Frankly, it’s hard to find the words to describe my guest, Arlian Ecker. To say he is a Planet Earth activist and young changemaker does not seem to do him justice. Arlian’s story began in Australia when, on his eleventh birthday, he watched three rehabilitated sea turtles being released back into the ocean and learned about the harm plastic pollution had caused them. The experience left him with a question: What could one kid possibly say or do that would make other people care? His mother, international documentary filmmaker Karin Ecker, responded by picking up her camera. Together, they created a 22-minute documentary film titled Plastic Alarm, and what began on one Australian beach grew into nearly a decade of filmmaking, scientific inquiry, environmental action, public speaking, and peer-to-peer education. Arlian, now age 20, has brought his work to more than 350 schools. his Plastic Free Boy site reports that his work has reached more than 1.5 million young people. At age thirteen, he addressed 130 mayors and some 1,400 delegates at the Asia Pacific Cities Summit and Mayors’ Forum. His work has taken him from the Great Barrier Reef to European glaciers and the Danube River, where he has collaborated with scientists, schools, governments, universities, businesses, and communities. Arlian is not a “student guest” in the conventional sense. After an early education that included traditional schooling and some homeschooling, he did not continue into a traditional high school. However, he is not an exception to this year's students only commitment because his life offers a living answer to the other question contained in our title: What could be school? For Arlian, the world became his classroom; protecting the planet became both curriculum and purpose, and he began learning and teaching at the very same time. This conversation was set up by a colleague, Kyle Wagner, who deepened his practice of student-centered, project-based learning as a humanities teacher and interdisciplinary team leader at High Tech High in San Diego. Kyle interviewed Arlian for his own podcast in 2025 and generously brought the two of us together. This will not simply be a conversation about plastic in the oceans. It is a philosophical conversation about education in the wild—and what can happen when a young person’s concern is treated as the beginning of serious work. As always, my gratitude to my peerless editor, Evan Kurohara, our creative consultant, Mel Ching.

Links:

Elite Changemaker Program

ABC News

APCS Summit

Arlian LinkedIn

The Five Angles Podcast is coming soon.

Created by Josh Reppun of Josh Reppun Productions, The Five Angles Podcast explores one compelling idea at a time through five conversations, five distinct perspectives, and five different ways of seeing.

Each collection brings together educators, researchers, designers, creators, students, community leaders, and other curious minds whose expertise and lived experience illuminate a shared question. Rather than rushing toward a single conclusion, the show slows down, listens carefully, and makes space for connection, tension, surprise, and discovery.

Born in years of thinking about education, but now reaching far beyond it, The Five Angles Podcast examines the ideas shaping how we learn, work, create, belong, and become fully human. Every season of five episodes is designed as a complete journey, released together so listeners can move through the conversations in their own order and in their own way.

This is not a show about finding one definitive answer. It is about discovering what becomes visible when one important subject is considered from several angles, and when voices that do not always appear in the same conversation are invited to meet.

Five conversations. Five perspectives. One important idea, seen from five angles.

The Five Angles Podcast is coming soon.

Listeners, this episode takes us to Warren Local High School in rural southeastern Ohio, where sophomores Jocelyn Evans and Lily King are helping us explore what can happen when a public school begins listening differently to its students. Warren is a recognizable American public school, grades, schedules, homework, tests, football games and homecoming, but something interesting is happening inside it. Through Students Solving Problems (SSP) and related student agency work, young people are learning to conduct empathy interviews (in partnership with the Human Restoration Project and Polaris Education), listen closely to peers and teachers, analyze what they hear, and bring those findings back to the adults shaping their school. What began amid a familiar tension, teachers concerned about student motivation and students frustrated by traditional “sit and get” learning, has become an experiment in something much larger: trust. Jocelyn and Lily take us inside that work, including efforts to understand Warren’s Flex Friday; they wrestle with what student agency means when young people are given not merely a voice, but opportunities to influence what happens next. Jocelyn also shares how the work carried her from rural Ohio to MIT and the Student Power Summit in Los Angeles, representing Warren far from home. But this conversation goes well beyond programs and school improvement. We talk about the adults who make young people feel safe, supported and seen, leadership without titles, Lily’s hatred of homework, and what students may really be saying when they push back against “sit and get.” Jocelyn offers an extraordinary challenge to adults: “What are we doing wrong? Why don’t the children trust us?” We also explore whether school itself may contribute to young people’s stress, and whether agency, purpose, consequential work and knowing that your ideas matter might help create healthier conditions for learning. What emerges is not a story about two students who have all the answers. It is a story about what becomes possible when adults stop assuming they already have them. Warren is learning to ask, listen, trust and act. And Jocelyn and Lily remind us what we may discover when young people are given real opportunities to practice their voices. Editing is provided by the talented Evan Kurohara. My creative consultant is Mel Ching. Our theme music is by Michael Sloan.