By: Carri Schneider
The sun is just rising over the reef, and I can hear my youngest arguing with Scout, his personalized AI assistant, about whether his flipper technique counts as adaptive movement or just flailing. From the other side of the boat, my oldest daughter calls out, “Mom, check your dashboard.”
We’re on a family dive vacation, all four of us. My daughter is here, working on her Capstone in Living Systems, where she is tracking coral regeneration as part of a global cohort of teen marine biologists. My partner, an environmental attorney, is interviewing local researchers about the resurgence of marine life following the end of offshore drilling. While we’re here, I’m gathering underwater images and reflections for my ever-evolving personal portfolio that blends visual storytelling and narrative strategy. Ushering my oldest into adulthood has pushed me to be even more intentional about noticing and following my own curiosities and interests. Times like these remind me that I’m still a learner, too!
This is nothing like school as I knew it; it’s more rigorous, more interdisciplinary, and more connected than anything I ever experienced growing up. In 2040, this kind of deep, place-based learning is part of a broader public infrastructure designed to ensure all learners, not just a privileged few, have access to meaningful, contextual learning.
Back When Learning Was a List
I graduated from high school in 2010. Back then, learning was mainly a list: courses, credits, and GPA. If you could memorize quickly and write a decent essay, you were good to go. I don’t remember ever being asked what I wanted to learn, or why it mattered.
I didn’t know it then, but some innovative schools were just starting to explore things like project-based and competency-based learning. Access was super limited, and too often it was treated as an “enrichment” opportunity, not a foundational part of learning like it is now.
When my daughter was born in 2022, the world inside and outside of the classroom was pretty chaotic. By the time she was in school, I was parenting through post-pandemic systems held together by patchwork apps and disconnected tools. One app told me her schedule and grades. Another showed me what she “mastered” that week. But most days, it felt like we were always guessing across spreadsheets, screen-time limits, and shifting expectations.
I spent so many nights worrying about what she was learning and what she wasn’t. I thought the problem was me—my time management, my tech skills, my parenting. My friends and I shared many of the same doubts as we exchanged late-night texts: What even mattered now? Will AI just replace everything? Would our kids be ready for a world we didn’t even understand ourselves?
I wanted a map. What I had was a maze.
From Maze to Map
But the truth was, the system wasn’t built to work together.
Eventually, we all started to see it. Families. Educators. Employers. And, of course, students themselves. Everyone was doing their best, but the pieces didn’t fit together. That began to change. It was slow at first, with pilot programs, small signals, and local innovations. Over time, momentum grew and, eventually, so did coherence.
A new infrastructure emerged that put learners at the center, connected learning across settings, and gave everyone (from parents to employers) a shared language to understand learning holistically. It didn’t happen overnight, but it happened together.
My daughter is living proof of what the shift made possible. Now she’s 18, and yesterday she gave a virtual talk to an international group of 15-year-olds about the ethics of conservation. It was peer-led, educator-supported, and entirely her own. The moment was logged in her learner record and tagged “systems thinking” and “scientific communication” for her advisor back home to review.
Her LER (Learner Employment Record) doesn’t just tell us what she knows. It shows who she’s becoming. It’s a living portfolio and a secure, digital learner wallet that includes things like:
- A philosophy reflection linking coral reef interdependence to human systems
- A visual analysis of reef color patterns and textile design
- A podcast episode she produced on coral resilience
- A math simulation on pH variation and reef recovery
- Field notes she co-authored with her environmental humanities mentor
- Her poetry that explores the connectedness of all things
Learning isn’t siloed anymore. It’s unbundled and deeply contextual. Biology lives next to art. History shows up in policy work. Philosophy guides design.
Trusting the Process
A few weeks before this trip, my daughter nearly backed out. The idea of leading a capstone research project abroad felt too big, too soon. She paced the kitchen. “What if I’m not ready?” she asked.
If I had said this to my mom, she would have warned me about college applications. And I’ll admit, a part of me wanted to do the same. (I still catch myself slipping into old-school parenting, although I don’t miss the days of over-caffeinated sprints through what felt like the Extracurricular Iron Man.) Instead, I prompted her to open her strengths inventory and watch the encouraging messages from her learning guides, who have been with her all along.
She scrolled through their notes, and we talked about the patterns of persistence, curiosity, and her growing confidence in scientific inquiry. She clicked open a voice memo from her advisor, “You’re ready! And I’m here every step of the way.” She looked up, exhaled, and said, “Let’s do this” as she clicked “Accept.”
I sat quietly for a moment after she walked out of the room. I hadn’t made the decision, but I had witnessed it. And I trusted not just her, but the circle around her: the educators who knew her patterns, the system that surfaced her strengths, the scaffolding that supported her autonomy.
That glimpse into the process and her thinking meant a lot to me as her mom, especially because I don’t see everything in her LER anymore. That’s by design. As she’s grown, so has her agency. Now she curates what she shares: moments she’s proud of, reflections she’s still wrestling with, entries where she wants another perspective. And that’s enough.
When she was little, I was the one uploading and tagging her marble runs and puppet shows. As she grew, she took the lead. At 16, we all agreed she was ready to adjust her permissions. Now, at 18, she chooses what to share with us and with future employers.
Privacy protections are core to the system’s design and to the trust that makes it work. Learners own their records. Permissions are adjustable. And teachers play a vital role, knowing when to step in and when to step back, while working closely to build the independence and confidence kids need to own their own learning journeys.
My mother still talks about dropping me off at college. “One day you’re packing lunches,” she says, “and the next, they’re gone.” The transition was jarring, from total dependence to total independence, in an instant. Today, those transitions are intentionally scaffolded. They happen on each learner’s timeline, not at a predetermined age or grade level. And they’re guided by a team.
Learning, Together
Back home, we live in a mid-sized city where learning isn’t bound by classroom walls. It’s part of a connected ecosystem—labs, libraries, studios, community centers, nature—all credentialed, all counted.
My own learner record has changed too. I was once a strategist in a marketing firm, toggling through color palettes and writing grant proposals. Now I design campaigns that blend visual storytelling, ecological design, and human motivation. My LER is rich with years of projects, questions and snapshots, including:
- A collaborative design project I created with my daughter last year
- A media literacy microcredential from a series I co-published with local educators
- A set of reflections from this dive trip, tagged: creativity, intergenerational learning, risk-taking
This morning, Scout even surfaced an opportunity based on overlapping tags in our LERs: “Shared themes detected. Suggested project: Coral as Story.” We loved the idea. Within hours, we went fully down the creative rabbit hole, pulling together photos, audio clips, and some of our favorite discoveries. Maybe some day we’ll even share it with others–but for now it’s just ours, filled with inside jokes and family lore.
This isn’t the Wild West. It’s a human system that’s carefully designed to support every learner in growing, reflecting, and sharing not just what they know, but who they are becoming.
And while I still sometimes worry (especially when there’s a blank space in her LER), I’ve learned to pause. In 2025, blank meant missed work. Now, it might mean she’s resting. Or thinking. Or growing in ways that don’t yet have words.
In the end, this isn’t about the tech. It’s about the trust, the mentors, and the learning moments that make it possible to let go…and to stay connected.
Signals from the Future
This possible future was based on the following signals from communities and projects around the world.
Learner Employment Record Adoption (LERs): Portable, learner-owned records of growth and skills being piloted across states and platforms. Many pilots are being run across the country and states like North Daktoa and Arkansas are piloting state-wide approaches to this technology.
Unbundled & Credentialed Systems: Initiatives across the country are modeling citywide learning ecosystems with credentialed learning across sites.
Educator Reimagination: Models from High Tech High Graduate School of Education, Next Education Workforce, TFA’s Reinvention Lab and schools around the world are helping transform teachers into learning designers and mentors, rather than sages on stages.
Learning For All Ages: Across the world, countries are recognizing the importance of upskilling and reskilling, meaning that experiences never stop.
- Singapore recently introduced a monthly allowance to help mid-career professionals train in meaningful new skills.
- France offers the Compte Personnel de Formation, an account of training credits available to all workers, including freelancers, for use on a wide range of certified reskilling programs.
- Sweden’s Transition Study Support (Omställningsstudiestöd) covers up to 80% of salary for up to 44 weeks for workers looking to change fields.
- South Korea has operated a Lifelong Education Promotion Plan since 2002, which includes the National Tomorrow Learning Card—a voucher system that helps fund vocational training for both employed and unemployed individuals.
The post Learning to Let Go (and Stay Connected): A Parent’s View from 2040 appeared first on Getting Smart.