Too often, students aren’t getting what they need to succeed. No wealth of knowledge, distinctions, or pathways can guarantee meaning, fulfillment, or well-being. We still have to choose the right path in our lifetimes, one where our actions improve people’s lives, and where we use all our talents and learning for good.
We support schools to create equitable, purposeful environments where students not only develop academic knowledge, but also the self-understanding, connections, and competencies that help them succeed in their own unique ways. Because, after all, we are what we add.
The Contributive Curriculum
So, how can schools help their students develop these outcomes? The Learner First’s Contributive Curriculum is a powerful tool to help bring them to life. For the SEL outcomes of self-understanding, connection, and competency, it describes the specific learning goals that students will develop as a result of a focus on contributive learning. With a range of complementary tools and processes, teachers will learn what it takes to link academic learning and SEL goals, and to design the experiences that make those goals a reality.
Want to learn more about Contributive Learning?
Check out our resources and publications.
The Depthvale Detectives and the Great Education Crisis
A Guide to Contributive Learning in Schools
“The Depthvale Detectives uses the power of storytelling to connect readers to the change that is essential in education. Every educator will be able to read this, see themselves and their school, and begin to think about how they can truly contribute to their own school community.”
Patrick Fisher
Principal, Meramec Elementary, United States
“This book marks a true meta-moment for schools, a chance to consider what your best school would look like, and to choose the behaviors that bring it to life.”
from the foreword by Marc Brackett, Ph.D.
Director, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence
The Good and the Bad
Equity, Assessment, and the Great Education Crisis
“Now more than ever, schools and school systems are in a position to rethink the role of educational assessment in the learning and development of diverse individuals—those of all races, genders, cultures, ethnicities, abilities, backgrounds, and sexual orientations, and each with unique sets of interests and goals that inform individual paths to success and fulfillment. We must create equitable systems of assessment that guide every learner on their path to success.”
Joanne McEachen, Mary Coverdale, and Matthew Kane
The Learner First
Measuring Human Return
Understand and Assess What Really Matters for Deeper Learning
Human return is the human capacity to contribute to other people’s lives and to the world. It’s incredibly important in the lives of every one of us, because when we contribute—when we add to the world—that gives us meaning, fulfillment, and well-being.
Measuring Human Return deeply explores the learning outcomes of self-understanding, connection, knowledge, and competency and how to develop them across schools and school systems. It includes diverse vignettes and case studies from all over the world, strategies and processes for your work with your students, and a comprehensive system of tools to help you develop and measure the outcomes that matter.