DailyGood: News That Inspires - Feb 18, 2026
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| | | "Education is fundamentally human scale. Democracy works, and everybody can and should have a voice." — Steve Seidel | | |
Is This the Most Radical School Ever Built? When Sean Tevlin arrived at The Group School in 1970s Cambridge, he was a working-class dropout with a learning disability diagnosis and little hope -- but the converted garage on Franklin Street operated on a radical premise: that students damaged by traditional education could heal when given dignity, voice and genuine partnership in their own learning. Between 1971 and 1982, over 600 teenagers graduated from this freewheeling experiment where weekly consensus meetings replaced top-down authority, where Kitchen Chemistry brought science into students' kitchens, and where MIT professors tutored kids from housing projects because a moment in history made such unlikely collaborations possible. "Human beings know when they are being listened to, heard and respected," reflects Steve Seidel, who taught there at nineteen and carried its lessons through decades at Harvard's Graduate School of Education. Now, as alumni digitize yearbooks and curricula, teachers like Rosalie Fay Barnes are discovering what one Berkeley High student told her after watching footage of TGS: that when you show young people a school built on their own brilliance rather than their deficits, they don't ask for less -- they ask for more. | Be The Change Today, notice a young person in your life-a student, neighbor, or family member-who seems disengaged or has been labeled as "struggling." Instead of offering advice or correction, ask them a genuine question about something they care about, then listen as though they are the expert. As The Group School demonstrated, "human beings know when they are being listened to, heard and respected" -- and that recognition alone can crack open possibilities that traditional teaching never could. | |
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