After having the privilege of spending a few days with Yong Zhao at our summer BCSSA gathering, I am writing this spin to consolidate my thoughts and consider a few potential next steps as I move into the new school year. I have always used writing as a tool to process and make sense of my messy thinking, so bear with me as I grapple with the notion of fix it or find it while reopening my leadership toolbox and preparing mentally for the year ahead.

Find it or Fix it?

I am realizing that Yong has been an important influence on how I move through many educational considerations. In our doctoral program, Yong, as one of my professors, never failed to hit the repeat button on "why," pushing my colleagues and I to reconsider not only what we were doing, but why we were doing it. He created a safe space for intellectual risk-taking, continually provoking us to question assumptions and resist settling for the status quo. Not everyone has this kind of magic, but Yong does.

In his endearing and powerfully roundabout manner, Yong can move a conversation from one place to an entirely different dimension. Sometimes he loses you along the way, but after some fascinating intellectual off-roading, he invariably helps you find your way back to the essential question of why we do what we do: our students.

Yong was also a member of my doctoral dissertation defence committee, and I will always appreciate his support during that intellectually demanding and emotionally draining process. While he had no problem putting me in the hot seat to defend my research, he did it in a way that allowed me to rise to his questions rather than become lost in the power differential that can so easily accompany those moments. Yong, along with my doctoral advisor Elizabeth Kozleski, equipped me with the tools to think beyond what is and to create new ways of honouring human dignity in educational spaces that are often fraught with systemic complexity.

His new book, Fix the Past or Invent the Future, is an important read for leaders committed to future thinking, which, quite frankly, should be all of us. Future thinking in education is often reduced to conversations about artificial intelligence and where AI fits within schools and learning experiences. While these questions matter, the challenge Zhao presents is much larger. The future is not simply a question of technological advancement and the take over of chat-bots; it is a question of human possibility.

Humanity is Bigger

Those working in the field of AI might argue that there is nothing more significant than the transformational potential of artificial intelligence. Yet my response is that humanity is bigger. As AI continues to reshape our world, our responsibility as educational leaders is not only to understand emerging technologies, but also to strengthen the human capacities and dignity that make education meaningful in the first place. This is not simply an educational issue. It is a leadership consideration for all of us, regardless of our professional discipline.

How we imagine schools for an unwritten future must focus deeply on the human experience, and meaningful change begins with the human experience itself.

Three Questions for Yong

This year's summer gathering was exactly that. At the opening of our BCSSA gathering, several colleagues and I, all former students of Yong's, had the opportunity to put him in the hot seat. We thoughtfully curated questions around educational hot topics and future thinking, doing our best to stay on track with Yong's roller-coaster style of thinking. Our questions were intentionally provocative and designed to spark reflection.

When it was my turn, I first asked the crowd to stand if they had ever received an email from a robot. There wasn't an empty seat in the room. Everyone was then asked to turn to a colleague and discuss who had really sent the email and why.

Relationships in an Automated World

Following this, I posed the following question to Yong:

"As advocacy becomes more formalized and sometimes automated through 'keyboard warrior' dynamics or AI-generated escalation, what risks do we run in terms of relationships, and how might leaders stay grounded in human-centred, relational approaches?"

Yong reminded us that everyone deserves to be treated with respect and that there is often a human being at the centre of automated responses, someone who is ultimately asking for help. He continued to emphasize the importance of treating human beings as human beings.

My follow-up question was this: What happens when our leaders are not being respected or treated as human beings as well?

Again, Yong returned to the importance of relationships. He emphasized that our core work is relational and that not every relationship will be healthy or helpful. Yet even within those realities, we must continue to recognize the humanity of one another. In a time when technology increasingly mediates our interactions, his reminder felt both simple and profound: human dignity cannot become collateral damage in our pursuit of advocacy, innovation, or efficiency.

Inclusion or Inclusive Education?

The next question I posed to Yong was an attempt to push our thinking around the construct of inclusive education and to encourage us to think beyond inclusion or integration as labels and toward what meaningful participation actually looks like in practice.

I began by asking the crowd, "What is the difference between inclusion and inclusive education?"

A lively conversation quickly ensued as my provocation was debated. Aren't these the same thing? Where does integration fit within this conversation? These were some of the questions that emerged when we invited the room to respond. The discussion itself was a reminder that many of the concepts we use regularly in education are not as universally understood as we sometimes assume.

My follow-up question to Yong was:

"We often say we value diversity, but in practice that can mean many different things: placement, belonging, or full participation. From your perspective, what does meaningful inclusion actually look like in schools, and what are we still getting wrong in inclusive education?"

Yong's response again circled back to the human experience in our classrooms and the ways in which we personalize learning. He pressed us to consider whether we are fixing the problems of exclusion, segregation, and integration from the past, or whether we are thinking differently about how we create learning experiences that truly honour human diversity.

In many ways, his response echoed the central theme of Fix the Past or Invent the Future. Are we simply refining existing systems so that more learners can participate in them, or are we willing to reimagine learning in ways that move beyond one-size-fits-all models altogether? He challenged us to think about whether our efforts are focused on helping students fit into existing structures or designing learning experiences that recognize and respond to the beauty and uniqueness of each learner.

A System That Starts Too Late

My final question to Yong was a somewhat edgy provocation, one that I admit I was hesitant to ask at a time when budgets are stretched and fiscal landscapes are tightly protected. However, in the spirit of future thinking and innovation, I wanted to ensure that the creative work needed on the journey toward integrating child care into the K-12 school system in our province was not left aside in our conversation.

I asked:

"If we truly believe early learning and child care are foundational to educational success, why do they remain structurally and financially peripheral to K-12 systems, and what would it actually take to challenge the 'untouchable' nature of K-12 funding to change that?"

While Yong did not offer a definitive answer to this wickedly complex challenge, he emphasized the importance of early childhood education as a foundational part of the overall learning experience. Our discussion explored the importance of funds of knowledge and the significant influence that families bring to, and hold within, a child's learning journey. The conversation left me wondering: if we say early learning matters, why have we structured, and continue to finance, our systems as though learning begins at age five?

Educational transformation does not begin at the age of five; it begins many moons before children walk through the doors of our public schools. If we are truly committed to transforming our educational systems, we cannot leave the early years aside or leave the healthy growth and development of our youngest learners to chance. Future thinking requires us to see learning as a continuum, not a series of disconnected stages. If we fail to invest in the early years, we should not be surprised when the consequences surface later in the K-12 system. Supporting children and families from the very beginning is not peripheral work; it is foundational to any serious effort to transform education.

A Few Future Focused Take Aways

As I process this past week's experience, I am holding on to four future-focused takeaways.

• Problem finding. Finding problems to fix requires leaders to consider not only what is failing, but also what is not working for people in real time. There is a difference between something failing and something simply persisting because people have learned how to navigate it. Schools are often good at sustaining practices where students who can play the school game continue to do so, regardless of whether those practices are serving their individual growth and cognitive development.

• Responsible urgency. There is a responsible urgency that leaders need to feel and address. How we choose to respond to the challenges around us is ultimately up to us. While there will always be timelines, commitments, and competing demands, we need to be more aware that not all challenges require the same level of response. In the age of AI, how we identify problems and decide what to address first is a crucial leadership skill. If we want to use AI to help us work more efficiently, we must first understand the human dimensions of our work and stay focused on identifying the right problems and working toward meaningful solutions.

• Human interdependence. Understanding how we are all interconnected and interdependent is more important than ever in modern leadership. Human interdependence is different from collaboration. Schools often teach collaboration, where the focus is on strategies and skills, whereas human interdependence recognizes how individual strengths can be layered and combined to achieve a shared goal. In the age of AI, the concept of the well-rounded learner, or leader, is becoming increasingly dated. No one person can possess every skill or expertise required to address complex challenges. Effective leaders understand both their own strengths and the strengths of those around them, and they know how to leverage people, technology, and resources to achieve better outcomes.

• Personalized learning isn't just an initiative or a teaching preference. It is a core educational practice and, as Yong says, "it is the way of the future." Rethinking the prescribed curriculum and how we bring it to life in our classrooms is one of the most exciting aspects of the work ahead. In the age of AI, teachers have unprecedented opportunities to expand and enhance student learning. Thinking differently about how we shape curriculum to meet individual student needs and interests must involve students directly. This means that getting to know individual learners and their interests is a foundational practice, right alongside literacy and numeracy. Future-ready schools are uniquely human, leveraging individual strengths while fostering the ability to learn and work together in community.

Perhaps the greatest challenge of future-focused leadership is not keeping pace with the change and speed of AI, but ensuring that humanity remains at the centre of all we do. Thank you, Yong, for reminding us all of what matters most.

Author's Note: My summary of Yong's responses is based on memory, which I admit may be somewhat hazy at times. While I may not have captured every detail, I believe the essence of our conversation remains true.

This short spin reflects my experience of the session, along with my appreciation for Yong and my fellow panelists, Kirk Savage, Stephen Petrucci, and Selma Smith. I am also grateful to BCSSA, particularly professional learning leaders Ian Kennedy and Trent Dolgopol, for creating such a meaningful opportunity and an inspiring start to the new school year.

Finally, while the ideas, reflections, and interpretations expressed in this spin are entirely my own, I used AI to assist with light grammatical editing to improve flow, readability, and clarity.