Where Pseads
began.

A note from the origins of Pseads

Dear friends,

Matthew Davis and I founded Pseads (“seeds”) in 2013 as a nonprofit and a hub for building community and transforming the experience of learning. From the beginning, we were committed to empowering youth visions and voices, renewing passion among educators and teams, and honoring the seed of wisdom that exists within every human being.

Pseads grew out of a shared love of learning across subjects, and a curiosity about psychology, social justice, science, healing, ecology, and the way people become fully alive as learners. That curiosity brought us to the same graduate school and then to our first major collaboration, the Worldview Literacy Project at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

One of the moments I return to happened in an Oakland high school in 2010. Students who were not even enrolled in Matt’s course sat in the hallway listening outside the door. Inside, the class was arranged in a circle. What struck me was not simply what Matt was teaching, but the way he spoke with every student as a fellow human being on a journey of discovery, and the way he listened to them with equal seriousness.

When I later asked him about his approach, he described something that still guides us: the innate will and love for learning can get covered over, but it is still there if we learn how to listen for it.

The “p” in Pseads is for people. Every person deserves to encounter the unique constellation of gifts they bring into the world. We chose an invented word because the work asks for freshness of heart and mind, freshness of listening and language, and the courage to see ourselves and one another differently.

Over the years, Pseads has grown slowly, locally, and relationally. We have returned to schools and communities year after year because relationships that last and deepen over time are not incidental to the work. They are the work’s foundation.

Today the programs have expanded across classrooms, film, youth leadership, educator development, intergenerational learning, publishing, gatherings, and new partnerships. Yet the invitation remains the same: to create environments in which people can reconnect with curiosity, belonging, voice, contribution, and the possibility that learning can become a source of life.

We want Pseads to be a place for everyone: a collective of people journeying together into the still-untapped depths of human potential and social imagination. We hope you will join us in whatever way speaks to you.

Here’s to what’s possible.

Elizabeth Miller

Pseads Co-Founder