William Meyer

Dr. William Meyer is an educational leader, author, and speaker whose work bridges learning, wellbeing, and purpose. As Assistant Superintendent for Eastchester Schools, he has led districtwide innovations in mental health, curriculum design, and social-emotional learning. Beyond his district leadership, Dr. Meyer is an author and speaker advocating for the rehumanizing of education through relationships, emotions, self-knowing, trust, and engagement.

I’m passionate about reimagining education as a space of connection, purpose, and emotional growth, where learning helps students become more fully human.

Education can be restored, not reformed, by reawakening the emotional and spiritual dimensions of learning. When we center relationships, trust, and human connection, schools become places of transformation where students and teachers rediscover meaning, purpose, and joy.

Two years ago, I found myself standing in one of the lowest places on earth, Badwater Basin in Death Valley. The vast salt flats stretched endlessly, the horizon dissolving into heat and silence. That moment became a mirror for education itself: boundless in potential, yet often confined by structure and time. Out of that realization came RESTORE, a framework to rehumanize learning through Relationships, Emotions, Self, Trust, Openings, Rigor, and Engagement. My TED story is about rediscovering the soul of education and the courage to imagine what schools can become when we see them not as systems, but as living, breathing communities of connection.

People don’t know I’m good at finding symbolism in everyday places from salt flats to city skylines and turning them into stories about learning and life.