— Stacy Howard, middle school humanities educator
About a year ago, I had just accepted a job at Watershed — a humanities position at an expeditionary, experiential learning school. I was going to teach 6th and 7th graders. And I thought I knew what I was stepping into. I had subbed here the year before, gotten to know a few people, and had a general sense of what this place was all about.
But the truth is, I had no idea.
I had no idea that teaching here would completely transform the way I think about education — again. I didn’t know that once I experienced this model, I’d never be able to imagine teaching or learning any other way.
That August, I asked Amy, our Humanities Department Chair, to sit down with me and help me wrap my head around the two courses I was about to teach: American Dream and Final Frontier. I knew they’d been taught before, and I assumed I’d be handed a curriculum or a binder or something. But as we talked, it quickly became clear that while past versions of the courses were amazing, I had total freedom to make them my own. Watershed was basically saying to me: Here are the skills, here’s the general subject area — now go. Build something that reflects your voice and your passion. We hired you because of that. We trust you.
I remember asking Amy that day, “Do you think I could take the class to the Capitol?”
She paused and said, “Sure — we’d just have to look at airfare and figure out how many days we could pull off. How many students do you have again?” And that’s when it hit me: she thought I meant THE Capitol — as in Washington, D.C. And she was seriously considering it. In August. That was the moment I knew I was somewhere different. That I had landed in a place where I could teach in a truly revolutionary way.
So I did my best.
I made the courses more relevant. I brought in new material about women in politics, immigration, the border, and what it means to live in a country you weren’t born in. We explored questions the students were hungry to ask. One day, I planned a 15-minute activity about the qualities we want in our representatives. It turned into the entire class. We got out of the classroom every single week. And that was just one course. Across all four of the classes I taught last year, I found myself on this same kind of ride — one that kept showing me how deep this model can go, how transformative it is, and what it can do for kids.
And still — I was just getting started.
This year, I barely scratched the surface of what the expeditionary model can be. I got my feet wet. I had some amazing experiences outside the classroom with students. I watched them return to the building buzzing, ready to make sense of it all — to fit it into the stories they’re beginning to write about their own lives.
I also watched teachers like Amy build entire courses around wild horses — then take 8th graders out into the field for a week to touch those horses with their own hands and meet the people doing the real work on the ground. I watched Ethan lead our 6th and 7th graders into the burn zones of the Marshall Fire to study the conditions that led to that devastation — to feel the dirt, to see the scars, and to witness the evidence of climate change with their own eyes.
And it wasn’t just the teachers. It was the students — returning from the field awestruck, filled with questions, unable to stop talking about the thing they had just read about, touched, and now understood in a totally new way. A real way.
That’s the power of the expedition model. It doesn’t just give kids experiences. It gives them belief. Belief that they can make an impact. That they should. That they can change the things they don’t like about the world — not someday, but now. And they can do it on their own, without waiting for us.
And when this happens at the middle school level? It’s everything. These are young people just beginning to ask big, essential questions: Who am I? How do I make an impact? This model gives them the space to actually explore those questions — to pursue depth and meaning. It allows us to integrate reading, writing, critical thinking, science, the arts — all of it — in ways that reflect how real learning works. It allows them to make connections across topics, but always return to the heart of what matters to them.
And they thrive. Middle schoolers love this kind of learning. They get out of the classroom. They get their hands dirty. They ask their questions to real experts. They see how it all fits together in their fast-moving, ever-evolving brains. They do this every day — and it’s hard. It’s hard work to synthesize, to connect, to think deeply. But they rise to the challenge.
So here’s my point: a year ago, I had no real idea of what this model, this school, this staff was really about. And while it took me a year to learn it, it took me about five minutes of living it to realize: this is it. This is all of the best parts of teaching and learning — all in one place.
And this year, my daughter is here with me, having just begun 6th grade at Watershed. Putting her in this model, with this team of educators, surrounded by this kind of thinking and this kind of heart — I can’t describe how grateful I feel. It’s extraordinary. We’re both lucky to be here. To learn this way. Together.
So even though our campus isn’t traditional and we’re still growing into the space, I still believe this is a place where middle schoolers belong. They belong in this kind of model, this kind of system — one that honors their curiosity, their complexity, and their capacity to contribute. They belong in a place where the sky isn’t just the limit for the educators in the building, but it truly is for them as well.
