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Why Inclusion Is the Heart of Progressive Education

By Kalyan Balaven, Head of School, Dunn School

I didn’t know I was homeless the day my father left. I just knew that everything suddenly felt colder. The January fog curled in front of me as I waited for a late school bus, my hands buried in linty pockets, and somewhere between the bitter chill and the thawed patches of yellow lawn back at the apartment complex, I opened the door to a family unraveling.

What I needed most in that moment wasn’t math equations or essay prompts. I needed to be seen.

And I was—by Tommie Lindsey.

You can Google him and find accolades: MacArthur “Genius,” Oprah’s Angel Network, California Teacher of the Year. But those titles don’t tell the full story. They don’t explain why he gave me Red Vines every day after class, or why he found excuses to keep me late so he could drive me “home” and make sure I was safe. They don’t reveal how he skipped the church one November with canned donations in the back of his Camry—because he knew that church was me.

Mr. Lindsey didn’t just teach me public speaking. He taught me how to speak for myself. How to be resilient. How to belong.

Back then, I didn’t have the vocabulary. Today, I do. What Mr. Lindsey practiced was Whole Student Education—the very heart of Progressive Education, and its truest expression: Inclusion.

Inclusion Is Not a Sidebar

Inclusion is not an add-on to progressive education. It is progressive education.

Tom Little, in his book Loving Learning: How Progressive Education Can Save America’s Schools, writes that progressive schools are “responsive to the child,” with “attention to the whole student.” But how can we be responsive if we do not understand the cultural, emotional, and social fabric of the child sitting before us? How can we commit to learning by doing, if we ignore the lived experience of the doer?

Inclusion—radical inclusion—requires that we see every child, not just as a learner, but as a fully realized being. Not just their test scores, but their trauma. Not just their brilliance, but their background. This is not sentimental idealism. This is design. It is the structure behind student agency, voice, and choice.

The Progressive Blueprint Needs an Equity Engine

Dewey, Montessori, Hahn: they gave us the architecture for student-centered learning. But none of these titans of progressive thought lived to see the fullness of what progressive education could become when practiced in an America reckoning with race, poverty, gender identity, immigration status, and ability.

That is the work I’ve carried into my leadership at Dunn School and into our Center for Community, Belonging, and Purpose. Because I know firsthand what it means to be the kid who was smart enough, driven enough—but too ashamed to ask for help.

Progressive education gives the tools. Inclusion teaches us how to use them ethically.

It’s why I created the Inclusion Dashboard—a tool that doesn’t just measure who shows up, but who belongs, who thrives, and who graduates with their full identity intact. It’s why in my classrooms, I used simulations, spoken word, and what I called the “darkness method”—a riff on Harkness circles—where students led the inquiry without me. I wanted them to own their learning the way I was taught to own my truth.

And when my students taught a full class without me, while I sat stuck in traffic? That was not an accident. That was inclusion in action. When students are trusted with voice, they rise to meet it.

My Mentor Taught Me This Before I Had a Name for It

Mr. Lindsey knew I was hungry. He knew I was proud. He knew I needed a hand on my shoulder more than I needed a lecture on grit. He understood that to empower a student, you must first affirm their humanity.

There’s one moment I return to often—an afternoon in November when our school was collecting canned food for the needy. Mr. Lindsey’s classroom had two huge boxes full, and he asked me to help him load them into his green Camry. I assumed we were headed to the local church. As we drove, Nat King Cole’s “Nature Boy” played on the stereo, and I remember him singing along with a joy that lit up the car. But he sped right past the church.

I thought he had forgotten, so I gently reminded him. He just smiled and said, “Don’t worry about it.” When we pulled into the apartment complex where my family was temporarily staying, he got out—something he never did—and opened the trunk.

“These are for you,” he said.

I froze. I felt heat rise under my skin, embarrassment welling up in my chest. He had known. The entire time. And he never said a word. He simply placed his hand on my shoulder and added, “This stays between us.”

That was inclusion before I had a word for it. That was Whole Student Education in its most human form.

Where We Go From Here

Today’s students are facing not just academic stress, but existential threats—climate change, political polarization, AI acceleration, and identity trauma. They don’t need an education that’s efficient. They need one that is essential. One that builds their voice, their agency, and their resilience.

We can’t afford progressive education without inclusion. Otherwise, we risk recreating the same inequities under a more “student-centered” banner.

When I speak with educators, I tell them: Inclusion is not a strategy. It’s a stance. A way of being. A lens through which we build curriculum, community, and culture.

It is the soul of progressive education. Without it, we’re just chasing metrics.

With it, we create magic.

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