When a child wants to quit something they once loved, it can bring up fears about perseverance, commitment, and missed opportunities. But stopping can mean many different things—and an experience doesn't have to last forever to have been worthwhile.

We say childhood is precious, yet so much of it is organized around preparing children for what comes next. What happens when the adults we hope children will become begin to matter more than the people they already are?

We spend enormous amounts of time debating how education should change, yet the people most affected by those decisions rarely have much power over them. What happens when we begin to see educational reform not only as a question of learning, but of youth rights, agency, and power?