Jason's Story
Copyright© 2025 by writer 406
Chapter 32
Richard Albright navigated his Tesla north on I-5, half-listening to his seventeen-year-old son David and his best friend Ben complain about their AP Physics teacher. As CEO of New Wave Control Systems, a major aerospace subcontractor for Boeing, Richard had learned to divide his attention efficiently—part on the road, part on whatever his son was saying, and part on the business podcast he’d queued up for the commute.
“Mr. Henderson doesn’t actually teach,” David was saying from the back seat. “He just assigns reading and expects us to figure everything out ourselves.”
“That’s called independent learning,” Richard replied, changing lanes smoothly. “Welcome to college prep.”
“I think it’s called lazy teaching,” Ben muttered.
Richard was about to defend Mr. Henderson when an unfamiliar podcast came on. He reached to change the station, but David’s voice stopped him.
“Hey, I think that’s the survival guy.”
Richard’s hand paused on the touchscreen. “Survival guy? Who’s that?”
“Ben’s girlfriend Jessica is friends with a girl named Sarah Thompson who goes to Capitol Hill High. She was telling us about this teacher who turned detention into sessions on how to survive in a big city. The classes sound way dope—how to make decisions, how to handle credit cards, relationship stuff. He started out by challenging some guy to figure out how to survive in Atlanta with no money, no friends, and no ID.”
“Like wilderness survival but for cities?” Richard asked, his interest piqued despite himself.
“Exactly. Instead of ‘how to build a fire,’ it’s ‘how to get a job when you’re broke and homeless.’”
“Huh.” Richard turned up the volume. “Quiet now, it’s starting.”
The host’s voice was warm and professional. “Good morning, Seattle. Welcome to the Bonnie Miller podcast. I hope our traffic doesn’t make you too stressed out. Unfortunately, the long-awaited repairs on I-5 both northbound and southbound are here to stay. It’s going to be a long fall, I fear.”
Richard grimaced at the reminder. The construction had added twenty minutes to his commute to see Boeing operations in Kent.
“Anyway, sit back and listen because we have a good show for you today. I’m here with Jason Stone, and we’re going to talk about education. You might remember that recently there was a big kerfuffle at Capitol Hill High about a teacher who was teaching unauthorized material during detention. Jason taught the now-famous Survival Class. He was fired for his boldness.”
“So, Jason Stone,” Bonnie began, “the story is that you got fired for basically teaching kids how to think for themselves. Walk me through what actually happened.”
Richard expected defensiveness or anger—the typical response from someone who’d been terminated. Instead, the man’s voice was measured and thoughtful.
“Well, the first thing I need to say is that getting fired was my own fault. I made a classic error.”
“How so?”
“I charged into an educational system focused purely on providing something I thought kids needed without properly assessing the political terrain. I knew better—I was Special Forces; I’ve been trained to work in complex political environments—but I got tunnel vision and ignored the institutional reality.”
Richard’s attention sharpened. Special Forces operators didn’t usually end up teaching high school. This was already more interesting than his business podcast.
“You’re saying the school district wasn’t the bad guy here?” Bonnie sounded surprised.
“Nope. The school district was doing exactly what school districts are designed to do: protect and teach kids through standardized, predictable approaches. Bureaucracies hate change because change is risky, and when you’re dealing with children’s futures, risk aversion makes perfect sense.”
Richard found himself nodding. He ran a company that worked with multiple layers of government and corporate bureaucracy. Stone’s assessment was accurate in ways that most people outside those systems never understood.
“I never once thought they were incompetent people, Bonnie. They are dedicated educators who view teaching as their life’s work. They’re conservative by necessity because they’re responsible for other people’s children. I should have accounted for that instead of just bulldozing full speed ahead.”
“But your classes were successful? Kids were learning life skills?”
“Yes. I think they were useful.”
Richard appreciated the understatement. Most people in Stone’s position would be bragging about their accomplishments or attacking the system that had rejected them.
“When we were talking before the broadcast, you mentioned you wanted kids to adopt something called ‘High Agency’ in their lives going forward. What did you mean by that?”
“That’s a great question. At its core, high agency is the feeling that you can influence the world around you. That you can choose your response to circumstances.”
Richard leaned forward slightly, his full attention now on the podcast. High agency was a concept he’d been trying to instill in his management team for years, but he’d never heard it articulated quite this way.
“It’s the belief that: I’m not powerless. I can handle things. I can figure out what to do next. I’m resourceful. My actions matter. And most importantly, I’m responsible for the outcome. I’m not a victim.”
“And most kids don’t have that?”
“Our schools teach kids to be reactive rather than proactive. From first grade on, they learn to wait for instructions, sit still and listen, and follow procedures. We train them to be passive recipients of their circumstances.”
In the back seat, David and Ben stopped their conversation to listen. Richard glanced in the rearview mirror and saw both teenagers paying attention in a way they rarely did during his lectures about responsibility.
“Here’s an example of low agency,” Stone continued. “A kid says, ‘I flunked that math test. I really suck at math.’ A kid with high agency would say: ‘I flunked that math test. Let me review it, find out where I went wrong, and get help to understand those concepts.’
A test is a measure of knowledge, not a measure of how dumb you are. Do you see the difference?”
“So instead of being genetically predisposed to suck at math, they become someone who finds out where they went wrong and solves the problem?” Bonnie said.
“Yes. When you enable kids to have high agency, you’re teaching them to be active rather than passive. I want them to learn to make intentional choices, take initiative, and overcome challenges. They should see obstacles not as roadblocks but as challenging puzzles to be solved.”
Richard thought about his own son. David was brilliant with computers and physics problems, but he complained endlessly about teachers and assignments rather than taking responsibility for his own learning. That was low agency thinking, Richard realized—blaming external circumstances instead of figuring out how to succeed despite them.
“I hear you brought in outside experts,” Bonnie said. “Plumbers, mechanics, marriage counselors. Why?”
“I call them ‘knowledge workers.’ I really don’t like the class-conscious way of defining work as blue-collar versus white-collar. A master electrician or plumber has a body of knowledge that would rival any PhD’s.”
“My goal was to emphasize that the kids had options, that they needed to look at things with fresh eyes.”
Richard found himself wishing he could hire Jason Stone as a consultant for New Wave Control Systems. Half of his engineers had advanced degrees but couldn’t think practically about real-world implementation. They were brilliant at theory but lost when faced with actual manufacturing constraints or customer requirements.
“I don’t understand why the classes had so much resistance,” Bonnie said, voicing the question Richard had been wondering himself.
There was a pause while Stone considered his response. Richard appreciated that he didn’t rush to answer—another sign of someone who thought before speaking.
“I think it’s because teaching kids to question systems and take control of their lives makes some adults uncomfortable. If you teach a student to think critically about college versus trade school, some parents hear ‘my child is being discouraged from higher education.’”
“Even when that’s not what you’re saying?”
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