Over the past few years, I’ve found myself reflecting on the different ways my own children’s lives have taken shape after school and college. Recently, I spent time with our son, and his path offers one particularly vivid example of how much the world—and the experience of adulthood—is changing.

After choosing to attend college in Europe, he built friendships and professional connections across borders and cultures. Today, he works for a startup based in San Francisco, but his work is not tethered to any one place. He moves fluidly between cities and countries—spending stretches of time in Spain, Portugal, and even Thailand—carrying his laptop, his curiosity, and a remarkably portable sense of community with him.

What strikes me most is not the novelty of the travel itself, but the deeper challenges and opportunities that characterize our rapidly changing ever-more globally dynamic world. These include the need to develop the confidence to step into unfamiliar environments, adaptability, cultural fluency, and a creative and often collaborative approach to solving problems. 

My son’s experience is not a template for every young person. But whether students ultimately plant roots close to home or build lives that span continents, I think essential work as an educator is the same: to help students develop the skills and habits that will allow them to navigate change, to engage with a diversity of people and ideas, and ideally to make positive contributions to the world—all while honoring their own unique perspectives and personalities. 

For much of the last century, it was possible to think of education as a relatively stable system encompassing a defined body of knowledge, a predictable pathway, and a fairly clear set of outcomes.

That model is increasingly out of step with reality.

We are living in a moment shaped not only by globalization but by rapid technological change, including artificial intelligence, where students will be defined less by what they know and more by how they use what they know. Information is instantly available and increasingly synthesized by machines. The challenge is no longer about access—it is about judgment, discernment, and application.

In such a world, the question for schools is not simply What should we teach? but how do we help students adapt to new challenges, develop sound judgement, and find their own creative ways to apply what they learn in ways that contribute to making this world a better place. 

Years ago, I first encountered the idea of a “living curriculum”—one that grows, adapts, and responds to the evolving landscape our students move through. What’s striking now is how precisely that idea describes what students need.

If the world is dynamic, the curriculum must be dynamic too.

A living curriculum cultivates habits of mind that help students make sense of complexity and see connections where others see silos. It invites teachers to design experiences that reach beyond content coverage, toward the deeper goal of helping students understand how knowledge works and how they might use it in service of something larger than themselves.

At Falmouth Academy, this takes shape through our Extended Inquiry program. Teachers guide students to draw on their years of scientific investigation—research, analysis, and iterative problem-solving—and to apply those habits of mind to questions that hold personal and broader significance. In one case, Faye McGuire ’26 extended her work beyond the classroom, contributing to a local ban on lighter-than-air balloons. This is a great example of how a living curriculum can lead to meaningful environmental action. [see page 14 in 2025 Spring GAM ]

 

 

This year, Falmouth Academy is engaged in our ten-year accreditation process with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. At one level, accreditation is a formal process—surveys, self-study, evaluation. But at its best, it is something more meaningful: an opportunity to step back and ask hard questions about who we are and who we need to become.

The process invites us to reflect on many of the above elements regarding what it means to be truly educated. The accreditation is a process of inquiry through which we as a school can integrate our own thinking with the broader trends shaping education:

It also reinforces something we know to be true: schools must be both grounded and adaptable. Clear in their mission, but willing to evolve in how that mission is lived.

One theme that has surfaced repeatedly in my recent conversations with educators and will be a focus of our accreditation is the importance of defining a school’s clear “vision of the learner.” So taking into consideration broader trends shaping education, what are the habits, skills, and dispositions we hope our Falmouth Academy students will carry into adulthood? This is important work as when a school has a shared vision, everything else begins to align around it.

I don’t believe education’s job is to produce one “correct” version of adulthood.

When I think about my own children—and the many high school graduates I’ve had the privilege of staying connected with—I find that what matters most over time is not a specific course or outcome.

Rather, it is the preparation of young people for a wide range of possible futures—some predictable, many not. What matters is to help students develop a set of skills and habits they will carry with them into an unpredictable, even uncertain future. If we can inspire and embolden our Falmouth Academy students to embrace the adventure, moving forward with attitudes of openness, curiosity, creativity, and collaboration, then we will have successfully prepared them to navigate a world that doesn’t stand still.

Finally, as we continue our work this year—through daily classroom experiences and through larger processes like accreditation—my hope is that we remain focused on this central question:

How are we letting go of preparing students for the world as it was, and doing our best to prepare them for the world as it is becoming?

The answer to this question will shape not only what we teach, but how we teach—and, ultimately, who our students become.