what are the following things have in
common
gangs religious cults the alt-right
Alcoholics Anonymous therapy flag
football leagues and mom’s book clubs
these are all places where people go to
meet a foundational human need it’s one
that’s always with us and it never goes
away
we’re always attending to it even
without knowing it it’s the need to feel
that we belong that we’re valued and
that our actions have meaning to
something bigger than ourselves think
back to a time early in your life when
you felt this way now raise your hand
how many of you thought of an experience
in school okay a few but not many
because even though having this
emotional and psychic need met is a
foundational one even though our ability
to become healthy well-adjusted adults
is absolutely dependent on it when it
comes to education we spend very little
time thinking about the role that
schools should play in nurturing this
basic human need we’re such we’re in
such a rush to make the work of schools
more efficient in producing the outcomes
that we’ve traditionally cared about
performance and basic subjects and on
tests that we forget who we’re doing it
for and what matters most to us about
our kids growth as my own sons have
gotten older I’ve seen how we’ve drawn
this artificial line between school and
life between education and their growth
as people but what if we could erase
that line
what if we could acknowledge that
feeling included safe and personally
engaged is this foundational to
education as it is in every other area
of our life to answer that question let
me introduce you to a young man named
Michael Michael is 17 he’s an earnest
young man unusually committed to his
academics and if you met him you
wouldn’t think that three years ago he’d
been expelled from two schools and was
sitting in the principal’s office of a
third after overturning a desk in class
when he got frustrated no one could
figure out what the
problem was his past schools had been
good schools and yet Michael felt
totally disengaged from his peers and
from other adults and it came across in
this defiant sarcastic disinterested
attitude no one seemed able to break
through and it seemed as though Michael
might go the way of so many young people
who are disengaged with school until his
family heard about a school called
lighthouse lighthouse is one of a
growing number of learner-centered
schools that see the complex humanity of
young people as the starting point for
teaching and learning and they see their
responsibility as helping to develop
that humanity to develop the unique
interests and the individual potential
of young people adults facilitate
learning opportunities and help young
people take charge of their learning
let’s contrast that with traditional
school centered environments these
schools are about efficiency they’re
about st. ranking and sorting young
people largely based on how well they
measure up against standardized notions
of what it means to be normal and smart
learner centered environments replace
the 3 R’s that most of us grew up with
reading writing and arithmetic with
three new R’s relationship relevance and
reintegration and the story of Michael’s
success at Lighthouse can tell us a lot
about how these three R’s work for young
people so let’s start with relationship
when Michael started at that lighthouse
as a sophomore he was supposed to set up
an internship for himself but he didn’t
cuz that’s how he rolled and he was sure
he was going to be expelled again but
lighthouse prides itself I’m not losing
young people that other places have lost
his adviser Mary who had met him and had
a sense that Michael might be reluctant
to reach out found him an internship at
a restaurant called Paul’s the owner
Paul had was on a sixth lighthouse
intern and over the years of
collaborating with the school he’d
figured out how to integrate young
people into an into his business in a
meaningful way so Michaels first day in
the kitchen Paul walked into the large
counter in the center of the kitchen
where he’d put a plastic bucket filled
with about a hundred pounds of onions
and he asked Michael to chop them so
Michael hacked and cursed his way
through about
two hours and he got so frustrated that
he stormed out early skipped the second
day and barely made it through the week
but Paul didn’t report him he didn’t
berate him he just looked him in the eye
when he came back and told Michael that
he expected a phone call if Michael had
to miss another session and he explained
why that was important to the
functioning of the kitchen over the
years and with Mary’s guidance Paul had
begun to understand the school’s
philosophy that giving young people a
meaningful opportunity to connect with
their community is the best way to
foster a sense of belonging and purpose
and he had seen for himself how
belonging Foster’s curiosity and
motivation he’d seen how eagerly young
people could learn once they started to
trust him and so in those first few
weeks Paul watched Michael and when he
had to step in he talked with him about
growing up in the neighborhood and his
own struggles in school how he’d come to
start the restaurant and he asked
Michael about himself and he watched the
young man’s resistance begin to soften
Michael like other people in
learner-centered schools talks a lot
about feelings seen heard known and
empowered in a world where schools and
educators and students are constantly
pressured to perform and produce where
there’s very little time to slow down
adults like Paul make space Paul stood
with Michael when he got frustrated and
wanted to quit I’m here said Paul I’ll
stay here you belong here Paul and the
other chefs saw parts of Michael that
he’d hidden away before they supported
him when he messed up and got frustrated
they showed him how normal it was to
make mistakes how they’d all done it
through them Michael became able to
accept himself and he began to
experience himself as competent likable
reliable through these relationships
Michael began to see himself in a new
way and that set the foundation for
everything that came next which brings
us to the second our relevance and
Michael had asked his previous schools a
pretty common question for kids why
should I care
and the answer we normally give them is
tests AP exams getting into college and
that’s clearly not enough because in our
traditional system the longer kids are
in school the less engaged they are in
2016 seventy-five percent of third
graders said that they felt engaged and
valued in schools but twelfth graders
only 34 percent of them felt that way if
we tell young people that they go to
school to take tests and they don’t care
about the tests where does that leave us
and where does it leave their sense of
purpose feeling relevant helps young
people to understand who they want to be
in the world and it helps them
understand why what they’re learning in
school matters and so schools like
lighthouse ask young people
intentionally to think about the things
that they find meaningful and that often
means getting involved in their
communities as Paul puts it that sense
of being totally focused on the task at
hand and of contributing if they can
experience that here in my kitchen they
can take that sense with them wherever
they go
so in Michaels second week at the
restaurant Paul asked him to saute
onions for a base Michael rushed it he
took five minutes to heat the oil and
saute the onions before he called Paul
over and Paul peered into the pan
without a word he took down a second pan
and started a second batch of onions and
he let those sauté for 15 minutes while
he put tomatoes and spices into
Michael’s batch and when they were both
done he turned off the heat handed my
glow spoon and they tasted both and
Michael scowled yeah okay mine sucks I
mean would you expect I don’t know what
the f I’m doing I’m not blaming you said
Paul but you do need to understand why
and you need to taste the difference and
he proceeded to explain the chemistry of
flavor the role of oil and heat and time
in transforming flavors you skipped this
step said Paul you got no chance of
getting the rest of the dish right
Michael was beginning to answer the
question of why for himself and no other
school had ever invited him to do this
he saw that honoring the
mystery of cooking would make a
difference in whether a client enjoyed
their meal or not and whether Paul kept
or lost a customer
he saw that learning to chop well would
make the difference between saving or
wasting food and money so as Michael
began to know more about the restaurant
he became interested in the business
side of it so the next year he did
another stint at Paul’s focusing on the
business aspects of the restaurant he
learned how Paul decided on menus and
sourced ingredients he figured out
QuickBooks in Excel and he began to make
suggestions for how the business could
be more efficient Mary in his advisors
that lighthouse helped him turn what he
was learning at the restaurant into the
lessons that he needed for graduation
and for his next steps in life as
Michaels contributions to the restaurant
grew so did his confidence and his his
confidence increased he began to look up
and out at the world beyond the
restaurant and that leads us to that
third are reintegration the school
centered system of education that was
developed about 150 years ago was
designed around efficiency and that
meant pulling kids out of the world they
lived in and setting their education
apart from that world it meant taking
knowledge and breaking it up into
discrete subjects that don’t actually
exist in the world where things are all
integrated and so learner centered
schools put young people back into life
and their communities to learn and one
of the things they learn is that
everything is connected
Paul had told Michael that he had
started the restaurant in the specific
neighborhood that he had because he was
interested in creating a neighborhood
hub in a part of the city that was
considered less desirable he felt that
an urban farm to table restaurant would
attract a diverse clientele now Michael
already knew that his city was
segregated by race and by class but
after talking with Paul he began to
notice that boutique restaurants and
national chains like Whole Foods were in
parts of the city that were whiter and
more affluent and that parts of the city
that had more immigrants and minorities
had smaller ethnic restaurants and fewer
national businesses so became interested
in how city planners made decisions he
learned about food
it’s about zoning and residential
segregation in a senior year he worked
with Mary to put together a project
where he was learning about residential
segregation patterns and doing oral
histories with residents to understand
the impact of the patterns and a common
theme emerged people felt disconnected
isolated alienated from the city as a
whole
for the first time Michael began to
wonder how he could make a difference
so through lighthouse he proposed an
internship of the city’s Economic
Development Office and while he was
there he was learning about tax breaks
and business incentives and
understanding how this had an impact on
a city’s development in his final paper
he proposed a cost-benefit metric that
made the even distribution of Economic
Opportunity across neighborhoods an
explicit priority and a local Family
Foundation offered him a one-year
fellowship after he graduated to build
out this concept if we want young people
to be the curious motivated lifelong
learners that we want them to be we need
to show them that success is not about
ticking boxes it’s about making
connections to the world to each other
to their ancestry and to their legacy
more than ever these days we see young
people who are desperate to make a
difference in the world who want to be
involved in big changes in society and
if we don’t harness their motivation the
way that schools like lighthouse do we
will lose them focusing on these three
RS is also a recognition that broken
young people won’t really learn anyway
they might pass tests they might go to
college but they’ll be anxious depressed
violent against themselves and others in
big and small ways health researchers
are finally willing to say that there is
a an epidemic of youth unwellness in the
United States each year one in five
females and one in seven males between
the ages of 9 and 16 engaged in
self-injury
more than 30 percent of students who
seek mental health services say they’ve
seriously considered suicide that’s up
from 24% a few years ago between 2006
2016 the suicide rate among kids younger
than 13 rows by 114 percent and the rate
for all young people rose by 64%
hospital admissions for suicidal teens
have doubled over the last few years and
the highest rates occur soon after
school begins every fall and to be clear
these trends transcend race and class
because whether young person is stressed
because of homelessness or poverty or
because of ongoing pressures to bolster
a College resume the body in the brain
responded in much the same way preteens
and teens from affluent families
experienced the highest rates of
depression substance abuse and anxiety
disorders of any group of children in
the u.s. our current system of education
produces young people whose heads are
stuffed full of knowledge they may be
creative and entrepreneurial and do
amazing things but far too many of them
lack the capacity to cope to deal with
the intensity of their emotions to fail
and get back up again to be vulnerable
and ask for help and far too many of
them are feeling unseen and wondering
what it’s all for now people are going
to wonder whether our schools have the
time and the resources to address issues
of belonging and purpose I think our
society can’t afford to not make this
change because if belonging and
connectedness are foundational for human
wellbeing how are young people who are
feeling anxious depressed and isolated
ever expected to thrive so many of the
problems that we’re trying to address in
society intolerance racism extremism
violence substance abuse mental health
issues stem from people feeling
alienated objectified and isolated think
again about the places and the people
you go to first sense of belonging and
purpose how it feels to go through your
day is knowing that you’re welcomed that
you know your way around that you’re
carried through your life by people who
nurture you and make you feel valued
and now ask yourself how we can want
anything less for our children I can’t
schools like lighthouse already exist
all over this country they serve kids as
young as three and they go all the way
through high school but there just
aren’t enough because at the end of the
day every young person deserves the
education that Michael was lucky enough
to find but for these schools to thrive
for this country to believe that this
type of education is possible and
necessary we must accept that learning
begins with purpose and belonging and
that any education that ignores that
need will pile knowledge on top of
frustration and loneliness it’ll never
address the true cause of a young person
struggles or tap into the true wealth of
her potential Michael’s gonna graduate
he’ll walk across the stage and get his
diploma which might land in a box or end
up in a frame but he will remember the
faces of Paul and Mary in the crowd
he’ll take with him a sense of the
history and the texture of his community
and a role for himself that he finds
meaningful and that sense is going to be
a foundation for a life that he builds
that’s meaningful and full of purpose
our kids
my son’s your daughter’s need us all of
us to see them as capable relevant
powerful members of our communities and
we need them we need them to go out into
the world secure in their sense of self
because that sense of belonging and
purpose is the only foundation strong
enough for them to build better lives
for themselves and a better world for
all of us thank you
[Applause] [Music]
common
gangs religious cults the alt-right
Alcoholics Anonymous therapy flag
football leagues and mom’s book clubs
these are all places where people go to
meet a foundational human need it’s one
that’s always with us and it never goes
away
we’re always attending to it even
without knowing it it’s the need to feel
that we belong that we’re valued and
that our actions have meaning to
something bigger than ourselves think
back to a time early in your life when
you felt this way now raise your hand
how many of you thought of an experience
in school okay a few but not many
because even though having this
emotional and psychic need met is a
foundational one even though our ability
to become healthy well-adjusted adults
is absolutely dependent on it when it
comes to education we spend very little
time thinking about the role that
schools should play in nurturing this
basic human need we’re such we’re in
such a rush to make the work of schools
more efficient in producing the outcomes
that we’ve traditionally cared about
performance and basic subjects and on
tests that we forget who we’re doing it
for and what matters most to us about
our kids growth as my own sons have
gotten older I’ve seen how we’ve drawn
this artificial line between school and
life between education and their growth
as people but what if we could erase
that line
what if we could acknowledge that
feeling included safe and personally
engaged is this foundational to
education as it is in every other area
of our life to answer that question let
me introduce you to a young man named
Michael Michael is 17 he’s an earnest
young man unusually committed to his
academics and if you met him you
wouldn’t think that three years ago he’d
been expelled from two schools and was
sitting in the principal’s office of a
third after overturning a desk in class
when he got frustrated no one could
figure out what the
problem was his past schools had been
good schools and yet Michael felt
totally disengaged from his peers and
from other adults and it came across in
this defiant sarcastic disinterested
attitude no one seemed able to break
through and it seemed as though Michael
might go the way of so many young people
who are disengaged with school until his
family heard about a school called
lighthouse lighthouse is one of a
growing number of learner-centered
schools that see the complex humanity of
young people as the starting point for
teaching and learning and they see their
responsibility as helping to develop
that humanity to develop the unique
interests and the individual potential
of young people adults facilitate
learning opportunities and help young
people take charge of their learning
let’s contrast that with traditional
school centered environments these
schools are about efficiency they’re
about st. ranking and sorting young
people largely based on how well they
measure up against standardized notions
of what it means to be normal and smart
learner centered environments replace
the 3 R’s that most of us grew up with
reading writing and arithmetic with
three new R’s relationship relevance and
reintegration and the story of Michael’s
success at Lighthouse can tell us a lot
about how these three R’s work for young
people so let’s start with relationship
when Michael started at that lighthouse
as a sophomore he was supposed to set up
an internship for himself but he didn’t
cuz that’s how he rolled and he was sure
he was going to be expelled again but
lighthouse prides itself I’m not losing
young people that other places have lost
his adviser Mary who had met him and had
a sense that Michael might be reluctant
to reach out found him an internship at
a restaurant called Paul’s the owner
Paul had was on a sixth lighthouse
intern and over the years of
collaborating with the school he’d
figured out how to integrate young
people into an into his business in a
meaningful way so Michaels first day in
the kitchen Paul walked into the large
counter in the center of the kitchen
where he’d put a plastic bucket filled
with about a hundred pounds of onions
and he asked Michael to chop them so
Michael hacked and cursed his way
through about
two hours and he got so frustrated that
he stormed out early skipped the second
day and barely made it through the week
but Paul didn’t report him he didn’t
berate him he just looked him in the eye
when he came back and told Michael that
he expected a phone call if Michael had
to miss another session and he explained
why that was important to the
functioning of the kitchen over the
years and with Mary’s guidance Paul had
begun to understand the school’s
philosophy that giving young people a
meaningful opportunity to connect with
their community is the best way to
foster a sense of belonging and purpose
and he had seen for himself how
belonging Foster’s curiosity and
motivation he’d seen how eagerly young
people could learn once they started to
trust him and so in those first few
weeks Paul watched Michael and when he
had to step in he talked with him about
growing up in the neighborhood and his
own struggles in school how he’d come to
start the restaurant and he asked
Michael about himself and he watched the
young man’s resistance begin to soften
Michael like other people in
learner-centered schools talks a lot
about feelings seen heard known and
empowered in a world where schools and
educators and students are constantly
pressured to perform and produce where
there’s very little time to slow down
adults like Paul make space Paul stood
with Michael when he got frustrated and
wanted to quit I’m here said Paul I’ll
stay here you belong here Paul and the
other chefs saw parts of Michael that
he’d hidden away before they supported
him when he messed up and got frustrated
they showed him how normal it was to
make mistakes how they’d all done it
through them Michael became able to
accept himself and he began to
experience himself as competent likable
reliable through these relationships
Michael began to see himself in a new
way and that set the foundation for
everything that came next which brings
us to the second our relevance and
Michael had asked his previous schools a
pretty common question for kids why
should I care
and the answer we normally give them is
tests AP exams getting into college and
that’s clearly not enough because in our
traditional system the longer kids are
in school the less engaged they are in
2016 seventy-five percent of third
graders said that they felt engaged and
valued in schools but twelfth graders
only 34 percent of them felt that way if
we tell young people that they go to
school to take tests and they don’t care
about the tests where does that leave us
and where does it leave their sense of
purpose feeling relevant helps young
people to understand who they want to be
in the world and it helps them
understand why what they’re learning in
school matters and so schools like
lighthouse ask young people
intentionally to think about the things
that they find meaningful and that often
means getting involved in their
communities as Paul puts it that sense
of being totally focused on the task at
hand and of contributing if they can
experience that here in my kitchen they
can take that sense with them wherever
they go
so in Michaels second week at the
restaurant Paul asked him to saute
onions for a base Michael rushed it he
took five minutes to heat the oil and
saute the onions before he called Paul
over and Paul peered into the pan
without a word he took down a second pan
and started a second batch of onions and
he let those sauté for 15 minutes while
he put tomatoes and spices into
Michael’s batch and when they were both
done he turned off the heat handed my
glow spoon and they tasted both and
Michael scowled yeah okay mine sucks I
mean would you expect I don’t know what
the f I’m doing I’m not blaming you said
Paul but you do need to understand why
and you need to taste the difference and
he proceeded to explain the chemistry of
flavor the role of oil and heat and time
in transforming flavors you skipped this
step said Paul you got no chance of
getting the rest of the dish right
Michael was beginning to answer the
question of why for himself and no other
school had ever invited him to do this
he saw that honoring the
mystery of cooking would make a
difference in whether a client enjoyed
their meal or not and whether Paul kept
or lost a customer
he saw that learning to chop well would
make the difference between saving or
wasting food and money so as Michael
began to know more about the restaurant
he became interested in the business
side of it so the next year he did
another stint at Paul’s focusing on the
business aspects of the restaurant he
learned how Paul decided on menus and
sourced ingredients he figured out
QuickBooks in Excel and he began to make
suggestions for how the business could
be more efficient Mary in his advisors
that lighthouse helped him turn what he
was learning at the restaurant into the
lessons that he needed for graduation
and for his next steps in life as
Michaels contributions to the restaurant
grew so did his confidence and his his
confidence increased he began to look up
and out at the world beyond the
restaurant and that leads us to that
third are reintegration the school
centered system of education that was
developed about 150 years ago was
designed around efficiency and that
meant pulling kids out of the world they
lived in and setting their education
apart from that world it meant taking
knowledge and breaking it up into
discrete subjects that don’t actually
exist in the world where things are all
integrated and so learner centered
schools put young people back into life
and their communities to learn and one
of the things they learn is that
everything is connected
Paul had told Michael that he had
started the restaurant in the specific
neighborhood that he had because he was
interested in creating a neighborhood
hub in a part of the city that was
considered less desirable he felt that
an urban farm to table restaurant would
attract a diverse clientele now Michael
already knew that his city was
segregated by race and by class but
after talking with Paul he began to
notice that boutique restaurants and
national chains like Whole Foods were in
parts of the city that were whiter and
more affluent and that parts of the city
that had more immigrants and minorities
had smaller ethnic restaurants and fewer
national businesses so became interested
in how city planners made decisions he
learned about food
it’s about zoning and residential
segregation in a senior year he worked
with Mary to put together a project
where he was learning about residential
segregation patterns and doing oral
histories with residents to understand
the impact of the patterns and a common
theme emerged people felt disconnected
isolated alienated from the city as a
whole
for the first time Michael began to
wonder how he could make a difference
so through lighthouse he proposed an
internship of the city’s Economic
Development Office and while he was
there he was learning about tax breaks
and business incentives and
understanding how this had an impact on
a city’s development in his final paper
he proposed a cost-benefit metric that
made the even distribution of Economic
Opportunity across neighborhoods an
explicit priority and a local Family
Foundation offered him a one-year
fellowship after he graduated to build
out this concept if we want young people
to be the curious motivated lifelong
learners that we want them to be we need
to show them that success is not about
ticking boxes it’s about making
connections to the world to each other
to their ancestry and to their legacy
more than ever these days we see young
people who are desperate to make a
difference in the world who want to be
involved in big changes in society and
if we don’t harness their motivation the
way that schools like lighthouse do we
will lose them focusing on these three
RS is also a recognition that broken
young people won’t really learn anyway
they might pass tests they might go to
college but they’ll be anxious depressed
violent against themselves and others in
big and small ways health researchers
are finally willing to say that there is
a an epidemic of youth unwellness in the
United States each year one in five
females and one in seven males between
the ages of 9 and 16 engaged in
self-injury
more than 30 percent of students who
seek mental health services say they’ve
seriously considered suicide that’s up
from 24% a few years ago between 2006
2016 the suicide rate among kids younger
than 13 rows by 114 percent and the rate
for all young people rose by 64%
hospital admissions for suicidal teens
have doubled over the last few years and
the highest rates occur soon after
school begins every fall and to be clear
these trends transcend race and class
because whether young person is stressed
because of homelessness or poverty or
because of ongoing pressures to bolster
a College resume the body in the brain
responded in much the same way preteens
and teens from affluent families
experienced the highest rates of
depression substance abuse and anxiety
disorders of any group of children in
the u.s. our current system of education
produces young people whose heads are
stuffed full of knowledge they may be
creative and entrepreneurial and do
amazing things but far too many of them
lack the capacity to cope to deal with
the intensity of their emotions to fail
and get back up again to be vulnerable
and ask for help and far too many of
them are feeling unseen and wondering
what it’s all for now people are going
to wonder whether our schools have the
time and the resources to address issues
of belonging and purpose I think our
society can’t afford to not make this
change because if belonging and
connectedness are foundational for human
wellbeing how are young people who are
feeling anxious depressed and isolated
ever expected to thrive so many of the
problems that we’re trying to address in
society intolerance racism extremism
violence substance abuse mental health
issues stem from people feeling
alienated objectified and isolated think
again about the places and the people
you go to first sense of belonging and
purpose how it feels to go through your
day is knowing that you’re welcomed that
you know your way around that you’re
carried through your life by people who
nurture you and make you feel valued
and now ask yourself how we can want
anything less for our children I can’t
schools like lighthouse already exist
all over this country they serve kids as
young as three and they go all the way
through high school but there just
aren’t enough because at the end of the
day every young person deserves the
education that Michael was lucky enough
to find but for these schools to thrive
for this country to believe that this
type of education is possible and
necessary we must accept that learning
begins with purpose and belonging and
that any education that ignores that
need will pile knowledge on top of
frustration and loneliness it’ll never
address the true cause of a young person
struggles or tap into the true wealth of
her potential Michael’s gonna graduate
he’ll walk across the stage and get his
diploma which might land in a box or end
up in a frame but he will remember the
faces of Paul and Mary in the crowd
he’ll take with him a sense of the
history and the texture of his community
and a role for himself that he finds
meaningful and that sense is going to be
a foundation for a life that he builds
that’s meaningful and full of purpose
our kids
my son’s your daughter’s need us all of
us to see them as capable relevant
powerful members of our communities and
we need them we need them to go out into
the world secure in their sense of self
because that sense of belonging and
purpose is the only foundation strong
enough for them to build better lives
for themselves and a better world for
all of us thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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