Christopher Herman is the Head of School at Garden School, a Nursery to Grade 12 independent college-preparatory day school in New York City. Prior to Garden School, he was Head of School at AIM Academy in Philadelphia, an independent day school serving bright children who learn differently. Chris is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s School Leadership Program, a certified Reading Interventionist, and has earned multiple master’s degrees related to education and special education. He completed post-Graduate work on Psychology and Motivation at Temple University and was a member of the Klingenstein Center’s 2025 Leadership Fellowship at Columbia University. Chris writes and speaks often on topics relevant to education such as Literacy, the Arts, Technology, Innovation, and Motivation. He sits on numerous boards that serve independent schools, public schools, community organizations, and arts education nonprofits.
Organizations often feel that to remain viable in a fluctuating market, wholesale change is required. The landscape in the field of education has faced dramatic disruption in the last five to ten years, and the pace of change is only intensifying with new technologies and evolving expectations. Schools, therefore may be tempted to drop everything and reinvent how they approach the work of cultivating the next generation, but that may be short-sighted.
Though innovation is essential, especially in moments of disruption, there is a long history of practices, approaches, and theories of learning to honor and guide us as we decide where to go next as a field. Children in our schools are well served if we embrace new approaches to teaching and learning and stay informed of the growing understanding of how the brain engages with new information while simultaneously finding ways to respect established and effective methodology. Balance is important because it enables us to preserve the best of what has come before while continuing to iterate and consider the evolving role of the teacher, student, and school.
Though some older methods may no longer apply, not all traditional approaches are flawed. For example, in core subjects like reading, math, and writing, where skills are sequential, structure is key. Research into phonological development is old with systems penned by individuals like Neuropsychologists Sam Orton and Anna Gillingham working its way into classrooms nearly 80 years ago. Look back to Euclid and the ancient Greeks to see math instruction focused on core arithmetic, logic, and reasoning. The rules and form of grammar, sentence structure, and spelling are nearly unchanged for hundreds of years. While we ask children to conceptualize at higher levels than ever before, traditional methods for building foundational skills remain effective for launching children into that higher-order thinking.
Yet, many traditional methods do not leave room for the diversity of learners in today’s classrooms. They also do not center the student and their interests in curriculum. Teachers know engagement matters perhaps more than anything. This is not new knowledge. Back in the 80’s, researchers Deci and Ryan from the University of Rochester developed their theory of motivation which showed the importance not only of competency, but of teacher and student relationships and the value of agency. Traditional classrooms made little room for student autonomy and mostly applied universal thinking to instruction in a one-size-fits all model. In today’s schools, the classroom that does not center the students cannot effectively engage them.
Similarly, we should reconsider the role of the teacher. As we move away from the sage on the stage model and increase student voice, the role of the teacher is shifting to facilitator and guide. Experts like Cognitive Psychologist Dan Willingham and author Ted Dintersmith show us a very effective classroom can be one where children work harder to draw conclusions while teachers feed them insights along the way instead of telling them how to do it. Problem based learning therefore may result in deeper learning. Similarly, Authors like David Yaeger posit educators should adopt a mentor mindset and step down off the stage to support the learning process rather than dictate it. Specific to Math, educational researchers like Jo Boaler and Dan Meyer are focused on process over accuracy, on wrestling to draw conclusions, and argue the real learning is in the development of thinking habits, not in right answers.
And yet, even as the voice of the teacher should decrease in the classroom, it should become more prominent in the schoolhouse. Harvard’s Graduate School of Education says that for school change to be most effective, teachers need to take meaningful leadership roles in how their institutions design and implement programs. Schools have historically left decision making up to an oligarchy of administrators and treated educators more as foot soldiers working on the front line than as intellectual equals with important contributions to share. A more enlightened school increases teacher voice at the decision-making table while it increases student voice in the classroom.
Finally, advancing technology has put our field in a state of perpetual change and innovating is critical as we leverage all opportunities associated with new tools and conditions. Innovation is essential for preparing students for this evolving world by equipping them with the skills and mindsets needed to adapt and thrive. As many standards focus on lower-level skills and recitation of rules, we can leverage the many technologies available to encourage creative and critical thinking and personalize learning. Five years ago, we learned that while change is hard, it is possible when embraced. During the pandemic, schools quickly recognized the need for substantial change in how they deliver instruction and engage students. The classroom was changed forever, and we were gifted with the opportunity to reevaluate what was worth bringing forward from the past and what we ask of children and teachers in perpetuity.
We do not need to discard traditional and effective techniques; instead, we can integrate them with modern approaches like student centered, project-based, problem-based, and multi-modal teaching and learning experiences. We can teach core skills to students who will then use them in the future to become autonomous stewards of their own learning. To strike this balance, schools will need to engage educators, students, and parents in the process of creating the vision for what school can be. As we iterate on something as critical as education, let’s look to places like Stanford Design School that argue it is easier and more effective to ask the user about the product they want rather than tell them what we made for them without their input. But let’s strive for a thoughtful balance of the best of what we already know about learning as we reconsider the changing role of the student, teacher, and school.