By Tedd Wakeman, Co-Founder and Director, the Sycamore School (CA)

As trends continue toward “rigorous,” standards-based educational practice, those of us on the front lines of reimagining education continue to explore the power and efficacy of developing competencies, mindsets, and essential skills. It’s a pursuit that requires a new process for decision-making that honors student engagement and agency while staying true to the educational outcomes you aim to achieve. It’s a pursuit that requires risk-taking and the belief that relevant experiences for students provide the most powerful learning opportunities.

Student-generated ideas and “fly by night fads” can be incredibly disruptive to an educational system. Kids can be bad at thinking about unintended consequences, taking multiple perspectives, and thinking deeply about the broader impact of their ideas. As for the school, these pursuits are traditionally viewed as non-essential and fall outside the walls built to protect prescribed learning time. “They can design that skate ramp on their own time. School is for serious learning!”

While it’s fair for educators and school leadership to take these challenges into consideration, the typical solution for disruptive thinking is to simply shut things down, often without question. This has been the answer to wild and wooly student innovation for decades and…