Holding Two Truths: Education, Evidence, and Fatherhood

For most of my career, I’ve been able to look at education through the lens of a practitioner.

That lens has served me well. It’s helped me see patterns across classrooms, schools, and systems. It’s made me hungry for evidence, skeptical of fads, and committed to the idea that learning isn’t magic; it’s hard work to make happen, but something we can understand, support, and design for within schools and everyday life. It’s made me an advocate for cognitive science-informed instruction, for technology (and now AI) as an accelerator when used responsibly, and for systems thinking as a leadership stance: if we want outcomes to change, we have to change the conditions that produce them.

And now, with a baby due in June, that practitioner lens is about to be joined by another one: fatherhood.

I’m excited. I’m anxious. I’m human. And I can already feel the questions arriving before the baby; questions that don’t have neat answers, and that may change month by month as this new identity becomes real.

The biggest question I keep returning to is this: What will I see similarly to how I always have and what will change when the “student” is my child?

I suspect my perspective will become a pendulum that ebbs and flows like a meandering stream: swinging between my former predispositions and new emotional realities, between what I know and what I feel, between the system and the person. The work, I believe, will be to keep asking the questions honestly without letting either side of the pendulum pretend it has the full truth.

The Practitioner Lens: What I’ve Been Trained to Notice

As a practitioner in education with roles as a teacher, coach, EdTech and instructional leader, and consultant, I’ve learned to look for leverage points.

I’ve learned that good intentions don’t automatically translate into good learning. That effort, while admirable, isn’t always efficient. That students can “do school” without actually building durable knowledge. That practice matters more than performance. That the best teaching is often invisible: the careful sequencing, the strategic retrieval, the feedback loops, the calibration of challenge.

I’ve also learned that systems can make it unnecessarily hard for educators to do what works. Sometimes this is due to constraints (e.g., time, resources, staffing, competing priorities). Sometimes it’s due to beliefs (e.g., “students learn best when…” followed by something comforting but unsupported by research). And sometimes it’s due to the inertia that shows up in every large organization: once something becomes normal, it’s hard to question it; especially when questioning it would require changing habits, routines, or power structures.

That practitioner lens in me has made me impatient at times. Not with kids but with systems that are slow to adapt, slow to learn, and slow to let go of what isn’t working or not working like they should if we were using the evidence-based research.

And that’s where I can already sense the pressure point of fatherhood.

The Parent Lens: Time Stops Being Abstract

In education, we talk about time constantly: time on task, pacing guides, calendars, academic years, instructional minutes.

But when it’s your child, time becomes something else.

Time becomes a countdown you don’t want to rush through. This is some of the most finite time in your life as a parent.

Time becomes the space where a personality forms, where confidence either grows or gets bruised, where curiosity either gets fed or slowly learns to keep quiet. Time becomes the difference between “they’ll be fine” and “this is shaping who they think they are.”

As a practitioner, I’ve been able to accept that systems move slowly. As a parent, I’m not sure I’ll be able to accept that with the same calm. Because when the system moves slowly, it isn’t “a cohort” waiting; this time it will be my kid.

So one of my questions is blunt and a little uncomfortable:

Will I become obsessed with the quality and efficiency of learning because childhood is short and the stakes feel personal?

I can imagine myself watching a classroom routine or instructional strategy and thinking, “Is this building lasting understanding, or just filling time?” I can imagine myself noticing how often students are asked to perform for the short term rather than practice and create durable memories to build strong content foundations in a wide range of domains. I can imagine feeling a sharper urgency about wasted minutes, unclear explanations, shallow tasks disguised as rigor, or policies that prioritize order over learning.

But there’s a danger here too.

The danger is turning learning into an optimization project. The danger is letting the stopwatch dominate the compass. The danger is mistaking speed for growth, or efficiency for meaning.

So the question becomes more precise:

Can I care about learning quality without turning my child into a personal “outcomes dashboard”? For much of the past few generations here in the United States, I believe we have focused on this too much, which has caused a myriad of consequences for Millennials and Generation Z.

I want the answer to be yes. I want to stay committed to what works without becoming the kind of parent who unknowingly pressures the joy out of learning.

Empathy: Knowing More Might Make Me Softer, Not Harder

Here’s what surprises me: I don’t think fatherhood will only make me more demanding.

I think it might make me more empathetic: especially toward the messy, emotional, uneven reality of learning. Learning should scale, but at times, it takes peaks and valleys while continuing that upwards projection.

As a practitioner, I already know (at least intellectually) that learning is hard and takes a lot of work. That struggle is not a sign of failure; it’s part of the process. That forgetting happens (often). That progress is rarely linear. That students carry invisible loads: stress, identity, family contexts, social dynamics, sleep, hunger, fear of embarrassment.

But knowing it and feeling it are different experiences.

I believe when it’s your own child, the struggle won’t be abstract as part of a larger system. It won’t be a data point. It will have a face. It will have tears. It will have those moments where you can’t “logic” someone back into confidence.

So I keep asking myself:

Will I be more empathetic toward the learning process? Will I be more patient with frustration, slower progress, and the emotional side of competence?

I think I will. And I think that empathy might actually make me even a better advocate for evidence-based instruction. Ultimately, this is not entirely because I want results, but because I want less suffering.

When instruction is clear, when practice is purposeful and strategic spaced out, when feedback is timely, when tasks are appropriately challenging, students don’t just learn more – they often feel safer. The classroom becomes less of a guessing game. Learning becomes less of a public performance. Confidence has more places to attach itself.

Ultimately, evidence-based teaching isn’t cold. When done well, it’s one of the most humane things we can offer.

Patience With Systems: Will It Shrink or Transform?

Another question sits right behind the empathy one:

Will I hold the same level of patience for education systems?

I can imagine two outcomes.

One: my patience shrinks. The minute policy or bureaucracy touches my child, I might feel the heat rise faster. I might be less willing to tolerate vague explanations, inconsistent standards, or “this is just how we do it” reasoning. I might be more likely to push, question, and escalate.

Two: my impatience transforms into a different kind of patience. This is the kind that isn’t passive, but persistent. The kind that understands systems don’t change because people get mad, but because people organize, align incentives, build coalitions, and keep showing up.

As a practitioner, systems thinking has been a leadership tool. As a parent, I suspect it will become personal. I won’t just be asking, “What’s best practice?” I’ll be asking, “What is this system producing for my child and who has the power to adjust it?”

If I’m honest, I don’t think fatherhood will make me less critical of systems. But I hope it makes me wiser in how I engage them: more focused on root causes, less addicted to blame, more able to distinguish between “educators doing their best inside constraints” and “structures that need redesign.”

Technology and AI: Still an Advocate, But With New Boundaries

I’ve been an advocate for technology and increasingly for AI as a powerful accelerator for learning when done right. I still believe that.

I believe technology can reduce friction: access to practice, better feedback loops, more responsive to supporting how students practice, and new ways for students to express understanding. I believe AI can support educators by lightening cognitive load, generating examples, tutoring through misconceptions, and personalizing practice at scale when it’s aligned to sound learning principles and human judgment.

But fatherhood adds another layer: protection.

As a parent, I’ll care more about privacy, about overexposure, about attention, about dependency, about who benefits from the data. I’ll care about whether tech deepens learning or just deepens screen time (which I plan to not introduce to my future child until much later on). I’ll care whether AI is building agency or replacing it. Last, I will also think about existential questions like “what will my child be learning to make them a lifelong learner when so much of the world will change in their lifetime?”

So I’m asking myself:

Will I advocate for AI for my child as much as I do now?

I think the answer will be “yes, but differently.”

Yes: I will still want my child to have tools that support learning. Especially tools that help them practice, get feedback, and build confidence. By the time they are school aged (in 5 to 6 years), what and how AI will look like in classrooms is a complete mystery.

Differently: I will be more insistent on boundaries and purpose. I will want AI to be a means, not a default. A support, not a substitute. A tool for thinking (I hope), not a machine for only answers.

In my best version of this, AI becomes like a good assistant teacher: available, responsive, and patient while the primary relationship to learning remains human, curious, and embodied in real experiences with other humans (and likely with other AI they’ll experience).

The Teacher I’ll Become as a Parent

The line that keeps coming back to me is this: I’m excited to be a teacher as a parent.

That’s a role I’ve never had before. I’ve taught students, coached teachers and leaders, worked in K-12, Higher Ed, and Adult Education systems. But parenting is different. Parenting is teaching with your whole self, not just your expertise. It’s teaching when you’re tired. Teaching when you’re wrong. Teaching when your own emotions are loud. While we will apply as much as we know about how learning and parenting can happen according to the research, I do know that I won’t be perfect at it, nor am I expecting to be.

With this in mind, it’s not just teaching content. It’s also teaching identity:

• “You can figure this out.”
• “Practice is allowed here.”
• “Mistakes don’t reduce your worth.”
• “Curiosity matters more than looking smart.”
• “Learning is something you do, not something you are.”
• “Learning never ends. It’s a lifelong process.”

I want my child to grow up in a home where learning feels like a natural part of life; not a performance, not a punishment, not a scoreboard. A home where evidence matters, most certainly but where warmth matters too. Where we optimize, but with humanity.

The Pendulum and the Foundation

I don’t expect my perspective to stabilize neatly. It will be messy and it will evolve.

I expect a pendulum: some seasons I’ll lean harder on efficiency and outcomes; other seasons I’ll lean harder on empathy and process. Some moments I’ll want to fight the system; other moments I’ll want to protect my peace. Some days I’ll be the calm educator; other days I’ll be the anxious dad.

Maybe that’s not a flaw. Maybe that’s the truth of caring deeply.

What I do hope stays steady is the foundation beneath the swing:

• Education is a force for change at any time in someone’s life.
• Evidence and cognitive science-based instruction matter because they make learning more likely and often more humane.
• Technology and AI can be accelerators when aligned to good pedagogy, ethics, and human connection.
• Systems thinking is essential, but it must be optimized with humanity, empathy, and wise use of tools. This is something all leaders and teachers need.
• And maybe the most important foundation of all: the willingness to keep asking myself the hard questions without defensiveness.

And maybe the most important foundation of all: the willingness to keep asking myself the hard questions without defensiveness.

Because fatherhood is going to change how I see education. It should.

But I don’t want it to replace my practitioner lens. I want it to deepen it—to make it more grounded, more urgent in the right ways, and more compassionate where I used to be merely correct.

June is coming before I know it. I’m excited. I’m anxious. I’m ready to learn again and what learning really means.