The clich茅 to describe my condition was burnout, and I had all the textbook physical signs. But something else had happened too: I鈥檇 lost my curiosity. 

Like many educators, I got into the work of schools because I loved learning. Somewhere along the way, though, I became so consumed with everyone else鈥檚 learning 鈥� students, teachers, principals 鈥� that I stopped paying attention to my own. The best educators somehow manage to remain students themselves. I hadn鈥檛. I was increasingly skilled at organizing other people鈥檚 intellectual growth while neglecting my own. I was at risk of becoming one of life’s most depressing archetypes: a competent bureaucrat. 

I thought leaving schools meant I was taking a break from education. Instead, the next several years taught me more about learning than almost anything I had done as a superintendent. 

My turning point came about a year after leaving school work. I was at a wedding watching the DJ spin salsa music as a few intrepid guests hit the dance floor. It reminded me of all the times I鈥檇 started to learn salsa dancing and quit. 

Then came the flood of memories of other abandoned ambitions: the novel I had started and stopped many times, never getting much beyond a few pages; my repeated attempts to become fluent in Italian; the many sports I鈥檇 wanted to learn. When I got home, I took out a notebook and wrote them all down. The list included some relatively simple items, like playing guitar, and some much more ambitious ones, like flying airplanes. 

I decided I would tackle one item each year. Without realizing it, I had recreated school for myself. Every year would be devoted to a single subject, with a curriculum, benchmarks and a final exam. This time, the only student was me. That experiment became the basis of my new book, . The book is geared toward people from all walks of life, but it鈥檚 particularly salient to educators. 

During my first year, I took on powerlifting because I wanted to reclaim my strength and overall physical health. I wound up entering a powerlifting competition and taking home the top deadlift in my weight class. During the next year, I learned screenwriting and signed with CAA, Hollywood鈥檚 most powerful agency. Then, during the height of the pandemic, I learned to surf. After that came tennis, novel writing, biochemistry, and Italian cooking. 

I鈥檇 be lying if I said external validation and achievement didn鈥檛 matter. But the most lasting benefits were what those experiences taught me about learning. I couldn鈥檛 help approaching each pursuit like a school leader. 

At the beginning of every year, I built a scope and sequence. I identified the component knowledge and subskills, put them in a logical order and established benchmarks along the way. The same process we had once used to break a seventh-grade math standard into teachable steps now became a way to deconstruct a deadlift, a tennis stroke or the metabolism of glucose.

Every year also ended with a final exam, though not necessarily a written one. In powerlifting and tennis, I entered competitions. During my biochemistry year, I took the MCAT. During my Italian cooking year, I hosted a pop-up restaurant for friends and invited a food critic from New York magazine.

I now believe every educator should deliberately become a beginner at something on a regular basis. You can fool yourself into thinking the books you read or the pedagogy workshops are enough to make you an expert. Those can add value. But they cannot reproduce the cognitive and emotional experiences our students face every day. The fear, embarrassment, bewilderment, failure, and, of course the joy of finally getting it right. 

To put it somewhat harshly, if you haven鈥檛 been truly bad at something lately and climbed your way to proficiency or mastery, then you are out of touch. I certainly was. I thought I was an expert on learning when I was a superintendent. Yet every step of my personal learning journey deepened or expanded my practice. Sometimes, it even exploded my orthodoxy.

For example, I鈥檝e long been a skeptic of group work. Too often in classrooms, “collaboration” means one student doing the assignment while everyone else free rides. Then I spent two months in a Tuscan kitchen and watched how tacit knowledge got transmitted sideways  from watching, imitating and being corrected by my teammates. 

I was also a bit of a personalized-learning skeptic because I鈥檇 witnessed countless schools oversell their technology in service of getting funding and attention. But during my biochemistry year, I was blown away by the quality of online content. 

This was worlds away from when I was in college. Back then, we got exactly one explanation of the citric acid cycle from our professor and maybe another from the one textbook we were assigned (which often was written by the exact same professor). Now with the push of a button I could access thousands of high quality videos from experts competing against each other to offer the best explanation. 

This challenged my view of the role of teacher. Explanation of content is simply less important now than it was when I ran schools. And with the advent of AI tutoring, we also have new and powerful avenues for differentiation. 

Other lessons were less about changing my mind than about turning theory into practice. I鈥檇 long had a superficial understanding of educational concepts like cognitive load theory, the Feynman technique and spaced repetition. But preparing to take the MCAT forced me to use those practices every day, sometimes under extreme pressure. 

And sometimes, being a student gave me a newfound appreciation for methods I already believed in. When I ran schools, we were fanatics about videos. We filmed teachers constantly and broke down classroom instructional tape like NFL coaches. We鈥檇 tag and save examples of excellent teaching (inspired by the work of Doug Lemov) and we鈥檇 watch our mistakes on repeat until we could decode what went wrong. 

I was almost always the one behind the lens, but years later, learning to surf, I was on the other side of the camera. My coach would film me taking all kinds of undignified falls. We鈥檇 watch the tape together, drill on land, then try again the next morning. For the first time, I understood how vulnerable it feels to watch yourself screw up. And I also gained a deeper understanding of how to pair the video with immediate practice. 

It鈥檚 easy, after years of evaluating others, to become an expert observer of learning. The harder 鈥� and more important 鈥� task is to remain a learner yourself. Which is why, after all of these years, my one-room school is still open. And my list keeps growing. I haven鈥檛 yet crossed off flying airplanes or salsa dancing, but I know I鈥檒l get there someday. 

Once a month, staffers at Sullivan Middle School in Sullivan, Illinois, pick adjectives to describe their feelings about work as part of an anonymous online survey. 

Principal Nathan Ogle said the short questionnaire, which he implemented in October, has helped transform employee culture at the rural school of 250 students. It鈥檚 one of the products offered by , an education technology startup that鈥檚 trying to improve teacher well-being across the U.S. 

The company has pulse surveys, downloadable resources and staff care packages that schools and districts can purchase. Since its 2022 launch in Omaha, Nebraska, Alpaca has worked with more than 100 schools and districts in 25 states. It received at the 2025 Future of Education Technology Conference, which features ed tech innovations and businesses.

鈥淚t’s been incredibly useful just to get that feedback from my staff on what things they’re feeling and experiencing,鈥� Ogle said. 鈥淚’ve been able to respond to that stuff as it’s coming in, more or less in real time.鈥�

During the 2023-24 school year, 48% of public school teachers reported declining mental health that impacted their work, up from 42% the year before, according to . The percentage of teachers who reported their schools offered minimal or no employee wellness programming increased from 68% in 2023 to 72% in 2024.

For Alpaca鈥檚 founder, Karen Borchert, the focus is employee engagement and retention: “What does it feel like to go to work when you are a teacher, what is it like and what could make it better?” Borchert went to college to become a high school teacher, but after earning her degree became interested in nonprofits and startups. She decided to create her own company after the pandemic hit and school staff shortages worsened.

She began by selling subscription care packs to teachers and schools. The packs 鈥� which inspired the name Alpaca 鈥斅燾ost $25 to $35 each and include items like snacks, pens, notepads, markers, tissues, lip balm and a handwritten note.聽

Last year, Alpaca launched its online pulse survey along with free like staff activities, teacher appreciation tips and strategies to help administrators make their employees feel valued. Borchert said most of the schools that use Alpaca will have staff complete the survey in monthly meetings. Some use Alpaca鈥檚 digital resources to host games and give out the care packages as prizes.

鈥淲e love to see them work together as a system or as a platform,鈥� Borchert said. 鈥淎nd then, by the time the principal gets back to their office, all of their survey data is live and ready, and they can see what鈥檚 needed.鈥�

Ogle said the monthly pulse surveys are more useful than his district’s annual climate survey, which doesn鈥檛 provide results until after the school year is over. When he began implementing the survey last fall, many teachers said they felt stretched thin and wanted time to plan with one another.

In response, he restarted a school tradition of 鈥淲orking Wednesdays.鈥� Administrators took over supervising students during lunch so teachers could use that time to collaborate with colleagues.

鈥淪ince we’ve implemented that, 鈥榮tretched thin鈥� is no longer a phrase that people are choosing” on the survey, he said. 鈥淚 have staff members who, if I just went and asked them, 鈥楬ey, how are you doing?鈥� They’re going to say, 鈥楩ine,鈥� because that’s what they do. But this gives them that opportunity to anonymously let me know how they鈥檙e really doing.鈥�

Alpaca’s reach also extends beyond schools and districts. 

High Desert Education Service District, a Bend, Oregon, agency that places thousands of substitute teachers in 10 nearby school districts every year, began . Part of the state’s Department of Education, High Desert uses the pulse survey for the subs to rank how they feel about working in different schools and districts. Substitutes also receive Alpaca packs when they accept a certain number of school assignments.

Borchert said Caddo Parish Public Schools in Shreveport, Louisiana, uses the products in its . And the University of Nebraska-Lincoln uses the pulse survey and care packages for its student teachers. 

Sue Kemp, a professor in the university’s special education department, said the survey results help her decide which schools to place student teachers at to gain practical experience in the classroom. 

鈥淚t gives me a better picture about how the students are feeling and doing in their school,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 get a better snapshot of the support that they’re feeling in the school and in their own skill development, and what they need on top of it.鈥�

The student teachers and the educators who are supervising them in the classroom also receive monthly Alpaca packs as a way to say “good job” or “thank you” for their work, Kemp said. She said the students and the supervisors have reported that the care packages make them feel more positive about their jobs and more connected to the college.

鈥淲e are at a moment where I think our educators are going to need so much care, and they’re going to need so many good support systems,鈥� Borchert said. 鈥淭hey’re going to need to be able to say how they’re feeling and what they need while we kind of walk through uncertain or unprecedented times.鈥�