What would you do with $100 Million dollars?

(to spend on education in the U.S.)

Hi friends of Learning, by Nature. First, some context, then my Tl;dr section.

Context

Today’s letter is written to

Dan Meyer

of

Mathworlds

in response to his prompt: Okay, so how would YOU spend $100 Million (for education)? Dan’s question derives from a recent Chalkbeat article by Matt Barnum about Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s (CZI) - Facebook/Meta’s philanthropic arm – stunning admonition that their big bet ($100 million+) in personalized online learning has fallen short of expectations.

Tl;dr (short on time: here’s what this is about)

I would spend $100 million for education on the oldest and best “technology” on the planet: The Planet. 🌍 Nature. Which I don’t like calling a “technology” or “innovation,” really – because nature is so much more than that. Still, I’m going there with the marketing game because Mother Nature needs as many people as possible in her corner because lots of well-resourced peeps (tech billionaires) seem to really want to fund education technology.

With some more research into best distribution, I would invest in these 8 areas:

1.     Professional Development for educators

2.     Educator Wellness Supports

3.     Outdoor teaching kits

4.     Outdoor classroom set-ups

5.     Biophilic classroom design kits

6.     Sub-grants to entities like Green Schoolyards America and Trust for Public Land

7.     Research

8.     Communications

And now my letter:

Dear Dan,

Nice to e-meet you (thanks

eric laurits

for the introduction!). Timely, as I have been fixating on the same @Matt Barnum Chalkbeat article about CZI’s funding pivot you’ve taken up in your past 2 posts. I’m guessing you also saw CZI’s head of education, Sandra Liu Huang’s, blog post in which she acknowledged CZI’s “understanding of what’s possible in the world of education — and in our world more generally — has changed” and admitted the “humbling and challenging” nature of navigating the changes CZI must make in response. 

Sandra’s admonition reminded me of the many thoughtful people at the helm of CZI, Gates, etc. who are really trying to improve education. It was refreshing and bold for Sandra and CZI to share their learning and own their mistakes. We all face failures. It’s just that most of our failures are far less public or costly. 

Even as I was heartened by the humility and dedication to doing better, I was crushed to read the chosen path forward:

identify “opportunities where technology and grantmaking can drive coherence.”

This feels a bit like a digging-a-hole to “set the bar” anti-aspirational goal.

Consider, for example, an academic standard reading:

“Students will be able to write a coherent sentence.”

Or, consider a grant application for $100 million (hard to even fathom from my perspective in education-requests-not-to-exceed-$5000 grant-land…but I’ll try):

“With support from CZI, all children will have a coherent learning experience.”

The (not) learning process looks like this:

I’m on a train with a hot spot right now, so I went pretty analog with this diagram. Gets the point across anyhow.

Rinse-wash-repeat.

I am super worked up about our outsized faith in an easy tech fix to ‘transform learning.’ Except inasmuch as it frees up teacher ‘bandwidth’ to focus on relationships and facilitate authentic, relevant learning experiences, I don’t have a lot of faith in technology to transform education for the better — unless that “technology” is nature.

So what’s my plan?

My plan for $100 million is to invest in regular nature connections in schools. It derives from the compelling, robust, and growing body of research documenting nature’s benefits for learners – one that is strong enough that NSF-funded scientists recommend nature and nature-based pedagogies become a mainstream part of teaching and learning.

This plan is also derived from things that float around in my brain like this 2011 article about what Silicon Valley techies prioritize for their own kids (low-or-no tech Waldorf School in this story) and lots of bits I’ve seen about how Bill Gates severely limits tech use for his own kids. I’m also increasingly interested in how change happens in education (have you seen education historian Larry Cuban’s axioms for school reform?) and how history/experience paints a sobering story of technology’s limits when it comes to school reform.

I get that there have been some massive education changes (*cough* pandemic, accelerated climate change + climate-impacts) between 2011 and 2023, and I worry the tech investment feedback loop just keeps on spinning (see fancy diagram above). Meanwhile, for comparison, the ‘nature pedagogies in mainstream education’ investment cycle doesn’t really exist because nature has gotten a fraction of a fraction of the attention of big tech.

A quick aside (bear with me, it’s connected)

I doubt you saw it — I wrote about this in Chalkbeat Colorado recently:

In the fall of 2020, in a different rural Colorado school, we improvised an outdoor school to make in-person learning possible. Students spent full days outdoors alternating with days indoors with their classroom teachers. In November 2022, after that school received a Bright Spot award from Governor Polis for academic growth through the pandemic, I received an email from the principal. Her take? Outdoor school was a causal part of their success.

Aside from heavy use of technology – lots of emails and online permission slips – to make it happen, the school itself was no-tech. And it worked.

It’s hard to directly pinpoint a single reason why these students experienced academic growth during the pandemic. Maybe it was because it made possible IRL interactions during an eerie-masked-distanced-moment? Maybe it was days spent running through forests, making dirt-pine needle-snow angels in a thin layer of wet snow, or rolling down a grassy hill? Maybe it was canoeing on a pond with fall’s yellow-and-orange Aspen leaves reflecting on the water?

Photo by Connor DeMott on Unsplash

I wish we had a whole monitoring and evaluation team of researchers on site to parse the drivers for these students’ academic growth during the pandemic.

And, for me it’s enough to crosswalk this experience with all of the other stories and science saying the same thing: Nature is good for students. Nature is good for educators. Nature is good for humans.     

Back to my plan for $100 million:

8 line items:

N.B. I don’t have exact allocations spelled out yet. I would need to think about how to ensure resources go to the highest needs schools trusting that well-resourced schools can replicate select innovations with their own funding.

1. Professional Development - Build educator capacity to integrate nature into their routine instructional and classroom design practices.

2. Educator Wellness - @Dan – you have this in your plan too. My spin is that I would love a specific focus on educator wellness from healing experiences in nature.

3. Outdoor Teaching Kits - “Go-bins” for all teachers at schools with accessible nearby nature. Contents might include: clipboards; weather-appropriate “gear” like a tarp, beanies, jackets, baseball hats; sunscreen jug; pencils and pencil sharpener; portable dry erase board/chalkboard; a bag of dry-erase markers/chalk; a wagon to haul contents around; foam sit pads (ideally made of recycled materials!) etc.

4. Outdoor classroom set-ups - Whiteboard/chalkboard in a weather-proof cabinet w/ locally sourced tree stump/hay bale/other seating; grading of ground as needed to ensure stumps don’t roll or wobble too much. Shade structures / wind breaks. Simple pavilion/roof where rain is a frequent concern.

5. Biophilic classroom design kits - Kits containing place-based biophilic interior design furnishings to appeal to our sensory needs and evolution in nature such as: carpet that looks like prairie grass, solar-operated window shades designed to provide optimal light and Circadian rhythms, nature imagery wall hangings, nature patterns, furniture of natural materials/textures (wood, fibers), local nature soundscape playlists, local nature imagery “green screens,” etc. (I’m not a designer…so I’d definitely get more ideas from folks like Anna Harrison, Oliver Heath, Mary Davidge and companies like Interface, etc.

6. Research - Grow the evidence base so we know what’s most effective, what doesn’t work, and where we still need to innovate.

7. Communications - Tell the story about what is and is not working so the good can spread and the ineffective practices can be tossed aside.

8. Sub-grants - Provide funding to support organizations like Trust for Public Land, Green Schoolyards America, and other entities that are ensuring all schools have access to nature.

That’s my plan.

What do you think? What would you do with $100 million for education?

Take care,
Becca

P.S. @Dan - Thanks for asking! If you (or anyone else reading this) cares to restack or share or subscribe, I’d be stoked.