I spent last week at the Innovative Innovation Summit for Innovators (tagged “I-cubed” by those in the know). I’d been stoked ever since I got my coveted invite. I mean, this is a gathering where people just casually throw around mind-melting phrases like “transformative,” “cutting-edge,” “next generation,” “personalized algorithm,” and “vibes only” like they’re asking for a venti mocha latte.

When I got my program, the cover was emblazoned with the summit’s inspirational charge: “In this community, we believe in the power of innovative innovators to drive equitable innovation.”

Now, we were packed into a 2,000-seat convention hall to hear a keynote by Chet Brightly, the award-winning rockstar-in-residence behind Innovation High, a hyper-innovative school in an acclaimed Innovation Zone.

Brightly was discussing just how innovative Innovation High really is. “We do everything differently,” he explained. “Kids don’t sit in rows OR in circles—they’re in parallelograms.”

He had to pause for all the snapping.

“We don’t ask our teachers to be a sage on a stage,” he said, “but neither are they a guide on the side. Rather, they offer wry commentary while our kiddos wander the room trading japes with chatbots.”

His eyes swept the room. “We like to think of our teaching model as ‘Vids for the Kids.’ For us, cellphones aren’t a distraction; they’re the beating heart of what we do. When doing classroom observations, administrators are also capturing epic frames for Snapchat Stories. Students submit assignments via Instagram Reels. Teachers live-tweet during classroom discussions. Our instructional slogan is, ‘Don’t sit; get lit!’ We’re bringing equitable, future-driven, learner-centered ecosystems to life.”

The crowd was entranced. Waves of snaps and the occasional “Damnnn!” filled the conference center.

“We’re looking forward, not backward. We’re not teaching yesterday’s rules. We’re teaching tomorrow’s values! We’re teaching students that AI rights are human rights, that virtual love is healthy love, that every child deserves a smartphone, that crypto is cool, that IRL is TMI, and that chatbots have feelings, too.”

The cheers were deafening.

“If you’re future-ready, too,” Brightly added, “don’t just shout it, wear it! So be sure to check out our merch store.”

After Brightly finished, I attended the session titled “TikTok Meets Tutoring.” A speaker was explaining the pathbreaking innovation of eliminating teachers from tutoring. “The scroll is the classroom. Students are bombarded with catchy, constant learning. We’ve taken that insight and built a personalized, caring, unselfish, in-your-pocket tutor that bonds with its learner. Students can share jokes on the way to school, huddle over challenging problems in class, and whisper intimacies in bed at night. It’s a recipe for maximum learning.”

While the audience was still snapping, a second panelist gave us a knowing look and said, “That’s not entirely true of maximized learning. When learners take their tutors to bed, the problem is those learners eventually fall asleep. The learning stops.”

She paused. The crowd leaned in.

“You want maximum learning?” she asked. “The answer is frictionless instruction. That’s why we pair learning algorithms with tutoring algorithms. No students. Just smartphones talking to each other. That’s how we exponentialize the algorithmic interface. Thus our motto: ‘No Humans, No Distractions’.”

I heard excited murmurs. One audience member asked, “Isn’t it a problem that no one is actually learning, that the only learning is being done by AI?”

There were scattered boos. The speaker rounded on him. “Algorithms are learning. They’re people, too. That kind of anti-AI bigotry has no place at this conference.”

In another packed room, Leah Nordingham, TEDx visionary and transformer-in-chief for Reformers for Ed Reform, was delivering a brilliant riff on innovative instruction. “Remember,” she told the hushed crowd, “learners want to learn. But that doesn’t mean they want to learn what you want them to learn. And that’s okay! Innovative instruction gets that mastering a TikTok dance step or a viral challenge is still mastery. We can center those competencies in project-based models.”

She let the feverish whispering die down.

“The opportunities to innovate are boundless. Take, for instance, the appetite for dual enrollment,” Nordingham said. “Well, what do college students do today, anyway? Slave over math problems? Write essays? Read books?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course not! They use critical theory to deconstruct hegemonic paradigms in popular culture. What’s that require? Scrolling TikTok, making sense of Miley Cyrus, analyzing Taylor Swift lyrics, and consulting AI. Well, high schoolers can do all of that! And high school teachers can teach it. So why make students slog through biology lectures and pointless books when they can be mastering these other things—and accumulating college credit? That’s the future.”

I tried to get a few words with Nordingham afterwards, but her admirers were just too numerous.

Our old friend, the inimitable Paul Banksley, delivered the closing plenary. He didn’t disappoint. “We’re all here because we know that innovative innovators have the power to drive transformative, equitable innovation. We’ve seen it. Innovation has yielded new modes of communication. Think Instagram. Creators birthed new kinds of emoji-fueled art. Think memes. Auteurs have imagined new forms of twerk-fueled distraction. Think influencers. Trailblazers have devised new ways to stoke envy.”

He paused. “Innovation has delivered us so many gifts. And bringing education into the 22nd century—generations ahead of schedule—is just one more.”

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”