Season 11 of The Wheelhouse, “Future Ready Schools: Innovation Rooted in Humanity” begins October 28, 2025!

Humanizing the Future of Learning

“From planting hope, to opening doors, to charting futures—The Wheelhouse takes you on the journey of humanizing education.”

The Wheelhouse exists to create an inclusive community of empowered educators who believe that, together, we can disrupt the transactional herding nature of schooling to create districts, schools, and classrooms where each student feels confident, optimistic, capable, well-supported, and emboldened to be and to become who they are meant to be.

Guiding Principles

1. We are steadfastly committed to each learner and each educator believing they are distinctive and irreplaceable.

2. We believe that educating our children should be a humanizing, relational, and transformational endeavor.  All else is secondary.

3. We believe that dignity is a birthright; it is not earned.  Each child deserves a future filled with open doors and unlimited possibilities.  Our work is in service to this central aspiration.

4. We believe that each human life is unique and precious; as such we are compelled to remove aspects of schooling that disregard any student’s dignity.

 Episodes of The Wheelhouse will explore bodies of knowledge and expertise that align to this vision and these guiding principles.  Our team and our guests are committed to this fundamental challenge to realize what we want for each student to experience in school.

In Season 9, we explored one of the most urgent and human questions in education: Are our systems, policies, and daily choices cultivating hope for students, or are they killing dreams (Monroe, 2025)? This theme confronted the stark choice schools face—either nurturing students’ aspirations or, through rigid structures and inequities, unintentionally extinguishing them. It surfaced the reality that educators’ daily decisions carry profound weight: every interaction either affirms possibility or reinforces limitation.

In season 10, we moved from what we owe students to how we design schools to support those dreams.  The natural extension of hope is access. If hope is cultivated, then schools must actively create opportunities that broaden students’ horizons. This theme explored how educators can dismantle barriers, reimagine learning environments, and design systems where every student sees multiple pathways open before them.

The future of education depends on a radical humanization of schools—where hope is cultivated, opportunities are opened, and innovation is harnessed to serve humanity. Only then do we create futures worthy of each students’ dreams. We begin by cultivating hope. We ensure possibilities are real and accessible. We design futures rooted in humanity.

In Season 11, we’ll begin to define the “where are we going” where we strive for future-ready learning that keeps humanity at its core.  Using the theme, Future Ready Schools:  Innovation Rooted in Humanity, we assert that future readiness cannot be reduced to technology or skills training—it must be anchored in human dignity, agency, and belonging. This theme positions innovation not as a departure from humanity but as its amplifier. A truly future-ready school prepares students to thrive by honoring their identities, nurturing their creativity, and equipping them to engage with a changing world from a place of strength.

The future is already here, and it must be human-centered.