Gever Tulley

San Francisco, California, US

“Persistence and resilience only come from having been given the chance to work though difficult problems…When we protect children from every possible source of danger, we also prevent them from having the kinds of experiences that develop their sense of self-reliance, their ability to assess and mitigate risk, and their sense of accomplishment.”

Founder, Brightworks School; Co-Founder / Toy Inventor, Tinkering Labs; Co-Founder, Tinkering School; Author, “Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do)” & “Beware Dangerism!“; Speaker, TED (big stage in 2009)

(5) Big Ideas from the Podcast: 

• his school purposefully “looks for evidence of magic” and was launched to defend the idea that “everything is interesting”
• why would you invite a kid to “be a robot on Mars” as a strategic response to Covid and how do you scale that invitation to kids around the world?
• build in “improvisational collaboration” across a school -> “create serendipitous overlaps where things emerge”
• why an accessible power tool wall (drills, drivers, saws, etc) implicitly says to a young person: “We trust you” and “Use what you need to explore your idea”
• letting elementary, middle, and high school kids co-build a 2-3 story structure called “Kid City” in an empty warehouse helped the school’s vision and pedagogy become real to everyone in year one