Is Oak House Too Easy?

Or What Alyssa Liu’s Gold Medal Says About Low-Demand Schooling

Every so often, a parent will ask me — sometimes gently, sometimes anxiously —
“Is Oak House too easy? Is my kid even learning?”

It’s an understandable question. In our culture, we often equate stress and high demand with achievement and growth. If something isn’t hard, pressured, or exhausting, we worry it might not be meaningful.

When parents ask this, I usually respond by explaining that we intentionally include nationally normed testing at Oak House. We want an objective measure. We want to be able to say, with clarity and data, that growth is happening.

But this year, the Olympics reminded me of another pedagogical truth I know deeply as an educator, a parent, and a human being:

Stress does not equate with achievement.

I grew up watching the Olympics with my family, back when there was one television and it felt like the whole world was watching the same thing at the same time. In my adult life, I haven’t kept up with that tradition.

But a few weeks ago, my sister, my dad, and I went away to a cabin in the woods to sort through photos of my mom as we prepared for her celebration of life this weekend. My sister — still an avid Olympics watcher — had the figure skating on in the background and caught me up on all the U.S. figure skating drama.

As I listened to the story of Alyssa Liu unfold, I was struck by how much her trajectory mirrors the pedagogical underpinnings at Oak House.

Oak House came into existence after we navigated traditional schooling for my own children — children with anxiety, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other neurodivergences — and watched that system erode our family relationships and pull us away from our core value of unconditional love.

We found ourselves trying to prop our children up so they could tolerate compliance-based instruction. They were overwhelmed by high expectations with inadequate support. Slowly, almost without noticing, we shifted our beliefs about bodily autonomy. We physically forced our children to attend school even when they felt unsafe.

Finally, we said, “Enough. We are done.”

We began homeschooling. In that season, we learned more about our children — but more importantly, we returned to ourselves. We returned to our primary value: unconditional love.

Alyssa Liu’s story carries a similar arc. She showed extraordinary promise early on and entered the high-demand world of competitive figure skating. At 13, she became the youngest ever U.S. national champion. But by 16, she stepped away. The relentless demands had drained the joy from skating. She recognized that within constant pressure and performance, she could no longer truly know herself.

She left — not intending to return.

Later, feeling the rush of wind while skiing, she rediscovered something: joy. She chose to return to skating, but only under different conditions. She maintained bodily consent and control. She created an environment where she could access the love of the sport without tying her worth to the outcome.

Throughout the Olympics, when reporters asked if she was hoping to be the first US figure skater in 24 years to win gold, she responded again and again with something striking:

“I just wanted to share my story, my art, with the world. I didn’t need the medal. I just wanted the stage.”

That is the heart of low-demand schooling.

Sometimes students arrive at Oak House from traditional schools and wonder if we are “too easy” or not rigorous enough. But Alyssa Liu’s story highlights something I believe deeply: when your core value is unconditional love — for yourself and for others — you will land exactly where you are meant to be.

At High School Morning Meeting last week, I shared Alyssa’s story and photos with our students. I asked them what her journey had to do with Oak House. Their responses were immediate and clear:

“Bodily autonomy.”
“Consent.”
“Everyone gets to make their own choices.”

Low-demand schooling is not in opposition to success, high achievement, or intellectual rigor. It is not the absence of excellence. It is the removal of coercion. It is clearing the space young people need to turn inward, to know themselves, to reconnect with joy, and to move forward aligned with who they are — regardless of the medal.

Here is the quiet magic of this approach: when young people are not spending their energy surviving demands, they have the capacity to create, to think deeply, to risk authentically, and to share their art with the world. Human worth is immutable. Low-demand schooling is building a generation that has the energy to find their worth internally and move into the world seeing the worth of themselves and others regardless of medals.

That is what we are building at Oak House.