In the middle of July, I found myself sitting at my dining room table on a video call with several educators talking about embracing uncertainty.

Earlier that month, Dave Cormier had been talking on Bluesky about something called “ShrugCon“, and I was curious, especially with the title “Embracing Uncertainty as a Pedagogy of Abundance!” I signed up and then found myself listening and participating in some really great conversations. There were so many crossovers and connections to what these mostly post-secondary educators were discussing to what we have been doing at Anastasis for the last fourteen years – I was so excited!

It’s so encouraging to hear professionals share their stories of teaching and learning, but especially so when they are challenging the status quo that leaves so many students in its wake. I kept thinking about how challenging it can be to be a changemaker when it comes to schooling. As a society, we haven’t budged a lot on what school looks like – what learning looks like, and that is something that gnaws at me often.

From one ShrugCon discussion, this quote from Jennie Blake stuck with me for quite some time:

“It’s like you are all in a forest, and instead of letting people find their path, you insist on dragging them straight through the undergrowth to get where you think they should be.”

A Rough Pathway (photo by me)

Uncertainty might be one of my very favorite things about teaching in a school that is an inquiry model. There are no sets of boxed curriculum… and instead of a very prescriptive set of standards with scope and sequence guides paving the way, teachers and students are asking questions within our inquiry blocks to help move the learning forward.

Traditional models of schooling with traditional written curriculum have all students following the same path at mostly the same time and same rate (generally speaking). Those models assume, if students all work hard enough, they can all get to the same place. The path is paved for the students. Some of them stay on the path easily, but others are getting dragged, as Jennie put it, through the undergrowth, with little thought at all — is this even a path these kids need? Want? Should this individual child even be on this path right now? Have we sacrificed the incredible wonder that comes with discovery and forging our own paths for a model that moves kids along in an orderly and efficient manner?

I know I’ve written a lot of posts about this… so many, that it seems self-serving to link them all here; BUT, the fact that we’re still having these conversations means that the topic is important.

Learning is greater… more wondrous… more fascinating than just marching through a textbook to get to the end.

If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to see pathways evolve in nature, there are often myriad ways to arrive at the same destination: some are a direct path, some take the long way, and some are forged through dense trees and undergrowth. I see a lot of these paths when we hike. Some are made by humans, and some by animals. Choosing which route to follow up to a lake, for example, can be such an incredible adventure! Sometimes, it can be too scary, and I want to take the more established path. The choice, though, is mine. When I’m on a new hike, I like to go with more experienced hikers, or at the very least, consult a guide.

We can do this with kids and learning, too! We don’t have to lay it all out for them without any choice or agency. At Anastasis, we’ve been helping kids to forge their own paths, and I can’t ever imagine going back to a traditional model. In saying that, I also have to give credit to all the hardworking teachers in traditional models who help their students every day to bring learning to life outside of a textbook.

I still wonder, though, what if all teachers had the freedom and autonomy that I’ve had at Anastasis? What would it look like for ALL kids to create their own paths in their learning journeys?

This is my wish for education as move forward. We don’t have to be so rigid and unyielding. We can do better.

Thanks to Dave Cormier and the University of Windsor for facilitating ShrugCon. I always feel energized after conversations like these, and it’s uplifting to know that others know we have to do better for all students.