Let It Brew

Summer 2026 was a flurry of activity. It began with a course I was teaching on Human Development—a six-day, highly accelerated course for the NYC Teaching Fellows. Throughout the course, we explored, played, questioned, and actively engaged with rich content, theories, and practical, everyday approaches to teaching and learning.

For the rest of the summer, I eagerly awaited the evaluations and feedback from my inspiring graduate students—humans who had worked in other sectors and were now answering the call to serve our youth as adolescent educators.

Then, while I was in Greece, relaxing with my family and swimming in the Aegean Sea, the evaluations appeared in my inbox, calling me to dive in.

And I waited.

I waited until I got home to read them properly. To process them. To learn from them.

Two graduate students. Two pieces of feedback. Two points worthy of reflection.

One thing I really enjoyed and appreciated about Professor Moriarty’s instruction was the way she took the course curriculum and made it her own. She consistently found creative ways to make the material engaging by incorporating multiple learning modalities and facilitating lessons through an inquiry-based approach. Rather than simply presenting information, she encouraged us to ask questions, think critically, and actively engage with the content, which made the learning experience both meaningful and memorable.

Yes!

This is what I purposefully designed for. What I spent hours at the computer doing. So many hours that my children’s friends would walk by and say, “Man, Nicole, you are still at that computer—standing all day and all night. How do you do it?”

And then came comment #2:

…there was not enough time to imbibe the material and let it “brew,” so to speak. The only thing I wished for was more time for independent reflection and processing. The course was highly collaborative, which I appreciated, but I also value having sufficient time to think through new ideas on my own before engaging in group discussions. A better balance between collaborative learning and individual reflection would have further strengthened my learning experience and allowed me to engage even more deeply with the course material.

And just like that, one word lingered.

Brew.

Why did that word stay with me?

Because it is an all-too-familiar feeling. I have been there. You have been there. We have all been there.

The day in the life of an educator is like no other. The first bell rings, and we are off! Running from class to class, meeting to meeting, and, in between, answering questions in the hallway from adults and teenagers alike. Somewhere along the way, we answer emails, make phone calls, write lesson plans, plan with colleagues, read student papers, and grade.

We are caught in a whirlwind of activity—1,000% engaged from 7:00 a.m. until 5:45 p.m.

One of my colleagues used to call me the whirling dervish. And he wasn’t wrong. I put the same physical and cognitive energy into every activity, all day long.

But when did I have time to process? To reflect? To sit with my own thoughts?

Sound familiar?

The hour-long drive to or from work. Standing in the shower. That strange space between sleep and wakefulness—that nanosecond of semi-consciousness. The dream that wakes you at some ridiculous hour in the morning.

And then it comes…

That is when it brews.

What was happening in those moments?

Nothing new had happened. No new conversation. No new information. Nothing.

That is exactly what was happening—nothing.

But really, everything was-that was when the pieces were coming together.

In those moments of stillness, my brain wasn’t actually still. It was processing, scanning for patterns, making connections, and pulling together everything I had experienced throughout the day. The activity had stopped, but the learning hadn’t.

And that makes me wonder: In a world where we are constantly bombarded with information, expected to act quickly, and inclined to fill every available space with activity for fear that a lack of visible engagement means nothing is happening, are we making enough space for learning to actually take hold?

We know this matters for children. We talk about the importance of sleep and the role it plays in consolidating what they have learned throughout the day. But what about adolescents? What about adults? Do we afford them the same space, or do we expect them to remain in an active state of learning and engagement at all times?

Think back to that educator—to Nicole—in the middle of that whirlwind of a day. An often-cited estimate suggests that an educator makes approximately 1,500 decisions in a school day. Across six instructional hours, that’s more than four decisions every minute. Imagine what it is for an administrator who works 10 hrs a day?

Decisions about children. About instruction. About relationships with fellow educators. About families. About what to say, what to do, when to intervene, when to wait, when to change course, when to stay the course.

And how much time do we give ourselves to make sense of any of it?

The Learning We Can’t See

Comment #2 left me thinking about three important concepts we need to consider when we design for learning and, ultimately, for transfer: reflection, metacognition, and incubation.

The car ride. The shower. Sleep. Swimming in the Aegean Sea.

These are spaces where everything I had taken in finally had somewhere to go.

Stillness is part of learning.

My graduate student wasn’t asking for less collaboration, engagement, or play; she was asking for something just as important: space to be still. To design for her thinking.

So What Does It Mean to Design Space for Learning?

Think first. Talk second.

Look at your lesson plan or agenda. Where can you make space for everyone at the table to think quietly before you ask them to “turn and talk”?

That’s it.

Give them the prompt, the question, the thing you want them to talk about—and then give them five minutes to think. They can write. They can scribble. They can draw. It doesn’t matter, as long as they have time to think for themselves before hearing what everyone else thinks.

This gives everyone at the table an opportunity not only to collect their thoughts, but also to draw upon their own knowledge and lived experiences. It also means the group benefits from hearing from more than the few who typically participate—or the person with the most positional power.

And these patterns of human behavior aren’t limited to one setting. We see them in the boardroom, the graduate classroom, and the high school classroom alike.

Think first. Talk second.

It primes the pump and communicates something important to everyone at the table:

Your thinking matters. Your voice matters. And we want to hear it.

And while they think, think, too.

When everyone else is quietly writing, drawing, or processing, resist the urge to fill the silence, check your email, or prepare for what comes next. Use the time yourself.

Sit with the same question. Jot down your own thoughts. Make your own connections.

Another benefit: you’ll experience the wait time alongside them. You’ll begin to get a feel for whether five minutes is too long, not nearly long enough, or just right.

And perhaps most importantly, when the room gets quiet and five minutes suddenly feels like forever, you’ll be less tempted to rescue everyone from the silence.

Create a Space for Thinking to Accumulate Over Time

In one district where I worked as part of an extended partnership, we agreed to create personal Google documents that served as ongoing journals. Each participant had a space to capture their thinking across our meetings and professional learning experiences.

During each session, we intentionally made time for them to write. What were they learning? What had been affirmed? What were they still wondering about? Where did they want to go next?

We didn’t always give them a specific prompt. Instead, we simply protected time throughout the session for them to stop, think, collect their thoughts, and process what they were experiencing.

There was an added benefit. As part of our agreement, I also had access to their journals. They weren’t being evaluated or graded. We agreed that their reflections would give me an opportunity to learn from them—to notice patterns, listen to their questions, and use their insights and wisdom to help shape where our work went next.

And something else happened.

Their reflection created an opportunity for my reflection.

After the sessions, once the students, teachers, and secretaries had left and the building had grown quiet, I could sit with what they had written. I could think about what I had heard and observed throughout the day alongside what they were telling me privately in their journals.

What was taking hold? What were people wrestling with? What had I missed? What needed more time? And where might we go next?

Their stillness created thinking for all of us.

The Payoff: Learning That Travels

All of this to say: if we want our learning to travel, sometimes we need to sit still.

Ultimately, the goal isn’t for someone to remember the workshop, the lesson, or the conversation. It is for the learning to transfer—to move into a new context, to inform what we do next, to impact a life, to become something greater than that single moment.

I want the workshop to translate into pedagogical moves in the classroom. I want what we learn to inform how we work with our students. I want the ideas discussed in a leadership meeting to influence a decision made three weeks later. I want the lessons of a graduate classroom to touch the lives of the many children these new educators will have the gift of working alongside.

That is when learning travels.

Let It Brew

The course was long over. The evaluations arrived and sat in my inbox for a week. I came home from Greece, poured myself a cup of coffee, opened my laptop, signed into my evaluations, and read.

And then I sat with them.

In the stillness, I had time to think and process. And now, as I begin preparing my next round of workshops and courses for the 2026–2027 school year, those ideas are still incubating.

I miss my NYC Teaching Fellows and look forward to seeing them in our graduate school hallways. But I am especially grateful for what they taught me this summer.

Thanks for the reminder to let it brew.

Thank you to my beautifully talented colleagues. It has truly been a gift to work alongside you.