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writing by nick covington

39 articles

Every Dandelion is a Triumph: Thinking Ecologically about Education

Schools are complex ecosystems that can, without intention and stewardship, become monocultures held in place by convention, policy, and the 'grammar of schooling.' In the face of such pressures, teachers and school leaders who don't share a passion for standardized instruction and testing nevertheless play a role in maintaining it. Thinking ecologically about classrooms and schools can help evaluate and intentionally cultivate biodiversity in the formal learning environments we create for young people.

HRP Summer Rewind

Back to school? Here are HRP's summer highlights, from new podcasts to Polaris updates, all in one place.

We Are Worldbuilders

Progressive education is a world-building project rooted in the radical hope that schools can become something fit for human beings.

HRP Wrapped 2025

A look back at our most popular articles, podcasts, videos, and resources from 2025 and a look ahead at what's to come in 2026!

Reflections on Teach Truth Day of Action 2025

How can John Dewey's ideal of a thriving democratic education revitalize an American commitment to freedom and democracy?

Student Voice Reimagines Professional Development

We're reimagining what's possible using student voice in our professional development.

Conference to Restore Humanity! 2024: Vision Into Reality

"There comes a point when some of the field's most basic models of learning no longer serve society well; we have reached that point."

Building Bridges: HRP & The Kosciuszko Foundation's Invitation to TEIP 2024

Human Restoration Project is looking for teachers interested in traveling, teaching, and learning in Poland this Summer!

Human Restoration Project Awarded Education Innovation and Research Grant to Reimagine Education

Human Restoration Project announces Education and Innovation Research grant from US Dept of Education

Beyond Pavlov's Perfect Student

A response to critics of our earlier piece, arguing that behaviorist models drawn from Pavlov, Skinner, and Ebbinghaus are too narrow a foundation for understanding how real students learn in real classrooms.

Unsettling The Science of Reading: Who is Being Sold A Story?

A critique of the Sold A Story podcast and the broader Science of Reading movement, arguing that literacy cannot be reduced to a curriculum package and requires investment in teacher professionalization.

There is No Such Thing As “The Science of Learning”

An argument that "The Science of Learning" flattens the complexity of cognition and schooling by reducing learning to a narrow set of testable, memory-focused practices that ignore the embodied, social, and emotional realities of kids.

Human Restoration Project Acquires Floop Edu

A partnership on feedback-driven learning.

Heaven, Hell, or Houston ISD

The takeover of Houston ISD sits at the intersection of so many issues impacting American education today: democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism; the so-called “parents’ rights movement”; testing and accountability measures; poverty, racism, and charter schools. We would be wise to understand what’s happening in Houston as a canary in the coal mine.

Teach Truth Day of Action 2023

We must stand with each other and with young people if we are to sustain the intergenerational project of America; if we are to keep the lights on, and the sea at bay.

Fighting Back Against the Future

Why dystopian storytelling dominates our cultural imagination, and how solarpunk and critical pedagogy can help educators imagine and build better futures.

What Does it Mean to Lead a Liberatory, Feedback-Driven Classroom?

Rather than leading with tools and strategies that isolate students, we can restructure the system itself through liberatory, feedback-driven practice.

"Current Events Do Not Belong in History Class"

A social studies teacher recounts the parent complaints, administrative pressure, and right-wing harassment campaign that drove him to resign after teaching about January 6th and Charlottesville.

Review: Flow - The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Csikszentmihalyi's blind spot is a critical one: that poverty is a cause of inattention and a lack of cognitive resources, not an effect.

Review: A Wolf At the Schoolhouse Door & the Unmaking of Public Education

What are the tenets guiding the unmaking of public education, what are the aims of the unmakers, and what is there for the rest of us to be worried about?

One Teacher Can't Save the World

What is it about the world that is worth preparing students for, and are we dedicated to the work of building that better world alongside them?

A Teacher's Case for Critical Race Theory

What is this “toxic propaganda” the White House and Senate are taking action over, and what are the consequences of having CRT banned from our schools and public institutions?

Liberatory Learning: Dismantling the Hidden Curriculum

This is a recap of our asynchronous professional development session, where we worked as a cohort to develop actions and solutions for equitable practices in our classrooms.

Endorsing Student Voice Through Virtual/Hybrid Activism

This is an overview of our August 1st Summit with Inspire Citizens (Donna Guerin, Steve Sostak, Kavita Tanna), Out of the Blocks (Aaron Henkin, Wendel Patrick), and Evan Whitehead!

Creating a Virtual, Liberatory Feedback-Driven Classroom

This past week, Human Restoration Project has had the honor of presenting this workshop on ungrading and liberatory pedagogy at Digital Pedagogy Lab 2020. Here's an overview of the activities we covered, what we learned, and resources to share!

Universal Design for Fishing

A family fishing trip becomes an extended analogy for applying the principles of Universal Design for Learning to classroom practice.

Review: Radical Hope

What we absolutely can and should do, however, is define our work as educators biased toward life-affirming, student-centered, inclusive praxis and create a space where we can do the work of reversing the decomposition... a Radical Hope.

On Range & the wicked world

Do specialists actually get better with experience or not, and is narrow, deliberate practice the only way to achieve greatness in a given field?

What’s in a grade? GRExit, GPA, College Admissions, and the Mastery Transcript (oh my!)

A look at the growing movement of undergraduate and graduate programs dropping standardized tests, what research says about GPAs as predictors of college success, and why the Mastery Transcript offers a better alternative.

Why "What Works" Won't Work and Why "What Works" May Hurt

An examination of the limits and unintended side-effects of applying medical-style evidence-based research methods to education.

A Progressive Response to "Ed. Reform's Lost Decade"

For those who believe the measure of a quality education can be distilled into an assessment score, the last 20 years of data must be intensely disappointing.

Review: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms

...constructivism has been a consistent but controversial and often caricatured counterweight to the recurring top-down reform movements rooted in accountability and standardized test scores that have defined the last 30 years of the educational debate.

Review: The Schools Our Children Deserve

In contrast with the methods books I had read for coursework and professional development, Kohn’s voice spoke to me with an urgency, a moral weight and clarity which framed dry topics.

Review: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

...white rage through the most explosive periods in America’s racial history, which the reader comes to understand through the brutal clarity and consistent facts of the historical narrative.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

This year I challenged my sophomore AP Euro students as we headed into the final weeks of class: Put your best foot forward.

Taking the Plunge

This is the kind of learning that is possible if we unencumber our classrooms from complicated instructional strategies...

”In your opinion, what matters?”

We were trapped in the circular logic and language of letter grades and points: I got an A so I must have learned it, and I know I learned it because I got an A.

Cutting Content to Make Room for Learning

A high school Economics teacher describes how he cut required content to make room for a semester-long, project-based Economic Engagement Project rooted in student curiosity and community connection.

My Pragmatic Journey to Voice & Choice in the Classroom

A history teacher recounts how abandoning tightly planned, standards-driven lessons for student voice and choice rekindled genuine learning and his own sense of purpose.