This is the latest in my series on the fundamentals of Restorative Education. There is an accompanying video on my Substack page here. If you want to support my work and see the video go check it out and become a subscriber.

Today, I am going to introduce another equation, and whereas the last equation represented the theoretical impact of restorative education, this formula represents the practice of restorative education.

Learning = Teaching

I am going to suggest that this simple little equation is the educational formula for ‘mentorship’. It is more than a platitude or a motivational poster caption. It is an observationally accurate description of what happens during learning at every scale, in every context, across every culture in human history, as well as being a blueprint for how to approach education across these scales and contexts.

It starts with something every teacher already knows: if you really want to learn a subject, teach it to someone else.

This is not a new realization. Some of the earliest descriptions of education show us the student becoming the teacher. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle demonstrate this in the Western tradition. But if you imagine what the earliest educational experience looked like before agriculture, or possibly hunter-gatherer society, you’d find the same setup: the learner who will one day become the teacher.

And yet there is an even more primal example than any historical record. It is available to anyone who applies their natural aptitude for metacognition to observe how their own learning works.

When you actually pay attention to what is happening in your mind while you are learning something, you notice that you are in “communication with yourself”. Maybe it’s in words. Maybe it’s in images. Maybe it’s in flashes of insight. But in each case, you are teaching yourself. You are mentoring your own understanding.

Teaching and learning are not equivalent merely because one makes a good study strategy, or because it appears early in the historical record. They are equivalent because when we examine what we actually “do” when we need to learn something, and no one is around to help us, we teach ourselves. And the better we become at teaching ourselves, the better we become at learning from others, and in turn, at teaching others.

Why Mentorship Is Not the Same as Teaching
Let me be clear about something: I am not advocating for replacing teachers with mentors. Teachers are important professionals whose specific expertise and preparation give them deep knowledge of subject areas. Most crucially, they are willing and able to share that knowledge in ways that make it learnable. A good teacher has not only mastery of content, but a real sense of how to present that content so that it can be absorbed.

A Mentor Functions a Little Differently.
As a mentor, you are teaching, but more than that, you are supporting a person through a problem. Knowing the answer helps. But it is not a prerequisite. A mentor will sit with a mentee and help them move through a difficult problem even when the mentor does not know the answer, because they understand that their role is to help their mentee move through their problem.

Sometimes the most valuable thing a mentor can teach is demonstrating how they attack a problem they don’t know the answer to. Sometimes the most valuable thing is simply being present… being in the room so that someone does not have to struggle alone.

And here is the thing, there will be moments in everyone’s life when you are the most effective teacher another person could possibly have. The lesson will likely not be trigonometry. You will be teaching about a problem you have learned to live with, and your lesson will resonate because something about your experience and your mentee’s experience coheres. They can relate to your answer. You can reach them. All of us have this capacity.

You Were Made for This
Both individuals and societies can become confused into thinking that knowing about something and being able to ‘act’ on that knowledge are the same thing. They are not. One informs the other, but having one does not guarantee the other.

Life can and will deliver painful experiences, deceptive experiences, conspiratorial experiences, traumatic experiences — experiences that damage our ability to learn. A skilled teacher can help you see what you cannot see on your own: that traumatic damage you have been avoiding because it is hard. They can help with very specific problems and with nuanced things you are trying to do. And when problems grow harder than what most people can navigate alone, there will always be a need for specialists.

But there is also a broader and more democratic form of this. There will be moments, often informal, unscheduled, uncredentialed, when you are uniquely positioned to be the most effective mentor to another person. These are teachable moments, and a truly restorative mentor learns to recognize and seize them, often because they remember when someone did the same for them.

Everyone deserves a mentor. A person they can count on for direction. But equally — and this part gets undervalued. Everyone deserves to be a mentor. A person who is counted on. Because mentoring is not only about how we build subject knowledge. It is how we build the behavioral regulation needed to execute ever more complex tasks. It is how knowledge becomes integrated with action, and how action deepens knowledge.

The Students Who Never Had This
As a special education teacher, I have worked with students who have never had the experience of being mentored. Never had a neighbor, a sibling, a family friend, a coach, or a teacher who stepped up and said, “I see you, I will walk through this with you.”
These students often come to school unable to connect with a teacher or even with peers. Unable to have a simple learning conversation. And they are that way, in many cases, because they do not know that kind of learning relationship even exists. They have never seen it. Never experienced it. There are, sadly, many teachers who have never had a mentor either, which is why their teaching does not include that element.
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The Promise of Restorative Education
This is where Restorative Education comes in.
The key to restoring lives through learning is through the process of being mentored -to- mentor. Supported in your problem-solving practice. Helped to discover your capacity, not just to receive knowledge, but to generate it, to embody it, and to pass it on.
Decades of peer-reviewed research now show that the act of mentoring reduces anxiety, changes gene expression, builds self-regulation skills, and develops leadership competence in the person doing the mentoring. Restorative Education is putting that research into practice.
You embody this first as a mentee. Then as a mentor. A mentorship that anyone can offer, regardless of age or background, credentials, or title.

Learning is teaching. Teaching is learning. And both, done with care and intention, have the power to restore.
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If you’d like to learn more about metacognitive problem-solving and how this kind of mentorship could support you, your classroom, or someone you love, I’d be glad to hear from you.

My latest paper just published in Frontiers in Psychology!

I have spent most of my career arguing that the ability to think about your own thinking isn't just a useful academic skill. It's a fundamental mechanism of human development. Now, with the publication of my new paper in Frontiers in Psychology, you can read my case about this mechanism of neural change.
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The paper is titled "The Neurological Implications of Metacognition," and it's open access, meaning anyone can read it for free here:

Thinking About Thinking Changes the Brain
The core argument of the paper is this: when you direct your problem-solving powers at your own problem-solving process, something remarkable happens. The brain doesn't just learn — it reorganizes.

​This isn't hand-waving. Neuroimaging research has identified specific brain networks involved in metacognitive activity, including the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, parietal regions, and hippocampus. These aren't passive observers of your cognition. They're active participants that show experience-dependent structural change. In other words, the more you use them, the more they develop.

You've probably heard about the famous London taxi driver studies — researchers found that taxi drivers who had to memorize the entire map of London showed measurable growth in the hippocampus compared to bus drivers following fixed routes. What's easy to miss in that finding is the metacognitive dimension: navigating an entire city successfully requires constantly monitoring your confidence about routes, evaluating your decisions, and adjusting your strategies. That is metacognition in action, and it appears to be part of what drives the neural change.

What We Still Don't Know (And Why That Matters)
Presently, there are limits to the current evidence, but we know that metacognition involves specific neural networks. We know those networks show plasticity. We know that clinical and educational interventions targeting metacognitive processes produce lasting benefits. What we don't yet have are studies that directly connect explicit metacognitive training to structural brain changes with the kind of experimental rigor that would let us say definitively: this intervention reorganized these circuits.
This work needs to happen and the paper makes the case for what those studies should look like using neuroimaging protocols embedded in randomized controlled trials, with appropriate control conditions, measuring metacognitive outcomes alongside neural change.
The science is pointing in a clear direction. We just need to follow it.

Come read about what has brought me to this moment of starting an educational movement. Especially if you are a former student you should read this one.

Today, I presented at the Neurology, Addiction and Dementia World Conference my research on the Neurological Implications of Metacognition. I was flattered to even be in the room with so many great researchers from all over the world!