I believe that humans are inherently curious, compassionate, discovery-oriented beings, and that my job as an educator is to make learning spaces that encourage students’ innate abilities, and that allow them to keep trusting those instincts of love and inquiry as they grow.

Traditional schooling often teaches us to resist our urges and comply with demands—to produce what is asked of us and be efficient like a machine. For many, curiosity and creativity are ancient history by middle school. But our world needs the gifts each human has to bring! We need the curiosity and wholeness of each individual. Our collective liberation requires that humans get curious so we can first imagine—and then begin to build—a better, more just, sustainable, and joyful future.

I believe humans come into the world whole, but given the oppressive systems we swim in, we need some help to remember that. Current schooling norms in our culture tend to assume that children need to achieve in order to be worthy of respect; the idea of ‘self-actualization’ is aspirational rather than foundational.

I’m inspired by an idea from the Blackfoot People, here articulated by Teju Ravilochan in their article, The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy, published in Resilience Magazine: “Maslow appeared to ask, ‘how do we become self-actualized?’ Many First Nation communities, though they would not have used the same word, might be more likely to believe that we arrive on the planet self-actualized. Ryan Heavy Head explained the difference through the analogy of earning a college degree. In Western culture, you earn a degree after paying tuition, attending classes, and proving sufficient mastery of your area of study. In Blackfoot culture, ‘it’s like you’re credentialed at the start. You’re treated with dignity for that reason, but you spend your life living up to that.’ While Maslow saw self-actualization as something to earn, the Blackfoot see it as innate. Relating to people as inherently wise involves trusting them and granting them space to express who they are.”

I see it as the role of the teacher to help students remember that they are complete as they are, and to treat each child with the dignity and respect of an actualized being, full of wisdom and brimming with interesting things to teach the world.

I believe in the transformative healing power of writing and sharing stories. I believe that the key to our survival lies in our togetherness, and that the first step toward making a more peaceful world is fostering a sense of compassionate curiosity toward others and ourselves. Just as we cannot fathom death or infinite Space, it is impossible to ever completely know another’s experience. This is both devastating and endlessly redeeming: it means that the possibility for greater understanding is always infinite. Art–and love–exist in this exquisite tension between the impossibility of knowing and the quest to understand.

Building our ability to listen and to love is crucial to the work of creativity and healing. In the words of writer and activist Adrienne Maree Brown, “Perhaps humans' core function is love. Love leads us to observe in a much deeper way than any other emotion…. If the goal was to increase the love rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We would suddenly be seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of war, but through eyes of love…. We would understand that the strength of our movement is in the strength of our relationships, which could only be measured by their depth. Scaling up would mean going deeper, being more vulnerable and more empathetic” (Emergent Strategy, 2017).