Picture a high school classroom in a community that is no stranger to damaging storms, droughts, or wildfires. Students have identified the changing climate as the topic they would most like to tackle. In small groups, they design and build models to weatherproof and fireproof homes, houses of worship, and businesses nearby. Their teacher facilitates the work, asking about the sources informing their approach, what geometry or physics they may be using, and why. Two students seek out the school’s facilities manager for materials; another consults an uncle he admires, a firefighter, about fire-retardant landscaping. Other kids are inspired by the plight of a local fruit tree farmer to write an opinion piece for the local paper, suggesting improvements to capture and store rainwater to mitigate the effects of drought.
Now imagine a middle school located in an enterprise district. Here, students have been asked to create a business plan for their favorite food truck, including pricing, menu, diesel consumption, and eye-catching swag. They consult an AI tool for the most popular Peruvian, Indian, Chinese, and Italian dishes and who invented them. They talk with truck operators, collect data through a survey, and sample new flavors. They learn what Halal and Kosher each mean in the context of food preparation, and that a few of their classmates follow similar guidelines at home.
What do these experiences have in common? They invite students to study, create, build, and contribute something meaningful and memorable, often guided by someone who matters to them. They are designed to spark curiosity and engagement. When elementary students are asked to interview and photograph veterans, police officers, nurses, and artists about their career paths, and share what they have learned with their classmates and parents, the excitement is palpable.
When done well, these kinds of experiences produce a flywheel effect. As learners learn more about their ability to impact the world through their schoolwork, they become more confident in what they can try next. When they see themselves as connected to something larger than themselves, they are inspired to go deeper into topics that interest them and motivated to learn the skills necessary to understand and impact them.
These pictures reflect something very different from traditional learning settings. Here, the North Star is agency, curiosity, and drive in each learner. Everything is designed with one thing in mind: to activate the biology of learning through human connection. And then to amplify each student’s agency and energy to reveal what they are capable of.
In education, relationships are often referred to as the “soft stuff”. This is a big problem. Human connection is not just an interpersonal event; it is a biological event. This is because our brains are electrical structures, and the primary energy source for their development is human connection. It is the most powerful biological force there is. Quite literally, connection sparks the electrical and chemical activity that builds new circuitry in the brain.
Here’s how it works: The brain is an electrical organ with massive demands, using more than a quarter of the body’s energy. It cannot store oxygen or glucose; both arrive only with steady blood flow. Humans can drive blood to their muscles by exercising, but to drive blood to the brain, we rely on the neurochemical cascade that connection sets in motion.
When we connect—through trust, touch, or shared belief—our brains release chemicals that ignite growth. Oxytocin and vasopressin quiet the stress system (HPA axis) and increase blood flow to the brain; dopamine fuels motivation and focus; serotonin stabilizes mood; brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and other growth factors drive neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to rewire and learn. In other words, human connection changes neural chemistry; neural chemistry supplies energy; energy drives neural growth and wiring; and wiring produces everything we are capable of being and doing. This is called Hebb’s law – neurons that fire together wire together – and as this happens, we become able to do increasingly complex things, whether it is reading, riding a bike, or building a robot.
The path from connection to possibility begins with the biological readiness to absorb something new. It’s a place where creativity can blossom because fear and embarrassment are absent. Feedback is welcome because there is trust. Human beings are actually drawn to it, like water when they are thirsty. Curiosity is a drive state. It’s a need to know. You can see it at work every time a learner is motivated to practice because a coach or teacher believes in them and takes their questions and aspirations seriously. When that happens, they practice with greater discipline and effort. They gain greater fluency more quickly, and then achieve mastery with the confidence to take on greater challenges. This is the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” in action. It’s that sweet spot where a human interaction helps a learner push up against what they thought they were capable of and break through to the next level.
When a student is introduced to a subject that matters to them a lot by someone who matters to them a lot, there is no greater fuel for learning. It is the secret sauce of engagement, motivation, and human development itself. Each adult in a student’s life, from parents to teachers, to librarians, to coaches, carries the power to activate deep learning. In school settings, advisories, project-based learning, and looping with teachers can help foster deep, trusting relationships and new ones. But the biology of learning doesn’t just happen in one-on-one interactions; it can happen in classrooms, communities, work settings—anywhere a student feels they belong, are valued, known, and cared about.
No one knows what is encoded in their DNA. Because of that, no one knows the outer limit of what is possible for them. But deep learning, developmental range, and human possibility do not appear by chance. They emerge in contexts and under conditions that unlock them: safety over fear, belonging over separation, connection over isolation, agency over avoidance.
The biology of learning makes the developmental range of the learner visible, shapes performance, and enhances the fit between the learner and their context. The closer the fit, the greater the performance. And it is fit that amplifies purpose and confidence, that primes performance, that lets any young person see what they are capable of.
Artificial Intelligence will help get us closer to finding the fit for each learner. But getting the most out of these tools, like anything else, requires biological energy, a lot of it. Today, there is still only one source of neurochemical energy that drives human agency, creativity, and curiosity —and that is human connection. It is the most powerful energy source we know, even now, in the age of AI.