Extraordinary Learning for All: How Communities Design Schools Where Everyone Thrives

Proven methods, hard-won lessons, and practical tools to create a better future of education

Extraordinary Learning for All: How Communities Design Schools Where Everyone Thrives delivers a hopeful, humane, realistic, and compelling portrait for how we must reinvent schooling for a new century, drawing on the voices and experiences of real school communities who are on that journey and illuminating the specific actions that school and system leaders can take to spark these journeys in their communities. The frameworks, concepts, and stories in this book, emanating from direct, in-the-trenches partnerships with innovators on the ground, show, in genuine detail, what makes this work hard―but also what makes it possible.

Written by the co-founders and Chief Learning Officer of Transcend, a leading nonprofit in school innovation, this book provides solutions to the major problems we face in education, including approaches that:

• Reverse declining enrollment rates and chronic truancy, especially in large urban districts, through better student engagement
• Mitigate our national mental health crisis through school designs that address higher-than-ever-rates of boredom, stress, and chronic anxiety
• Engage and collaborate with parents and communities to improve local schools
• Uplift the voices and expertise of teachers, 300,000 of whom left the profession between 2020-2022

For educational leaders in communities of all shapes and sizes, Extraordinary Learning for All: How Communities Design Schools Where Everyone Thrives is your blueprint to break free from the traditional model of schooling and build a better future for all.

Aylon Samouha (Chicago, IL) is Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Transcend Education. Prior to co-founding Transcend, Aylon was an independent designer providing strategy and design services to education organizations, schools, and foundations. Aylon also served as Chief Schools Officer at Rocketship Education; leading the highest performing network of low-income schools in the state of California, designing the academic model and blended learning approach, and growing the network from 3 to 7 schools.

Jeff Wetzler (Hastings on Hudson, NY) is Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Transcend Education. Prior to Transcend, Jeff spent a decade in senior leadership roles at Teach For America. Jeff was a founding board member of Leadership Prep Charter Schools and has served on the boards of Uncommon Schools NYC and the National Academy of Advanced Teacher Education. He currently serves as board chair of New Classrooms Innovation Partners.

Jenee Henry Wood (New Haven, CT) is Head of Learning at Transcend Education, an organization which helps schools across the country build & share innovative new models of learning. Transcend has served over 800,000 students through their work with nearly 400 districts & schools. Transcend directly supports schools and systems in their design work, democratizes design support through resources, tools, and professional learning, and catalyzes systemic change by engaging funders and system leaders to understand and advance innovation.