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MindsON.earth

Field notebook · Entry nº 001

Status: figuring it out

Raising humans is a pretty big experiment.← no control group

MindsON is a growing community exploring education, childhood, nature, technology and human development — and experimenting with what comes next.

MindsON brings parents, educators and curious people together to ask better questions about childhood, learning and what humans need to flourish.

Join the gathering Explore MindsON

For parents & educators reimagining education

  • What is education for?
  • What does a child actually need?
  • What happens when learning leaves the classroom?
  • What if curiosity was the curriculum?

№ 01The question

Dani Sierra walking a garden path, daughter riding on shoulders

It started with one question.

What kind of education do I want for my daughter?

I spent more than a year looking for an answer.

The more schools I visited, programmes I researched and educators I spoke with, the more complicated the question became.

I realised I wasn’t really looking for a school.

I was asking:

What kind of childhood do we want to create?

  1. 01What should children experience?
  2. 02What should they learn?
  3. 03What should they become capable of?

And what happens when we design education around those questions — rather than simply inheriting the systems we grew up with?

MindsON is my attempt to explore those questions in public.

— Dani

№ 02The loop

How we’re exploring

Ideas are more interesting when they leave the page.

  1. 01 / Think

    Think

    Follow the questions.

    Essays, research and ideas I’m exploring around childhood, education, technology, nature and human development.

    Read the essays
  2. 02 / Talk

    Talk

    Learn from people doing things differently.

    Conversations with educators, parents, researchers and people experimenting with new approaches to learning.

    Explore conversations
  3. 03 / Try

    Try

    Take the ideas into the real world.

    Small experiments for families — and eventually larger experiments in place-based, adventure and experiential learning.

    Try an experiment

Learn

…and then back to Think ↺

The loop: Think, then Talk, then Try, then Learn — and think again.

№ 03The journal

Think

Thinking out loud.

Some questions need more than a caption.

This is where I go deeper — exploring education, childhood, human development, nature, technology and the questions that keep following me around.

Read more essays

On Substack

For the questions that won’t fit in a Reel.

I write about education, childhood, technology, nature and the strange experiment of raising humans in a changing world.

Read / subscribe on Substack

№ 04The MindsON Circle

You don’t have to figure this out alone.

I’m gathering parents and educators who are reimagining education — people who want to explore what learning and childhood could look like beyond the obvious answers.

The MindsON Circle

A monthly gathering where we:

  • Talk

    Share the questions and challenges we’re encountering as parents and educators.

  • Explore

    Look at ideas around childhood, learning, technology, nature and human development.

  • Learn

    Share useful research, resources, experiments and perspectives.

  • Ask

    Bring questions to educators and practitioners I’m speaking with.

  • Connect

    Meet parents and educators asking similar questions.

A tiny dried flower resting on an adult's fingertip while a child points at it
spotted by the smallest scientist

Who’s gathering

Parents and educators reimagining education.

As the circle grows, we’ll invite a smaller group of families to participate in our first learning experiment.

Add your name to the sheet:

No spam. Leave any time.

№ 05Conversations

Talk

Conversations about what comes next

I’m talking with people who are experimenting with education, childhood and human development.

First conversations are being lined up — these are the people I’m hoping to learn from.

  • Walk & talkPlaceholder

    Forest school educator

    Guest to be confirmed

    “What does a child learn in the woods that they can’t learn anywhere else?”
    • Educators
    • Nature
    hoping to talk soon
  • PodcastPlaceholder

    Unschooling parent

    Guest to be confirmed

    “What did you have to unlearn before your kids could learn their way?”
    • Parents
    • Unschooling
    hoping to talk soon
  • VideoPlaceholder

    Founder of an independent school

    Guest to be confirmed

    “If you started again tomorrow, what would you leave out?”
    • Schools
    • Educators
    hoping to talk soon
  • PodcastPlaceholder

    Child development researcher

    Guest to be confirmed

    “What does the research actually say about agency — and what doesn’t it know yet?”
    • Researchers
    hoping to talk soon
  • WrittenPlaceholder

    Designer working on children’s technology

    Guest to be confirmed

    “Can technology support childhood without replacing experience?”
    • Technology
    • Researchers
    hoping to talk soon
  • All conversationsExplore the conversations

Scroll sideways →

№ 06Field work

Try

This month’s experiment

October’s homework (for grown-ups)

Take learning outside.

Spend an afternoon with your child somewhere you’ve never explored.

  1. 1.Don’t teach.
  2. 2.Don’t explain.
  3. 3.Follow their questions.

Afterwards, ask yourself

What did they notice that you didn’t?

Try it Share what happened
A child crouching on stream rocks with a net
exhibit A
Time
An afternoon
Ages
Any age
Where
Somewhere new

№ 07The wall

Questions we’re exploring

Pick one up (they spring back). Click one to follow it.

Nothing selected

← pick a question. Any question.

Each one leads somewhere — an essay, a conversation, an experiment. Some don’t lead anywhere yet.

№ 08What happens next

Draft · subject to change

We’re not building the programme first.

We’re building the community first.

As the circle grows, we’ll invite a smaller group to participate in our first family learning experiment.

The emerging idea looks something like this →

A toddler stepping between rocks in a shallow stream
field notes: stream crossing
  • Parents+children
  • Nature+adventure
  • Questions+projects
  • Movement+making
  • Reflection+community

We’ll run it, document what happens, listen carefully, and use what we learn to shape whatever comes next.

Join the gathering

№ 09Lately

Fresh from the notebook

ThinkTalkTry
Dani Sierra leaping through a waterfall pool
Dani, mid-leap (as usual)

№ 10Who’s asking

I’m figuring this out too.

I’m a dad, storyteller and curious researcher interested in how we help humans become more capable of navigating an uncertain world.

MindsON started because I couldn’t find the education I wanted for my daughter.

Alongside MindsON, I run Regen Studio, where I lead communications for alternative education organisations. It means I spend a lot of time with educators and founders who are already trying things differently — and I bring what I learn from them here.

It isn’t about having a perfect alternative. It’s about exploring what happens when we take children’s curiosity, agency, relationships, bodies, communities and living environments seriously.

Read the story

Come explore with us.

You don’t need to have the answers.
You just need to be curious about the questions.

Join the gathering Explore the conversations