Re-shaping anything including the form or structure of schooling the content or substance of the curriculum and re-defining purpose or direction of learning is never easy always contentious and needs the conscious act of generating freedom by the deliberate breaking of forms and patterns. Using the taunting lyrics of the Sufi poet Kabir as starting points this presentation notes that educators with a serious and long term interest in re-shaping learning in India and elsewhere must seriously engage with the slow crises created by the metahistories of change. Located within her own practice as a scholar and teacher and using specific examples drawn from the work of the Project Vision Design and Research Collective Bangalore Geetha argues for a pedagogy of learning in the middle school that blends primary analytical and designerly ways of knowing to create sustainable synchronistic and synergistic learning communities in the middle years classrooms.