Heeyyyy my dudes,

I guess the East Coast decided we all needed a little break. 🤣 Between the migraines, the heat, the storms, internet outages, a bit of unplanned travel, and just life being life, I actually found myself laughing over the last couple of days because it felt like the perfect reminder of everything we've been talking about. The Revolution isn't another challenge to keep up with. It's not thirty perfectly executed lessons. It's a conversation, and conversations have a way of fitting into real life instead of demanding that real life fit around them. So if you missed a day, or I missed a day, or you haven't had a chance to sit down with a cup of coffee and really think about these ideas yet, that's okay. We have lots of time and a lot I still want to discuss with you.

I've been thinking a lot about where to go next, and I keep coming back to one question that I don't think most of us have ever really stopped to ask in our deschooling journey.

Who decided what success looks like?

Not just in education, but in general. Who decided that by a certain age children should know certain things... that getting an A is better than getting a C, that reading at five is somehow more impressive than reading at eight, or that one child is "ahead" while another is "behind?" Behind what? That's a question I ask parents all the time. Because what I've realized over my years of supporting parents in this work is that we rarely learn to define success for ourselves. We inherit someone else's definition and spend years (sometimes our entire lives) trying to achieve it.

Now before anyone misunderstands me, I'm not against goals or measurements. I measure things in my own life all the time, and I model these for my children. I pay attention to the finances in my home and business. I have health goals that I'm constantly evaluating and adapting. I track specific projects. Measurement isn't the enemy. Measurement is actually incredibly useful. The problem is that somewhere along the way we've started confusing what's easy to measure with what actually matters, and those aren't always the same thing.

Think about your own child for a minute. If I asked you what you hope they're like as a thirty-year-old adult, I doubt your answer would have anything to do with third grade reading scores or whether they got straight As in high school. You'd probably tell me you hope they're kind. That they're resilient. That they love learning. That they have meaningful relationships. That they know who they are. That they're capable of solving problems when life gets hard. That they're doing work they enjoy. Those are the things that actually matter to us. Yet if you look at the way we've designed education, very few of those things are what we spend the majority of our time measuring.

How do you measure curiosity? How do you measure creativity? How do you measure empathy, integrity, wisdom, courage, or the ability to keep getting back up after you've failed? Those things don't fit neatly into a standardized test or a report card, and because they're difficult to measure, we've often pushed them to the side in favor of things that are easier to quantify.

And here we have what I feel is one of the biggest unintended consequences of standardization. Standardization itself isn't the issue. As we've discussed these past few days, systems require standardization in order to function. Businesses have systems. Hospitals have systems. Schools have systems. The problem begins when the system is built around something as deeply individual as the human experience. The moment we try to standardize something that is inherently unique, somebody is always going to fall outside the standard. Then, instead of questioning the standard, we start questioning the person.

And that is where so much unnecessary shame begins. And where educational trauma takes root.

A child isn't behind because they learned to read later than someone else. A child isn't less intelligent because they struggle with multiplication, but can build things with their hands that most adults couldn't dream of creating. A child isn't less successful because their gifts don't happen to align with the things we've chosen to measure.

We've simply spent so long living inside one definition of success that we've forgotten we have the freedom to ask whether it's the right one. Especially in today's ever-changing world, where people around us are literally redefining what success looks like every single day.

So that's what I'd love for you to think about today. And specifically I want you to put yourself at the center of this discussion, not your child - YOU. Because a lot of this deschooling work is about healing your inner child and recognizing how different your choices may have been if you'd had your own unique view of success.

If you could erase every report card, every standardized test, every GPA, every reading level, and every comparison you've ever been handed, how would you define success for yourself? Not what you think you're supposed to say. Not what colleges say. Not what your parents would say. Not even what I would say. You.

I have a feeling your answer looks a whole lot more human than the system we've inherited.

I'm so excited to have this conversation. My Bridge Academy families - we'll be discussing this in our private group today.

🫶🏽 Leah