learning Archives - Rachel What If

Beyond the Blind Spots: Reimagining Learning Through Coaching

Photo by Alistair Freeman: https://www.pexels.com/photo/classic-black-eyeglasses-on-reflective-surface-33129357/

It’s been almost 15 years since my nearly blind eyesight was corrected through Lasik eye surgery. Although I had been told to keep my eyes closed after the surgery, I couldn’t help but sneak a peek in the recovery room. What happened next made me believe in actual miracles. I could see. I could see words on the wall, clearly defined lines where blurry had always been, and best of all: the details of my husband’s face. The ability to see is something I will never take for granted.

Being able to see things easily overlooked is a skill I continue to work toward building every day that I am consulting or coaching in a school community.

Coaching Is Not a Luxury, It’s a Lifeline

There’s one small school that has shaped me more than any other.
Tucked away on the Navajo Nation, it serves just around 25 students, kindergarten through eighth grade , and is led by three teachers who each wear about seven different hats. Some students live at the school during the week. Many come from long distances. All of them, in some way, have become part of my story.

I’ve worked alongside this community for five years now. It’s the only school that has stayed constant throughout my coaching career. I’ve watched students grow from shy kindergartners, some nonverbal or struggling with big emotions, into curious, confident middle schoolers. I’ve watched teachers build systems out of thin air, create lessons across multiple grade levels, and keep joy alive despite the isolation and challenges that come with teaching in a small rural setting.

But what’s most important isn’t what I’ve given them — it’s what they’ve given me.

What Coaching Looks Like When You Listen

When I first started visiting this school, I thought I understood what coaching meant: goal setting, modeling, reflection, planning. But this school taught me that real coaching begins with listening and paying attention.

It taught me that progress doesn’t always look like a new strategy or a new framework; sometimes it looks like teachers laughing again. Sometimes it looks like a student leading their peers. Sometimes it looks like a staff of three saying, “Let’s try it this way,” and doing it because its what they believe is best for their kids, not because its a district initiative.

The work I have done with this school community has helped me realize that coaching isn’t about bringing the answers into a school, but more about holding a mirror to what they are already doing that is working and amplifying those things. Coaching is learning beside people who are doing the hardest, most human work imaginable.

And because of that, my own practice has changed. I don’t walk into schools trying to fix them. I walk in trying to see them.

The Blindness Schools Don’t Know They Have

Over the past five years, I’ve had the privilege of visiting hundreds of classrooms across many districts. Populations could be small, large, rural, urban, and everything in between. What I’ve noticed is that schools, as caring and dedicated as they are, often develop a kind of unintentional blindness.

We all know that developing a rhythm of teaching and building systems that work is important. In doing so, its easy to lose sight of the world beyond the walls of the classroom, the one our students are actually stepping into.

And that world is changing faster than ever.

Too often, I see students who are compliant but not curious. They’re consumers of information, not creators of meaning. Technology, which could open endless doors, is mostly used for testing. And teachers, who entered this profession to inspire, often feel like they’re just trying to keep up.

That’s why coaching matters.
Not because it evaluates, but because it illuminates.

Coaching as Connection and as a Lifeline

When coaching is done well, it becomes the bridge between what’s happening inside classrooms and what’s happening in the world beyond them. It gives teachers a chance to step back and ask:

“What are our students learning that will help them live — not just pass the next test?”

In a system that’s changing too slowly for the times we live in, coaching is not a luxury. It’s a lifeline. It gives teachers time and space to think again, to reimagine, to remember why they started. It helps schools see what they can’t always see on their own.

The schools I visit don’t need rescuing , they need reflection, validation, and partners willing to walk beside them, ask the hard questions, and hold the mirror steady while they rediscover their purpose.

Reimagining Learning Together

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Navajo school I wrote about above, it’s that we get better together.

While our systems continue to build the future of education on programs and policies, we have to believe it will be built through people who are brave enough to reimagine learning together. People who can look at the uncertainty of the world and still choose to believe that joy and curiosity are worth fighting for.

My word for 2026 is capacity. I hope we can all be brave enough to really look at what we are doing every day and determine if its a checklist or a compass. Are we providing a model of presence and connection over compliance and perfection?

Education doesn’t need more programs it needs more perspective.
If your school or district is ready to reimagine learning and rediscover joy in the classroom, I’d love to be part of that conversation.

💡 Let’s learn together. Reach out at rachelwhatif@gmail.com, on Instagram @rachel3296 or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Bringing Belief Into the Classroom: Survival, Power, and Possibility

This summer, I traveled with one of my best friends to Italy, Montenegro, and Greece. In twelve days, we took three guided tours that left me with a lesson I haven’t been able to shake: belief changes behavior.

Venice: Belief as Survival

My first tour was through the Doge’s Palace and St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice and was probably my favorite. Our guide, a Venetian woman with magnetic eye contact, kept using the word: “Propaganda!”

At first, I thought of marketing. But as she explained, the mosaics of St. Mark’s, with walls drenched in tiny golden tiles telling biblical stories, weren’t just art—they were persuasion. They made people believe Venice was chosen, special, blessed. And that belief kept the city alive. With no natural resources, Venice needed commerce, tourism, and influence. Their survival depended on creating wonder.

Athens: Belief as Power

In Athens, our guide Marco embodied Greek pride. He reminded us that the Acropolis wasn’t built to be practical. Its perfection came from illusions—columns built with curves so the building would look straight to the human eye. It wasn’t just architecture; it was a message. The Athenians needed their people (and their enemies) to believe they were strong, chosen, and unshakable. Belief built power.

Santorini: Belief as Possibility

On Santorini, we toured the ancient city of Akrotiri. More than 4,000 years ago, this island had plumbing, marketplaces, and earthquake-resistant buildings. They weren’t just surviving—they believed life could be better, and they built for that future. Belief sparked innovation.

What This Has to Do with Teaching

So what do golden mosaics, optical illusions, and prehistoric plumbing have to do with teaching?

Here’s the hard truth: many students today don’t believe in much. They see systems unraveling. They’re growing up in a time of deconstruction. And maybe some systems should be torn down. But the question is: what will we give them to believe in instead?

Our guides weren’t just experts—they made us believe what they shared mattered. Their conviction made me want to lean in, to listen harder, to remember.

That’s our role as teachers, too. Not just to deliver information, but to help students believe:

that knowledge matters,
that learning can shape their future,
that they have the power to create something better.

Venice, Athens, and Akrotiri remind us that belief is not fluff—it’s survival, power, and possibility. In our classrooms, belief can be the difference between disengagement and transformation.

So as we design our lessons, our routines, our words—what messages are we sending? What do our students walk away believing?

Tips for Teaching Today

Survival- Students belief learning is essential

Just as Venice needed people to believe their city was special in order to survive, students need to believe that learning is essential to their own survival in today’s world.

The mission of the Human Intelligence Movement is “to ensure all people have the human skills they need to thrive and succeed in an AI world.“

This is in no way suggesting that humans will not survive in an AI world, but it is to suggest that the way we will do that, is to remember the value of humans.

Their belief is that education should help everyone grow their creative talents, and that AI can elevate our humanness.

This is why it matters now: What are we doing to elevate the humanity in our classrooms? How are our students building belief in themselves in order to survive?

Power – Students believe learning shapes their future.

Athens built illusions into their architecture to send a powerful message: We are strong. We matter. Students, too, need to believe that knowledge gives them power—power to make choices, to change their circumstances, to influence others.

The classroom is a safe place. If students believe in themselves, and in their unique ability to create, how are we allowing them to share that with the world?

Are we explicitly naming the power of their thinking and ideas in the classroom on a regular basis? In order to name something, you must have an idea of what it is. Do you know what learning strategies are?

Take a look at this previous blog post for more information on learning strategies, and then name them every time you see a student using them.

Power is motivating. When students see themselves as active agents, not passive recipients, they start to believe their effort matters. Gradually release some of the control in your classrooms and trust that students will take the responsibility.

Possibility – Help students believe they can create something better.

At Akrotiri, people weren’t just surviving—they innovated. They believed life could improve, so they built earthquake-resistant homes and plumbing systems millennia before “modern” civilizations.

Students need to have a vision for the future. In a quick search for “how to help young people have a vision for the future,” I sadly found very little resources. I guess AI and Google are still struggling in this area.

Global Action Plan conducted a research project by interviewing lots of young people and found it disheartening that the majority of them had negative expectations for the future, and believed that things probably wouldn’t change, and if they did, it wouldn’t be for the better.

This sounds like a SCREAM for help. OR… its an opportunity to take action. What if we used a tool like a vision board, or Canva, to help them get started? This website gives teens a step by step guide for thinking through how to envision their own futures and create a visual representation of it.

Kids as young as kindergarten can also create a visual for what they hope for the future. We need to start bringing this into our conversations. We need to bring back the hope. Possibility grows when students see their ideas take shape in the real world, so don’t stop with a vision board, help them bring it to life!

Curiosity is the fuel for innovation. Ask those what if questions: What if you wrote the next great novel ? What if you could invent a game that helps younger kids learn fractions? What if you listened to the whisperings of your heart, leading you to the things you love?

Because if belief changes behavior, then the most important thing we give students might not be just knowledge, but the conviction that what they’re learning, and who they are, matters.

Student-Centered: Just Another Buzzword?

Despite a common language around student-centered practices, we are still heavily focused on the teacher and teaching. Let’s not let this important way of teaching become just another buzz word in education. Friends don’t let friends become memes.

In education, there are certain words we all know, and somewhere, in the back of the room, a teacher is rolling their eyes about them. We’ve heard them so many times now that there are memes all over the internet about them. This one from Teacher Misery is my favorite by far:

Learning vs. Teaching

Let’s start with a quick experiment. Can you name ten teaching strategies off the top of your head? Now, how about ten learning strategies? Or even five? Notice the difference?

Every school I visit, it’s the same story. The talk is always about teaching – what’s working, what’s not, what we teachers need to do differently. And when those test scores don’t budge or grades start slipping? You bet we’re quick to look at the teachers. It’s like we’ve got blinders on, focusing only on how we teach instead of how kids actually learn. We can’t expect different results, if we keep doing the same things. Or having the same conversations.

Buzzword Alert!

In a previous post, I describe a shift that occurred in my thinking about what it actually means to run a student-centered classroom. Teachers want to do better, often trying new things and taking risks within their comfort zones. When we talk about becoming more student-centered, we begin with the data, in an effort to be more objective and set goals. Where things get fuzzy is in the goals setting. By setting goals around instruction, we are still fundamentally teacher-centered – just with a new label.

Consider this: When we analyze student data, set goals based on that data, and select teaching strategies to target growth, where is the student in all of this? We’re still primarily focused on what the teacher does, not on how students learn.

Don’t get me wrong – data has its place. But when we reduce students to numbers and colors on a chart, we lose sight of the individual learners behind those figures. We must remember an undeniable truth: teaching does not cause learning to happen. Learners cause learning to happen. It’s a choice the learner makes.

“Just because you taught it…”

James Anderson’s book “Learnership” offers a paradigm shift in how we approach education. Anderson says, “We don’t have a teaching problem in our schools, we have a learning problem.” This subtle but crucial distinction changes everything.

We invest considerable time and resources ensuring teachers know how to teach and providing them with the best tools and curriculum. But what skills are our learners developing? We are living in a time where AI can perform basic computations and language tasks, so we must equip our students with skills that make them uniquely human.

A Touch of Madness

Remember when your parents freaked out if you said you wanted to be an artist or a musician? “There’s no money in that!” they’d say. Well, guess what? The game has totally changed. With AI taking on the repetitive and monotonous tasks, our individuality is our greatest asset. Coming up with wild new ideas and connecting unrelated things will be the the most valuable skill sets. Having “A touch of the Madness,” Legendary movie producer Lawrence Kasanoff says.

Anderson also asks us to consider what learning actually is. Essentially, it’s about creation. It’s about forging new neural pathways, generating novel ideas, and making unexpected connections. He also redefines what it means to have a growth mindset in these ways. In this new era of education, we must nurture these distinctly human capabilities.

Find a way or make a way

True learning is about finding a way when there isn’t an obvious path. It’s about problem-solving and critical thinking. When faced with a challenge, learners must either find a way or create a new path.

In a more practical sense, learning in action involves making choices. Remember Robert Frost’s famous lines, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by”? Learning requires making choices. It’s an active process where the learner decides to engage, to change, to grow.

Focus on Learning Strategies

As educators, parents, and lifelong learners ourselves, we must shift our focus from teaching strategies to learning strategies. Here are some actionable steps we can take:

Encourage metacognition: Teach students how to think and talk about their own learning processes.
Foster creativity: Be open to creative ideas from others and try to connect them to content.
Develop agency: This isn’t simply voice and choice, to coin another overused and abused buzz phrase, its about supporting students through challenges and allowing them to make their own choices to overcome them.
Practice failure: Reframe mistakes as learning opportunities rather than setbacks.
Debrief Experiences: Pay attention to the learning as it is happening and facilitate discourse that names the learning strategies students were using.

The future of education isn’t about perfecting our teaching; it’s about empowering our learners. We have to shift the investment of time and effort into how students are learning, rather than what they are learning.

The amazing thing is that we are creating the future every day. Let’s start creating a future where students understand that getting better is more valuable than doing your best. Getting better is about process over product, growth over outcomes, taking risks, etc. You know, living your best buzzwords.