In this blog post, I'm naming two projects I'm retiring from. Both did what they set out to do, and both leave something behind that outlasts the container.
Fitting neatly into one box has never been my thing. But holding a lot of threads at once means the honest version of my work includes subtraction.
You can only carry so many things — putting one down is often how you free your hands for the next. Call it multipotentialite arithmetic.
In this blog post, I'm naming two projects I'm retiring from. Both did what they set out to do, and both leave something behind that outlasts the container.
The Commonwealth Alliance for Thriving Youth is a Virginia coalition, led by Stephanie Malia Krauss, that pulls together education and youth-development leaders from across the state — MENTOR Virginia, VPOST, 4-H Virginia, Communities In Schools, Voices for Virginia's Children, UVA's Youth-Nex, the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent, several school divisions, Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Richmond, and more.
The shared commitment is easy to say and hard to do: every young person in Virginia thriving wherever they live, learn, and play.
I came in as a consultant and volunteer. Stephanie led it — ran the statewide listening tour, wrote the wind-down note. My job was to contribute.
What the coalition built is the thing I'm proudest to have touched — the Commonwealth Portrait of a Thriving Middle Schooler.
Think of it as a customizable north star, a cousin to a Profile of a Graduate, aimed squarely at young adolescents. It's organized around four strengths (Body, Mind, Heart, and Spirit) each one broken into the skills, supports, and services a middle schooler actually needs. It's built on the Thrive Five outcomes (safe and supported, healthy and healing, rooted and connected, living with joy and purpose, learning and growing) and on AMLE's five essential school conditions. And it says something a lot of frameworks skip — adults have to be thriving too, first, as a precondition for kids to.
This is the exact territory I work in every day. Durable skills. Holistic frameworks. Communities of practice. Taking research and turning it into something a school can pick up on a Monday and use. Middle school is an argument I believe in — a second developmental window, wide open, and one we underinvest in badly.
Here's where things stand: The funding for facilitation and the listening tour ended June 30, so the meetings and work-group calls are paused for now — paused, not finished. Two things are still moving. The State of Virginia's Middle Schoolers report, with findings and recommendations from the listening tour, is targeted for early August. And there's work waiting on the other side: a statewide community of practice built around the Portrait, and possible advocacy tied to social-media litigation and settlement funds.
If you want the fuller argument for the work, Greg Toppo's July interview with Stephanie in The 74, "'Rehumaning' Education: Banning Screens Is Only Part of the Solution," is worth your time.
One plain ask before I move ‘Rehumaning’ Education: Banning Screens Is Only Part of the Solution – The 74 on: the Alliance needs funders. If you have a lead, reach out to me or to Stephanie.
For six years there's been a neighborhood bookstore in Virginia Beach called Read Books. It belongs to a friend of mine — a retired librarian — and it was a lifelong family dream made real. Handselling, personalized recommendations, book clubs, events, reader retreats. It closes at the end of this year.
I was one of the booksellers — not the owner, not the visionary. One of the people behind the recommendations, part of the shop's reading life.
If you've been around my work, you know books aren't a side hobby I keep away from the serious stuff. I'm slowly making my way through the NYT 100 Best Books, I track on Storygraph, and I've written before about how much I love giving a book away at a cocktail party. Handing someone the right book is the same instinct as the education work — matching a person to the thing that might change them. Different equipment, same move.
The shop is closing, but a few things keep going. The online bookshop and audiobook shop at ReadVB.com stays live through December 2026. The 2 Sisters: 24 Books podcast, hosted by the owner and her sister Janice, is continuing into 2027 — if you like books and good company, go subscribe. And the shop's Instagram keeps posting recommendations.
I got to be part of someone else's dream. That's a rare thing and I'm grateful for it.
None of this is tidy, and it doesn't feel like nothing. But this is how the arithmetic works — you put something down so your hands are free for what comes next.
If you want to see what's still on the table, visit my projects page.
