In mid-October, I attended a creative writing workshop in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina, led by memoirist and environmental activist Jedidiah Jenkins. Shortly after, I headed to a meditation retreat in Rhinebeck, New York, hosted by Dan Harris, Jeff Warren, and Sebene Selassie. Both experiences, surprisingly, referenced the same concept: the hedonic treadmill. No matter how much we acquire or achieve, we quickly adapt and return to our baseline, striving for the next thing. Yet that constant reaching for more and better rarely brings the satisfaction we’re after.
The parallel to this issue’s “Power of Less” theme hit me afterward. With growing expectations from all sides, schools face pressure to demonstrate initiative by adding more initiatives. More programs squeeze into after-school hours. New edtech tools proliferate unchecked. What we end up with is a “dizzying array of programs that promise to improve schooling,” Thomas Hatch writes. But as systems grow more complex, they stray further from what really matters: actual learning.
More often than we realize, enough is enough.
MIT professor Justin Reich describes “Christmas tree schools”—buildings where everyone wants to hang their ornament, but no one dares remove one. The result? Overload that creates “fragmentation, frustration, and diluted impact.” Teachers feel unseen when their daily practices embed the values that one-off programs claim to serve. Students perceive these add-ons as “performative.”
This issue’s authors suggest a different approach. They ask: What if schools used data to distinguish necessary initiatives from needless ones? What if they refocused on instructional design instead of compensatory programs? What if districts started small, with something as fundamental as teaching students to write good sentences?
These aren’t easy choices. As Reich warns about AI adoption, navigating this work requires humility—a willingness to try things out and sit with uncertainty.
When schools pare down to the essentials, the payoff is clear. They create space for authentic connection, deeper learning, and the kind of teaching that transforms students’ lives. This issue of EL gives educators permission to do less—and practical strategies for doing it powerfully.
