School as a Human Endeavor
School is a human endeavor. We’ve always known how to pass knowledge from one person to another, but modern schooling also exists to care for children at scale while developing their skills. The combination of education and custody requires systems, and those systems are difficult to build and sustain well.
To educate many children well, it takes many adults working in concert. And across every level, from kindergarten to college, the center of the experience is still the same: the relationship between a student and a teacher.
Children come to school seeking three essential things: relationships with peers, a sense of place, and a meaningful relationship with an adult outside of their home. At the deepest level, children want to be known and loved. A school works best when it is designed to make that possible.
Adults in schools are experienced by children as experts, people who know more and can help make sense of the world. Children push against the edges of that expertise, especially in areas of personal interest, and they quickly recognize when knowledge is exaggerated or performed. In this way, expertise is not defined by omniscience, but by intellectual integrity: understanding what one knows, and being transparent about where that knowledge ends.
Beyond expertise, the most important role an adult plays in a school is knowing the child. Children want to be known and loved, and this mirrors what families want for them as well. To know a child means more than understanding academic progress, it means knowing their interests, their passions, and the details of their life. It means recognizing when a child is struggling and taking the time to invest in them as a person.
Our strongest memories of school are rarely about content alone. They are shaped by the teachers who were present, engaging, and invested. These adults made learning feel meaningful. Teaching carries an inherently performative element; it asks adults to bring energy, story, and humanity into the room. In this way, learning becomes not just instructional, but experiential.
No two school years are ever the same, because schools are living communities, not static systems. While there is a rhythm to the year, it is seasonal rather than predictable, much like a harvest. Periods of intense work are followed by intentional moments of rest in winter, spring, and summer. In between, learning happens through the collective effort of people sharing the same space. Whether a school serves hundreds of students or ten students and one adult, its work is fundamentally synchronous, collaborative, and human.
