What do we want for our children?
It’s a simple question. But in most systems, we rarely sit with it long enough to answer it fully together.
Instead, we move quickly to plans, programs, and priorities. We draft vision statements meant to guide the future. And then, often, we return to business as usual. But in communities across the country, something different is happening. People are staying with the question. And in doing so, they are beginning to build something new. Shared vision, in these communities, is not something you write down and move on from. It is something you co-create, shape together, and live into over time. It is a living practice.
Across our Learner-Centered Ecosystem Lab, we see this work unfolding in 23 communities. Local leaders are designing and growing learning ecosystems rooted in their own places, each shaped by its history, its relationships, and the possibilities ahead. The starting point is rarely the same. Sometimes it begins with educators who see that young people need something different. Sometimes it grows from families asking for learning experiences that reflect their greatest hopes for their children. In other places, business leaders or civic partners begin asking how they can support the next generation.
What matters is what happens next.
This work becomes powerful when they begin building the relationships, roles, and structures that allow the vision to guide real decisions and real opportunities for young people. In many of these communities, young people are not only participating in new learning experiences. They are helping shape the vision itself—bringing questions and perspectives adults alone could never fully imagine. When shared vision is treated as a living practice, something powerful happens. People become active participants in shaping the future. Like a healthy ecosystem, it grows from the roots, strengthening the relationships and connections that allow the whole system to flourish.
The stories that follow offer a glimpse of how that work is unfolding in different communities.
At La Luz Education in Colorado, learning is intentionally designed to extend beyond the classroom. Students spend mornings engaged in academic learning and afternoons working in studios across the community—from museums and maker spaces to environmental programs in the mountains. These experiences are not occasional field trips. They are a core part of how learning happens. The team at La Luz Education began by listening closely to learners and families. Conversations with young people revealed that many felt disconnected from school and wanted something different. Some middle schoolers shared that they dreaded going to school and even “hated being with people.” That listening became the seed of a new learning environment—one shaped not only for young people, but increasingly with them. At La Luz, learners now spend half of each day in the community, at places like the Denver Zoo and the Gold Crown Clubhouse maker space, working on projects they design and own. The school treats its work as research and development for new possibilities, connecting young people with community challenges and real-world projects. As one parent shared, “My child knows they can learn what they need to know, and that confidence is critical for life.” Here, the shared vision didn’t begin with a strategic plan—it began with listening.
On a recent site visit to Lafayette Big Picture High School in upstate New York, learners, educators, families, and community partners described how Lafayette is expanding what learning can and should be. Young people pursue their interests while contributing to the community and the Onondaga Nation. One learner interested in health care spends time supporting residents at a local retirement community. At the school’s Sap Shack, learners experiment with tapping trees to produce syrup, which is then sold as a fundraiser. Learners problem-solve, collaborate, and discover alongside one another. Each month, learners exploring culinary pathways prepare and serve lunch for elders gathering from the Onondaga Nation. What once felt like an “alternative” school is now helping spark a broader conversation across the region. The shared vision emerging here through community dialogue and cultural change aligns closely with the state’s Portrait of a Graduate. As one learner shared, “We want the hard things so we can be challenged, so we can learn from it.” Educators echo the same spirit. And the work requires a team always moving toward a shared goal and responding to the needs and aspirations of learners and the community.
In Chicago, Embarc is helping redesign the roles educators and community partners play in supporting young people. Through dedicated partnership roles, shared professional learning between educators and partners, and systems that help schools coordinate real-world experiences across the city, Embarc is building the infrastructure needed for learning to extend beyond the classroom. Embarc partners with 17 Chicago Public Schools and is building an ecosystem of more than 90 community organizations that help bring learning to life for young people. These partnerships are not transactional. The team often describes them as a dance, with each partner playing a distinct role in advancing a shared vision: helping educators and partners to design learning experiences that connect young people with real-world challenges. We met many of these partners as they gathered with educators to sharpen their practice and design meaningful learning experiences together. Partners from organizations such as Alt Advisors Trading Desk, The Morton Arboretum, Hull House, and The Lincoln Lodge spoke about how their relationships with educators and young people have become part of the infrastructure that supports learning. Many of the partners spoke of the positive impact being part of the ecosystem has had on their own organizations. That ongoing depth of training and professional development with community partners and educators together is a new dynamic of the ecosystem that leads to sustainability and helps nurture the shared vision.
When co-creating a shared vision becomes a valued dynamic of a community, young people are not only seen differently; they begin to see themselves differently as contributors, creators, and participants in shaping the future of their communities.
Bobbi Macdonald
In Colorado Springs, a coalition of partners, including the school district, the chamber of commerce, the university, and local industry, worked together to launch the Colorado Springs School of Technology (CSST) inside a regional innovation hub. The school is not operating in isolation. It sits alongside startups, higher education programs, and industry partners, creating daily opportunities for learners to connect their studies to real-world challenges. Several pressures were converging at once. The district superintendent was facing declining enrollment. The Chamber of Commerce was working hard to attract and retain businesses in the region. Yet, employers consistently raised the same concern: they could not find the workforce they needed. The local university was asking how it could remain relevant in a rapidly changing economy. At the same time, the philanthropic community was eager to invest in more than isolated programs. They wanted to support true transformation—an approach to learning that would see each young person holistically.
At first, these conversations were happening in different places. Over time, they began to connect. Community leaders started asking a new question: What would it look like to design learning together? They found a school leader who was eager to help bring these ideas to life. The district created an innovation zone, and this year launched the first of several learning hubs: the Colorado Springs School of Technology. CSST has worked closely with regional industry partners to create pathways aligned with emerging opportunities, including a thriving aerospace pathway. But what guides the work is not simply economic demand. Leaders consistently return to a deeper commitment of seeing each young person as a whole learner, helping them discover their strengths, interests, and possibilities. The alignment with industry opens doors. The commitment to the whole child keeps the work grounded in human development. Shared vision in this community holds both realities together: centering the gifts and interests of young people and designing meaningful work with them—work they care about and futures they are actively creating. The ongoing focus of this shared vision leads to a new model for education—one that nurtures and sustains a developing ecosystem over time.
And in Minnesota, Eden Prairie Schools has taken a different approach by embedding shared vision into the structures of the system itself. Their community-developed “Flight Plan” provides a clear direction for the district’s future, centered on personalized learning, real-world experiences, and strong partnerships across the community. A core planning group of 30 to 35 people (students, parents, teachers, staff, administrators, community members, business partners) conducts site visits across the system to “see, hear, and feel” strategy in action in different grades, classrooms, and programs. The Flight Plan guides decisions about programs, partnerships, and opportunities for learners. It creates coherence while still leaving room for innovation. As they grow their ecosystem, they are working to develop the infrastructure that supports these ideas along the way, creating new roles specifically responsible for cultivating partnerships and tending to the ecosystem itself.
Ecosystems are Taking Root
While each community looks different, something consistent begins to take root. Across these communities, a pattern begins to emerge. Shared vision does not come from a single process or planning session. It grows through participation and becomes sustainable when communities build the structures that enable people to keep shaping the work together. And as that vision deepens, something else begins to change. Responsibility for learning begins to expand. Schools remain essential, but they are no longer carrying the work alone. Community organizations, businesses, libraries, artists, and civic leaders begin to see themselves as deeply engaged participants in the learning ecosystem.
In the Ecosystem Lab, this shift to shared responsibility is visible across every site. Communities report that supporting young people is increasingly shared across institutions and partners. This makes it possible to create learning experiences no single organization could provide on its own.
But the deeper transformation is cultural. When co-creating a shared vision becomes a valued dynamic of a community, young people are not only seen differently; they begin to see themselves differently as contributors, creators, and participants in shaping the future of their communities. They are no longer simply students moving through a system, but young members of a community whose gifts, curiosity, and aspirations matter. The purpose of learning expands. Preparing young people for careers remains important. But communities begin speaking just as strongly about belonging, purpose, creativity, civic life, and the ability to contribute meaningfully to the world. This is what makes shared vision so powerful. It changes what a community believes is possible for its young people. And when that happens, ecosystems begin to come to life.
As new voices are brought into the conversation, the vision continues to evolve, becoming richer, more inclusive, and more deeply connected to the life of the community. Shared vision is not a destination. It is an ongoing act of imagination and co-creation.
The idea that young people learn across a community is not new. For generations, families, cultural institutions, workplaces, and community spaces have helped shape how young people grow and learn. What is new is the recognition that these opportunities have never been evenly available, and that this work calls for us to change that.
So what do we want for our children—and are we willing to build it together?
