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The Liberated Learning Model

The Liberated Learning Model.

Learning is not a ladder. It is a living process.

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Let's liberate by naming the system.

This work is offered from the homelands of the Anishinaabe Council of Three Fires — the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. Dahlia Quintanilla carries Rarámuri lineage from her mother's side. The Liberated Learning Model draws from Indigenous educational wisdom that has existed across generations, long before colonial schooling attempted to replace it. We name this with gratitude and accountability.

We have assumed the problem is the child who cannot sit still, the teacher who is overwhelmed, the parent who is not engaged enough. We have asked principals to hold an entire building alone.

When the room and structures are built against human development, we question and look at the system, not the people experiencing the harmful system. Our model begins here.

Pillar

Relational Ecology

We exist in an interconnected web of relations, human and non-human. A classroom is a web. A family is a web. A school community is a web. How we relate shapes what becomes possible inside the room.

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Pillar

Embodied Learning

Our bodies and emotions are our greatest teachers. Our bodies need movement, rest, and play. Meeting those needs is among the greatest learning opportunities.

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Pillar

Restorative Culture

Conflict is curriculum. We center repair and do not punish. When harm happens, we address all those involved as human, centering truth, safety, and moving toward right relationship.

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Pillar

Reciprocal Belonging

Belonging is inherent. We all belong because we exist. We examine bias, judgement, and lingering oppressive beliefs. No one needs to perform or earn respect, love, and belonging.

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The Learning Spiral.

  1. Inquire
  2. Explore
  3. Practice
  4. Reflect
  5. Share

The ladder asks whether someone is on pace. The spiral asks what they are curious about now. This holds in a twenty-minute lesson, a six-week arc, and a full year. It returns to the same questions from new ground, with more capacity each time.

The learning spiral invites in the learner’s interests, culture, and purpose in a way that becomes education.

Instead of forcing subjects onto learners, we follow their fascinations and discover how every passion naturally contains all the learning we need.

One strong interest has the potential to be holistic, life-giving education. What a learner is drawn to is their curriculum calling. Learning spirals help us recognize and nurture the depth already present in their interests.

This reaches the orientation underneath learning itself — the pace, the questions, the shape of a room.

Curriculum that follows curiosity and skill together.

The model guides adults to stay steady when intensity arrives, classrooms to move from fear to participation, families to practice learning as part of everyday life, and institutions to build culture through relationship and agreements.

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