This is a summary of the 2nd meeting in October of the Courageous Minority group. I have kept it long because it shows what our members are doing and thinking, which I hope can serve as excellent examples for others.
Educational transformation is difficult. Even when teachers, school leaders, and parents recognize that education needs to change, turning that recognition into action is another matter. Established practices, institutional expectations, parental concerns, and deeply ingrained beliefs about teaching and learning can make even modest changes challenging.
Artificial intelligence has made these tensions more visible. While some schools are investing in AI tools and professional development, others are restricting their use. Some educators are experimenting with new possibilities, while others are struggling to understand how AI fits into their existing practices. Meanwhile, students are already living in a world increasingly shaped by AI.
What can educators who believe in the need for fundamental change actually do?
This question guided the 2nd October meeting of the Courageous Minority, a global community of educators committed to exploring and implementing transformative approaches to education in the age of AI. Participants shared experiences from classrooms and schools in Australia, Canada, China, and the United States.
Their stories revealed a common reality: resistance is real, change is exhausting, but meaningful possibilities are emerging.
Starting Where We Are: Small Steps Toward Change
The meeting began with participants sharing what they were actually doing in their schools.
Sandra, an Australian primary school teacher, described the challenges of introducing AI in the early years. Her school had recently introduced teachers to an education-specific AI tool, but students in the lower grades had limited access to digital devices.
Sandra has been exploring AI-supported approaches to differentiated spelling and reading instruction. Yet her larger concern is more fundamental: How should we prepare young children for a future we cannot predict?
Rather than focusing exclusively on AI, she has been reconsidering the importance of play. Young children learn through exploration, experimentation, relationships, and play, but these experiences have increasingly been marginalized in formal schooling.
Her reflections raised an important question: If AI can provide information and perform many cognitive tasks, should schools devote more attention to the kinds of experiences through which children discover, develop, and express their humanity?
Brett, a geography teacher from Brisbane, emphasized that meaningful change begins in classrooms rather than in government policies. His students are currently investigating data centers, exploring their geographical distribution and implications. The project encourages students to examine questions they might otherwise never encounter.
For Brett, the important issue is not whether schools have an AI policy but whether teachers are creating opportunities for students to investigate meaningful problems.
These examples illustrate an important principle of the Courageous Minority: transformation does not need to begin with an entire school system. It can begin with what educators can actually influence.
When Teachers Use AI Without Thinking
Andrea, who works with preschool children, offered a revealing observation.
Her initial goal in introducing AI was to help teachers reduce administrative workloads, improve planning, and spend more time with children. Teachers were receptive, but she soon noticed an unexpected problem.
Some teachers were simply submitting AI-generated lesson plans without critically reviewing them. Occasionally, they even left the original prompts in their submitted work.
The concern commonly expressed about students outsourcing their thinking to AI applies equally to teachers.
Andrea has therefore been experimenting with YEE-AI, a system designed to guide users through questions and choices rather than simply generate completed answers. She appreciated how the system encourages educators to think through their intentions and consider different possibilities.
Her experience highlights a crucial distinction between using AI to perform existing tasks and using AI to rethink the tasks themselves.
If teachers use AI merely to generate lesson plans faster, the underlying pedagogy may remain unchanged. But if AI helps teachers question their assumptions, explore alternatives, and design new learning experiences, the technology could become part of a deeper transformation.
The challenge is not simply getting teachers to use AI. It is helping teachers think differently about learning.
Parental Resistance: From Fear to Participation
Rosy, an educator working within a democratic education environment in Australia, shared one of the meeting’s most encouraging stories.
When she informed parents about plans to involve students in a Courageous Minority project using AI, several responded with strong objections. Their concerns included the environmental impacts of AI, ethical questions about how AI systems are trained, and potential risks to children.
Rather than dismissing these concerns, Rosy acknowledged their legitimacy. She explained that the project was intended to explore AI thoughtfully, not embrace it uncritically. The school’s commitment to human-centered learning and student agency would remain central.
She also arranged opportunities for parents to discuss their concerns. At a subsequent meeting, no parents attended, which she interpreted as a sign that the initial objections had been sufficiently addressed.
With those concerns no longer blocking the project, eight students between approximately 12 and 15 years old were eager to participate.
Importantly, Rosy did not prescribe exactly what students should do. She introduced the Courageous Minority initiative and invited students to help determine how they might explore AI.
A parent who works with Australian news organizations on responsible AI use also offered to contribute a game-based program helping students recognize AI’s limitations, inaccuracies, and potential dangers.
This combination of student agency, critical engagement, and parental communication offers an alternative to the increasingly polarized debate about AI in schools.
The choice need not be between unrestricted adoption and outright prohibition. Schools can create thoughtful opportunities for students to explore emerging technologies while learning to question and evaluate them.
Rosy’s experience also demonstrated that resistance does not always mean rejection. Sometimes, addressing concerns openly can create the conditions for experimentation.
Personalized Learning Is Possible. But What About Human Interdependence?
Chris shared an experiment in his Grade 10 Nature of Science course.
Students are encouraged to pursue their own scientific interests and questions. Before AI, supporting these individual learning pathways required extensive one-on-one conferences, making the approach difficult to sustain.
Chris and his colleagues have developed an AI-supported system that helps students construct learning pathways based on their own inquiries while connecting their work to established curriculum criteria.
The results have been encouraging. Students are pursuing questions more deeply than they often would in a teacher-directed science course, and Chris can spend more time supporting students where needed.
However, Chris identified a significant challenge: human interdependence.
Students have been conditioned to focus on individual achievement and grades. When invited to collaborate on activities that may not directly improve their marks, some struggle to recognize their value.
This is perhaps one of the deepest challenges facing educational transformation.
Personalized learning can help students discover their individual interests and strengths. Problem finding and solving can give learning purpose. But human interdependence requires something more: a shift from viewing education primarily as individual competition toward understanding learning as a means of contributing to others.
Traditional assessment and meritocratic expectations do not make that transition easy.
Chris’s experience suggests that changing classroom activities is only part of the challenge. We must also change the values students have learned to associate with educational success.
Schools Must Become Places Where Mistakes Are Possible
Nick, an educator in Melbourne, raised another essential question: How can schools create safe environments in which teachers and students can experiment with AI, make mistakes, and learn from those mistakes?
His school is providing teachers with opportunities to explore AI tools, share resources, and receive guidance. Rather than expecting teachers to become experts before using AI, Nick is looking for ways to support experimentation within a collaborative environment.
Peter, a school principal from Australia, extended this point.
Schools, he argued, should be places where young people learn how to become adults. That necessarily involves making mistakes, reflecting on experiences, and developing the capacity to navigate uncertainty.
Yet many schools have cultures that discourage mistakes. Teachers themselves may be reluctant to acknowledge uncertainty or admit that something did not work.
A culture of transformation requires the opposite.
Teachers and school leaders must be willing to experiment, recognize failures, laugh at their mistakes, and learn together.
This is especially important in the age of AI, when nobody has all the answers.
The Courageous Minority Exists Even Within Progressive Schools
David, an educator at LightHouse Holyoke in Massachusetts, offered a particularly revealing account of institutional resistance.
LightHouse is already a highly unconventional school. It emphasizes self-directed learning, competency development, projects, relationships, and student choice. Students do not necessarily follow the conventional sequence of separate academic subjects.
Yet even within this progressive environment, resistance to AI remains substantial.
David described an action research project in which a student is investigating the effects of television and smart devices on children. Rather than giving her a predetermined assignment, he is supporting her as she develops her research question, explores ethical issues, and considers possible actions.
Progress has been slower than expected, but the process allows the student to take genuine ownership of her learning.
Meanwhile, LightHouse is developing an AI-supported documentation system called Observatory. Educators can record observations about students, connect them to relevant competencies, and use the accumulated evidence to support student evaluations.
Such a system could help document forms of learning that are difficult to capture through conventional tests and grades.
Yet the school’s staff, students, and families have expressed mixed reactions.
David observed that even within a small, progressive educational community, only a few individuals may be ready to pursue major changes.
In other words, there can be a courageous minority within the Courageous Minority.
His reflections also revealed the emotional cost of innovation. Seven weeks into the school year, he was exhausted.
Peter responded with encouragement, sharing his own experience with a parent who strongly supported innovative education in principle but withdrew his daughter when he became concerned about her academic results.
The parent appreciated the school’s philosophy but did not want his own child to become an experiment.
This story illustrates a recurring contradiction in educational change: people may support transformation as an idea while resisting it when familiar expectations about their own children are challenged.
The Courageous Minority is not exempt from these tensions. Its members face the same uncertainties and pressures as other educators, even when they work in relatively supportive environments.
Creating Protected Spaces for Transformation
Joel, an educator in Shanghai, offered another example of persistence.
For six years, Joel and a small group of colleagues have been developing opportunities for students to pursue projects based on their own interests and aspirations.
The initiative operates within a limited, protected period of the school day. Students develop proposals, create action plans, and gradually assume greater responsibility for their work.
Other teachers contribute expertise and provide access to spaces such as art, music, dance, and technology rooms.
Although the initiative runs against many established school routines, students eagerly anticipate their project time.
Their work is largely ungraded, yet students take pride in what they accomplish. At the end of the project cycle, they present their work to parents and community members.
Joel acknowledged the fatigue associated with continual resistance, but students’ enthusiasm gives him the motivation to continue.
His experience reinforces a central insight emerging from the Courageous Minority: protected spaces can make transformation possible without requiring an immediate restructuring of the entire institution.
Such spaces allow educators to test ideas, develop evidence, involve colleagues, and demonstrate possibilities.
Over time, successful experiments may influence the broader school.
Extending Possibilities Through YEE-AI
The meeting also included updates on YEE-AI, the platform being developed to support personalized learning, meaningful problem finding and solving, and human interdependence.
Ruojun reported that the system was being introduced in a public school involving approximately 400 students and 40 teachers.
One distinctive feature is that the AI does not simply provide answers. Instead, it engages learners through questions intended to encourage reflection and thinking.
Yimeng demonstrated several developments, including tools for designing learning journeys, incorporating teachers’ own materials, sharing educational resources, supporting facilitation, tracking student progress, and enabling collaboration.
These developments reflect an effort to move beyond AI as a tool for delivering information.
The larger ambition is to develop an environment in which students, teachers, and AI can work together to create meaningful learning experiences.
Rosy raised an especially interesting question: Could students from different schools collaborate through the platform?
The response was encouraging. The system is intended to support collaboration across schools, opening possibilities for students in different countries to work together.
This connects directly to the Courageous Minority’s emphasis on human interdependence.
AI could help students not only pursue individual interests but also connect their strengths with those of others to address shared problems.
From Individual Experiments to a Global Movement
As the meeting concluded, the discussion turned toward the future of the Courageous Minority itself.
The community has already brought together educators who are experimenting with different approaches to learning. But how can their experiences influence others?
Several possibilities were discussed.
One is to establish a more visible global network highlighting participating schools, educators, and projects. Making these efforts visible could help members gain support within their own institutions while inspiring others to undertake similar experiments.
Another possibility is to create collaborative projects involving students from different countries. Such partnerships could provide authentic opportunities for students to develop their interests, solve problems, and contribute to others.
The meeting also discussed opportunities for international conferences, workshops, school visits, and exchanges. A potential gathering in Wuhan, China, was identified as an opportunity for Courageous Minority members to share their experiences and lead discussions about educational transformation.
The emphasis was clear: members should not simply attend events to listen to others. They should become active contributors who help others imagine and undertake change.
The meeting also highlighted the importance of supporting one another. Members offered encouragement, shared frustrations, and acknowledged the emotional demands of challenging established practices.
Not every experiment will succeed. Not every participant will be able to continue. But the experiences of those who persist can help others see possibilities that might otherwise remain invisible.
Courage Is Not the Absence of Resistance
Perhaps the most important lesson from this meeting is that educational transformation is not simply a technical problem.
AI tools are becoming increasingly capable, but their availability does not automatically change the fundamental organization of schooling.
The deeper challenges lie in the assumptions, habits, relationships, and expectations that shape educational practice.
Students have learned to pursue grades. Teachers have learned to deliver curricula. Parents have learned to judge schools through familiar measures of success. School leaders have learned to protect institutional stability.
All these expectations make sense within the existing system. But they can also prevent schools from responding meaningfully to a changing world.
The Courageous Minority is attempting something different.
Its members are not waiting for comprehensive policy reform or universal agreement. They are working within the spaces they can influence, developing alternatives, engaging with resistance, and learning from their experiences.
Some are reintroducing play. Others are redesigning science or geography courses, empowering students to pursue their own projects, developing new assessment systems, or helping teachers rethink their use of AI.
These efforts are different, but they share a common purpose: to move education away from uniform delivery and individual competition toward the development of unique individuals who can identify meaningful problems and contribute to one another.
The work is uncertain. It can be frustrating and exhausting. Progress is often slow.
But as participants repeatedly demonstrated, resistance is not necessarily a reason to stop. It can also be an opportunity to rethink approaches, build relationships, and strengthen an idea.
We do not know precisely what education will become in the age of AI. Nor do we have a guaranteed formula for transforming schools.
What we do know is that waiting for certainty will not produce change.
The Courageous Minority exists because some educators are willing to act despite that uncertainty.
The future of education will not be created simply by people who know what should change. It will be created by those who are willing to try, learn, persist, and help others do the same.
That is what it means to be part of the Courageous Minority.
