Are We Designing Schools for Systems or for People? | Jane Shore

In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, host Rebecca Midles sits down with Dr. Jane Shore, founder of School of Thought PHL and author of People-Based Learning: The Future of Learning is Human (Routledge, 2026). Jane is an education researcher, idea visualizer, and school co-founder whose work sits at the intersection of learning science, neuroscience, storytelling, and visual thinking. Her book introduces a three-part framework, connect, reflect, and affect, as a guide for educators and leaders who want to design learning environments rooted in the irreplaceable power of human connection and cognition.

Together, Rebecca and Jane explore why people-based learning is not simply about relationships but about the cognitive dimension that other minds add to our thinking. They unpack the tension between individual agency and collective contribution, the concept of burstiness in creative teams, and why every great idea needs both a riffing room and a quiet corner. Jane shares practical tools including a disarming introduction activity that strips away titles, ripples of impact mapping, and the power of tiny experiments as a framework for gentle, trackable change inside inherited systems. The conversation also moves into leadership territory, examining how attendance data, staffing decisions, and grading policies are design choices that either open or close the door to human-centered learning, and why the most powerful thing a leader can do is place a story beside every number.

Transcript

Rebecca Midles: You’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. I’m Rebecca Midles. We’ve been wondering lately whether one of the biggest changes in education isn’t that we’ve forgotten what learning is, but that we’ve underestimated the conditions that make learning possible. As ed leaders, we can spend a lot of time talking about curriculum, technology, assessment, and now artificial intelligence.

Rebecca Midles: But before any of those matter, learning depends on something profoundly human: our relationships with one another. Today’s guest, Dr. Jane Shore, has spent more than two decades exploring this question as an education researcher, teacher, school founder, and a visual storyteller. As the founder of School of Thought, Jane blends learning science with storytelling and visual thinking to make complex learning science practical, memorable, and deeply human.

Rebecca Midles: In her new book, People-Based Learning: The Future of Learning is Human, she draws on learning science and neuroscience to explore why people, not programs or platforms, remain at the heart of meaningful learning through three core moves: connect, reflect, and effect. Jane, welcome to Getting Smart. 

Jane Shore: I am so happy to be here.

Jane Shore: I’m so happy to be in conversation with you and get to talk about these things that I’ve become obsessed with and can’t stop thinking about. 

Rebecca Midles: Same! Well, let’s kick it off. Your book begins with relationships, where learning happens. Much of our work at Getting Smart can also focus about one layer out, the systems and leadership conditions that either make these relationships possible or unintentionally get in their way.

Rebecca Midles: So to kick us off, if someone only read the title People-Based Learning, what do you hope they understand that they may have overlooked in conversations about innovation? 

Jane Shore: I love this. So first, something that I’ve learned as I’ve gotten into conversation across settings about the book, which is my favorite part of writing a book,

Jane Shore: is that people, the word people, will pull people into thinking that people-based learning is solely about relationships. And one thing I just want to clarify is that that is really an important part, but one of the pieces that I’ve begun to articulate as I’ve told stories and brought people in, because I always want to talk about relationships — 

Jane Shore: But people-based learning is not necessarily only about connection. 

Jane Shore: It is about cognition. It is about the thinking that grows because there’s a human thinking there with you, next to you, who you can learn through. So I would clarify, if you just read the title, that it is certainly related to relationship, and relationship is an element, and people-based learning is a, is an orientation to learning that is about cognition and the benefits that we gain by having another mind, another story, an experience that’s shared that makes learning human.

Jane Shore: It gives it dimension. It gives it possibility. It, changes our assumptions about something. So I think that that is the one piece that I’ve been learning myself through people-based learning. I’ve realized when I talk to people and they say, “Well, here’s what it’s about,” that’s something that I’m learning how to talk about in clearer terms..

Jane Shore: So it’s a people-based learning. It’s learning with and through others, because other minds can add dimension, thinking, and cognition. It’s a cognitive process. 

Rebecca Midles: Okay, I love that. I’m so glad you highlighted that. I, you know, as I was reading, since you brought this up, I kept coming back to the relationship between the individual and the collective.

Rebecca Midles: We refer to this sometimes as the tension of the “me” and the “we.” In education, we often talk about helping every learner become known, develop agency, and discover who they are. But increasingly, though, I’m wondering if the goal isn’t simply self-discovery but contribution. How do you think about the relationships between becoming ourselves, and I was getting a little bit this from you, but, and becoming part of something larger than ourselves?

Jane Shore: So I think that it is both, and I have to tell you, Rebecca, I am writing a lot lately because I can. You continue to evolve your ideas, and one of the ways I do that is visuals. One of the ways I do it is writing. And you used the word contribution. I do wanna get to the me and the we, because that’s a whole section of the book, and recognizing that talking about people-based learning isn’t necessarily saying everything should be collaborative, we need to have groups, everything’s about the collective.

Jane Shore: There is a lot of research around the idea that what really is the most effective way to dig into innovation, I, simplifying it, but this idea of intermittent collaboration- Mm-hmm … where you have time to yourself, and you also have time with the collective. And I think that that is really important when we imagine settings, any setting, school, work, life.

Jane Shore: We imagine that there are going to be times where we think better, because others are around and pushing us, and then we need to have the space and the time, and sometimes the quiet, at least I do, to process and digest and turn things into something different. Can I tell you a little story?

Jane Shore: Yeah. So one thing that I think about that is, It comes from a podcast that I was listening to. It was Trevor Noah talking to Adam Grant. Mm-hmm. And they were in, when Trevor Noah was hosting The Daily Show, they were- Mm-hmm

Jane Shore: in his creative reading, writing room, and the comedy writers their whole cadence, their talk did not change when Trevor Noah walked in. And it sounds like, well, that’s nothing. You know what? Nothing changed. But when you think about somebody like Trevor Noah, he’s the star, he’s on air, he’s the comedian they’re writing for, and nothing changed.

Jane Shore: And the culture of bouncing ideas, you take this and it goes somewhere else, it is a culture. And the term I learned from this podcast was burstiness. It’s burstiness. And it’s, it, it’s Anita Woolley, who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, is someone who’s done a lot of research on this and coined the term burstiness.

Jane Shore: It’s this idea that I have an idea, and it bounces off your idea, and then it might bounce back or go somewhere else. And that collective is a sign of a healthy team — Mm … a relationship that isn’t hierarchical. And then there’s this other place that it goes. So there’s an idea that can happen through this bursty environment, and then it will sit.

Jane Shore: So if you’re thinking about Trevor Noah on air, he has this bursty writing room where people are like jazz musicians, and they’re playing off, they’re riffing off each other, and then he takes it, digests it, owns it. So there has to be that exchange. 

Jane Shore: People-based learning, it does not mean that we have to do everything together or that collective thinking is, in itself, the way that we all need to think, but it is the benefit of having other minds and riffing and recognizing- Mm … that wisdom that comes from all kinds of exchange.

Rebecca Midles: Okay. Mm-hmm. So you advocate for the connect, reflect, and affect model. Can you walk us through how a principal can practically facilitate that connect phase in a staff meeting or professional development session to build trust? 

Jane Shore: Yeah. So one thing I do wanna clarify is that connect phase is not what we might think of as an icebreaker. It’s not like, how do we do this? Well, let me give you. And it’s gonna sound like an icebreaker when I tell you about it, but an activity that I love, that I actually did just last week at a keynote event that I got to co-facilitate with a friend of mine. So the activity is this, and it, you might know this already, but you ask every individual to introduce themselves to someone with no other real guidance.

Jane Shore: You take 30 seconds, just one minute total. Introduce yourself, and break from that. And then the next time, turn to someone else, introduce yourself, but you can’t say anything that you just said to the first person. And this idea is meant to illustrate the culture that sometimes happens when we know how, you know, our titles, our roles, we upfront a lot of introductory scripts. Mm-hmm. And how can we expose that second layer? How can we recognize that connecting is with a multidimensional individual? And so in debriefing from an activity like that, there were several people that said, “I could all of a sudden be myself.”

Jane Shore: Mm. And it’s, it’s something different about that form of connection. It m- and I wanna clarify too, I, it, so sometimes that means that you are talking to somebody without any understanding of where or who they are. are, and, and it allows us, in some way, to recognize that if we can reduce some of those titles and, you know, even the markers of school —

Jane Shore: So we have same age groups, we have, you know, certain classrooms and levels. How can we create spaces where people are talking outside of those? They are getting to the person, without all the other details. So I think that if you were in a professional learning setting as a principal, recognizing all of these layers that we have, I, I think about the additional things that people wouldn’t know about you. , you know, exposing everything or being vulnerable. I’m not even really talking about that. I’m talking about imagining the places that we can go if we get beyond. And so I would say something like that activity. I love that activity. It’s always… It, when, the first time I did it, it made me realize how, how many things I wouldn’t say the first 30 seconds.

Rebecca Midles: That’s good. Mm-hmm. And everybody listening, we always love, really thoughtful, intentional ways to connect like that, so that’s great. so I’m, I’m gonna go to effect now. The- 

Rebecca Midles: So I, I love that because like I said earlier, it kind of moves beyond that personal growth and, and gets to what I think is contribution.

Jane Shore: How do you know when learning has crossed that threshold or that line? Like, when it isn’t changing the learner but beginning to change the community around them? I have two things that your question makes me think about: one is a story, and one is a way of knowing. I want to start with the story. how do you know, that you’ve affected and the affect? So the model is connect, reflect, affect. And I think, you know, any one of those, at various times in schools, we could gloss over — just because Mm-hmm

Jane Shore: there are other things that are happening. I, had the opportunity to, as you said in the introduction, I had the opportunity to be part of a team that started a school, and my son graduated from that school last year. 

Rebecca Midles: Mm-hmm. 

Jane Shore: And one of the assignments, he was a first-time voter in Philadelphia. One of the experiences he had was to go out to Love Park, outside of City Hall in Philadelphia, before the last presidential election — Mm

Jane Shore: and ask people if they… find people who had not had the opportunity to vote and ask them why. And so the assignment, It, it, for a lot of the young people that were engaging in the park that day, they had a lot of assumptions going in, thinking people didn’t believe in democracy anymore, or that their vote didn’t matter.

And the first person my son encountered actually ended up being the only person, because he had such a long conversation with him. The guy said, “Well, I was in line to vote, and I got a call that my wife was in labor. I had to get out of the line, I couldn’t vote. I wanted to be there at the birth of my son.” And, when we talk about effect, I will say that… And you’re, you’re asking about the community, but I will say showing up to vote, which was about a month and a half after that, that engagement, that e- experience that he had, he showed up. You know, and, and we were, like, proud parents.

Here in Philly, he got all kinds of notices and postcards from the comm- “Oh, we’re so happy you’re a first-time voter.” But he had his assumptions challenged by meeting a person whose story gave him new dimension to what he thought was the reason people didn’t vote. And so when you s- when we think about how does that change-you know, it changes the mind of a young voter by getting out and learning with and through a person’s story. He doesn’t have a relationship with that person. He, this is somebody he met, but that person definitely affected him. 

Jane Shore: And one of the things that, I’ve had the experience and opportunity to work with some of the schools I’ve been working with on something called ripples of impact mapping. There are a lot of different uses of something like this, and this is a people-based way to track effect. So, and I think the name just gives you the idea. Mm-hmm. But imagine if after a project, young people would, or anybody, think about the idea of intentionally identifying the kinds of things that have happened through touchpoints. So you might take a project and split it into the goals and- Mm-hmm … look at the people that you met. And then through those people, where did it go? And you end up, and I’m, you know, moving my hands around on a podcast, but you end up having this beautiful visual that demonstrates the affect in a way that affects community and starts to allow you to go beyond what an evaluation of a project would be. 

And it, especially for people who are doing great, creative work — creating experiences, opening up opportunities — and then they’re like, “Well, how do we evaluate it?” And the kinds of things that stick with you will be, you know, experiences that challenge your assumption about voting or a physical way of looking, a visual way of looking at all of the ripples of impact that have happened because you were engaging in a project. So my definition of affect continues to expand-as I get to learn and vicariously experience the kinds of things that educators are doing and that we can do together to expand our understanding of, you know, what outcome means. 

Rebecca Midles: Mm-hmm. I love the authenticity of the way you described that. many of the schools we currently lift up or celebrate — not just at Getting Smart, but as ed leaders in the space — they’re intentionally designed around these ideas. They show us what’s possible. Most educators and leaders are working inside systems they inherited, not systems they were able to design. Maybe they have some influence over some pieces, but as a larger system. what advice would you give leaders trying to create more human-centered learning without waiting for the “perfect conditions”?

Jane Shore: I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I’ve gotten to work with lots of different schools over the last few years. I’ve been so lucky to have settings from charter to public to independent. And independent sometimes people think you have more flexibility, but here in Philadelphia we have the oldest, Quaker school, so it’s a 300-year-old school that works on consensus. And imagine how change- Mm … happens in spaces across these different settings. And so- One of the pieces that has been really consistently useful is thinking about — instead of imagining a total overhaul — where are the pockets of change that can happen? And I go to, this idea, and I got it from an author named Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

She’s somebody who is a neuroscientist in London, and she’s written a book called Tiny Experiments. And it’s really the concept of tiny experiments that I love. The idea is: we don’t need to set grand goals. And the- I know that we work with strategic plans, and we work with, you know, annual goals.

What kinds of things do you wanna do? But what you can do today and track over two weeks can allow you to make a decision in two weeks to go this way or that way. I almost think of it as a heuristic. Like, You try something that feels purposeful, you track it. and I, I have a background in research, and, you know, I, I feel like if you can do this kind of personal research where you’re actually tracking — if I begin each day with a silence in the classroom, how does that affect the mood over the course of a week? And you track these l- these elements. And so you have purpose, you can track. And for me, and, and a lot of the work that has been done on this tiny, this idea of ki- tiny experiments, I find it really useful to have someone you’re accountable to, someone you’re talking to. So you say, “Okay, I have a tiny experiment.

I’m going to try over two weeks in my classroom doing this small, human-oriented, people-based activity every day, and I want to see if it changes a structure or changes the orientation people have around each other.” I’ll give you two examples of some things people could track. One is: I love what one of the local teachers here got to do — she had students citing each other, which I love.

I bring that up as an example all the time, because I think it creates an environment where you recognize the learning is in the room. and it feels like something so small, but it’s also big. There was also a teacher, I got to visit in California last year, and I came a couple of months into the school year.

Every day the students had to sit in a new spot next to new people. And these are little things. What does that do to the classroom? Yeah. How does it change who’s talking? And we- you used the word contribution. I’ve really been thinking about this term participation- Mm-hmm … which is very frequently defined as the person that’s speaking quickly and answering a question, whereas contribution really recognizes the many ways people can participate.

I don’t know if those definitions are exact, but, but I– the contribution just feels like it appeals to me. And little tweaks like that. Mm-hmm. Have people move to different seats. It doesn’t mean you’re overhauling an entire curriculum and, you know, kids are out of the classroom three days a week. It’s they’re sitting in different seats.

And what does that do to their knowledge of who’s around them? Who’s in their class? They’re sitting next to people that maybe they wouldn’t normally. 

Rebecca Midles: So I love this. We call ’em design sprints, and I often talk about what’s the minimal shift you can make? Let’s just start doing the work and start seeing. So I love that you’re giving such great concrete examples. I know that people are appreciating hearing this. One of the things that makes you really distinctive is that you don’t just explain ideas — you draw them. Big fan. You make invisible systems visible.

Rebecca Midles: Your book reminds people of that. You speak about it. You talk about how leaders are designers — every schedule, a grading policy, staffing decisions, all of those things can expand or limit the relationships you’re describing. So how do you hope leaders begin seeing those conditions differently after reading your book?

Jane Shore: Let me think about the question. So how do they see the conditions differently? I would say, so, so leaders, Leaders are everywhere. And so I just wanna start with, like, if you were talking about a leader, you know, we’re le- like the students can be leaders, our, our teachers are leaders and they’re learners at the same time.

I want to start kind of thinking about educational leaders from a district level or a superintendent level and thinking about con- you know, we were talking about conditions. I, I, people-based learning, creating cultures of people-based learning, creating space for thinking about the humanity behind, the, a lot of the operational pieces that we need to engage. I mean, people-based learning doesn’t mean we don’t need to take care of bus schedules and attendance data. But imagine adding, again, this idea of dimension, and I think about work that’s been done. For example, attendance — leaders are tracking attendance. It’s a number. There’s so much cool work going on, but I will name two examples.

One is the Opportunity Youth Network in Newark. Over the last few years, they’ve been conducting a study that is youth-run. It’s youth-led, youth interviews to understand absenteeism in Newark. What they’ve uncovered were many dimensions, and not only that, they’ve created leaders in these young people in Newark, added dimension to what absenteeism means, and then you have these absentee numbers, and then you also have a recorded story.

Here is a student describing what the reason is that they can’t show up for school. and adding to that, there’s a work on the new absenteeism that friends at the Reinvention Lab have been doing over the last couple of years. And again, it is about, And I think they’ve s- you know, they, they’ve interviewed people, hundred, more than 100 people.

They’ve done focus groups. And you a- again, it’s you’re looking at a number, you’re looking at a system, And again, it is about creating space — and I guess that’s a condition — creating space for hearing voices. Mm-hmm. And so your number in whatever is happening in your schools, especially in high schools, where the absentee issue, especially after the last few years, has risen to the top of concerns, you all of a sudden have a voice of an individual.

So what are the numbers for? If the numbers are for saying, “Well, here are some things that we think are challenging.” The only way you can respond to something like that is to actually have the voices of the people it’s affecting be part of the way you’re collecting information.

So I think that, for leaders co- yeah, understanding how to operationalize this idea of people-based learning — it is about adding dimension. Maybe I’ll say it in a simpler way. I think that beside every number, if there could be a story collected — about what engagement means, what teacher retention means, all of these system-level structures and numbers — if we could start to think about who the people behind this are, it allows us to see the true story and reflect on what’s happening with people. he world doesn’t mean recreating all the, you know, ways that we have to really structure and run schools. It means adding the people, adding the “who” — thinking about who made this possible, who are the voices that need to speak on this issue, and who needs to hear those stories. 

Rebecca Midles: Let’s circle back to the visuals. How have visuals influenced your work? How important is it to you? I have found that people — sometimes that helps the sense-making. If they see a visual of it, it’s just more than words, right?

Like, how have you come to that, and how do you find that useful in the work you do? 

Jane Shore: So visuals for me are a way of thinking. Mm-hmm. And I learned even more during the pandemic. We had just started a school, and part of what we were all adjusting to was not being in person with people. I started doing visuals for all kinds of things.

I called it “visuals for virtual,” and it evolved into: how can we begin to use visuals as a way to dive into things like research and complex ideas? One of the things though that I realized even further in writing a book was that the visuals helped evolve those concepts. And as I was visualizing, the thinking was advancing.

So it becomes a tool for communication with others, but it’s also a personal tool for me- Mm … because it allows me to move forward in my thinking. When something can be represented in a visual, it provides another language. It accesses a different part of us. And, so I’ve been doing a lot of it lately, especially as each time, each iteration.

Every time I get to… I mean, probably I’m gonna do a visual after we talk today, because Every time I get to talk about things, I think, “Oh, this is something I want to dive into” — how can a visual capture a whole story? And partly also I think about I spent many years, getting to sort of engage in learning science and doing research, and visuals really aren’t a part of that world in the academic sense. So you’re creating articles for journals — and when I started creating visuals for the research and seeing that it was helping people understand what the research was all about, it made me realize we’re creating spaces that aren’t open and welcoming to the users of the things we’re trying to articulate.

So it just provides another language, and it provides another way in and another way out. I think that’s what it is. It’s in, and it’s out. And I love doing it. It’s so, It allows for 

For me, it’s really the visuals, and then I can write about it. 

Rebecca Midles: Hmm. It’s like your first stage. Mm-hmm. Okay, so to close this out — your favorite gentle rebellions, that you think would be helpful for people to hear? 

Jane Shore: so I think that, to create spaces that are more people-based, it is a reflection of our orientation, and I think we actually already talked about some of the ones that I think could be really useful.

for me, having spent a lot of time in research and recognizing the importance of, taking stories more than just the quantitative, taking I also think that, the element of ensuring… I have been talking to some schools about doing a people-based learning audit. Imagine all the places where another mind can help make learning more inclusive, more durable, more emotional, and more actionable. So when I think… And that actually spells IDEA.

Inclusive, durable, emotional, and actionable — if we can engage in ways we talked about with tiny experiments and creating conditions, ok at something and say, “Would this be a place where people-based learning could add to the understanding that someone has of a concept?”

It can be any setting, and the de- the… I just think there are ways for us to look at ourselves and dig into these tiny experiments, little tweaks. I like gentle rebellion. But I, I don’t think we frequently do that, where like, okay, what is the objective? What are, what are the pieces that we need to check?

Imagine how those checks can begin to sort of… I have a visual in my head — like checks flying, becoming something that allows us to reach beyond what the lesson objectives might say. So how can you bring people into whatever learning setting? 

Rebecca Midles: I totally get the themes you’re sharing. I can hear it throughout all of it. It’s wonderful. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. 

Jane Shore: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I love talking about all of this, and I love getting to dive deeply into it with people who are thinking as well. 

About Guest

Jane R. Shore, Ed.D., is an accomplished education researcher, idea visualizer, and community builder with over two decades of experience as a student, teacher, and high school co-founder. As the founder of School of Thought PHL, she is dedicated to fostering meaningful learning by bridging the gap between rapid knowledge growth and essential human connection. Her work is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach that blends learning science with storytelling and visual art to make complex research findings accessible and actionable for educators and organizations alike.

Dr. Shore is the author of People-Based Learning: The Future of Learning is Human (Routledge, 2026). This work serves as a guide for leaders and lifelong learners to shift from system-focused models to those rooted in the understanding that humans are biologically wired for connection. Her model, which weaves together the three core moves of “Connect, Reflect, and Affect,” provides a framework for creating learning environments that are intentional, inclusive, and capable of translating deep insight into lasting, meaningful change.

Links

• Jane Shore LinkedIn
• School of Thought PHL
• Jane Shore Edutopia Profile
• School of Thought Substack
• Revolution School Research
• People-Based Learning: The Future of Learning is Human