The Quiet Power of Letting Kids Have a Say
There is a teacher in Spokane, Washington who opened an outdoor self-directed learning center. Not only is she doing cool things with kids and families, she writes about progressive education with such clarity and bravery. I’m continually inspired by what she offers up for fellow educators to read.
Katy Purviance’s piece on consent in education struck a deep chord because it names something that so many of us have felt but rarely say out loud. We uphold consent as a core value in nearly every domain of adult life, yet we quietly suspend it for children in the place they spend most of their time. As she describes, students in conventional systems have little meaningful say in what they learn, how they learn it, or how they move through their day, and what we call “choice” is often compliance in disguise. Once you start to see it, it’s hard to ignore how normalized this has become, and how many of the struggles we attribute to motivation or behavior might actually be grounded in something much more human: a lack of agency.
This idea lands directly in the center of what we are trying to build with Sacramento Community School. At the heart of our model is a belief that children are not empty vessels to be managed, but humans with ideas, preferences, rhythms, and voices that matter. That belief shapes everything. We think carefully about how students can help shape their learning, how their interests can guide the work, and how they can show what they understand in ways that feel real and meaningful. Structure still matters, and so does strong teaching, but the relationship shifts. Instead of managing compliance, we are working alongside young people, creating conditions where ownership and responsibility grow naturally over time.
What stayed with me most from this essay is the reminder that consent is not a grand, abstract shift. It shows up in small, daily moments; when we pause long enough to ask a real question and stay open to the answer, when we offer options that genuinely expand a child’s sense of possibility, when we trust that curiosity is already there and doesn’t need to be engineered. This is the work we are stepping into when we aim to develop different relationships between children and learning, and when we hold the belief that young people deserve a say in their own lives.
If you connected with this piece from Katy Purviance, you might want to read another essay she wrote about how traditional school structures create “bad kids” and, in the process, shape how all children learn to see each other. It reveals how quickly systems of compliance turn into systems of judgment, and why building environments rooted in dignity, belonging, and understanding is not just good for learning, but essential for the kind of community we want to create. It’s a powerful reminder that the classrooms we build for children don’t just shape how they learn, they touch the future by shaping who they believe is worthy of understanding and care.
