Learning to Relearn - A Conversation with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

In order for us to pursue and push for the change that we're looking for systemically, we have to interrogate the very infrastructure of formal education. Why is it so important for us to be in compliance to protocols and guidelines that are antithetical to humanity?

Hi everyone, thanks for joining me again this week on the podcast brought to you by Good Impact Labs. I'm your host Tim Logan, and this week it's a huge pleasure to be able to bring you this crossover episode with Kwame Sarfo-Mensah and his fantastic channel Identity Talk for Educators Live. Kwame and I have both been running our channels for the last 5 years, so it's been fascinating to be able to connect with him, learning from many of his deep insights gained from his own practice as a maths teacher and educational coach and consultant, but also through his more than 200 conversations with amazing educators and leaders. Throughout his extensive education career as a classroom teacher, author, and consultant, Kwame has earned numerous accolades for his work, which include being honored as the 2019 National Member of the Year by Black Educators Rock, being recognized as a top education influencer by Brightbeam in 2021 and 2022. Kwame has written 3 fantastic books, and we recorded this episode on the day that he just found out that his latest book, Learning to Relearn: Supporting Identity in a Culturally Affirming Classroom, had just won the 2025 IPPI Awards Gold Medal for Education, who was also awarded the 2024 Forward Indies Award for Education Book of the Year. Kwame's two previous books were Shaping Teacher Identity: 8 Lessons That Will Help Define the Teacher in You, and From Inaction to Inaction: Creating a New Normal for Urban Educators. You can find loads more links to Kwame's amazing work in the show notes.

Good to see you, Kwame. Special day, I hear.

Yes, special day.

Pretty special day. I'm loving the red carpet you've got behind you. This is like in honor of your Oscar-winning moment, right?

No, this is just— Yeah, I didn't think that. I wasn't even thinking like that. But I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

No, no, congratulations. It's a really— an amazing accolade and well-deserved.

Yeah. Yeah, thanks so much. And just to let people know, so as we were talking about our respective podcasts, we discovered that we started around the same time. So Tim just celebrated his 5th anniversary for the Future Learning Design Podcast. And of course, you all know that we just had our 5th year of Identity Talk Educators Live celebrating 200 episodes. So both major milestones. So congrats to you on that.

And to you. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's interesting. Um, yeah, exploring the connections as we've, like, we've been exploring. I think it was, it was super interesting having some pre-conversations about, you know, where are the connecting points and where, where might we explore together on this? So no, I'm super excited about having the conversation.

Yeah, for sure. And then of course, uh, before we get into the nitty gritty, as far as the beginning of you thinking about how we can create these generative spaces, did that start when you were in your freelancing phase? Because I know for me, you start to think about ways in which we can do this thing called education differently. But you don't really go into the deep dive until you're fully removed from that traditional primary, secondary school space. So when did that start for you, that thinking?

No, it's, it's a great question cuz I think when you are in the institutional spaces, like what it's possible to think and do in those spaces are, are quite constrained by the way the space works, right? The timetable or the way the roles and responsibilities in the institution work, et cetera. Absolutely. So it does kind of limit your imagination about what you think is possible until you start seeing what else is happening out there. So I guess, yeah, probably I was thinking about how we might do learning better, I would say, how we might innovate on kind of approaches to learning while I was in schools. But really the deep, yeah, the deep dive into what else is happening out there in home education networks or in unlearning context, unschooling, you know, a much broader look, that didn't happen until I got outside of those formal institutional settings for sure. And I would say I've learned a ton by doing the podcast actually. It's been an incredible space, just speaking personally, of learning for me. I don't know if you feel the same, but it really has. Podcast for me started around the questions of innovative curriculum or pedagogies or, you know, and actually even then I can almost see Across the 5 years I've been doing it, the questions that I've been asking, the bigger framing themes of the questions I've been asking have got bigger and wider over the 5 years as I've learned more and more about just how deep some of the challenges are, right? It's not just a case of technical solutions around new curriculum or new pedagogies. There's some really fundamental assumptions built into the systems that until you start going really deep into them, which is easier when you're outside of them. It's really hard to kind of go quite deep enough to ask the right questions. Yeah.

And I think with the COVID pandemic happening, it forced us as a global society to rethink the way that we even do professional learning as educators. Because you have to think about it, prior to the pandemic, we're probably in these big halls or in a classroom in our school or institution, where we're receiving a top-down type of professional learning experience that doesn't allow for input or doesn't allow for the teachers to tap into different modalities that allow them to learn and process information. But then once I got into the podcasting space, similar to you, I realized this could be another avenue we can take for professional learning. And I can't tell you how many times I've gotten testimonials and messages from colleagues and friends in schools who have said, "Hey Kwame, we're actually using one of your podcast episodes for our professional learning." "Hey Kwame, we're using this and we're pairing it with the text that we're reading for our PLC." That wasn't the case 5 years ago. We weren't doing this 5 years ago. We were very much text heavy. So As we're thinking about innovation, not just from a professional learning standpoint, but also with our students, I'm curious to know from you, what are some of the dangers that arise when innovation disregards things like power, privilege, and equity? And what are some things that we can do to avoid making those mistakes?

Yeah, so I mean, again, another— it's a massive question, right? I think I'm interested in— I mean, I was looking at the books the amazing stuff that you've written, it really felt to me like as you were kind of, you know, looking at your original book about shaping teacher identity, it really kind of raised some questions for me about who can I be when I'm in these spaces, right? And there's something about, I had a really great conversation with an amazing woman called Ida-Rose Flores just earlier this week. And part of that was about how the scripts and the scenes of the schools that we're in do all this incredible job at separating aspects of ourselves, right? So as you're talking about what's your identity as a teacher, my question there is how much of who you can possibly be is actually constrained by the school scripts and scenes, right? Like, you know, you, you have to show up at this time to teach this lesson and the way that the very rigid, you know, she was talking about separate, the way we separate young people from their family at a particular age, right? And then we separate, obviously, kids into different ages, etc., and grade levels. We also— there's a separation of, like, the professional from the personal as well, somehow. So, the idea that, you know, you show up in this professional role, how do you maintain that professional role and actually maybe showing aspects of yourself and your own personal emotional state or identity or whatever is somehow sometimes frowned upon in these more rigid professional spaces. So I guess I'm saying that in the sense that the way we then do innovation in those spaces is often heavily constrained by the separateness that has already been normed and built into the DNA of the system. So like how it's possible to shift those systems often isn't in the more radical ways that we would like that would speak to power and privilege and equity, because there are only certain things that you can, that there are limits to the innovation that are possible because of the way the metastructure of the overall system has been built, if you know what I mean. So I think it's a real challenge actually to do innovation kind of pragmatically inside a school setting in a way that really speaks to these questions, right? Of power and privilege and equity. So I think, I mean, in a way, people like Zaretta Hammond, who I've had on the podcast, who's just amazing, and you and others and Kevin and You know, critical educators are doing, I think, that's some of the most important work for me around where, how innovation can happen in spaces where at least there is a calling out of some of those power inequalities in order to bring the right people together into the conversation so that, you know, there's many different perspectives on how the school needs to evolve right now, or, you know, taking young people's voices seriously, taking the voices seriously of, of not just dominant culture. There's a, a reflexivity that needs to happen about like how, how much can we self-reflect on, yeah, maybe there are some pretty challenging power structures built into the scripts of this institution that we all live and work in every day. How do we become aware of those things while we're having the conversation about how the curriculum needs to evolve or how the how the timetable might change or how we might do project-based learning differently or whatever. So it, I think you, it's really important to have some real honesty about how you have and hold those conversations and who's in them when you think about where does the school want to go, right? And whose perspective is actually driving that? Because often, as you say, from a professional learning model, often it's a top-down model of, you know, the leadership have decided that this is where we're going, or the district has decided, or, you know, so there's that idea of bringing many voices into the direction of the innovation is often even a challenging thing to do.

Yeah, and I think that's what makes this situation so complex and nuanced, because like right now we're talking about teachers, right? We're talking about the institution of a school, so we're looking at it from a real micro level right now. But we wanna go at a macro level. We have to even talk about our teacher prep programs. We have to talk about our colleges and universities, right? Because the way we were trained to become teachers 20+ years ago, I don't think it's that much different, which is the problem. And that's where the innovation has to come in. Because if we're talking about this word innovation, there's a resource perspective that we have to look at where we're looking at AI, we're looking at other emerging technologies, other forms of pedagogy, other forms of approaches instructionally. But then there's also the, the mindset. And I feel like the mindset has to be the one that we have to prioritize because we have AI already. We have all these innovative ways of doing learning in a different way. The problem is there isn't the buy-in that should be there. The investment isn't there from every educator who is charged with the responsibility of teaching our young people. So then I'm curious, and I've thought about this a lot, how do we get our teacher prep programs, so not just our colleges and universities, but also our accelerated programs to catch up to the times that we are in? Because I think that's still a question that we have to answer.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I mean, I'd love to ask you a question on that in a moment, but just to answer that, I think the deep work that you talk about in the book, right, for example, you know, the, the unlearning and relearning, continually evolving teachers' practices, right, as a reflexive professional— or take that back, a reflexive human in a classroom with other humans, right? It's not just about being a professional. I think that's part of what I feel really passionately about. This is about how do we show up in spaces with other humans in a way that, as you say, you are open enough and the conditions are such that you can be challenged, unlearn, relearn, all of those things that we need to do in order to call out some of the things that need to be called out, but also keep responding to what is needed now, right? As the new technology comes in, as the AI comes into the space, how are we honestly and openly reflecting on how we should respond to that based on big questions about the things we care about, what our deep values are about what we hold true to as an organization or as a community. There's something really strong that needs to guide people and hold people in that reflection about, so what do we do now? Like, there's no script about how we have to respond to transformative technologies like AI, for example, that calls on all of us to be doing the work of saying, well, like sharing perspectives on it, having other people help us see the things we are not seeing ourselves through dialogue and through, you know, just through that continual process of learning, which I think seems critically important to anything staying current, particularly with the speed at which everything's moving. Right. So, I mean, maybe just to come back to ask you a question that, because I, I, this is something I think about a lot. How do you, and I'm, I'm conscious that this isn't a very practical or useful question because we work with the structures as they are. But my question is like, do you feel like the structure of the institutions that we live and work and learn in every day do kind of limit the possibilities. For example, I was listening to someone talking about the fact that schools demand the kind of invisibilisation of certain identities, right? They demand, they almost demand the erasure of identity, to the theme of your channel, right? They actually demand people to leave their personal, own cultural questions and belongings, or, you know, whatever you want to call it, at the door of the classroom when they come in. It's like, 'Oh no, we're only here to learn academic, you know, content, who you are as a person is actually unhelpful if you bring it into this space. It creates noise that is unhelpful to the business of academic learning, which is largely what we prioritize. So I guess, yeah, my, my question is, do you feel like there's something in the structures of the schools that we, that is actually deeply unhelpful to the kinds of conversations we want to have and the, the kinds of more generative educational environments we might want to create?

Mm, man, that, that's a big question.

It is.

The first thing— no, but this is a really good question. The first thing I will say is the way our education system is structured right now is how it's supposed to be structured. When you think about the advent of formal education, it did not account for Black and brown people. I think that's number one. You can even go back to the eugenics movement and how that was used as a way to create a hierarchy of intelligence when it comes to Black and brown people versus white people. So there's a history documented that lets us know how this education system was structured. So when you think about what's happening in our world contemporarily, it's not a surprise because these are things that are remnants of the history. We think about Jim Crow and how they had the segregation of Black folks from white folks in the States, but she also saw that in the UK as well. They had their own version of that as well in the UK. We think about Indigenous people. Why were boarding schools created? Boarding schools were created so that young Indigenous folks could be taken away from their reservations and they could be stripped from their culture stripped from their language, stripped from their traditional regalia, and forced to assimilate to a westernized culture that is foreign from who they are indigenously. And this still happens today in the form of dress codes, in the form of hair policing, right?

Right.

In the form of English-only laws, which still exist in some international schools, believe it or not. Which I believe is very much oxymoronic. We're an international school and we have English-only policies and we're not honoring the different home languages of the students who are coming into that space. But that's a whole nother conversation. So I would say in order for us to pursue and push for the change that we're looking for systemically, we have to interrogate the very infrastructure of formal education, which does require an unlearning, which I talk about a lot in my book, Learn to Relearn. We have to really interrogate and ask ourselves, why are certain things the way they are? Why is it so important for us to be in compliance to protocols and guidelines that are inhumane? That are counterproductive, that are antithetical to humanity, why is there such an allegiance to that mindset? And the only answer I can think of, Tim, is because that's what's been ingrained in us. We grew up in those similar systems where you just did what the teacher asked you to do. Yeah. Nobody gave you the agency to question or even investigate why that's even a good choice. Or not a good choice.

Yeah.

And I think part of it too is just culture. I have two parents who grew up in Ghana, West Africa, and there was a huge priority in terms of education, but also there was a thing about making sure that you respect your elders no matter how wrong they are. So now we're not teaching our kids mutual accountability, right? And I love talking about Paulo Freire because The Pedagogy of the Oppressed pretty much provides a playbook for how we can do education differently. That's a bit more co-creative, that allows for the teachers and students to have interchangeable roles, right? Whereas, like, as a teacher, I can be a student and learn from my students, and then the students can be the teachers and they can teach me something. So there's an exchange of knowledge because we come with different funds of knowledge that we could tap into to our benefits. He was telling us that years ago, many, many years ago, before any of us were born. But yet, and this goes back to what I said before about the way that we are trained as teachers, how many of our institutions require us to read Paulo Freire? In the education, like teacher training program, how many of those institutions are saying, hey, I want you to go ahead and read Pedagogy of the Oppressed? Not too many. Yeah, not too many. And there's a reason why, because the answers are in that book.

Yeah, I'm with you, man, 100%. And I would also say though that it's, it's a difficult thing to really pursue that line of inquiry and then have to work in the structures in which those cultural codes of domination and erasure are built into the codes of the structures, right? That's kind of where I'm coming from. It's like, we have to do that because that's what exists, right? The schools that we have now are the schools our young people, our own children are in, right? Like literally now, this minute where I'm living and where you are, that's the reality. So we have to work with that. So I, I, I'm always conscious of that. And at the same time, this is kind of the question that's really motivating me now is of spaces, can we co-create that might one day become well-established enough to start replacing these structures in which, as you've said, all of this stuff is encoded into these schools that actually, uh, I think are largely unhelpful structures, as you said, of like of deep conditioning. We just, one of my favorite people I've had on the podcast, Marie Baptiste, an indigenous scholar, just amazing woman. And she talks about marinating in Eurocentrism, right? The, the schooling system has marinated us all in Eurocentrism. It, because it's a colonial construct, right? It's a colonial industrial construct. And whether you wanna dismiss what I'm saying as wokery, whatever, it's just, it's a fact, right? It is a fact. It was created at a particular cultural moment. In a particular geographic location, which built into it all of those codes of, you know, what does it mean to be a, a good person? What does a good society look like? And it was built on all these concepts of hierarchy and disembodiment and all of this stuff. And so I think I'm increasingly questioning those institutions, right? Like the scripts in those institutions. I have to sound like a broken record now, but Like, all right, here's a, here's a different way of thinking about it, a different question. Where do you see other ways of learning together in community in spaces that are not inside the school? Because that's one of my other, my other questions is this idea of educating our young humans to become, you know, to become fully human. That happens in all sorts of spaces, not just in a school. And we've somehow been led to believe that the only place where learning happens is in a formal learning institution. All right, what about the churches? What about the out-of-school clubs, societies, sports? I don't know, like, where do you see that kind of learning happening in more— more in community?

Yeah, and I think you started to answer your own question.

Yeah, sorry about that.

It was like, like the church. No, this is good. Well, this goes back to what you said, Tim, about schooling versus education, right? This is where the difference lies. When I think about schooling, And you probably agree with me when I say this, that's more about compliance. That's more about adherence to norms and protocols that you don't bother to question. They're just ingrained in the school's culture because that's how things have always been. And that also stems from the dominant culture, which you just referenced, right? Education happens anywhere and everywhere. Education can happen at home. If you got books at home, you could, you could show books to your children, read books to them. They can read books to you. Education can happen in libraries. Librarians are educators. They're directing us to literary resources that we can access so we can gain information that we may not get from our brick and mortar of a school. So I'm gonna say libraries. We can also say the churches as well, the mosque, whatever faith you practice, because our worldview is informed by our faith. And a lot of those principles, those moral principles, those ethical principles, they seep into the way that we look at society. So we have to look at religion, right? We also have to look at recreational teams, recreational organizations, nonprofits, there are so many areas, Tim, where education is happening right now. We got influencers who are on social media providing social commentary on these very issues that we're speaking of, right? They do it in their own way.

Look at what you said about your podcast channel, right, being a source of professional learning for educators. I mean, you are one of those influencers, right? Exactly. I mean, it's absolutely— people are finding it where they need it, which is super exciting.

Yeah. And then also, Tim, homeschooling too is on the rise. You're seeing a lot more parents pull out their children from formal educational institutions in order to take control of their educational experience, whether it's the parent that's the teacher or they're able to find a, a tutor or a team of teachers that can come to the home. To provide that learning supplement. And there are actually many examples of virtual schools that are functioning in that manner where you see different volunteer community facilitators come in, right, to provide some learning, to teach whatever course they feel is necessary. And it's not just your traditional math, science, social studies, history, humanities courses. We're talking about courses that are responsive to the needs of their immediate communities.

Right, exactly.

Courses that speak to their knowledge of self, courses that speak to their identities that they bring to the table. You know, that's what's there. And we had those indigenous ways of educating back then. You go across any historically marginalized community, they'll tell you some ways in which they provided education in a non-formal way. We got to get back to that. Love that.

It exactly, it makes me think of the Saturday schools in the UK, the supplementary schools, like African Caribbean migrants who got together and it was like, clearly it wasn't working in the formal schools, either they were being excluded from the formal schooling or not. But there was a significant amount of harm or erasure that was happening in those formal institutions. So they established these supplementary schools. But what I find interesting about that is even the language of school, we keep using the language of school, right? They were called supplementary schools. So maybe that's not an issue. But I agree with you. It's like these kinds of spaces have existed in communities, particularly in marginalized communities, forever, in order to create spaces where the things that we value are honored, right? Continue to be honored, even if in spite of, in the shadow of this eugenic thing that you've got going on, as you said, right there. And I mean, I love that you brought in eugenics. It's a controversial topic, right? When you bring it up at a dinner party, it's a tricky thing to— you get some funny looks. But I think this is just what I'm learning from other people who know a lot more about it than I do. But I feel like it goes so deep into the DNA of what formal education institutions are about and are built around that so many educators across the world aren't just simply not aware of how deep those roots go, right? So for example, any conversation about measurement in education has to acknowledge where those conversations have come from. And to your point about intelligence, right? And intelligence testing, you know, Francis Galton was the person who coined the term eugenics. And he is also the person who created the intelligence, the IQ test, right? And a whole bunch of statistical, amazing statistical innovations. You're a math teacher, right? You know, statistics, a lot of the statistics come from people like Francis Galton. And so much of the, the weaving of those things that we measure people in order to rank them, in order to put them into a hierarchy, in order to say who's better and who's who's worse, who should be in and who should be out. Like you can't separate those things. So anyone who brings in the conversation about measurement into an educational space, I think has to acknowledge that history. And I'm not saying we don't assess and measure like that. Sure. There's a role for doing that in a thoughtful, critical, open way. Cuz there's accountability structure, blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff. But at the same time, you've gotta acknowledge where this history comes from. So I, yeah, I love that you brought that in.

Yes, and Tim, and, and this is actually a perfect segue into a question that I have for you regarding metrics and accountability systems, because we know that for the longest time we've been brought up on standardized tests, which has been even more of a conversation over the past quarter century. We've talked about grading systems, we've talked about different ways to measure intelligence, to measure academic competence, but we've come to realize that a lot of these tools of measurement are done in a vacuum and do not account for the identities, particularly of marginalized student communities. So for me, my question to you is, how do we move away from those metrics and accountability systems that do create that erasure of identity and don't account for the communities in which the students are coming from?

Again, brilliant question. I don't know the answer to it. I'm gonna be completely honest, right? I can, I definitely have some thoughts about it, but I, the moving away from those things again, it's like such a deep set of conversations and deep work, right? Because those things are built right into the DNA of the system again. But I guess one of the questions is why do we need them? What is it that they provide for us? Like the outputs of the metrics and the accountability systems, you know, even down to professional goal setting and, you know, KPIs for teams in schools, right? From an organizational management perspective. In a way, all of those things are used as quantitative proxies for something else. It's like, because we don't trust ourselves in the messy reality of what it means to be, you know, what it means to bring our full selves into the space. We want to somehow cut through that and find clean— problematic term— measures that we can trust that will tell us the things that we want to know, like how much have young people learned? It doesn't tell us that at all. But we create this as a proxy just so that we can then continue with the system, continue with the decision-making that then needs to come off the back of having that data, right? Do I give this professional a promotion? Or do I give this young person, you know, what grade do I give them? Do I promote them to the next grade? Whatever the decisions come off the back of. So it's an instrumental use of this, like, quantitative data. And so there's something about the move away from that that requires a much more multidimensional approach that takes seriously the context I'm in, the way I show up, like the way I can demonstrate skills and competencies, like how, I don't know, let's take an example of like oracy, right? You know, my communication skills. How do I show up and demonstrate those things in a space with other people? You can't just turn that into a nice quantitative measure that gives me a 7 out of 10 for public speaking or whatever. This is a really contextual skill that it's like, well, who is my audience? Who am I speaking with? How was I sensitive to the dynamics in that space? Like it brings in a whole bunch of nuanced questions that just the idea of communicating with other people in a room requires. Then if we want to assess that, I think the term measure is actually really unhelpful, but if we want to assess that, then the receiving of that, the feedback that is then given to that young person who's trying out their public speaking skills needs to be nuanced. It needs to be largely qualitative. It needs to be like another human taking them seriously and saying, I heard what you did there. I really liked the way you did this. I think perhaps, you know, maybe you could think about, you know, other ways to approach this, which I noticed, you know, the assessment process has to become more dialogic. It has to become more of a conversation somehow. And again, like I said at the beginning, I'm not saying I have an answer to how that should be done. 'cause again, that's also really contextual, but part of our need for the quantitative measures is that they level up into an efficiency logic of the broader system. It's like, I can't take the time to, to give that rich feedback because I don't, A, I don't have time, it's just not practical. And B, I can't put that in the spreadsheet of the mark sheet that then needs to go. So I've gotta like compress that data. Down into a number because that's what my manager has asked me to do, or that's what the system demands of me. So there's like so many layers why that compression of the data is, is essential for the continuing efficiency of the system to keep functioning. And so it's like you can't ask about changing the assessment system without really asking about what do we value and what are the structures that take seriously what we value.

Yeah, for sure, man. A lot of great commentary there. And I think it'll be great for us to culminate this conversation with this question, and it's all about the future of education. So right up your alley. If you could make a bold shift that's going to change education in these next 5 years, what would that one bold shift be that you could think of?

Nice. It's tough. In a way, loads of things need to happen simultaneously at many scales, right? So it's a really difficult thing to answer in some ways, but in another way, I would say maybe one of the boldest shifts would be something about having the courage to trust our, our humanness and our intuitions around taking seriously the ways that people are showing up in spaces and thinking that is educational work. Right? Not having to prove that we've done the job of successfully educating someone by constantly being obsessed with the outputs of that process, like exam grades or project outcomes or whatever it is. But like, the bold shift is something for me around really taking seriously that the process is the thing that we want to be doing. Like, the conversations is the learning, right? The feedback process the exchange, the like, how do we gather in a space? That is the process, that is education. And so having the courage to take that seriously rather than just say, well, we can't fully trust that bit until we've got the concrete outcomes that I can show and prove and, and say, we arrived, we did this, right? Because it's like, it is a constantly evolving process. It has to be. That is what learning and being human is about. And so that's a bit of a vague answer, honestly, but it's, it's a, it's a tough one because it's not one thing, I think.

Yeah, you're, you're right, Tim. It's not just one thing. Like we've been mentioning for this past hour, there are a lot of things that have to happen at the same time in order to make other things work, right? But for me, if there's a shift that I believe can be done, a bold shift that can be done, I would say it'll be around getting teachers to reframe their mindset as far as who they are, right? I feel like when we first come into the formal education system as teachers, we are viewed as employees, right? We view ourselves as employees. We, we don't come with this expansive view of what it means to be an educator. And I believe that if we all came into it with the view of what education can be, right, understanding that, hey, I don't need to be in a physical space in order to educate students. There are other avenues I can take that will achieve the same outcome or goal. If we can get more of our young teachers coming down the pipeline to see that they have more power then they realize, then I believe that we'll be able to agitate some of the issues that are still pervading our school systems. I believe that, but it's got to come with the change in mindset. And that comes with understanding who you are, understanding what your morals are, understanding what your non-negotiables are. As not just as educators, but as humans.

Yeah.

What will you allow to happen and what will you not allow to happen? You have to draw a line somewhere and still come out of it with your integrity in the process.

Yeah. That's— integrity is a big word. Yeah. No, absolutely. And it doesn't always— it's not always the thing that is encouraged actually, right? In the spaces we're in. And it's— so that takes courage, 100%. No, no, I love that. And if I may, maybe one of the other things that I know I wasn't, the question wasn't two things, but maybe I wonder also about how do we connect and empower the other spaces, the other learning spaces that we've talked about so that there's a strengthening of confidence and resource and, you know, ability to do more of that in those alternative spaces. Right? To have people take seriously all of those alternative learning spaces, regenerative learning spaces that are happening in community, new ones or ones that have been there for 50 years, but often they've been struggling in the shadows of the kind of mainstream system. I wonder about how to empower, how to connect and share the learning across that network, because it's happening in every country around the world as I see. There are small Communities trying to do things differently everywhere. So what would happen if we connected, enabled some sharing across that network? So I don't know, that's just a, a wondering that I have.

Yeah. And I mean, this is one thing that I always like to say about these conversations. We're not gonna be able to solve all the world's problems in one hour. So we do have to embrace non-closure. That's it when it comes to these very highly complex and nuanced issues, but we gave it one hell of a try today.

I love it. Yes, we did.

And I appreciate you, Tim, for coming to my arena in this space to just share your perspectives and ideas.

Yeah, thank you. No, I mean, so appreciate everything you're doing, and that really is the spirit of the channel, I hope, is that this idea of where, you know, all of us are better than any of us if we get together and think these things through collectively, leverage the collective intelligence. I think that's a, that's got to be a key principle that we have more spaces for. So yeah, thank you very much. I so appreciate it.

Thank you.

And congratulations again on your well-deserved award. And absolutely amazing. It's an amazing book. I'd encourage everybody to go out and buy a copy. I'm sure most of your listeners already have a copy, but mine may not, and they really should, learning to relearn. And it's a vital piece of the conversation, right? It has to be. So, you know, thank you for everything you're doing. Thank you for the channel. And, you know, really just lovely. I look forward to future collaborations, I hope.

Yeah, likewise. Same here. You're doing phenomenal work, and we're going to keep this thing going.

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