Eric Gonzalez-Payne Educator & builder
I build schools, learning tools, and things that help people grow. This is a collection of the work—and the questions that keep me making more.
Explore the work How it all started 2 min film
20 yearsLearning through real projects
10,000+Teachers trained
440+University placements supported
OneSchool built with Echo in Bali
Schools. Software. Ideas put into practice.
My focus now
From building a school
to helping others build theirs.
I'm building the curriculum, training, and software that help people open and run their own preschools. It grows out of the work we began at Empathy School in Bali.
Explore Empathy GlobalCurriculum, teacher training & Ask
Bali, Indonesia · Founded 2020
The school that started it
What happens when nature, real projects, and emotional learning shape a child's day? Echo and I built a school in Bali to explore that question, together with a community of educators and families.
The curriculum, in children's hands
Classroom experience, shared
A social and emotional learning curriculum I developed through daily practice at the school. Lessons, materials, and teacher training that bring the work into other classrooms.
The people, places & materials behind the work
The thread through all of it
Hitchhiking around the world.
Curiosity became a full circumnavigation.
My grandmother taught me to look twice at the things everyone else walked past.
We recovered furniture and devices, cleaned them up, and sold them. Later, I taught myself to repair discarded computers. I sold some and gave others to nonprofits.
Those projects taught me more than technology. I could take something apart, get it working, and change what happened next. That experience helped set me on a path through world travel, work in refugee camps, and Harvard.
“Broken and worthless are not the same word.”
I've spent the years since trying to create that same possibility for other people: a real project, someone to learn alongside, and evidence of what they can do.
At ten, I took an hour-long bus ride to school with a broken tape player I'd found in a dumpster. It still had an opera cassette inside. If I laid it flat and pressed my ear to the casing, I could hear the music. Nobody assigned that project. I wanted to hear it, so I found a way.
I grew up around people who were every bit as capable as I was. Watching our lives take different directions left me with a question I couldn't put down: what helps someone turn possibility into a life they actually choose?
After roughly twenty years in education, I keep returning to three things: finding a direction, having the confidence to try, and knowing the next step. Encouragement matters, but it needs somewhere to land.
Someone who does the work, answers questions, and stays alongside you.
Something small enough to finish and real enough to matter.
Evidence of what happened, so the learning doesn't disappear into memory.
I kept meeting remarkable young people doing work beyond their grades, with almost no record of the things that made them distinctive. That's the question behind Distinction: how can we help them turn curiosity into direction, real work, and evidence?
Everyone should be able to meet their own expectations. Nobody arrives able to do it alone.
Curiosity takes a few forms
Some questions become businesses. Others become tools, resources, or a game worth playing.
AI & learning
Helping young people turn curiosity into direction, real projects, and a record of what they've made. AI coaching informed by two decades in education.
Open learning resources
A free library of field guides, worksheets, and projects for families, teachers, and curious learners.
Understanding empathy
An adaptive assessment for exploring empathy as a set of skills, with a practical place to start improving.
Play & social strategy
Games built around negotiation, trust, and cooperation. A place to explore the decisions we make with other people.
Parenting simulation
A simulation that follows a child from toddlerhood to eighteen, inviting you to think through the choices along the way.
Earlier ventures, books & writing
A past venture
RetiredI co-founded a university admissions and education advisory business, helping students find their next chapter. The business has retired. Its story lives here, preserving a chapter of the work.
Visit the retirement pagePublished · 2024
Chapter 08
Empathy School: A Democratic,
Nature-Based SEL School
My chapter in Designing Democratic Schools and Learning Environments—a book I worked on with my professor. Published by Palgrave Macmillan and edited by Linda F. Nathan, Jonathan F. Mendonca, and Gustavo Rojas Ayala.
Read the open-access chapterFiction
A dystopian novel
Written by Eric Gonzalez-Payne
From the archive · 2014
Travel writing
An earlier book of personal stories from my years living, working, and exploring Cambodia.
Stories, radio & conversations
Hong Kong Living · 2021
Tom Hilditch visits the school Echo and I founded, exploring outdoor classrooms, learning through play, and the ideas behind Empathy.
Travel with Rick Steves · 2013
My call-in contribution to the travel radio show, with a bonus clip about local food in Shanwei and a link to Your World Your Home.
LittleLives Indonesia · Webinar
A session on practical approaches to early education, curriculum design, and supporting preschool teams.
My personal blog
Family Travel Education
The education that happens
beyond the classroom.
Stories from my years of living and working abroad, adventures with my sons, Miles and Atlas, and reflections on supporting young people as an educator.
Through photographs and first-person accounts, I explore how meeting people, navigating unfamiliar places, and paying attention to everyday life can deepen our understanding of one another.
Watch on YouTube 19:39 ↗
From my travel-show years · China
I used to have a travel show in China. In this episode, I brought a film crew into a village to explore, meet people, and see where the day took us.
Unscripted, and very much my kind of adventure.
Watch the episodeA little about me
I've spent two decades working in education. The work has taken me from classrooms and university admissions to building a school—and then building the tools I wished existed.
Empathy began with education camps Echo and I ran in Thailand, China, and the United States. It grew into a school in Bali, a curriculum, and a new question: how can we help more people create places like this?
That's what I'm working on now. I like ideas you can put into practice, tools people can actually use, and learning that leaves something in the world.
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Master of Education (Ed.M.) · Educational Leadership
M.P.A. · University of Georgia
Good conversations start somewhere
