In a quiet pediatric hospital in Virginia, a teenage volunteer slides a crayon drawing across a tray table to a child too weak to lift her head. Hundreds of miles away in Arizona, a young immigrant paints alongside students who once believed their futures ended at a border. Neither room looks like a classroom, yet in both, lessons unfold with more force than any textbook.

Their work, though unfolding in different corners of the country, reveals a shared truth: education isn’t defined by test scores or the walls of a classroom. It grows through service, healing, and the courage to build community. Olivia Zhang, founder of Cancer Kids First, and Reyna Montoya, Deferred Action for Children Arrivals (DACA) recipient and founder of Aliento, show how compassion can become knowledge. Their journeys demonstrate that learning does not begin or end with academics, it emerges where empathy is practiced and young people discover their power to create change.

A Teenager Who Rewrote The Meaning Of Service

Olivia Zhang was still in middle school when she first stepped into the pediatric cancer ward that would change her life. She noticed immediately what most people overlook: the quiet isolation that follows children who are too sick to attend school, see their friends or simply be kids. In a 2023 interview with CBS Boston, Zhang said she wanted kids with cancer “to feel less alone,” an intention that later grew into a global nonprofit.

Cancer Kids First began with handwritten cards and small care packages. Today, it operates in more than 40 countries, connecting youth volunteers to children undergoing treatment through art, tutoring and emotional support. What started as a teenager trying to lift someone’s spirits evolved into one of the largest youth-led cancer support networks in the world.

Behind every package her volunteers send is a lesson not learned in any classroom: that kindness can be curriculum and leadership can begin long before adulthood. Through partnerships and hospital collaborations, Zhang uses volunteer work to show young people that supporting others can be its own form of learning.

As a current Harvard student studying global health, she continues to bridge academia with action. In a profile published by the Harvard Gazette on March 22, 2024, Zhang said her coursework helps her think about “systemic change” and the ways student initiatives can contribute to global health equity.

For Zhang, learning is circular: what she studies informs her service and what she witnesses in hospitals around the world defines the purpose of her education.

Healing Through Art, Voice, & Belonging

Across the country, in Phoenix, Arizona, Reyna Montoya builds a different kind of classroom, one shaped by migration, memory and resilience. As a DACA recipient who immigrated from Mexico at a young age, Montoya understands the emotional gravity carried by undocumented youth. She remembers the fear, uncertainty and silence that filled her own childhood.

Montoya founded Aliento to create a space where young people could process those experiences.

“For so many first-generation students, education isn’t just about personal achievement, it’s a way to honor their parents’ sacrifices and break generational cycles of limited opportunity,” Montoya said.

Aliento now serves more than 12,000 immigrant youth families through arts-based healing, leadership development and civic education programs, according to the organization’s 2023 impact report.

Montoya expressed how her programs emphasize dignity, emotional literacy and collective resilience. In her classrooms, murals become testimonies, poetry becomes empowerment and community becomes a teacher.

“We measure impact through belonging, resilience and agency,” Montoya said. “We ask young people what they’re experiencing and what they’re dreaming about so our programs can evolve to support them.”

Montoya’s work reframes education as a shared act of liberation. For students who have been told their identity limits them, Aliento becomes the place where they learn not only who they are but what they can make possible.

“Growing up undocumented taught me that education is a tool for empowerment,” Montoya said. “Once you gain knowledge, you have a responsibility to create pathways for those who come after you.”

Lessons From Two Different Worlds, Teaching The Same Truth

At first glance, Zhang and Montoya inhabit different universes, pediatric hospitals versus community studios, global health versus immigration justice. Yet their work intersects in one essential way: both women turn hardship into opportunities for others.

They redefine what it means to be educated. Their classrooms have no bells, no desks, no standardized tests. Instead, learning happens in conversation, in art, in care packages assembled late at night, in the moments when someone feels seen for the first time. It happens when young people decide that their lived experience is not a limitation but a source of power.

Their stories challenge the way society measures learning. We track grades, degrees and awards, but overlook the education happening quietly in places most people never see. In the back rows: the rooms where children fight illness, where families navigate fear, where students confront barriers others never have to think about, resilience becomes the lesson plan.

Beyond The Classroom

The lives of Olivia Zhang and Reyna Montoya invite a deeper understanding of what it means to learn. Education can and should exist in schools. But it also thrives in the hands of young people who insist on creating change, even when they don’t have all the answers yet.

Zhang teaches that empathy is an action. Montoya teaches that identity can be a source of strength. Both teach that courage is a form of knowledge, one that requires no diploma.

Their classrooms may be unconventional, but their lessons are universal: learning is not a privilege reserved for the fortunate. It is a human experience built through compassion, service and community, a truth often discovered in the quietest corners, far from the spotlight, where the most powerful teachers are simply those brave enough to begin.