From a Beautiful Idea to a Living, Breathing Learning Environment

In my role as an educator during the first years of Embark, I remember thinking and often stating, “Embark is a beautiful idea.” Collectively, we were breathing life into that idea, and it was beautiful even in its nascent state.

The fact that we are entering year five is a tribute to all of the educators, learners, and the community who supported us, and continue to support us, along the way. The fact that interest in the school continues to grow is a sign that Embark and learner-centered education is in demand and in service of the type of education that truly makes learners and educators alike engaged and valued.

In a time when educators are leaving the profession in droves and the relationship between families and schools is tenuous, we are compelled to create and sustain a healthier norm.

Five years in, Embark is no longer just a beautiful idea, but a living, breathing, learning environment deepening its roots. We are doing this through systematizing practices we have found to work like advisory conferences and five to six week authentic Learning Experiences. We are also doing this through retention of our entire educator team and nearly all of our student body. Retention is a key enabler of our ability to develop our program and deepen our practice. It is also a sign that we are doing something differently, and that it’s working, because this is far from the norm in education.

At the same time, we are aware that resilient ecosystems require constant care and responsiveness. In response to our learnings from past years, we’ve moved to grade level advisories as opposed to mixed grades. While there is great benefit to our day-to-day being mixed age, we found that each grade level also needs a space to support specific developmental needs. We’ve also created more quiet spaces for neurodiverse learners and formed a partnership with a values-aligned community organization to bring in Embark’s first counselor.

As we look towards the future, we are intent on continuing to intentionally learn. For six weeks, I will step back into the “classroom” while one of our founding educators seizes the opportunity to develop adult facing learning. Our hypothesis is that this will both keep me connected more deeply to young learners and learning, while also adding tremendous value to our growing adult learning work by having a practicing learner-centered educator sharing work without having to permanently leave the classroom.

Something we have long known is that the strength of Embark deeply derives from the incredible humans on our team. We also recognize that we have not fully leveraged each person’s brilliance in a way that honors their voice and talents, and this is something we are working through as a team. We are leaning hard into a distributed ownership model, with systems and frameworks we have learned from Franklin Street Studio and August Public. Our hypothesis is that by sharing ownership, new ideas will emerge and implementation will have far greater buy-in and chance of success.

When I began thinking about the notion of deepening our roots last year, I worried that we were settling and would become stagnant. As it turns out, I have never been more excited for the work ahead nor have I felt the level of confidence and conviction that Embark is both living our mission - “To support learners to courageously inquire, engage, and discover a sense of self,” - while continuing to blaze the trail ahead.

Here’s to a great year of learning for all!