“But Do the Kids Actually Learn There?”

“But do the kids actually learn there?” It’s a question we sometimes hear, offered with curiosity, and occasionally with a touch of uncertainty. It’s an honest question, especially when what you see at Verdi EcoSchool doesn’t quite match the picture of school many of us grew up with.

In many ways, that’s exactly the point.

At Verdi EcoSchool, we believe young people are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with information. They arrive with interests, passions, questions, strengths, challenges, and an innate desire to make sense of the world around them. Our learners move through mixed-age Discovery Levels and spend their days learning through hands-on, project- and place-based experiences, with educators who see themselves not simply as instructors, but as guides, collaborators, and fellow learners. We believe our role is to create room for possibility—to listen closely to young people, help them discover what matters to them, and give them the tools, relationships, and confidence to chart their own course.

We are not designing for the schools we have always known—institutions of the past, built for a different time and a different world. We are designing for what school can be. We are building for the present and the future, for children growing up in an age defined by constant connection, abundant information, and rapid change. We are building for the first generation of students to see their educational experiences deeply immersed in and influenced by the internet, smartphones, and AI.

Today’s learners do not need more opportunities to memorize. They need opportunities to make meaning. They need to ask questions that matter, test ideas in real contexts, collaborate, reflect, and grow not only academically, but as whole human beings.

At Verdi EcoSchool, learning is intentionally alive. It lives in the garden beds where students plant seeds, tend soil, and witness the quiet miracle of growth. It lives in the kitchen where harvested food becomes shared meals, where math, science, culture, and care all converge. It lives in the compost piles, in the rhythms of the seasons, in the understanding that we are deeply connected to the natural world and responsible for its stewardship.

It lives in our discomfort and our joy. It lives in tension and ease. It lives in spaces that are harder to measure, but no less essential.

It lives in conversations where students learn to navigate conflict with empathy and respect in our Peer Helpers classes—a social-emotional learning course designed to help young people build the skills to support themselves and others. Learners explore goal-setting, time management, listening, conflict resolution, personality differences, and healthy relationships, then practice those skills in the context of their real lives and relationships. Through reflection and honest conversation, they develop greater self-awareness, empathy, confidence, and resilience—skills that matter just as much around a picnic table, at an internship, or in a future workplace as they do at school.

It lives in Fiber Arts, where learners discover what can happen when we slow down and make something with our hands. Students may begin with a raw fleece and follow it through the process of cleaning, processing, and transforming it into yarn and eventually into a piece of art, while exploring the history and cultural meaning of fiber along the way. As their hands learn to manipulate a new material, learners are also practicing patience, fine-motor skills, focus, creativity, persistence, and the deeper human work of transforming something ordinary into something meaningful.

And it lives in mentorship. Through one-on-one meetings with educators, learners have space to talk about their goals, passions, challenges, internships, college interviews, and the choices they are making about their lives. A mentor is not there to prescribe a path, but to listen, ask questions, help a young person work through challenges, and reflect on what they are learning about themselves. Over time, these relationships help learners feel known and supported while developing the self-direction and confidence to make positive choices for themselves.

In a more traditional setting, that time might be redirected toward additional instructional minutes, more seat time, more standardized preparation.

Here, we make a different choice.

We choose to create space for reflection, connection, discovery, and for the slow and meaningful work of becoming. We want all learners to know this is a space for imperfect growth and for failing forward.

Research continues to affirm the impact we witness every day with your learners:

Project-based learning fosters deeper understanding and long-term retention. In the 2019 study, Revisiting the Effects of Project-Based Learning on Students’ Academic Achievement, Cheng-Huan Chen and Yong-Cih Yang analyzed 30 studies involving 12,585 students across 189 schools and nine countries, finding that project-based learning positively impacts academic achievement compared with traditional instruction.

Place-based education builds relevance and connection. In the 2023 review, Place-Based Education: A Systematic Review of Literature, Miri Yemini, Laura Engel, and Adi Ben Simon examined 149 studies and found that connecting learning to students’ physical, cultural, ecological, and social surroundings can support engagement, environmental awareness, and learning.

And in 2023, Christina Cipriano and colleagues at the Yale Child Study Center conducted an analysis of 424 studies involving more than 575,000 students and found that school-based social-emotional learning programs were associated with improvements in social and emotional skills, relationships, school functioning, and academic achievement.

So yes, our students are learning!

They are learning how to think, question, collaborate, care, make mistakes, and how to try again. They are learning how to engage with the world, not just consume it. They are learning skills that cannot always be captured on a test, but will serve them for a lifetime.

We know it looks different.

And we are deeply, humbly grateful that it does.

Because the world our children are growing into is different, too. And it calls for individuals who are not only knowledgeable, but curious, grounded, adaptable, and compassionate.

The world can use a bit of “different” these days.

And we are growing it.