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What School Could Be
The What School Could Be initiative is a community-powered platform that provides a space for educators to share resources, enroll in professional learning experiences, and connect with others around the world. What School Could Be is a global community of educators committed to unleashing student and teacher potential. Under the leadership of Ted Dintersmith, and inspired by the ideas of the late Sir Ken Robinson, this organization serves as an umbrella for various purpose-driven school reform efforts. One key resource on the What School Could Be platform is the Innovation Playlist, a proven, powerful change model that empowers progress through small teacher-led steps.
World Leadership School will continue to host professional learning events on the platform including our Reimagine Advisory with Purpose learning and K-12 Purpose Summit on the WSCB platform.
Articles and Books
Purpose Learning to Meet the Demands of Today
Jessica Catoggio, Ross Wehner, National Association of Independent Schools, Fall 2023
Purpose is a unique journey for each human, and it’s an expedition that varies dramatically for each school. In our experience, each school enters the purpose-learning framework from different places. Many independent schools enter via learning as thinking, while others focus on doing via project-based, arts-focused, or expeditionary learning. Where independent schools can often grow is learning as _feeling_—in other words, the part of purpose learning where students drop into emotion, see others with empathy, and have the space and support to do the inner work of identity and purpose clarification.
Purpose Learning: Reimagining What and How Students Learn
Ross Wehner, Independent School Magazine, Winter 2022
Schools are already doing such great work around purpose formation. But we need to be more explicit by understanding the theory and science behind purpose formation. We need to tie together what we are already doing into a visible K–12 strategy designed to foster purpose among students. We need to formulate the right questions: Now that we understand how the adolescent brain works, how can we make it light up with purpose? Or more specifically: How can K–12 schools help students discover, explore, and articulate purpose? What if the purpose of school were purpose?
Blog Posts
Parenting for Purpose
Ross Wehner, WLS Founder
Purpose-driven students manage stress differently because they link inner meaning to outer challenges. This is why purpose-driven students can thrive under the same workload that can make other types of children (goal-driven, dreamers, or disengaged) implode.
