From Recipients to Contributors: What Happens When We Stop Telling Students to Wait

The Wheelhouse · Jul 28, 2026 · 55m

We tell students they matter. We invite them to share their voices, describe them as future leaders, and assure them that their ideas are important.But too often, we also ask them to wait.Wait until they graduate. Wait until they earn the right credentials. Wait until the adults have made the decisions. Wait until some future moment when their contributions will finally be taken seriously.In this episode, Dr. A.J. Ernst joins us to examine what happens when educational institutions care about students but are not designed to need them. Together, we explore the idea of deferred mattering—the…