The Best Thing I Did as an Educator Was Get Out of the Way

The Best Thing I Did as an Educator Was Get Out of the Way

This past year I watched kids write musicals, launch businesses, and heal in weeks, not years. The only thing I changed was getting out of their way. I call it Inside-Out Education.

An article by Andrew Freeman,  Founder of Coherence Education

I already knew kids were amazing, but nothing prepared me for the remarkable, mind-blowing things I’d witness them doing this past year.

• A thirteen-year-old wrote a full-length musical — twenty original, orchestrated songs in less than 16 weeks. One of the songs, sung by a classmate, is so tender it touched me to tears. 
  
• An eleven-year-old cured her own peanut allergy through meditation. She was recently featured on Dr. Joe Dispenza’s YouTube channel, where the segment has drawn 27K views — and she gives Coherence Education a shout-out at the 5:11 mark for opening her heart and making the healing possible. She’s also built a YouTube channel of original animations teaching kids about heart coherence, and written an illustrated book — all in less than 24 weeks.. 
  

• A thirteen-year-old walked into our final Money Mastery for Kids showcase and blew away a panel of “Sharks” in our Shark Tank–format finale. His tree-net business is on track to “net” him
  0K+ this year — all in less than 8 weeks. Numerous other students launched businesses over those same eight weeks.
• Students have shown incredible psychic abilities in class. Many have learned to see and read through blindfolds, accurately remote-view hidden objects, and send healing to animals in distress on the other side of the world. Yes, just like you, I was taught these things are scientifically impossible. Luckily, nobody told our kids that. 

For most adults, any one of these accomplishments would take years — if ever. 

So what’s the secret? Did I just happen to hit the lottery and have a bunch of outliers come into my school? 

No. These are brilliant kids, but for the most part their parents report that they were just “normal kids” before they came into our school and were unleashed by our “Inside-Out” learning methodology. 

Honestly? The secret to their tremendous creations wasn’t anything I taught them.

The secret was me just getting out of their way.

Every Child Is a River

Here’s how I picture it. Each child is a river — a powerful current of energy flowing in their own unique direction. 

Most schools think the way the kids’ current is flowing is wrong. They decide to divert it, dam it, or even make it try to flow back upstream! That, I’m convinced, is why so many kids hate school. 

Inspired by the Sudbury School philosophy, I decided my job as an educator was to respect the path of the kids’ rivers, believe in their inherent desire to learn and create, and just to clear the way so each of their respective rivers could run unimpeded.

The result? Kids create at a genius level and LOVE coming to school (our biggest complaint by far is that our vacations are too long). 

A River Needs Banks

Here’s where people get me wrong. When I say “get out of the way,” they picture chaos — kids doing whatever they want, all day, with no direction.

The opposite is true. A river without banks isn’t free. It’s a swamp.
What makes a river powerful is that it’s channeled.

So we build banks. A rhythm to the day. A mentor who holds the vision alongside them. Real deadlines, real audiences, real stakes — a Shark Tank panel, a showcase, a published book. 

Accountability the child actually wants, because it’s pointed at their goal, not ours. True hope and optimism for the future.

Practically Speaking…

So what do the banks actually look like? The magical engine of Inside-Out Education is the two hours a day kids spend in our Genius Zone Project Rooms.

Parents tell me all the time: “There’s no way my kid could focus for two hours.” That’s true when it’s work they don’t want to do.

Genius Zone work is different. When the project is something a kid is genuinely excited about and wants to do — something that uses their natural talents and lines up with their values — focus stops being a battle. 

There’s literally nothing they’d rather be doing.

The kids work side by side in a Zoom room, heads down on their Genius Zone Project — the thing they love to do, are naturally great at, and care deeply about. 

As they work, they see the other kids working away on their projects, and the sense of camaraderie creates a wave of contagious focus.

The proof that this works? We never assign homework. And many of our students pour extra hours into their projects on their own time. Not because they have to — because they want to.

It turns out the river banks aren’t a cage. They’re a catapult.

Life Coaches? For Kids???

I got a life coach — when I was 45 — and it was incredibly helpful to have someone in my corner who believed in me and provided expertise, encouragement, and accountability.

I wondered what it would have been like if I’d had a life coach when I was a kid. So I made sure every one of our full-time students got paired with their own Life Coach — a caring, non-family adult they meet with one-on-one every week. 

Someone to ask: “How are your projects going? What could be going better? How are you feeling — and how’s life?” It’s someone in their corner to be accountable to, to be encouraged by, and — quietly powerful — someone they want to show up for, because they want to be as amazing as their coach believes they are.

Nouns, Verbs, and the Age of AI

Recently I wrote about how school trains kids to become nouns — doctor, lawyer, accountant, engineer — and how AI is rapidly taking over those noun jobs.

What I saw this year is the antidote. These kids aren’t being trained to be replaceable nouns. They’re becoming irreplaceable verbs — creating, building, healing, innovating, connecting — expressing exactly the divine human capacities no machine can replicate.

As we move into the Age of AI, we can’t afford to keep preparing our children the same way. It’s bad for the kids, and bad for the parents who support them.
The future is going to DEMAND that our kids be at their human best.

And as parents — why would we want anything less?