Why the Best Classrooms Look More Like Nature Than Factories

In part two of my S5E32 Schoolutions conversation with Dr. Benjamin Freud of the Green School Bali, we explore how regeneration and regenerative agriculture principles can inform learning, emphasizing a more holistic view. This conversation is designed to cultivate fresh perspectives on adult learning and sustainable development in educational contexts.

We cover:
→ The four S's of the Bird Lab — sensing, seeking, shaping, and storytelling — and why this framework supports active learning and whole child development
→ Why rubrics, when treated as the end goal, are violent to the learning process — and what to replace them with in your lesson planning and instructional strategies
→ Why stories are the most honest form of assessment — and how they build classroom belonging, student participation, and inspired teaching
→ The difference between emergent learning and "anything goes" — and how guardrails rooted in community problems create more student motivation than any standard ever could
→ Why a set curriculum that never changes is epistemologically violent — and what innovative teaching looks like instead
→ What the 8th grade water structure project reveals about pro-kid mindset, thriving students, and learning that serves something beyond the individual
→ How the "learningologist" model reimagines teacher coaching, instructional coaching, and the consultant relationship entirely
→ Why education will be regenerative when it stops trying to be — and what that means for school leadership, school culture, and education leadership at every level

💫Make sure to watch Part 1 & here are some Episode Mentions:

• The Bird Lab 
• Coconut Thinking 

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction and recap of Part 1
1:30 Inside the Bird Lab — what learning looks like here
2:45 The four S's: sensing, seeking, shaping, storytelling
4:30 Why regenerative learning can't be a copy-paste model
6:30 What's wrong with rubrics and grades
8:00 Assessment as story — moving your audience
10:00 Google Drive projects and the individualism trap
11:30 The "learningologist" vs. the fly-in consultant
13:30 What emergent learning actually means
15:00 The 8th grade water structure project — a real example
16:45 Standards as guardrails vs. standards as the goal
18:30 "Education will be regenerative when..." — the closing question
19:30 Olivia's closing reflection and listener challenges
21:30 Next week — civic education with Colleen O'Brien, Ed.D.

🎧 New episodes every Monday & Friday with bite-sized Wednesday reel bonus content.
📧 Connect with me as a thought partner to help you cultivate curious learners who advocate for what they believe in. 
🎵 Music: Benjamin Wahl

Next week:  Civics educator and doctoral researcher Colleen O'Brien joins me to reveal why civic apathy is actually a confidence problem and how the right classroom experiences can transform students into active participants. From Supreme Court insights to student voting booth moments, this conversation will absolutely change the way you think about civic education at every age. 

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

Olivia: [00:00:00] I am back with Dr. Benjamin Freud for part two of our conversation. If you have not listened to part one, pause this episode. Go back, listen, and then join this conversation. For part two we are going more in depth with the Bird Lab into what assessment can look like if we ditched the rubric and into what it really means for education to be regenerative.

Again, I do not expect you to agree with all of Ben's points. Both Part one and part two this week are intended to cultivate confidence, provoke dialogue, and explore fresh thinking about what's possible in our world of education.

This is Schoolutions, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives the support they need to thrive. [00:01:00] 

Welcome back listeners. I am so excited to be here with Dr.Benjamin Freud. If you have not listened to part one of our conversation, you must pause this, go back and listen, and then return right where you left off to join for part two. Benjamin, it has been absolutely fascinating to hear your passion, to feel your passion. I will say. You truly believe in this work that you are doing.

You're in Bali at the Green School. Part two of our conversation we're going to go in more in depth with the Bird Lab and the biomimicry work you're doing. And I also wanna go back to something you mentioned in part one around assessment and what you see assessment as. Um, I know it is not rubrics. It is not projects sitting in Google Drive as many of our kids are experiencing right now. So welcome back and, um, start [00:02:00] us off. Take us to a day, um, in the Bird Lab with students at the Green School. 

Benjamin: So I just wanna be clear that the Bird Lab's still being built. So we are learning about how to do this as we go along. So we're super excited about what that space is going to be, but we're considering a lab, not just a physical space, but how, how we're learning already in the classroom. So, so it's gonna be like, even better next year.

So what we have been doing there is really going through, uh, an approach to learning that involves encounters, and those are like words. Um, uh, you know, that, that we, that we have, uh brought from a, from, from post humanist philosophy, but it's this idea just to make it very simple, that we have four s's, sensing, seeking, shaping, storytelling, and it's not linear.

You can like layer 2, 3, 4 on you, go back and forth. They're just kind of like these signals out there. Sensing is really trying to figure out what's going on. Like, like walking around, getting a sense, uh, through your body sensing, um, [00:03:00] about what is there, but also listening to the voices of others, including the other than human.

From there, we seek by asking big questions. Now, this is also super important in terms of regenerative work. Um, regeneration's not a model, and it's not something that you could replicate somewhere else. What we do here in Bali in this moment can only happen in response to this moment and in Bali. You, you know, in, in the States or somebody in, in, in the Siberia, it doesn't really matter.

Um, as soon as you're saying, how could we do this model elsewhere, it's not regenerative. That's an IKEA box, um, uh, approach to education. And, and, and so we ask questions that can't be transported elsewhere. So for instance, let's say I, I don't know, I'm, I'm making this up as I go along, but let's say, uh, let's design, um, uh, a, a space for, for learning and playing, um, which are the same thing, but learning and playing that, uh, I dunno that that takes into account, uh, all, all living things be safe.

I mean, I'm making it up like, like it would certainly be much more interesting. Now, just say that that would look. In one [00:04:00] aspect in Bali because of the particular conditions in Bali, and it will look somewhere different in Paris or in South Africa. But the question remains the same, and that's where the seeking is.

How can we ask a question that makes sense in place that can be transported elsewhere with a different response and then learn from one another? Shaping is just like shaping, doing, hope, you know, learning, learning from the, from the living world. Um, that's where we kind of get our hands dirty. Our fingers dirty and, and storytelling is super important because we tell the stories of how we have done things to others and they tell their stories, and we become inspired by one another, like creating constellations. So through sensing, seeking, shaping, and storytelling, it's an approach to just about anything that can be done. 

But what it really wants to do is de-center us as users, as people, as humans, as individuals, and starting to think about how this resonates, how this implicates, how this is complicit within a larger um, uh, participation of members, uh, of the community, human, and other than human [00:05:00] to the point where after a while you just stop even saying that because you just kinda just, you just kinda live it as a participant. 

Olivia: Yeah. Yeah. That it's so beautiful and I appreciate that storytelling is an, an aspect of the thinking because stories are what unite us and inspire us to get outside of our own selves and to really be curious and to lean in and ask questions. And, and so I just, this work, when I read about it, it, I, I paused and I, I, I spent days researching just you as a human, but also the ripple effects that this is having and the potential um, because I think it, again, you said something in part one, it's not just about preparing kids, it's shifting the way we experience life as adults as [00:06:00] well.

And that's, I, I just, I've lost a bit of hope for grownups these days. I, I do enjoy being around kids because of their curiosity, but I also gravitate to grownups that are curious and want to explore and reshape and rethink, um, and lean into that. A huge part of what keeps cranking our education system forward, it feels, especially in the States, is assessment. And if we talk about state testing and all of those nuances, but you've even, you have made it very clear that rubrics are just what's wrong with education? And so many teachers and students use rubrics. Can you say more to that? 

Benjamin: Yeah. And, and, and it's, it's really about confusing ends and means. And, and this is like, I have nothing against rubrics. I do if they're the end, and if that's like the tick box of rubric, that is, that is what gives you a grade. So let's, let's kind of [00:07:00] think about the legibility of this system and what we're going for. When you have mastery competency, grades, whatever, you know, regents exam, whatever you want, you're, you're putting a letter or a number on paper and, and reifying it, making it so that, that is the, the, the learning that's there.

But, but really it's a snapshot in time. And this is nothing new. Lots of people have said this, but let, let's, let's think about what that means. It's like what you have learned can be transported and brought anywhere. I can take my transcript in Santa Fe and move to, you know, Johannesburg and, and it's supposed to be relevant, but it's not.

It's just a way not to do anything with learning. But it's a sorting mechanism. It's a way to, uh, really help the person who sorts. It doesn't take into account the dynamic nature of learning. It doesn't take into account how it was done in this place at this time, under these conditions, but worse, it emphasizes, and this is where rubric goes, it emphasizes the static [00:08:00] nature of assessment assessment's okay. We're always assessing, like right now I'm looking at the screen and if you are falling asleep, I would kind of like assess myself saying that it's not very, very good. Right. Right. So, so we're always measuring and assessing. That's not the, the issue. It's just a question of would we do it in order to get to a standard finality that we think that could be reproduced, that's problematic.

So the idea of story is beautiful to me as a form of measuring learning quantitatively, qualitatively, and post-qualitatively. And, and let me, let me kind of go here because stories are dynamic. Unless they're from rote memorization, they're always the same. And even then they're not the same because the conditions change, including the listener, the weather, the sound, right.

When the Bards used to go around telling, you know the talk about Beowolf, the story changes because the weather changes, the people change, so, so even that is insane. So stories are dynamic. There's antagonist, protagonist, plot, twist, different voices. So many books [00:09:00] bring up the same story through different perspective. To me the best way, sorry, lemme rephrase that to me, the way to get us out of this, this static, standardized mechanistic mess, is to bring in stories and the different perspectives of community. So when we do learning and doing, when we learn, and we do and we do, and we learn as part of the same process, that mobius strip I've talked about in part one.

How does the work that we do, how has that been felt by other community members, human and other than human? How, how has that changed and moved them? So let me give you an example that's very concrete. Um, I don't need a rubric to tell me that Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech. Fantastic. I feel it in my body. I feel it in that time. I get, I get chills 'cause it's so powerful. He's such a good speaker. Same thing with, you know, with, with, with, with music. I don't need a rubric to tell me if a piece of music [00:10:00] moves me. And that might be different for taste. But that's okay. You get chills. It's an embodied effective experience.

But if, if, you know, I'll, I'll challenge your listeners to go on Google or, or whatever, whatever, search in the news and type in rubric for presentation and pick a random number one to a hundred. The rubric that will pop up, I will put my hand on the fire for this is, uh, can you project your voice? Do you have graphics? Have you substantiated your claims? Like that's garbage. 'cause it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters in a presentation is have you moved your audience? Have you called them to action? Have they changed? The only thing that matters in the, in the book is, has it moved your, your, your reader. There's a relationship there.

And, and it's about like how that goes out. My dissertation for my Ph.D. I think was pretty awesome. I loved it. Nobody's read it. Nobody's read it now. Maybe 'cause it's too esoteric. But, but my point is, is that it, it hasn't necessarily moved the world. Now that could be another topic, but, but you see what I'm saying? Like, we can't keep it [00:11:00] individualized in the work. And that's what these projects that are kept on the Google Drive do. 

That's what these rubrics that, that, that say that whether or not you have a linking sentence is the finality does. The linking sentence is put to the service of moving the audience. The, the projecting your voice is put to the service of getting your audience to say, wow, I never thought of that. And, and it's the means, not the end. Just like master and skills and all that stuff. It's not about like getting a tick box that you demonstrated creativity in a particular time and space that's never gonna be replicated is that's a means to get to another end. 

And so just to end this really quickly, it it's not that weird because anybody who is, who has a job right now, when they do their resume, their CV puts on, I have increased sales by a hundred percent. I got these testimonials, uh, you know, uh, I was able to do this, that they already talking about this. They already see it in terms of how has the work affected and changed conditions. So why are we doing things differently [00:12:00] in schools? It makes no sense. It individualizes it, its competition and, and, and it just doesn't make any sense in the world how something that was done in 2026 will have any relevance in 2031.

Olivia: Yeah. Well, and it goes back as well to the teacher I mentioned in part one, that really is working hard to explore why. And that again, if you think of the neocortex versus the limbic of where a feeling is in our brains, getting to that the heart and the feeling and moving and inspiring people when they understand the why behind or even have a glimpse into it as learners, they are much more able to transfer that whatever information they're receiving because their mind is opened in a different way and I think the idea of having an impact on the community and that it, it's a great responsibility, but it's also a beautiful piece to [00:13:00] be gathered together in learning. And, and that, that to me is where I hope we go, um, as a world of, it's not just about me. Um, so I want you, I also, I am very inspired by the work you've done with coconut thinking and just thinking of emergent learning or the idea of a learning dialogist, will you, will you identify that? 

Benjamin: Yeah, I, I, I could do two things at once here. Um, I, I don't like necessarily the word consultant it needs to bring together, but nowadays it's all about bringing people together so that you have somebody who drops in, says a bunch of stuff, probably repeating what you've said, and then moves on with their lives and, and collects a big fat check.

Um, so, so, so for me, ologists really talks about the dialogue and, and really listening and, and, and exchanging and, and probably having a flatter hierarchy. Uh, it's all about what, what that might look like, uh, what it might look like to exchange ideas, to bounce ideas, to respond to one another [00:14:00] so that the dialogists on either side, uh, because at this point the people that we're encountering are also gonna be in that dialogist mode.

Like we, we are both as flat. Uh, we, we learned from, from each other. Um. The, the expert consultant who flies in says stuff on a PowerPoint and moves out without learning from, from the environment. It, it's just not on. So, so I just wanted to distinguish that. Um, and, and so it, it goes along with emergent learning.

And this goes back to the rubrics that this, this idea that we create, these curriculums that are set in stone and that every year is the same thing and that we get to this one output that we know of is incredibly, is violence. It's violent to children. It is epistemologically violent. It is not how learning is it, it saps kids from, from any kind of, of, uh, responsibility to place. So emergent learning is, is just like the living world. Um, again, it's not the wild west, but it is wild. I like to say that. Right. Because, because people say, oh, they [00:15:00] can do whatever they want, but no, they can't. 

Olivia: No.  

Benjamin: Because in the natural world, a, a, a, I don't know, A cat is born with certain DNA structure and you can take on different shapes and sizes and personalities, but if the DNA is is not there, it will die. The natural world will, will make sure that, that, that, that the cat dies. Right? And so you've got these, these, these, uh, borders I guess or these, these guard rails of possibilities. Anything that could happen within that happens, not just due to the DNA, but also the conditions. The conditions for growth.

Were they well fed? Did they get water? Did they have a kid that loved, you know, we're on the street. Things like that. Um, and so that's what emergent learning is. We, we start with a tra, we have a trajectory. We know what we are, what problem we're trying to, local problem we're trying to respond to, but we don't know what that's going to be. We don't know what that's finally gonna look like. Even if we're saying like, we wanna build a, a water structure. So I'll give you an example. So, so the, the, the, the eighth grade students here last year built a water structure as part of their math [00:16:00] class and gifted it to the early years. Um, you know, so it was like a project algebra.

Like we kind of knew that that was going to happen. That could have changed if the students said, we don't wanna do this, we want something else. But I guess they went with it, but we didn't know really what that would look like, what the problems would look like, where it would be put, how they, how the kids would, the early years kids would, would resonate.

So that was emergent. Having conversations like you were saying about your, your, your, your friend about the moon. She didn't know what that would look like. They might've rejected it, but she went with it and it emerged and, and their feeling came out and that changed the experience as well. So we just need to be open to the fact that let's just see what happens and be okay with that because we're still kind of knowing where we're going 'cause we've got these guardrails. But let's let the students participate, the young learners participate in the experience so that they can shape it as well. And then again, we're learning together and, and whether or not you hit such and such standard, like, yes, great, it’d be amazing. But [00:17:00] how you do that, is it different and it's not as important as the relationships that we build and the learning that that goes a lot deeper and stays for a lot longer. 

Olivia: You were walking my mind. I was just about to ask around standards, because you've mentioned guardrails, but the guardrails feel to me, if I'm interpreting what you're saying, much more of the problems that we're trying to explore in the community and solve together. Not the standards. The standards aren't the guardrails and I, I think that there's a misstep when we think of standards or standardized education, that that is the goal of what we're trying to plan by and reach. But those standards mean very little to students. But if we ground them and intertwine them with an issue that they see in their backyard or in their community, it gives such purpose behind that number and letter code on a piece of paper.

Um, and there's also something that comes to community because standards are [00:18:00] designed with vertical and horizontal alignment. So how beautiful that we could say to a child. Look, this is the way we unpacked this learning or lens of learning last year. This is the new lens we're looking at it through to solve this new emerging problem within our community. So I, that layer of your work was fascinating to me, and I'm so glad that you just brought that to light. I want to end the conversation with not just speaking to the 2030 that you have, but also I want to ask you the question to complete the sentence. Education will be regenerative when…

Benjamin: Education will be regenerative when it stops having goals to be regenerative. 

Olivia: Yeah. Yeah. 

Benjamin: Just stop. It's a goal. Linear. We need to get there kind of thing. When regeneration, we never know where [00:19:00] life's gonna end up. Uh, and it ha life has trajectories. It doesn't have, um, paths to goals. And we will, we will, uh, we just, we just have to stop thinking in terms of solutions and goals. 

Olivia: Um. I am so grateful that you took the time. It is now seven 40 my time at night, and then I'm guessing, I'm trying to think of the time. 8:40 AM where you are?

Benjamin: That's right. 

Olivia: Friday. 

Benjamin: Yep. 

Olivia: All right. There we go. Um, it looks much warmer where you are. I'm very jealous. Yeah. Yeah. We had a balmy 45 today and it was just dreamy.

Benjamin: Oh my gosh. 

Olivia: So, yeah, it was chilly up, but I, I just. I very, very intentionally reached out to you because I think the way you are living and breathing in this world is having an impact in ways on children, but the adults, I'm sure there as well, and we can take [00:20:00] so much from what you're doing, as a mindset, an inspiration for what we do every day to show up in the States tomorrow in classrooms.

It doesn't mean that all the schools are gonna become progressive or microschools. That's not what I'm saying.  But just that layer of community learning around, you know, what is the purpose behind the learning that we are offering to children and inspiring them with and seeking out problems in the community and coming up with ways of not solving those problems, but addressing them in really thoughtful ways. So I'm just, I'm grateful for your time and the work you're doing. 

Benjamin: Well, thanks for the great questions and, and really, uh, I appreciate this podcast and I can't wait to like, subscribe and hear more. So, so thank you for the work you're doing as well. 

Olivia: Yeah, take care. After listening to part two of the conversation, I am hoping you feel [00:21:00] like it was an expansive, challenging, and genuinely moving dialogue. You can explore Dr. Benjamin Freud's work and the incredible Green School Bali community, a school without walls rooted in bamboo and big ideas at the links in the show notes.

If you're an educator, sit with the birdhouse example. Ask yourself about the last project your students completed. Who did it serve? Where did it go when it was over? If you're a school leader, reach out to coconut thinking. Start a real conversation about what it would mean to redesign from the roots. If you're a parent or caregiver, ask your child's school, not: How are grades determined, but how does my child’s learning contribute to something beyond themselves? And for everyone that listened, follow Benjamin's writing @coconutthinking.com. Engage, challenge, respond. Regenerative education doesn't happen in one [00:22:00] school. It happens when a community decides together that it matters. 

And now I want to plant a seed for next week. Civics educator and doctoral researcher, Colleen O'Brien, joins me to reveal why civic apathy is actually a confidence problem and how the right classroom experiences can transform students into active participants. From Supreme Court insights to student voting booth moments, this conversation will absolutely change the way you think about civic education at every age. I cannot wait to share it with you. 

Schoolutions podcast is created, produced, and edited by me. Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son Benjamin, who creates the music playing in the background. You can follow and listen to Schoolutions wherever you get your podcast or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Thank you to my guest, Dr. Benjamin Freud, for showing us what regenerative education looks like in action. Please reach out to [00:23:00] me @oliviawahl.com. If you'd like a thought partner to help you cultivate curious learners who advocate for what they believe in.

Don't forget to tune in every Monday and Friday for part one and part two of my guest conversations with the best evidence-based classroom ready strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. Your 60 second bite-sized piece of learning from our conversation will be waiting for you on Wednesdays to share with a colleague. Take care and thank you for forever getting better with me. See you next week.