Elliot Washor's TGIF 10.16.2026

Are You With Me Now? — AJ Ryder

I spent three evenings looking at the Space Needle in Seattle from my hotel room. As a kid, the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair was a fairy tale world I could never get to. Now, here I am, staring at this marvel for a long as I could stay up.

What brought me to Seattle this time was the Teaching With Small Boats Alliance (TWSBA) Conference. Our friend Joe Youcha started the first of these programs in Alexandria, Virginia, and today there are hundreds of these independent nonprofits around the world. People came to this conference from as far away as Chile and Ireland. Many of these programs work with young people who have become disconnected from school. On the surface, it's about building small wooden boats, learning a trade, and earning a high school diploma. But there's so much more going on here. To paraphrase one of the godfathers of vocational education and one of MIT's early graduates, "It's the student we are making, not furniture."

One of these programs is Rocking the Boat in the Bronx, where students from Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School have been going for years. In fact, one of our first Harbor Freight Fellows, Francisco Cabrera, came out of both Fannie Lou and Rocking the Boat. I love the name Rocking the Boat. When you rock the boat, your dead reckoning kicks in. Your senses, your knowledge, your hands, your head, and the world around you have to work in sync. You can't just follow directions. You have to pay attention, make judgments, ask questions, and figure things out as you go. That's real problem-solving. That's learning through experience. That's another way of knowing. And how do we measure all of that? How do we assess what happens when a young person learns to trust their judgment, work with others, and navigate the unexpected? You need a body and soul for this kind of work. AI has neither.

What makes this gathering so special is its intimacy. There are around 150 people here, including students, in a wonderfully diverse mix of educators, boatbuilders, craftspeople, and young people. These are independent nonprofits, each working in its own community, yet they are connected by something much deeper than a common program or curriculum. They share a belief that young people learn by doing real work that matters, alongside adults who know and care about them. They're not simply building boats. They're building relationships, confidence, judgment, and a sense of belonging.

And isn't that what education ought to be about? The boats are what bring everyone together. The young people are what really matter.

Peter Drucker saw it coming more than thirty years ago when he wrote about the rise of the knowledge worker and what he called a fundamental change in the human condition.

“It is the first society in which ordinary people—and that means most people—do not earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow. It is the first society in which 'honest work' does not mean a callused hand…. This is far more than a social change. It is a change in the human condition.” — Peter Drucker

Drucker wrote this in 1994, and he seems to have been more right than wrong. But hearing about Maritime 253 in Tacoma gave me another way to think about his prediction. Maritime 253 is a maritime workforce development initiative connecting people to the skills, technologies, and hands-on work of the maritime industry. What makes their work especially interesting is how they're bringing AI and robotics into the skilled trades without taking the human being out of the equation.

Their Learning Experience Engineer, Phil Schmit, introduced me to a word I hadn't heard before cobots. These are collaborative robots that work alongside people rather than separately from them or in place of them. People are still making judgments, solving problems, and doing physical work, but now they're doing it in partnership with machines. They're not separating the work of the hand from the work of the mind. They're finding new ways to bring them together.

And this is where Drucker's prediction gets even more interesting. The knowledge worker hasn't replaced the person with callused hands. In many ways, they're becoming the same person. The skilled trades aren't disappearing into the knowledge economy. They're adapting, evolving, and sometimes leading the way. AI and cobots may change the tools and the work, but they don't eliminate the need for human judgment, experience, and knowing what to do when things don't go according to plan.

Maybe Drucker was right about the change in the human condition, but he underestimated the adaptability of the work of the hand. What I heard about goings-on in Tacoma suggests that the future isn't about choosing between working with our heads or our hands. It's about using both, along with our hearts, in work that matters. And that's something no robot can do for us.

After finishing a lakeside conversation with Joe Youcha, moderated by Karen Gaylord, at The Center for Wooden Boats, I took a walk and was awestruck by a magnificent Laceleaf Japanese Maple. It turns out this tree has quite a history. It was reportedly planted and replanted at least four times, beginning in Japan, before making its way to Seattle for the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition, Seattle's first World's Fair, held from June 1 to October 16, 1909. And I'll be damned if October 16 isn't 117 years ago to the very day, I'm writing this TGIF. What are the odds?

But here's where the story gets even crazier. Not more than an hour before coming upon this maple, I had been talking about how much the Olmsted Brothers influenced my thinking about design through three principles: Prospect, Refuge, and Mystery. And lo and behold, the Olmsted Brothers were involved in designing the grounds for that very World's Fair where this tree was planted. Talk about mystery! Here I was, walking along the water, stumbling upon a living piece of history that connected to a conversation I'd just had. That's nuts! Sometimes the world has a way of making connections that no curriculum, or AI algorithm could ever anticipate.

Next week, we have our first round of site demonstrations for the California Secondary School Redesign work at the San Diego Met and Lincoln High School. From building boats in Seattle to redesigning high schools in California, the connections keep coming back to the same thing: young people learning through their interests, doing real work, and finding people and places where what they do matters.

Ahh! There's a lot to be said for rocking the boat.

Be well!