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Conference to Restore Humanity! 2025: Quest for Connection
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Ten Ways to Leverage Student Choice in Your Classroom

Spencer

2016

Author highlights a variety of ways that students can be put in charge of their classroom environment.

A rocket ship.

featured contributor

Peter SipeA white man wearing a tiara.
Peter's writing has appeared in USA Today and the Harvard Educational Review. He teaches at a public middle school. If he gives you homework, you better do it.
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Reimagining public middle schools in Western Michigan.
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Listening and learning from 400+ young people & educators.

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Critical perspectives and progressive insights on reimagining education through a human-centered lens.

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Recents

>>
Teaching in the Wreckage of the Real
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We Are Worldbuilders
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HRP Wrapped 2025
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Progressive Education

>>
We Are Worldbuilders
2026
Nick Covington
>>
Spaces and Structures, Part Two: Seeing the Shape of Thought
2024
Mal Radagast
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Unauthorized Education
2024
Benjamin Ludwig
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Self-Powered Math
2023
Emma Chiappetta
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Why we need to change schools (right now).
2023
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More Human Than a Ladder or Pyramid: Psychology, Behaviorism, and Better Schools
2023
Chris McNutt
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This is why we should stop giving homework
2023
Chris McNutt
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Progressive with a Capital P?
2022
Dr. Amber Strong Makaiau
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Storytelling: The Soulful Road Back Home To Mathematics
2022
Sunil Singh
>>
MINDFOOD I: Top 10 Books Every Progressive Educator Should Read
2022
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Designing Possibility in Schools
2022
Paul Kim
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Translanguaging as a humanizing pedagogy
2022
Jacob Huckle
>>
On Constructionism, Makerspaces, and Music Education
2022
Burton Hable
>>
A Primer for the Progressive Educator
2021
Sean Michael Morris
>>
Universal Design for Fishing
2020
Nick Covington
>>
Review: The Art of Critical Pedagogy
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools That Work
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms
2020
Nick Covington
>>
Review: The Schools Our Children Deserve
2019
Nick Covington
>>
Review: The Book of Learning and Forgetting
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Why They Can’t Write
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
I use evidence to inform my teaching.
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: On Critical Pedagogy
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
A Year of Mathematical Freedom
2019
Abe Moore
>>
Rejecting the Huxley Supposition: Using Technology in the Classroom for Real Transformative Learning
2019
Mark Barnett
>>
Being the Serious Teacher Who Doesn’t Take Traditional Seriously
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: These Schools Belong to You and Me
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Get Out There!: Connecting to the Community
2018
Chris McNutt

Anti-Racism and Social Justice

>>
There is no change without Hope
2025
>>
Fascism on Campus and the Siege of Student Space
2024
Noah Ranz-Lind
>>
On Friendly Fascism
2023
Troy Distelrath
>>
The Wrath Without The Math: Why Mathematics Wars Have Only Ever Been Class Wars
2023
Sunil Singh
>>
Carceral Classrooms
2022
Jessica HatrickSophie Sylla
>>
The Myth of Diversity Hiring in Education
2022
Shelley Buchanan
>>
Toward a Better Democracy: Lessons from the Black Freedom Movement
2022
Brian Charest
>>
Empty Pedagogy, Behaviorism, and the Rejection of Equity
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: We Do This 'Til We Free Us
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: We Want to Do More Than Survive
2020
Vineeta Singh
>>
A Teacher's Case for Critical Race Theory
2020
Nick Covington
>>
Hindsight
2020
Lisa Demro
>>
Liberatory Learning: Dismantling the Hidden Curriculum
2020
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
Teaching Anti-Racism Isn’t “Progressive.” It’s Essential.
2020
Lisa Demro
>>
Review: An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Supplying a more responsible, equitable classroom.
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
2019
Nick Covington
>>
Review: The Inner Level
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
At a Crossroads of Anti-Authoritarianism: Dismissing Far-Right School Advocates
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: This Is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Accepting the Status Quo: Teaching Without Bias
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Teaching at the Edge of Hope
2018
Chris McNutt

Discourse & Critical Reading

>>
Breakfast, Basic Needs, and the Problem with “Maslowing”
2024
Emma McMain
>>
Heaven, Hell, or Houston ISD
2023
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
The Alt-Education Pipeline: PragerU
2022
Robert DickinsonTom Cowin
>>
The Culture War in the Classroom Continues: Unpacking the Battle
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
"Current Events Do Not Belong in History Class"
2022
Nick Covington
>>
Review: Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience
2021
Nick Covington
>>
The Dark Underbelly of School Remediation
2021
Shelley Buchanan
>>
Review: A Wolf At the Schoolhouse Door & the Unmaking of Public Education
2020
Nick Covington
>>
We Need to Think Critically About How the Pandemic is Impacting Our Schools
2020
Dan Kearney
>>
Death and Teaching: COVID-19 and the Return to School
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
On Range & the wicked world
2020
Nick Covington
>>
Remote learning isn’t dehumanizing education, we’ve already done that
2020
Tegan Morton
>>
Review: The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Reflecting on Rigor
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Wait, 20 is the perfect amount for a classroom?
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
“We all do what’s best for children.”: The Banality of Educative Statements
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Is the factory model a myth?
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Response: The importance of rigor in bringing history to life
2018
Chris McNutt

Hope & Just Futures

>>
Reflections on Teach Truth Day of Action 2025
2025
Nick Covington
>>
Spaces and Structures, Part One: The Hope
2024
Mal Radagast
>>
The Future is Us, Today
2023
Jericho Franson
>>
Fighting Back Against the Future
2022
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
The Only Lasting Truth is Change
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
A Day in the Life at Three Schools
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
One Teacher Can't Save the World
2020
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
The Time Has Chosen US
2020
Jacqueline Nelson
>>
Review: Radical Hope
2020
Nick Covington
>>
The Real World
2019
Lisa Demro
>>
Lies on Their Shoulders
2019
Monte Syrie
>>
Prepared for What? The Future for Graduates
2018
Chris McNutt

Play & Games

>>
Play's Power
2022
Aaron Skjerseth
>>
Learning from Games: Making Decisions for Others
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
Language and literacy teaching with games: the “who” and transformative actions
2020
Jonathan deHaan
>>
Game Design, Classroom Design, and the Faux Use of Gamification
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
A Playground Should Have A Pulse
2019
Abe Moore
>>
Improvisation and the Transformative Potential of Play
2019
Eric M Schildge
>>
Escape from Reality: The Apathetic Adolescent
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Gamification: Is it all just a ruse?
2018
Chris McNutt

Professional Learning

>>
A New Era of Learning: Reimagining Conferences for Inspired Teaching
2023
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Radical Teacher, Academic Journal
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
That Baseball Study Can’t Tell You How to Teach
2020
Thomas White
>>
Review: “You Can’t Fire the Bad Ones!”
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Teachers are Not the Heroes
2020
Thomas White
>>
Remaking Professional Development
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Death to the Acronym
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Making Progress on Progressive Education: First Empower Teachers
2019
Eric M Schildge
>>
Assurance
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: On Being a Teacher
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
PSA for Teachers: Teach to Get Fired
2018
Chris McNutt

Student Voice

>>
Enacting Change by Listening
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
The Promise of Childism for Imagining Transformation: Reimagining the Future of Activism
2022
David Charles Metler
>>
Class Discussions and Classroom Climate
2021
Lisa Wennerth
>>
100 Days of Conversations: Amplifying Communities to Reimagine Education
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
Building a Student-Centered Third Place
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Loving Care
2020
Brennan Dignan
>>
Waiting
2019
Lisa Demro
>>
Review: Free School Teaching: A Journey into Radical Progressive Education
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Put Your Best Foot Forward
2019
Nick Covington
>>
Tracing Letters
2019
Brennan Dignan
>>
Review: A School of Our Own
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Being That Teacher: Shifting Towards Student-Centred Learning
2018
Abe Moore
>>
My Pragmatic Journey to Voice & Choice in the Classroom
2018
Nick Covington
>>
A Superhero Teacher's Lament
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
The Path to Discovery: Providing Real Choice in Schools
2018
Chris McNutt

Testing, Admissions, & assessment

>>
Beyond Testing: Human Centered Approaches to Assessment
2022
Lisa Wennerth
>>
Drop the College Board
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Why “What Works” Won’t Work and Why “What Works” May Hurt
2020
Nick Covington
>>
A Progressive Response to “Ed. Reform’s Lost Decade”
2020
Nick Covington
>>
“You Do Not Have to Be Good”: De-emphasizing Product in Arts Education
2019
Timothy Fawkes
>>
It’s time to stop using Kahoot as a whole class review tool.
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
The Cult of What
2019
Brennan Dignan
>>
The College Process & Progressive Ed: What’s Wrong
2019
Brennan Dignan
>>
Data: A New Conversation
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be
2018
Chris McNutt

Reflection

>>
Time to Question: Lessons on Social and Emotional Learning from One Collaborative Teacher group
2025
Emma McMain
>>
Art as a Liberatory Practice in School
2025
Gianna Bizzarro
>>
Concerning Control
2024
Mal Radagast
>>
Why I Need To Leave Math Education
2023
Sunil Singh
>>
From Teacher to Unschooler
2023
Heather Wilson
>>
The Last of Us: Rehumanizing Mathematics For A Higher Purpose
2023
Sunil Singh
>>
"Not rehired" for "teaching politics": One teacher's story
2023
Sam Shain
>>
Liberation from Oppression - a story of a student who, in spite of doubt, liberated himself
2023
Jericho Franson
>>
Middle of Everywhere, Center of Nowhere
2022
Sunil Singh
>>
Home Free
2021
Peter Sipe
>>
COVID-19 Brought Us Closer
2021
LaTanya Coleman-Carter
>>
The Runaway Bunny-Allegory for Ego
2020
Brennan Dignan
>>
Honoring the truth: The Dishonor in Spiritual Bypassing the State of Education
2019
Traci Nicole Smith

Purpose-Finding

>>
Review: At What Cost?
2020
Dan Kearney
>>
What do you value in your space and how do values guide your practice?
2020
Mark Barnett
>>
To Have, Not Be Had
2019
Brennan Dignan
>>
“In your opinion, what matters?”
2018
Nick Covington
>>
Finding Your Purpose in Education
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Why are we not taking happiness seriously?
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Excellent Sheep
2018
Chris McNutt

Restorative Justice and Student Activism

>>
‍My IEP, My Future
2025
Catherine Patton
>>
Rethinking The 3 D's...
2022
Alix Tate
>>
Conference to Restore Humanity! 2022: Keynote Q&A - Dr. Denisha Jones
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
Conference to Restore Humanity! 2022: Keynote, Harvest Collegiate Circle Keepers - Transformative Justice
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Teacher & Child
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
Can Activism Improve Arts Education?
2021
Mario Mabrucco
>>
Endorsing Student Voice Through Virtual/Hybrid Activism
2020
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
Revisiting Disobedience Instruction as Classroom Structural Change
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
As They Say in Arkansas
2019
Brennan Dignan
>>
Starting off Right: Writing a Pro-Student Syllabus
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Power to the Students: Teaching Issue-Based Organizing
2019
Eric M Schildge
>>
Making Them All Look the Same
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
The Naughty List: Stop the Madness
2018
Chris McNutt

Systems-Thinking

>>
Becoming Our Best Selves: Reconnecting to Ecosocial Literacy
2024
Chris Zorn
>>
Beyond Pavlov's Perfect Student
2023
Nick CovingtonMichael Weingarth
>>
Unsettling The Science of Reading: Who is Being Sold A Story?
2023
Nick Covington
>>
There is No Such Thing As “The Science of Learning”
2023
Nick CovingtonMichael Weingarth
>>
Review: Equity-Centered, Trauma-Informed Education
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
How Teachers Can Start a Grassroots Revolution for Better Schools
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
Binary Solutions to Systemic Problems
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
Simplification: School Policies and Practices to End During COVID-19
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Small, big changes
2019
Lisa Demro
>>
Dispelling Illusions
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Timeless Learning
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Teaching to Transgress
2018
Chris McNutt

Ungrading

>>
A Student's View: Perspectives on a Gradeless and Growth-Centered Classroom
2025
Theresa Walter
>>
Does Assessment Stymie Curiosity?
2024
Theresa Walter
>>
A Dialogue: Is The Gradeless Revolution Upon Us?
2024
Theresa Walter
>>
The Myth of Mastery Learning in Education
2023
Sunil Singh
>>
Grading Gets An F: A Mathematician's Guide To The Absurdity of Numerical Assessment
2022
Sunil Singh
>>
A Brief History of Grades and Gradeless Learning
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ungrading
2022
Joelle Lamboley Ostrich
>>
What Does it Mean to Lead a Liberatory, Feedback-Driven Classroom?
2022
Nick Covington
>>
Building Community and Trust In A Gradeless Classroom
2021
Theresa Walter
>>
The Surprise Growth in an Ungrading Practice: My Own
2021
Theresa Walter
>>
Going Gradeless This Year? Just Thinking About It? Start Here.
2021
Theresa Walter
>>
Gradeless: An English Teacher’s Journey Towards Agency Through Feedback
2021
Theresa Walter
>>
Grades as the Gatekeeper to Privilege in Schools
2021
Shelley Buchanan
>>
Creating a Virtual, Liberatory Feedback-Driven Classroom
2020
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
Team 1 and Team 5
2020
Matthew Byars
>>
What’s in a grade? GRExit, GPA, College Admissions, and the Mastery Transcript (oh my!)
2020
Nick Covington
>>
On failure
2019
Lisa Demro
>>
You Can…Until You Can’t
2019
Monte Syrie
>>
Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Grade
2019
Monte Syrie
>>
Taking the Plunge
2018
Nick Covington
>>
The Way of Things
2018
Monte Syrie
>>
Cutting Content to Make Room for Learning
2018
Nick Covington
>>
A Different Sort
2018
Monte Syrie
>>
What really is an "A"?
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Making the Grades
2018
Chris McNutt

Neoliberalism

>>
Teaching in the Wreckage of the Real
2026
Chris McNutt
>>
"Success at Any Cost"
2024
Chris McNutt
>>
The Silent Crisis: Humanities, Pedagogy, and Neoliberalism
2023
Trevor Aleo
>>
Schools Can't Accept the Corporate Status Quo
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
Unpacking "Neoliberal" Schooling, Part 3: Progressive Education: Enter the Matrix
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave: How the Testing Industry Manufactured the "Learning Loss" Narrative
2021
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: Manufacturing Happy Citizens
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Unpacking “Neoliberal” Schooling, Part 2: Teachers Pay Teachers
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Unpacking “Neoliberal” Schooling
2020
Chris McNutt
>>
Career Ready Kindergarten
2019
Abe Moore
>>
Neo-Progressivism
2019
Chris McNutt
>>
The “Fad Trap” of Progressive Education
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Review: The End of the Rainbow: How Educating For Happiness (Not Money) Would Transform Our Schools
2018
Chris McNutt
>>
Work's Worth
2018
Monte Syrie
>>
“Let’s get to work!”
2018
Chris McNutt

Organization Updates

>>
HRP Wrapped 2025
2025
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
Change the Data, Change the System with Polaris Education
2025
Chris McNuttNick Covington
>>
Student Voice Reimagines Professional Development
2024
Chris McNuttNick Covington
>>
Conference to Restore Humanity 2024: Vision Into Reality
2024
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
Building Bridges: HRP & The Kosciuszko Foundation's Invitation to TEIP 2024
2024
Nick CovingtonChris McNutt
>>
Human Restoration Project Awarded Education Innovation and Research Grant to Reimagine Education
2023
Chris McNuttNick Covington
>>
What We're Doing With Social Media
2023
Chris McNutt
>>
Human Restoration Project Acquires Floop Edu
2023
Chris McNuttNick Covington
>>
Using AI Without Losing Ourselves: A Critical Media Literacy for the 21st Century
2023
Chris McNutt
>>
Human Restoration Project and Learning InspirED Collaborate on "Students Leading the Way" Initiative to Transform Education
2023
Chris McNutt
>>
Teach Truth Day of Action 2023
2023
Nick Covington
>>
Sustaining Education for Today & A Lasting Future: Building the Interdisciplinary Subject
2023
Chris McNutt
>>
Lessons Preview: Human-Centered Interdisciplinary Subject
2022
Chris McNuttNick Covington
>>
Human Restoration Project Values Statements Update (2022)
2022
Chris McNutt
>>
What we're working on: Human-Centered Interdisciplinary Subject
2022
Chris McNuttNick Covington

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Human Restoration Project is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. 1333 Buckeye Ave #1040. Ames, IA. 50010. United States.
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I think a lot of communities have a problem of too much competition, I guess. That they can't... when it gets to a point that they can't be happy for other people's accomplishments and that the only thing they can do is want to be better than the other person or the rest of them.

Sophia

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