Every movement needs a mirror.
Every system needs a sounding board.
And every revolution needs real voices.
At Thinkering Collective, we’ve never been content to sit in observation. We are educators, creatives, strategists, and builders who believe that the future of education will be humanized—or it will be lost. Our mission is to uplift the humans inside the system, to champion their bold ideas, and to offer a launchpad from spark to scaled solution.
We are not just an idea incubator.
We are an idea-to-impact incubator—dedicated to helping educators go from isolated insight to public innovation.
And now, we’re launching a new initiative that takes this mission one step further:
🎤 Thinkering Voices
A field-facing, future-forward storytelling series built to surface, spotlight, and support the people who are quietly shaping the world through education.
Why This Series, Why Now?
In nearly every sector of society, those on the front lines of meaningful change are overworked, undervalued, and underheard.
Education is no exception.
We live in a moment of crisis and of creative possibility. In every school, district, library, and learning organization, there are people fighting for more human, equitable, and joyful learning experiences. But too often, their stories are never shared beyond their walls. Their impact goes unseen. Their insights are not resourced. Their models never scale.
Thinkering Voices was created to change that.
What Is Thinkering Voices?
Thinkering Voices is a multimedia interview series and strategic listening campaign. It is both a storytelling platform and a discovery process—a way for Thinkering to go out into the world, listen deeply, learn honestly, and uplift the people who are designing the future of learning.
Each season of Thinkering Voices will explore a critical education-aligned field or role:
Teacher Librarians
Mentors
Learning Designers
School Counselors
Youth Media Producers
Special Education Advocates
District-level Innovators
Museum Educators
Tech Integration Coaches
Experiential Learning Designers
…and beyond.
These are the humans behind the systems—the people whose daily work makes learning possible, but who are rarely given the time, attention, or investment to scale their vision.
Through Thinkering Voices, we’re stepping into their world to explore:
What’s working
What’s broken
What’s being reimagined
And what could be—with the right support
From Thinkering Street to the National Stage
Thinkering Voices will feature a range of storytelling formats, including:
On-the-ground interviews from national events, college campuses, and public spaces (Thinkering Street)
Deep-dive conversations with educators and changemakers across sectors
Behind-the-scenes media coverage from major conferences and innovation showcases
Field notes and reflections from the Thinkering team
Cross-platform media partnerships to share content beyond Substack
This isn’t media made about educators.
It’s media made with them, for them, and because of them.
What Comes After the Storytelling
At the end of each Thinkering Voices series or industry “deep dive,” we don’t stop with content.
We turn insight into infrastructure.
Every cycle will culminate in two major deliverables:
1. An Open Impact Report
A beautifully designed public brief outlining:
Key challenges and opportunities in the sector
Innovations we uncovered
Voices that must be amplified
Strategic recommendations for funding, policy, and partnership
This report isn’t just for reading—it’s a springboard for action. Thinkering partners, funders, fellows, and collaborators can use it to inform real-world strategy.
2. A Dedicated Fellowship Track
For each sector explored, we will launch a tailored fellowship opportunity to support changemakers from that space in building their dream project.
For example: If we discover that librarians across the country are hungry for studio tools, mentorship networks, and trauma-informed media programming, we’ll co-create a Librarian Capstone Track inside the Thinkering Fellowship. And we’ll fund it, promote it, and build alongside them.
This is our model: Listen deeply. Learn honestly. Build together.
Our First Deep Dive: School Librarians at AASL 2025
We begin with a profession that’s long been undervalued but never unimportant.
At the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) 2025 National Conference, we are sitting down with librarians from across the country to understand their evolving role in shaping future-ready learners.
These interviews are raw, real, and revelatory.
We’ve heard stories of:
Libraries becoming trauma-informed sanctuaries
Makerspaces born from empty rooms and elbow grease
Educators using podcasting and book clubs to elevate student voice
Mentorship models that fight isolation in districts with no PD funding
Entire school communities transformed by one empowered librarian
We’re not just documenting stories. We’re building something from them.
Watch for the Thinkering Voices: Librarians Impact Brief and the launch of the School Library Fellowship Track this winter.
Why This Matters
We believe that education isn’t broken.
It’s misunderstood.
It’s under-leveraged.
And it’s full of people doing brilliant, unrecognized work in silos.
The work of Thinkering is to:
Remove the silos
Magnify the brilliance
Build a scaffold of human connection, funding, and storytelling to take big ideas from spark to system
That begins with listening.
And Thinkering Voices is how we listen louder.
Join the Movement
🗞️ Follow Thinkering Voices for behind-the-scenes access to educators across the world:
thinkeringmedia.substack.com
💡 Support the work of producing these interviews, funding Fellowships, and building tools for scale:
givebutter.com/thinkeringcollective
📌 Apply to the Thinkering Fellowship by clickingthe article below - if you’ve got a bold idea for reimagining learning—and want a community who believes in you:
You’ve Been Building Toward This Moment
For every educator who’s ever stayed up late wondering how to make a real difference, this is for you.
These are the voices shaping the future of learning.
They’ve always been there.
It’s time we all start listening.
Let’s Thinker together.
