The Shape of Learning

It’s taken nearly two decades for the pieces to click into place. From my college professor José Victoriano, who ingrained in me the belief that everything communicates, to Julie Stern's Learning That Transfers, to the work of Heidi Hayes Jacob and Allison Zmuda on Curriculum Storyboards—it has all come together into a single, larger premise.

Now, I’m not claiming to say anything entirely new—maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m finally telling myself the story of how, in every role I’ve held, I’ve been searching for storytelling all along. Story supersedes me. I live inside a pattern older than the lesson plans I craft or the stories I’m seeking to publish.

The premise?

That learning is about meaning-making. And the universal language of meaning-making is story. And story follows a shape… So too, must learning. The shape of learning.

What if it is true—that everything we do—every choice, every gesture, every word, every silence, every lesson plan, hallway conversation, and morning journal prompt—is all an act of communication? And what if the pattern that gives those acts meaning—the deeper rhythm humming beneath them—is story?

Story is the pattern. Communication is the act.

Think about it.

We’re born looking for the shape of things.

We scan for beginnings, middles, and ends.

We crave context, conflict, and resolution.

We ask: What happened? What’s happening now? What comes next?

So then, what if educators saw every subject as a story? What if we saw students not as vessels to be filled, but as characters to be awakened? What if we intentionally seek to help students name the patterns beneath their experience—and bring them to author it for themselves?

After all, aren’t we all doing the same? Searching for meaning? Searching for shape? Because if story is the pattern, and communication is the act, then every time we engage with life itself, we are living the shape of learning—and a story is unfolding.