds us that there are no small moments, no moments that do not matter, in the ecosystems of our learning environments

Rightly ordered loves — They care not just for themselves, but for others, for those not like them, for the communities they inhabit, for ideas worthy of contemplation. 

Rich, expansive selves — They come to know themselves only as they know others, and they actualize their potential only as they help actualize potential in others. They practice Ubuntu: “I am because we are”

Harmonized power — They understand power not as domination or control, but as the dignity of humility and the gifts of vulnerability. 

Resistance to shallow desires — Having learned to love well, they possess what Augustine called the virtues: temperance (love that protects its integrity), fortitude (love that endures for the beloved), justice (love that shares equally), and prudence (love that discerns what truly benefits).

We should want fuller, broader, deeper versions of our students than mere brains on sticks

We should want deep thinkers, kind neighbors, thoughtful citizens, hopeful entrepreneurs, innovative designers, trusted friends

This kind of student is possible.

We just have to get the ecosystem right

How do we transform our schools into gardens where human flourishing takes root?

Start small: Even if you can't change your school size, create smaller communities within larger structures. Form advisory groups, learning pods, or "families" of students who stay together across grades. At the school I lead (Odyssey Leadership Academy), we start each and every day with “Mentor Time”: 45 minutes of community wrapped in donuts, volleyball, puzzles, and laughter. It is a space held sacred for the fostering of mattering and belonging for each and every student

For school leaders: Advocate for "schools within schools" that adapt to developmental needs. Reduce departmentalization where possible, enabling teachers across disciplines to work closely together in service of the whole child. At OLA, we emphasize  cross-discipline courses like Einstein’s Ethics that give students the chance to engage the pedagogy of the core learning (knowledge) and the coeur learning (the learning of the heart)

Start small: Begin each week by asking students what they want to learn about. Create a "student council" for your classroom where kids help establish norms and solve problems. Give them real choices in demonstrating their learning. At OLA, we ask students what classes and electives they want…and then work really hard to deliver on as many as possible

For school leaders: Implement meaningful student participation in decision-making. Not token representation, but genuine co-creation of policies, schedules, and learning experiences. 

3. Design Spaces for Connection

Start small: Rearrange your classroom furniture weekly to encourage cooperative learning. Create cozy corners for reading and reflection. Bring in plants. Make your space feel human-scale and inviting, not institutional. Place desks in circles instead of rows to create community within the learning environment

For school leaders: Audit your physical environment. Are there spaces for informal gathering? For quiet reflection? For creative expression? Transform an unused hallway into a "community living room" with couches, books, and board games making it the heart of the school

Start small: Practice vulnerability with your students. Share your own learning struggles. Apologize when you make mistakes. Say “I don’t know, but we will find out together” to show them what it looks like to be a lifelong learner who doesn't have all the answers. 

For school leaders: Create regular opportunities for staff to practice the very things you want them to cultivate in students—creativity, collaboration, compassionate dialogue. You can't cultivate in others what you don't embody yourself. Staff meetings should model the pedagogy you want to see in classrooms.

Start small: Create a "flourishing portfolio" where students collect evidence of growth in areas like empathy, creativity, perseverance, and collaboration alongside academic work. Celebrate these qualities as publicly as test scores. At OLA, we use a narrative transcript instead of a numerical one (and yes, our graduates still get into college! Most on scholarships to their top schools of choice) so that we tell the full story of our students beyond scores and grades

For school leaders: Ask different questions in your evaluations. Instead of "Did test scores go up?" ask "Are our students becoming more caring? More imaginative? More capable of meaningful connection?" Survey graduates three and five years out about what actually mattered in their formation.

Education must return to its etymological roots—educare, "to bring forth" 

We must bring forth not just skilled workers or information processors, but fully human persons whose loves are properly ordered, whose hearts are shaped for the Good

This requires us to see education not as job training or standardized test preparation, but as human formation. 

And in a world increasingly saturated with AI, that pedagogy—the pedagogy of human flourishing—is going to be more valuable and more urgent than ever before

AI can deliver content. It can grade papers. It can even tutor students in specific skills.

But AI cannot cultivate a human heart.

AI cannot model what it means to be fully human.

AI cannot create the conditions for moral and spiritual growth.

That's your work. That's what makes educators irreplaceable.

Your work as an educator is no longer to be a mere content deliverer, but to be the one who calls up and calls out that which is Good, Noble, True, and Praiseworthy in your students. 

To help your students come to know their truest and best selves. 

To turn acorns into oak trees in the story of a forest

That’s a far cry from merely filling minds with data

It is about calling students into the fullness of who they are and who they’re becoming.

Look at your classroom, your school, your district. 

What seeds are you planting? What are you cultivating in the hearts of your students? What is growing in your garden?

The harvest we reap will be determined by what we sow today.

The beautiful truth is this: you get to decide.

Right now. Today. With the very next interaction you have with a student.

You can choose to see your students as test scores to be raised, or as human beings to be formed.

You can choose to design systems that prioritize compliance, or communities that cultivate compassion.

You can choose to perpetuate schools as they've always been, or reimagine them as gardens where human flourishing takes root.

This is not naive optimism—it's an urgent, practical necessity. 

Our students are inheriting a world that desperately needs people who have learned to love well, to think deeply, to connect authentically, and to act justly.

Will your garden grow those kinds of people?

I believe it can. I believe it will. Because I believe in you—in your capacity to be not just a teacher, but a cultivator of human hearts.

So plant good seeds today. Tend your garden with care. And trust that the harvest, in time, will come.

Next Steps:

Choose ONE action from the list above and commit to trying it this week.

Let's create a movement of educators who are reimagining schooling as gardens of human flourishing.

The world is waiting for the harvest only you can grow.

With hope and solidarity for the work ahead,

The Insightful Educator

P.S. — If you're a school leader wanting to dive deeper into creating an ecology of flourishing, yours and your learning community’s, I’ve create this resource just for you!! 

The Flourishing School Leader Field Guide is your essential guide to leading with vision, hope, and humanity—without losing yourself in the process. 

Blending practical tools with soul-nourishing reflection, this resource equips school leaders to thrive personally and professionally. Inside, you’ll find self-assessments, thought provoking practices, mini-retreat guides, and proven strategies to rekindle passion, restore purpose, and create an ecosystem of trust and flourishing in your school community.

It’s only $40 and guides you through the work I’ve outlined throughout this newsletter

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