Elliot Washor's TGIF 07.17.2026

“Are you with me now?” AJ Ryder

Building What Lasts

“And Big Picture Learning, with its focus on advisories, relationships, and internships, comes the closest we’ve seen to doing all of these at once.”

After more than 30 years, a new report arrives with this observation.

The striking thing is that people have been saying versions of this about Big Picture Learning almost since we began. Yet the education system has become more rigid, more standardized, and more bureaucratic than ever.

What more needs to happen?

Summer Dreams

I'm looking forward to Big Bang next week. Like every conference these days, AI will be discussed though out. As we continue talking about how AI is influencing our work, I keep coming back to a different question:

How do we influence the AI conversation through our work?

Over the past month I've taken a slow-motion dive into stone masonry. While traveling in Croatia, I visited sites where stone structures have stood for thousands of years. Talk about longevity—and the ultimate longitudinal study. Our oldest records are literally carved in or painted on stone.

It made me wonder: What did those master masons know? What did mastery mean to them? How long did it take to achieve? What wisdom has been lost, and how might we recover it and to what end?

In Stone: Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery, Richard Rhodes—one of only three living master stone masons in the Siena tradition—reflects on these same questions. He writes that "the sexy work is in AI, not in a hammer," but reminds us that working with hand tools offers something technology cannot replace:

"Action with the hammer and chisel offers an immediacy that can never be replaced. The soul of the artist is being transferred energetically into the material."

That idea stayed with me.

Croatia is one of those places where stonework is woven into everyday life. Tourists may not even notice that they're walking on centuries-old limestone streets polished not by machines, but by generations of footsteps. I visited the towns of Ston and Mali Ston, home to the world's second-longest stone fortification after the Great Wall of China. Hundreds of years later, it still stands.

But when I spoke with local Croatians, they told me very little stonework is done anymore. Few people know the craft. Like everywhere else, the building boom is dominated by concrete and rebar.

It made me wonder: How long will these buildings last? And even if they do, will they carry the same heart, purpose, and meaning?

Rhodes puts it this way:

"The real thing is to grow the cable that runs from your heart, down your arms, through your tools into the material. That is what art does. What you feel is conveyed through that pathway in some way that we cannot measure."

One lesson feels especially relevant today: when we surrender too much of our agency to technology, we risk losing something essential.

Let's Build It

Last week I attended the Harbor Freight Tools Prize for Teaching Conference, where current and former awardees gathered for three days of building ideas.

The culture of this conference is remarkable. These are extraordinary career and technical education teachers from across the country who have devoted themselves to helping young people build things that matter. The camaraderie was genuine, but what really set the conference apart was its bias toward action.

The theme was simple: Let's Build It.

The learning experiences weren't just tours—they happened in places where people actually make things. Even more important, the conference's civics project gave participants an opportunity to build for the San Diego community.

The group I joined spent part of their day at Veterans Village of San Diego building dog relief stations, planting gardens, installing blinds, and tackling other projects that immediately improved the space. There was no endless planning or discussion. People simply got to work.

That's a lesson worth remembering.

Too often we think of civic engagement as talking about community. But civics is also about building community.

During the conference, many teachers stopped by to learn more about Big Picture Learning and how we create authentic, real-world learning experiences through internships, relationships, and student-centered work. Everywhere I go, educators ask the same questions because they're struggling against the same bureaucratic barriers.

After three decades, the demand for this work hasn't gone away. If anything, it's growing.

More to come.

A Blast from the Past

One final thought.

Our START Centers in New Jersey are part of a much longer tradition than many people don’t realize.

Back in 1896, progressive educator Charles Benjamin Gilbert became superintendent of Newark Public Schools. During his five years there, he expanded school construction, strengthened teacher preparation, and championed what he called "manual training"—the belief that schools should educate the intellect and the hands together.

Imagine that.

Gilbert later served as superintendent in St. Paul and Rochester, where he opened some of the nation's first kindergartens and argued against the over-bureaucratization of schools that drove talented teachers from the profession.

I wish more people knew this history because it reminds us that today's system isn't inevitable. It isn't ancient. Educational models have always evolved, and they will continue to evolve.

That gives me hope.

As Taj Mahal sings: “I wish I was in Texas swinging on steady roll."

Wish no more.

I'll be at Big Bang in Dallas on Sunday, ready for what promises to be an incredible week.

Be well.