AI is overriding education. This technology boasts massive opportunity, allowing for powerful learning experiences (experiential and project-based) to be ungraded while still showcasing rigor, growth and capability, along with an infinite capacity for processing large swaths of data. At the same time, it also brings a suite of challenges—small stuff, like changing the value proposition of and approach to “school” as we know it.
As a result, setting learners up for success means supporting them in collecting, articulating and curating their lived experience as data because in an AI world, evidence and data are king, queen, and court jester. This requires a fundamental shift in self-knowledge, how learning is measured and communicated, and both the role of educators and networks. In the wake of AI, schools will need to create cultures of documentation, reflection and visible learning; students will need to develop storytelling capacity for identifying, articulating and sharing their own stories; and educators will need to become co-authors of the learners’ story to date and their story to come, as well as being a conduit to the outside world.
Read our earlier blogs in this series:
At a recent meeting with an organization that prides itself on creating conditions for “flourishing knowledge,” I had an involuntary negative reaction to the word “knowledge”. Our world is overabundant with information, much of it contradictory, and knowledge doesn’t make enough of a value statement to be different than information. What I wanted was a term that gestured toward thriving, a silver bullet in a silver bulletless world. The word that came the closest was wisdom. In a world where information is abundant but wisdom is scarce, how do we prepare the next generation to thrive?
In this complex, AI-saturated landscape, wisdom is an essential skill, and one we must cultivate when young. We cannot wait passively for the river of time to shape the sediment of experience. Wisdom has never been a passive trait one acquires with age, despite our depictions in Hollywood, stories, and elsewhere. It’s a skill that is learned, gained, and earned through experience. It comes from doing, not just getting an AARP card. Emerging technologies and a post-trust media landscape mean that we can no longer afford to wait. We must build an education system that intentionally prioritizes the development of wisdom through real-world learning and provides the necessary time and process to help learners recognize and communicate it.
In a beautiful twist of fate, the rise of AI is forcing us to return to the most human forms of learning. To effectively partner with AI, you cannot be a passive consumer; you must be an active creator. You need “data” to input, and for a learner, experiences are the data generators. Perhaps most importantly, these experiences stack upon critical foundations like wellness and wholeness, which are learned through rich Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). They contribute to feelings of belonging and self-worth. They cultivate crucial, interconnected skills such as empathy, integrity, a sense of civics, adaptability, teamwork, and cooperation—all necessary for interacting positively with others and contributing constructively to society. By reframing SEL in the inclusive language of “being a good human being,” we emphasize that the ultimate goal of learning is to gain a deeper, lived understanding of wellness, community responsibility, and compassion that shapes a person’s character. This is wisdom.
Redefining Wisdom for a New Era
When we discuss wisdom, we’re not just referring to academic knowledge. We are defining it as the synthesis of experience, reflection, and metacognition. It’s the process that makes “learning evident through evidence,” to quote David Dunbar. As researcher Ron Dahl notes, it’s the “experiential learning… about how we contribute, how we matter, and how we make a difference”. Wisdom is the ability to connect what you’ve done to who you are becoming.
The creative world has long understood this. “Real artists ship”. “A writer is one who writes”. Craftship is earned through experience and is a skill with both value and values that is transferable to new people and new generations. It is honed rather than discovered. These experiences are the practice and performance space where learners test their durable and technical skills in the real world.
These aren’t just one-off projects; they are pathways that help young people develop confidence, belonging, self-implication, and storytelling capacity.
The Tragedy of Unseen Wisdom
The challenge is twofold. First, we don’t provide enough of these rich experiences within the school day. Second, and perhaps more critically, we systematically fail to recognize and credential the wisdom that learners are already gaining outside of school.
Think of the high school student in a difficult foster situation who works 30 hours a week to support himself. He is tired in class, and the school sees a deficit. They fail to see the incredible wisdom—resilience, time management, collaboration—that he demonstrates every single day.
We all have these moments, but we don’t practice framing them as “stories of demonstration”. This is the tragedy that anyone who has applied for a job knows well. We’ve all stumbled on the question, “Tell me about a time when you demonstrated…?”. We stumble because we haven’t done the critical work of reflection. We don’t have a knowledge base of evidence. We haven’t told ourselves the story of ourselves.
This is partially because of a collectively weak reflection muscle. As a society, we have turned reflection into both homework and a solitary act when, at its best, reflection is a social act that deepens relationship with yourself and with others.
Learning Approaches that Work
While not nearly widespread enough, there are a number of movements in the broader education landscape that inspire hope for the facilitation and recognition of powerful experiences:
Pathways with Depth: Career and Technical Education (CTE) offers one model. In systems like Switzerland or Germany, learners choose a pathway—culinary, health care, design, engineering, computer science—and spend years gaining real-world exposure. The blend of academic and vocational is powerful; it accelerates relevance and lays the narrative foundation for stories students can tell about working with others, creating something meaningful, and testing what they love and don’t love.
Tip for Leaders: Establish multi-year, real-world pathways by securing partnerships that provide continuous exposure and allow learners to test durable and technical skills in an authentic context.
Students Owning Their Data: Learners creating a multimodal knowledge base of their experiences and skills. In the moment documentation, captain’s log end of day summations (think Star Trek, the Martian, and Avatar); capturing of process/progress.
Tip for Leaders: Implement tools and protocols so learners can build a portable, multimodal knowledge base of their experiences and skills, utilizing process capture methods like captain’s logs and in-the-moment documentation.
Embedded Documentation and Reflection: Every experience should include intentional “pause points” for reflection. This can be as simple as a journaling prompt (“What surprised me today?”), a peer story swap, or a quick class spotlight share. These practices help learners see learning in real time and are a non-negotiable. Documentation happens in real-time through artifact collection, and then again through the wider metacognitive reflection.
Tip for Leaders: Mandate embedded documentation by integrating intentional, non-negotiable “pause points” (such as journaling prompts or quick class spotlight shares) within every experience to cultivate the reflection muscle in real time. Create muscle memory and a culture of storytelling. Then have your learners create the prompts for themselves.
Iteration and Remix: Students should have multiple opportunities to revisit, revise, and remix their work. Stories of growth are rarely written in one draft.
Tip for Leaders: Structure curriculum and time to provide students with multiple opportunities to revisit, revise, and remix their work, acknowledging that stories of growth are rarely written in one draft
Authentic Audiences: Learning takes on new meaning when shared with others—community partners, mentors, families, or peers in other schools. Public exhibitions, digital portfolios, podcasts, or mentor check-ins shift learning from private to communal.
Tips for Leaders: Prioritize sharing with authentic audiences by setting up regular mentor check-ins, digital portfolio sharing, or public exhibitions to legitimize student learning and shift it from private to communal
Narrative Across Time: Encourage learners to revisit earlier artifacts and reflections, asking questions like, “How does what I’m doing today echo or challenge my earlier self?” This creates continuity and helps students connect threads of growth over the years.
Tips for Leaders: Design systems that prompt learners to connect current growth to earlier reflections, helping them trace continuity and build their longitudinal story of self over the years, tracing interconnected moments into cohesive journeys.
More specifically, this work is done in models across the world:
Capstones: At Hawai’i Preparatory Academy, student Ese Faith Ovbagedia completed a Capstone that included a series of paintings titled Shades of Brown. But she didn’t stop there. She paired her art with a digital brand and marketplace for her work. That is wisdom—the integration of skill, passion, and real-world application.
Portfolios of Learning: At JeffCo Open School, students compile rich portfolios. Author and former student Jennifer D. Klein reflected that while she did poorly on her PSATs, her 50-page portfolio proved she had a “high IQ” and a “really creative mind”. The portfolio captured the wisdom that the standardized test missed.
Work-Based Learning: Models like CAPS and GPS Education Partners show learners gaining authentic exposure to real-world work in fields like health care, engineering, or design. The value isn’t just vocational; it’s allowing learners to encounter the joy and struggle of creating something meaningful and testing what they love (and what they don’t).
Real-World Projects: This can also look like the client-connected projects in Kansas City, or the Ohio Seals of Readiness, all of which ask students to apply their learning in an authentic context.
Apprenticeships and community partnerships at Cañon City. There may not be a high school more intertwined with its business and non-profit community than Cañon City High School. They also document and tell the story of these partnerships beautifully. They’ve gone all in on student-led assessment and capturing learner growth.
Communally capturing the process and not just products of design and architecture: At the University of Kentucky, Professor Ryan Hargrove’s Landscape Architecture Studio course is rooted in the Lexington, Kentucky, business and non-profit community. Students do real-world client-connected work and use the city as a canvas for their ideas. Ryan also wants his students to learn from each other, and created a system where they share documentation and reflection in real-time across the class. The goal is to create a culture of process storytelling in real-time and in summative exhibitions of learning.
Rooting experiences in confidence and belonging in Alaska: Kusilvak Career Academy (KCA) is a residential program that brings students from remote Alaska communities to Anchorage to access hands-on career training, dual credit opportunities, and real-world workforce pathways not available in their home villages. It connects K–12 education with university, industry, and nonprofit partners to create clear pathways from school to career. School leaders and teachers realized that experiences needed to be a lever for confidence-building and belonging, so they created a “Humans of New York” style curriculum and gave students the skills and time for personal reflection. SEL became a bedrock for CTE.
Presentations of Learning: Crosstown High in Memphis, Tennessee, was built in the remodeled former 1927 Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog distribution center. It’s a communal space filled with culture and business. The Memphis community flows into the school, and students flow out into the community. At Crosstown, Presentations of Learning are ingrained in the culture of the school and involve family, friends, teachers, peers, and community stakeholders. Director of Academics Kat McRitchie reflects, “Students are storytellers, and in their Presentations of Learning they get to say what matters in their learning, celebrate their growth, and identify their next steps in life to a supportive community”.
Wisdom in Experience
In Hawaiian legend, Pele, the goddess of creation, sends her sister Hiʻiaka on a mission. When Hi’iaka feels unprepared and returns to Pele seeking help, Pele responds with the phrase, “Go, the sustenance you need lies ahead.” In other words, the journey itself, with its challenges and uncertainties, is what provides the necessary learning and growth. Through the journey, one acquires wisdom. In this story, wisdom is not something that can be handed down or taught. Experiences give students the raw material. This allows for that shift from passive to active, thinker to doer, consumer to creator. If we want learners to thrive, we can’t just stop at changing the set of necessary skills. Instead, we must do something far more difficult and far more human: we must build a culture of story where we help learners practice the deep work of reflection, documentation, and storytelling in pursuit of building not just knowledge, but wisdom.
