Whole Learners, Whole Systems
Transforming School Districts for Adolescent Thriving
- Sarah Fine - High Tech High Graduate School of Education
- Santiago Rincón-Gallardo - Liberating Learning Inc
- Michael Fullan - Michael Fullan Enterprises Inc., Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Canada
Administration & Leadership | School Change, Reform, & Restructuring | Secondary Education
Reimagine your school district as a thriving ecosystem where young people flourish
Middle and high schools are in crisis. Many educators sense that the traditional factory-model approach to secondary education is failing to meet the developmental needs of adolescents, leading to widespread disengagement and exacerbating a growing mental health crisis. Yet, it often feels like we’re all trapped in a game that nobody wants to play. This book offers a powerful counter-narrative, showing how districts can move beyond compliance and fragmentation toward a new paradigm for secondary education built for deep learning, belonging, and real-world purpose.
Rooted in groundbreaking research and drawing on vivid, story-rich case studies from six diverse school districts in California, Whole Learners, Whole Systems provides a compelling and practical roadmap for transforming secondary schools. It introduces a powerful framework for change built on four key pillars:
- Shared Vision: Develop a compelling, co-created, and coherent vision for schools that embraces a “whole learner” view of success.
- Steady Work: Learn to focus on long-term improvement over quick-fix reforms, building the trust and coherence needed for deep, sustainable change.
- Symmetry: Model the collaborative, inquiry-rich culture you want to see in classrooms by embedding it in your leadership practice and professional learning.
- Systemness: Foster collective responsibility and interdependence across classrooms, schools, and the central office to break down silos and build a true learning ecosystem.
Whole Learners, Whole Systems provides hopeful, solutions-oriented insights and actionable strategies education leaders need to redesign their systems. It’s time to create whole systems where all adolescents can connect, contribute, and thrive as whole learners.
Once again, Michael Fullan and his colleagues Sarah Fine and Santiago Rincon-Gallardo have written a book for educators that addresses a critical and timely topic. We have known for many years that the social, emotional, and psychological needs of kids affect how they perform academically. Yet, for too long, these issues have been approached separately, and more often than not, in a fragmented manner. This book shows how schools can address these needs in a coherent, thoughtful, and compassionate manner. Based on case studies of school districts where such an approach has been successfully implemented, the new vision they provide is one that all schools can and should embrace.
It is high time to leave behind the outdated factory-model approach to secondary education. Grounded in rich case studies and focused on coherence, purpose, and equity, this book provides system and school leaders with a path forward. Fine, Rincon-Gallardo, and Fullan offer a roadmap for how to build whole systems where adolescents can thrive as whole learners.
Beautifully written, imminently practical, and realistic yet hopeful, this book is a captivating must-read on how systems can support high school transformation. Highlighting places where adolescents are thriving, the authors share rich cases of pioneering systems that integrate student learning and wellbeing.
Fine, Rincon-Gallardo, and Fullan share how six districts have made a real impact by focusing on students, prioritizing relationships, reimagining traditional structures, and recognizing the essential role of the system in sustaining change. This book will inspire and guide any district ready to truly transform their students’ high school learning experience.
This book is for any education leader who is looking for a clear path towards high school transformation. Based on rigorous research and full of stories as well as tangible guidance, Whole Learners, Whole Systems shows how to shift teaching and learning so our nation's adolescents can learn, lead, and contribute. It charts a vision for how to avoid the tired duality of academic learning versus wellbeing, and powerfully shows how children engaged and thrive when we marry both.
What happens when high schools shift their focus from compliance and standardized achievement to each students and their agency, authentic work, connectedness, and joy? Whole Learners, Whole Systems provides detailed, real-world examples that ignite imagination and inspire! It shows that when leaders support the right sparks to fly, students and schools thrive.
The authors have masterfully articulated through research and case studies a compelling call to reimagine how systems can move beyond disengagement to truly honor adolescents as whole learners, destined to thrive within learning and life. A must-read for leaders committed to helping youth succeed and in need of inspiration to make this happen.
This timely book highlights what’s possible in public education when districts shift from control to coherence, and from compliance to learner agency. The real stories of transformation offer critical hope and practical pathways for leaders ready to reimagine learning and wellbeing. A must-read for anyone who believes adolescents deserve schools that allow them to choose, connect, and contribute as whole learners.
Whole Learners, Whole Systems offers six vivid case studies of districts pursuing whole system transformation. Written in compelling prose by three pre-eminent educational scholars, this book is an indispensable text for anyone seeking to move school systems into the 21st century.
Fine, Rincon-Gallardo, and Fullan offer a clear-eyed and sober assessment of the current state of school in the U.S. and beyond. Through their engaging description of emerging and promising work in diverse school systems in California, they offer something else: hope.