October 28, 2025 • 35 mins
At a time when 67% of students are not at grade level, Kellie Lauth is revolutionizing education in America. Her nonprofit MindSpark is spreading an innovative approach called problem-based learning like wildfire across the country. And it’s resulted in over 25 of their students owning patents, starting dozens of companies, and a 15% improvement in STEM and literacy achievement!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
When we have people come in and kids present in
front of them, they have to sign NDAs. The companies
have to sign an NDA because you're not.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Taking my kid's idea. That's not going to happen.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
No, Oh my god, it's.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
The easiest cycle. Kids get immersed in a real road problem.
Industry brings it forward because it's authentic. They provide the
expertise and the mentorship. Because teachers don't know about AI
and quantum and all these things, right, So industry provides
that content, that expertise, They provide experiences. They immerse kids
in this problem. Kids come up with a viable solution,
they present it back to industry, and the solution gets
(00:35):
lived out from age five to high school.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach an inner
city Memphis, And the last part it actually led to
an oscar for the film of one of my teams.
That movie is called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems
(01:06):
are never going to be solved by a bunch of
fancy people and nice suits using big words that nobody
understands on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army
of normal folks. Guys, that's us, just you and me deciding, Hey,
you know what, maybe I can help. That's what Kelly Loth,
(01:26):
the voice you just heard, has done. Kelly is the
founder of mind Spark, which is spreading problem based learning
like wildfire across our country. It's resulted in twenty five
of their students owning patents, starting dozens of companies, and
a fifteen percent improvement on STEM and literacy achievement. I
(01:52):
cannot wait for you to meet Kelly right after these
brief messages from our general sponsors. Kelly Loth is a
(02:13):
lifelong Colorado who grew up on a ranch outside of
Duringo and with an awesome dad named Bob, who made
her break a wild horse at eight years old. The
horse kept bucking Kelly off, and Bob wouldn't let her
come in the house until she and the horse figured
it out and got along. It was one of Kelly's
(02:35):
first experiences with problem based learning, and such a childhood
made her tough as nails, which she'd need for personal
tragedies such as her first husband suffering a massive stroke.
At only thirty two years old, medically dying twice, needing
to learn to walk and talk all over again, in
(02:57):
mentally capping out as a fifteen year old, and professional
challenges like an education system that didn't like this engineer,
well shaking things up. You're doing this teaching thing and
you're starting to have success with this interesting math science
(03:18):
based problem solving model of teaching young people. Right, yes,
what are before you even started anything? What did that
initial success feel and look like? How was it quantifiable?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So I taught science, and I just you know, science
can be naturally engaging if you do a good job,
and kids love labs and things like that. But I
started bringing in some of my friends from industry. I
started getting involved in different projects with NASA and just
some different partnerships around Colorado. And what was interesting was
I had kids show up more regularly. It was middle
(03:54):
school this time, I had like kids truly engaged. And
so when I say that, it's like actively participating, actively discussing,
raising their hand, wanting to be in their group, you know,
not fighting, not bickerying, interested, yeah, being interested, wanting to
know more, wanting to be you know, in this role
or not or in this role, and so I started
it was interesting to me. And at the time, the
(04:16):
middle school I was in was a pretty middle class
you know, kind of a basic middle school, nothing too
crazy going on. But even then I saw kids getting
pretty excited about what was happening. And when I moved
on to a title high school where things were a
little bit different and started trying it out there in
classrooms that's for all life. Yeah, so at least fifty
(04:38):
percent free and reduced lunch. This one happened to be
around ninety five percent, so.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
So yeah, pretty pretty low.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, socioeconomics, high poverty area. And I started to see
the same thing even there. Even there, right, kids showing
up pretty excited, wanting to participate, you know, not you know,
fighting like I said, or not cuss each other out
or just not being naughty. I started having less referrals
to the office, like just some things started changing, and
(05:07):
so again I thought, I think there's something to this.
And then after being a teacher for a long time,
I had the opportunity to move to a district position
in the district to oversee science with a team of
two other amazing women, and sort of this perfect storm
of we just started building this little notebook, literally a
binder of really cool ideas that we had that if
(05:29):
someday we got to school, how would it look and
feel different. And what was important to us is there
was no exceptions. So it needed to be in a
system with strong teachers, union, crappy budgets, poor leadership, bad culture,
naughty kids, families sunny. I didn't want there to be
any exceptions. I didn't want people to be able to
(05:50):
come in and say.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Oh, but it works because of this.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yes, because you have all these amazing kids who can reader. Oh,
it's only working because you're in this really nice neighborhood
or whatever. So we just started building ideas, and we
started on our own time and our own time, traveling
the country looking at different models of teaching and learning,
everything from Montessori to high tech high really interesting, like
even you know, private schools that were teaching like Buddhism
(06:15):
and then Catholicism and like, we just started looking at
all these different models of teaching and learning and just
started gathering best practices and what was really working. And
the high schools that were doing an amazing job where
they were putting industry and kids together kept saying to us,
this is cool, but we're not getting very far because
the kids have no idea what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Right, They're not ready for this.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
They don't they don't understand this idea of suddenly being
thrown into the world of work or working with industry.
So you need to start young. That's our one.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Our one recommendation is you need to start young.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
I didn't at one point was this before after At
one point you went to superintendent and said you wanted to.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Do Yeah, So we built this little binder and we
went to our superintendent and said yeah ye, but just
said we want to school. We want to open a
STEM school and STEM was sort of the buzzword. Yeah yeah, yeah,
science technology entering a math and said we want to
use this as our hook, our pr move, and we
(07:12):
believe in it under.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
The public school system. I just want to say that
not something that someone wild say, oh you picked the smartest.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And brighter side, not even a charter school system, which
there's nothing wrong with that, but like, I wanted it
to be in the system, right, They wanted it not outside.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And at first he said no, we're not. We're not
We're not doing it. We're not doing at school, and then.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Why I think. I read that and my question next
to it was why so.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I think a few things.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I think having a considered what like a special focus school,
what they consider a magnet school, was scary. We never
had had one in the district before. I think he
felt like it would take kids away from other schools,
so then there'd be this weird competition inside the district.
And I think it was just so new of an
idea that it was just kind of easy to say no.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Right.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Do you think that goes back to the same mindset
of the two teachers that told you to move from
the receipt.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
This is just this is what we do.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, that's just what we do.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Why are you upset and up?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
We have neighborhoods, We have neighborhood schools.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
The great We put in our nine hours and go home.
Why are you doing this?
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Ye're making my life for your pain. But seriously, no,
it's a thousand percent. Yeah we frustrated, what I mean, Yeah,
we were frustrated, but also like fired up. And so
again the three of us really came from this mindset
of like, we know what we're doing is going to
be pretty cool. We didn't know what it actually would
look like in terms of you know, what it became,
(08:39):
but it.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Was getting back on the horse exactly literally.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So we just kept build our little binder, kept building
the binder, building ideas, building all the things. And then
this perfect storm happened where a number of charter schools
applied to be chartered in the school district, creating competition.
We would lose families right from the public schools to
these charters, and there was a lot of pressure on
the board to do something different. So we went back
and said, here's something different. Doesn't need to be a
(09:05):
charge school, just let us have a school.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And he said, yes, a new supertendent, same one, same one,
same one. He said, you saw a little pressure worked,
a little pressure.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Worked, a little political pressure worked, and we got our school.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
And we pitched him.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
The idea in kind of January February, and he said,
you can open with a handful of kids in the fall.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
You better get to work.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Was it a lot like getting the classroom on the
stage the school itself one thousand percent.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So they cobbled like random money from all.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
These different budgets we've got.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Okay, I just wanted so to in today my most
high schools to open require between one hundred and twenty
five to almost two hundred and twenty five million dollars
to open a middle school about sixty five million. Right,
we got one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, nice school
in the oldest building in the district that looked like
a jail.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Really.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, it was abysmal. And they said, here, you got
your building, you got your budget.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
You go knock yourself out. Ye, let's see how successful
your little bonder can be.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yep, you give it your best.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Okay, tell us about that year.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So by midyear we had a wait list of over
two hundred and fifty families mid year.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
What happened those first semester? Why did it happen so quickly? Midyear?
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So we had this small group of teachers and all
we did was invest in them. You're going to be
the best dang teachers on the planet, come hell or
high water. We're figuring this out. So we completely immerse
them in this model of problem based learning, which is
very simple, probably one of the oldest forms of learning around,
which is really you're just going to work on an
actual real world problem. Central to your standards and kids
(10:43):
are going to solve.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
The problem was that this was a K through eight school, right, yeah, yeah, okay,
So you're taking six year olds and saying here's an issue.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Five year olds, yep, how do we fix it?
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Yes, And you're teaching the teachers to a model education
or realm that type of thing. So when you talked
earlier about investing your people, you're not just talking to kids.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
No, no, No, adults in the system matter just as
much as the kids if you want this to work.
And so we invested heavily in our teachers. We put
them into industry forums. They went and joined chambers of commerce,
they joined board associations of like bioscience and engineering.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Your teachers got a real worldview what students are going
to have to do one day. So they got a
better perspective of what problem solving and what teaching needs
to look like.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And it wasn't because I wanted them to become scientists
or engineers or whatever. I want them to understand what
it looks like in the real world. Because mostly when
you come from education, you've only grown up in education academia, dude,
So you don't understand what it looks like in this
world of supply chain or advanced manufacturing or AG right,
and so I needed my teachers to understand the real world,
(11:53):
to understand industry.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
And now a few messages from our gender sponsors. But first,
I hope you'll consider signing up to join the army
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happen to miss an episode, or if you prefer reading
about our incredible guests, we'll be right back. I can't
(12:33):
tell him many times i've heard. First of all, I've
said it. I can't how many people in the business,
you know. I've got a fairly big business people. When
I hear professors talk so knowingly about some issue economic issue,
especially as it pertains to geopolitics, I want to reach
(12:54):
through the TV and strangle them. And my immediate response
is that's what happens in academia, when you're steeped in academia.
And there's this old adage that those who can do
those who can't teach right, and you're breaking that down
with your staff. Yes, I love that. I don't think
(13:17):
I got that from Alex's I'm starting to kind of well,
it's a nice job, but I'm starting to feel that
you wanted to give them some of the real world
experience you got prior to coming into teaching.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So the kids are going to come as kids, right,
They're going to come at whatever level, with all their
gifts and all their challenges. But the one thing I
could completely overturn control fix investment was it als in
this equation. And that's what we did. We put teachers
into project management training and said, look, if you're going
to truly be the guides in the classroom and you're
(13:50):
going to be facilitators of learning, you need to understand
what it looks like to be project managers and to
coordinate different aspects of this.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Well, you certainly weren't hiring teachers that were worried about
their seat in the faculty longe. She must have been
getting kind of young aggressive I want to go after.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
And so here's what's interesting, and we had a really
we start with a smiling star.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
The teacher recruitment had to be different.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
So there was a different profile of who we were
looking for, and so by mid year it was really interesting.
We had a fairly traditional language arts teacher, but very
excited about the model. But she was a little bit
still really bent on, you know, following her standards and
really being more traditional. And she came in mid year
and she said, I really need.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
To talk to you guys. And I was like, dang it,
this isre we go.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Here we go, right, And she said, I just need
to show you something, and she laid out a whole
bunch of test scores from mid year and she said,
what do you see. We had completely closed the literacy
gap for all of our Hispanic males in six months.
No way, Yes, And she said, I don't know what's
(14:53):
going on here. And I said, kids are learning. That's
exactly what's going on here, kid. And so it just continued.
Kids were It didn't become about tests, it didn't become
about any of the traditional stuff schools about. It literally
became about kids solving real world problems in their community.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Give me an example that first year world world problems
that you tasked children with.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yes, one of my favorite examples kindergarten class five year olds.
So in Colorado at least probably nationally as well. One
of the big things kids learn about at nauseum in
kindergarten is what it makes a good community, what makes
a healthy and thriving community.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
It's a social science standard.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
So the teacher decided that around that standard they would
start mapping their community. And they started looking around at
all the things that make a healthy and thriving community
and realize that their community did wasn't that food, desert, recreation, desert,
medical care, desert, wasn't healthy, wasn't thriving, and they lived there.
And so in little groups of five and six year olds,
(15:56):
they decided to start tackling each of those different types
of problems make our community better, safer, thriving. And one
of my favorite groups was the medical care group. And
my favorite day ever was they organized themselves. They did
all this research and they came to me and said,
we have decided that we want a mobile medical care
unit to come to our school twice a week and
(16:17):
provide care for anyone in the community who needs it
at the school where my grandma can get on the
bus line and get here. And I want that to happen.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, well, not just the students, anybody in the community.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Anybody in the community. And I said, that's awesome. They
had a marketing plan, they had to budget, and they
presented it to me. So I got to call three
mobile medical care companies and ask them to come to
the school and present, and I didn't tell them who
they were presenting to. I just said, come meet with us,
we want to maybe engage your services.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
You did not have them present to a board of
six year olds.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yes, so this only works. It's if authentic. It only
works if you're going to live out these solutions. It
only works you're going to.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Pop like shark tank and had grown ass adults present to.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Them with their briefcases, walked into the mind sit in
chairs where their knees worked through their ears. And they said, oh,
we're not meeting with you with you and the school
board or you in the group. And I said, nope,
you're going to meet with my kindergarteners because they're going
to just choose if you're worthy to be in their
community and provide services.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So the kids had all their questions.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
What did they say When you said that, they.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Were appalled and they instantly loved it. You could tell
right you that was a good gauge because instantly you're like, okay,
probably not going to work out for you, but we'll
give it a chance. So they sat down and there
was a panel of kindergarteners who fired questions at them
and you know, how are you going to take care
of my grandma? How are you going to make sure
that we, you know, are safe, like all these pieces,
and they had a hold stick questions and at the
(17:48):
end they actually decided who comes. And still today a
mobile medical care unit shows up twice a week to
the school.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
And they did everything.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
They advertised it, they got it the word out there,
They built little posters. This one of the schools is
located in the largest trailer park network west of the Mississippi,
and so they would use different networks within the trailer
park to advertise and it's thriving.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
That is freaking great.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And they're five. Yeah, I mean this is not rocket science. Literally. Yeah,
we've had kids, you know, patents, We've had kids start businesses.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
We've had what yeah, no, don't just say that, tell
me a patent, tell me a business.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, we've had kids start their own software storage.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Companies, software storage company.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, figuring out how to create like they created a
platform for us.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
What was the problem that led them.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
To this so this was a high school group and
in it they actually just had to create an app
to solve a problem in their community that was open ended,
just look around and trying to make it. And at
first they you know, used kind of design thinking. They
laid out what they thought the problem was, how they
were going to figure out an app to do it,
and I think they thought it was a simulation, like
we're not going to really build an app, We're going
(19:01):
to just kind of pretend. And then we got in
software companies to help them.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Build out front, we're building an app, building an.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
App, So they got to build apps. And then one
group was so into what they had built, which was
literally helping this was early days. There's a probably million
of them now, but helping homeowners find care for their
pets when they're on vacation, and you know, and this
was early kind of two thousand, so they it was
kind of a novel idea. But it was also to
(19:29):
employ young people to do this. So you had kids
who needed jobs, people who needed care for their pet,
matching them up together.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
That was their app. That was our idea. So it worked.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It worked so well that they still run it today
and they are making a lot of money still still Yeah,
so they we moved them off.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
We didn't let somebody get these kids idea.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
So this is also what happens is now when we
have people come in and kids present in front of them,
they have to sign NDA. The companies have to send
an NDA because you're not taking my kid's idea. That's
not going to happen. No, yeah, oh my god, it's
the easiest cycle. Kids get immersed in a real world problem.
Industry brings it forward because it's authentic. They stay alongside.
(20:16):
They provide the expertise and the mentorship because teachers don't
know about AI and quantum and all these things, right,
So industry provides that content, that expertise, They provide experiences.
They immerse kids in this problem. Kids come up with
a viable solution, they present it back to industry, and
the solution gets lived out. That's it, over and over
and over from age five to high school.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Okay, So where does Latin English, current events, Spanish, and
conjugating verbs fit into this model?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
So that all fits because what happens is when you're
immersed in this type of problem solving, you're authentically reading
and researching for that you're authentically writing for that type
of audience or that type of topic.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
And so kids are.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Having to learn skills, right, They're having to learn how
to do proper grammar and how to conjugate verbs and
how to do these things, but they're doing it in
a way that's authentic. They're doing it because they have
to come up and present to you, know.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
To you. So your kids don't just get this good
applied education through doing the applied education. They're still doing
fun on the standard score, getting those faces.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Well, yeah, the standards are there, right, we don't this again,
there's no exceptions, so you don't get to not have standards,
you don't get to not do these things. But we
do so in a way where the kids are learning
these things and then they're directly applying them and a story.
So you're reading for a purpose, you're writing for a purpose,
you're learning math for a purpose, and they get to
see that and it builds on itself. And again that
doesn't mean that there's not direct instruction right where teachers
(21:50):
aren't saying, Okay, this is exactly how we're going to
solve this algorithm. That's exactly how we're going to do this,
but then you turn in and say, Okay, in engineering,
this is why we need to know this, because in
engineering is applied math and that's what it looks like.
And now we're going to go and do this problem.
I mean, it's bringing relevancy to an authenticity to learning
and kids get that like they love it. Right, you
have kids wanting to learn more, wanting to go deeper
(22:13):
into topics.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Back to that, we're still on that first year. You
open the door, two hundred and fifty kids. By the
end of that first year, you had four hundred and
eighty three families on a wait list, and we closed
the reading gap for our Hispanic metals by midyear.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
What was the gap?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
So they were underperforming their white counterparts by about sixty percent?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
How much sixty.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
And in half a year you closed it. Yeah, completely closed.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yep, they were on level.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
That is.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I don't understand why every district in the United States
is not flocking to where for Colorado to sit on
your doorstep and say show the.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, I mean, we do get a lot of visitors
to see these schools in action, because I don't I
don't think people believe it can happen or they don't
believe it can happen in a public.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
School with all the constraints.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
So we get hundreds and hundreds of people to come
see it, and that's why we have so many schools,
and that's why the nonprofit started and all these things.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
Well, that's good because that in the case that there's
people still that do care and whether make it right.
They just need to learn how. Yes, we need to
reinvent the way we think about that.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
And I think, yeah, an education week, we're so fast
to do this pendulum swing from one extreme to the other,
and that's not what this is.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
This is just solid teaching and learning.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
I would have killed to have seen a bunch of
five and six year olds interview and a bunch of
people in tiz presenting a business plan. That is absolutely
there needs to be a movie with that scene in it.
So I've read that you're up to six student run
fully registered LLCs, the youngest of which is a second grader,
(24:09):
and then you have like fifteen or sixteen patents.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I mean, is that really right?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
So in one in this system, which is a K
K two, K three, it's and then in twelfth grade
we actually that's doubled since those stats, so we have
twice as many. So we have about twelve to fifteen
patents right now registered with the State of Colorado. And
then yeah, LLCs formed a lot. It was a really
cool thing in Clorado. We started a fund where there's
(24:35):
just a little bit of seed money at Young Americans Bank,
which is a bank for kids.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
There's a bank for kids, right it's a bank.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
For kids in Colorado, but it's in Cherry Creek, which
is the most one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Colorado,
and so a lot of families who want to teach
their kids financial literacy set up acounts there or things
like that. But the kids I'm working with didn't even
know about it nor had access to it. So we
set up a fund there and they can come and
pitch their ideas for a business. And you can be undocumented,
(25:01):
you can be homeless, you can be in foster care.
You don't need an adult to sign off, and you
can get a loan to start your own business with
a two percent interest rate and if you don't pay
it back, nothing bad happens to you. You just get
to learn and go through a course about failure.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
And people have used that thing to fund businesses that
are over running.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yes, and as they pay their.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Loans, give me an example of a business.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Because they pay it back, it just replenishes the fund.
So they've I mean, we've had everything started from small
lemonade stands that have grown to be huge enterprises. To
the boys that I was talking about with this app.
They went there to get a loan to have software,
so they get sure stuff they needed to build their app. Big, small,
it doesn't matter, and they have to pitch to a
(25:45):
group of adults that get to approve or not approve
their loan. All the loans are generally approved, but still
they have.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
To go through the process of the learning process of
what that is.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I commit to getting them there. The schools commit to
getting them down there because it's a ways from the schools,
and again transportation is hard for a lot of the families.
So that's our commitment is we'll get you there. You
put your idea, let's go from there.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
All right. That's crazy.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
When you took the STEM problem based learning model to
a struggling high school in your district, they went from
like a seventy percent graduation right to over a ninety percent.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Graduation sixteen nine percent, yeah too, over ninety ninety two.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
When what was that? When did you do that?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So we did that in two thousand and like twenty ten,
twenty eleven school year.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
It's just unbelievable, not not unbelievable, wrong word. It's it's
not incredule's that's also I believe you.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
It's just it's shocking. That's the word.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
And it almost it seems so obvious.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, I mean when I walked in, because that was
like sort of the next step was we had s
somewhere for eighth graders to go where they suddenly weren't
thrown into a high school. They didn't match the type
of learning they had, so this sort of floundering high school,
the district said take that over, have it be a
Stem high school and see what will happen. And when
I walked into announce a staff, you know, there was
a couple of hundred teachers all dressed in their union colors, sitting,
(27:13):
you know, cross armed, and I said, guess what you
get to become the next big Stem high school? And
basically they've you know, flipped me off, booed me, one
stood up and said I'm going to do this just
to spite you and show you how stupid of an
idea this is. We're not we don't want to do this.
We're not going to do it.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
How did you lose?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
So this is the crazy part of the story. None
of them left and some a lot of them should have.
But they all stayed. They stayed for a year and
we just started working again. It's required no materials. This
was literally just professional learning saying we're going to seems to.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Be a little lack of commitment and their anger and
angst if none left there.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
They're very much again, I don't want to change, I'm
dug in And here here's the other thing, right, And
you probably know this when you work with at risk
schools and hard to serve regions and populations. There's no
one on the outside screaming about this. So you can
be a really terrible teacher and no one cares. No
(28:15):
one's going to say to you, this is not okay
for kids. Parents just want their kids to go to
school because they've got so much on their plate. They're
worried about so much in their life that school is
where their kids go. But if you were in a
white or affluent or you know, other type of school
and you did any of this stuff that I saw
going on, Oh my gosh, parents would be up in arms.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
It would never happen. It would never fly.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
What I started saying is, if you don't get on
this bus with me and figure this out, I'm going
to start shining a big bright light on what you're
not doing for kids.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
End of story.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
We're going to lay it all out there, so you
either figure it out and start doing right by your kids,
or everyone's going to know that you can't do this.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
And we just started three categories. Okay, a small handful
that actually cared and were like, hell, yeah, I'm on
your side.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Let's go girl. Thousand small, i'd say fifteen percent less.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Then there's the greatest percentage that really hate your guys
because now they have to work and they're going to
be exposed for being horrific of what they do. And
then there's another small percentage that actually really love your
idea but are too afraid to speak up against the whole.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
You named it like you nailed it. Yep, that's exactly
what happens.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
That's a weird dynamic advantage for you.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
The other thing that's happening in the school at the
same time.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I had to have been wondering where the knives were.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Every day, was yeah, no, I'm serious, No, I mean, yeah,
you talk about having some thick skin for sure. The
other interesting thing that was happening at the same time
was they also had you know, they get to see
how much they love their school and feel connected to
their community. Teachers do they get to kind of rate
their school, and there's a climate culture survey and they
had the lowest rating.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
What a surprise.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, And so besides, you know, one of the metrics
besides changing this graduation rate for kids and flipping the
script on that, the other thing that happened was by
the end of you know, after a year year and
a half, they had one of the highest climate culture surveys.
What the teachers wanted to come to work. They felt
strongly about what they were doing. They had even the
ones they hated.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Me, did you turn them most of them?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I think we turned most of them. And then you know,
the principal did a good job of, you know, pushing
out those who really truly didn't didn't fit and shouldn't
be there.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Well, they probably shouldn't be in any school.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
No, they should not.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I mean, it's a it's a flow exactly, it's a
it's a career. You know, it's maybe not their career
for you conversation, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
So I mean, it's another career for you conversation that's funny,
but yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
And so that was very compelled to people because, you know,
the first school was the sort of lesson and we
get to start something new, we get to have people choicing,
we get to kind of figure this out, and this
one was taking a big mess, big hairy mess, and
saying no, no, no, no problem, big problem, and saying no, no, no,
We're going to show you what's possible with the resources
(31:19):
and the people that you have and the families that
you have.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
So then you said, I think and correct me if
i'm chronological matter or but I think that's when you said,
we have a bona fide thing here that works, and
we've modeled it now from kindergarten through high school, and
(31:43):
we've modeled it from a startup lookike jail with no
budget to the crappiest school in the district with the
worst scores. It's worked from five year olds to eighteen
year olds and all kinds of socioeconomic situations, title schools, everything.
There's more than just maybe something here. This is a thing,
(32:05):
a thing. And that's when you started bund Spark's that right?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah? So I was actually, wah.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
What was the genesis? Why not just keep doing this
with more schools? What was your thinking behind it? When
I when I understood, when I read your whole story,
I was like, well, why not just keep doing more
of this? What is mind spark and why? What was
the you know what fueled you?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
That So the little bit of space in between the
high school was there was also another K in the
district that was actually being closed down. It was a
failing middle school had been failing for years.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
And so the superintendent said, I think we should make
it as K Stems School and be sister schools with
the one you started in this high school? Do you
want to go be the principal? And I that was
not something I'd ever wanted to do in my life.
And I told him he really need to take the
weekend and.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Think about that. And he told me, you need to
take the weekend and about you to.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Be the principal and you said you need to take
the weekend. They might have might have considered that a
bit condescending.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Maybe, and he said no, you need to take it,
and so I ended up saying yes.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
And so part of this sort of odyssey to get
to bind.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Spark, that's sassy, This is odyssey to get to minind Spark.
Part of it is that I spent I couldn't walk
away thinking there's something here without having played a part
in all these different roles, and one of those was
leading this effort from within. Right, I had done a
lot of work with principles, I'd done a lot of
work with teachers. I had been a teacher. Felt like, yeah,
and here's the thing I walked in. You know it's
(33:43):
going to be shut down. There was an eighth grader
who raped a first grader on campus. An eighth grader
had raped a first grader on campus, and so it
was a decimated parents were leaving. It made the papers.
The only reason it didn't get national attentions because they
found Jessica Ridgey's body the same week they found what
Jessica Ridgeway's body. Yeah, the same niche that this happened.
(34:04):
So it didn't get national tations.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
How do you emotionally deal with that?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I mean, there was no safety measures in place. It's
a K eight school, so you have big kids and
little kids. So the K eight models in jeopardy of
being decimated. Our STEM model that we worked so hard
for is in jeopardy of being decimated because this really
poor leadership that was there and this mess. You have
all these teachers who signed up for this and are
super excited to do something cool in a place that
really needs them, they want to leave. I mean it
(34:30):
just I walked into this message.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Absolute dumpster fire.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
And that concludes Part one of our conversation with Kelly Low,
and you do not want to miss part two that's
now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change
this country, but it starts with you.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
I'll see in Port two
When we have people come in and kids present in
front of them, they have to sign NDAs. The companies
have to sign an NDA because you're not.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Taking my kid's idea. That's not going to happen.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
No, Oh my god, it's.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
The easiest cycle. Kids get immersed in a real road problem.
Industry brings it forward because it's authentic. They provide the
expertise and the mentorship. Because teachers don't know about AI
and quantum and all these things, right, So industry provides
that content, that expertise, They provide experiences. They immerse kids
in this problem. Kids come up with a viable solution,
they present it back to industry, and the solution gets
(00:35):
lived out from age five to high school.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm a football coach an inner
city Memphis, And the last part it actually led to
an oscar for the film of one of my teams.
That movie is called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems
(01:06):
are never going to be solved by a bunch of
fancy people and nice suits using big words that nobody
understands on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army
of normal folks. Guys, that's us, just you and me deciding, Hey,
you know what, maybe I can help. That's what Kelly Loth,
(01:26):
the voice you just heard, has done. Kelly is the
founder of mind Spark, which is spreading problem based learning
like wildfire across our country. It's resulted in twenty five
of their students owning patents, starting dozens of companies, and
a fifteen percent improvement on STEM and literacy achievement. I
(01:52):
cannot wait for you to meet Kelly right after these
brief messages from our general sponsors. Kelly Loth is a
(02:13):
lifelong Colorado who grew up on a ranch outside of
Duringo and with an awesome dad named Bob, who made
her break a wild horse at eight years old. The
horse kept bucking Kelly off, and Bob wouldn't let her
come in the house until she and the horse figured
it out and got along. It was one of Kelly's
(02:35):
first experiences with problem based learning, and such a childhood
made her tough as nails, which she'd need for personal
tragedies such as her first husband suffering a massive stroke.
At only thirty two years old, medically dying twice, needing
to learn to walk and talk all over again, in
(02:57):
mentally capping out as a fifteen year old, and professional
challenges like an education system that didn't like this engineer,
well shaking things up. You're doing this teaching thing and
you're starting to have success with this interesting math science
(03:18):
based problem solving model of teaching young people. Right, yes,
what are before you even started anything? What did that
initial success feel and look like? How was it quantifiable?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So I taught science, and I just you know, science
can be naturally engaging if you do a good job,
and kids love labs and things like that. But I
started bringing in some of my friends from industry. I
started getting involved in different projects with NASA and just
some different partnerships around Colorado. And what was interesting was
I had kids show up more regularly. It was middle
(03:54):
school this time, I had like kids truly engaged. And
so when I say that, it's like actively participating, actively discussing,
raising their hand, wanting to be in their group, you know,
not fighting, not bickerying, interested, yeah, being interested, wanting to
know more, wanting to be you know, in this role
or not or in this role, and so I started
it was interesting to me. And at the time, the
(04:16):
middle school I was in was a pretty middle class
you know, kind of a basic middle school, nothing too
crazy going on. But even then I saw kids getting
pretty excited about what was happening. And when I moved
on to a title high school where things were a
little bit different and started trying it out there in
classrooms that's for all life. Yeah, so at least fifty
(04:38):
percent free and reduced lunch. This one happened to be
around ninety five percent, so.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
So yeah, pretty pretty low.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah, socioeconomics, high poverty area. And I started to see
the same thing even there. Even there, right, kids showing
up pretty excited, wanting to participate, you know, not you know,
fighting like I said, or not cuss each other out
or just not being naughty. I started having less referrals
to the office, like just some things started changing, and
(05:07):
so again I thought, I think there's something to this.
And then after being a teacher for a long time,
I had the opportunity to move to a district position
in the district to oversee science with a team of
two other amazing women, and sort of this perfect storm
of we just started building this little notebook, literally a
binder of really cool ideas that we had that if
(05:29):
someday we got to school, how would it look and
feel different. And what was important to us is there
was no exceptions. So it needed to be in a
system with strong teachers, union, crappy budgets, poor leadership, bad culture,
naughty kids, families sunny. I didn't want there to be
any exceptions. I didn't want people to be able to
(05:50):
come in and say.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
Oh, but it works because of this.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yes, because you have all these amazing kids who can reader. Oh,
it's only working because you're in this really nice neighborhood
or whatever. So we just started building ideas, and we
started on our own time and our own time, traveling
the country looking at different models of teaching and learning,
everything from Montessori to high tech high really interesting, like
even you know, private schools that were teaching like Buddhism
(06:15):
and then Catholicism and like, we just started looking at
all these different models of teaching and learning and just
started gathering best practices and what was really working. And
the high schools that were doing an amazing job where
they were putting industry and kids together kept saying to us,
this is cool, but we're not getting very far because
the kids have no idea what they're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Right, They're not ready for this.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
They don't they don't understand this idea of suddenly being
thrown into the world of work or working with industry.
So you need to start young. That's our one.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Our one recommendation is you need to start young.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
I didn't at one point was this before after At
one point you went to superintendent and said you wanted to.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Do Yeah, So we built this little binder and we
went to our superintendent and said yeah ye, but just
said we want to school. We want to open a
STEM school and STEM was sort of the buzzword. Yeah yeah, yeah,
science technology entering a math and said we want to
use this as our hook, our pr move, and we
(07:12):
believe in it under.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
The public school system. I just want to say that
not something that someone wild say, oh you picked the smartest.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And brighter side, not even a charter school system, which
there's nothing wrong with that, but like, I wanted it
to be in the system, right, They wanted it not outside.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And at first he said no, we're not. We're not
We're not doing it. We're not doing at school, and then.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Why I think. I read that and my question next
to it was why so.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I think a few things.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
I think having a considered what like a special focus school,
what they consider a magnet school, was scary. We never
had had one in the district before. I think he
felt like it would take kids away from other schools,
so then there'd be this weird competition inside the district.
And I think it was just so new of an
idea that it was just kind of easy to say no.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Right.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Do you think that goes back to the same mindset
of the two teachers that told you to move from
the receipt.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
This is just this is what we do.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, that's just what we do.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Why are you upset and up?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
We have neighborhoods, We have neighborhood schools.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
The great We put in our nine hours and go home.
Why are you doing this?
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Ye're making my life for your pain. But seriously, no,
it's a thousand percent. Yeah we frustrated, what I mean, Yeah,
we were frustrated, but also like fired up. And so
again the three of us really came from this mindset
of like, we know what we're doing is going to
be pretty cool. We didn't know what it actually would
look like in terms of you know, what it became,
(08:39):
but it.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Was getting back on the horse exactly literally.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
So we just kept build our little binder, kept building
the binder, building ideas, building all the things. And then
this perfect storm happened where a number of charter schools
applied to be chartered in the school district, creating competition.
We would lose families right from the public schools to
these charters, and there was a lot of pressure on
the board to do something different. So we went back
and said, here's something different. Doesn't need to be a
(09:05):
charge school, just let us have a school.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
And he said, yes, a new supertendent, same one, same one,
same one. He said, you saw a little pressure worked,
a little pressure.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Worked, a little political pressure worked, and we got our school.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
And we pitched him.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
The idea in kind of January February, and he said,
you can open with a handful of kids in the fall.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
You better get to work.
Speaker 4 (09:27):
Was it a lot like getting the classroom on the
stage the school itself one thousand percent.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So they cobbled like random money from all.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
These different budgets we've got.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Okay, I just wanted so to in today my most
high schools to open require between one hundred and twenty
five to almost two hundred and twenty five million dollars
to open a middle school about sixty five million. Right,
we got one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, nice school
in the oldest building in the district that looked like
a jail.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Really.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, it was abysmal. And they said, here, you got
your building, you got your budget.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
You go knock yourself out. Ye, let's see how successful
your little bonder can be.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yep, you give it your best.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Okay, tell us about that year.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
So by midyear we had a wait list of over
two hundred and fifty families mid year.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
What happened those first semester? Why did it happen so quickly? Midyear?
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So we had this small group of teachers and all
we did was invest in them. You're going to be
the best dang teachers on the planet, come hell or
high water. We're figuring this out. So we completely immerse
them in this model of problem based learning, which is
very simple, probably one of the oldest forms of learning around,
which is really you're just going to work on an
actual real world problem. Central to your standards and kids
(10:43):
are going to solve.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
The problem was that this was a K through eight school, right, yeah, yeah, okay,
So you're taking six year olds and saying here's an issue.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Five year olds, yep, how do we fix it?
Speaker 4 (10:54):
Yes, And you're teaching the teachers to a model education
or realm that type of thing. So when you talked
earlier about investing your people, you're not just talking to kids.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
No, no, No, adults in the system matter just as
much as the kids if you want this to work.
And so we invested heavily in our teachers. We put
them into industry forums. They went and joined chambers of commerce,
they joined board associations of like bioscience and engineering.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Your teachers got a real worldview what students are going
to have to do one day. So they got a
better perspective of what problem solving and what teaching needs
to look like.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
I got it.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And it wasn't because I wanted them to become scientists
or engineers or whatever. I want them to understand what
it looks like in the real world. Because mostly when
you come from education, you've only grown up in education academia, dude,
So you don't understand what it looks like in this
world of supply chain or advanced manufacturing or AG right,
and so I needed my teachers to understand the real world,
(11:53):
to understand industry.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
And now a few messages from our gender sponsors. But first,
I hope you'll consider signing up to join the army
at normal folks dot us. By signing up, you'll receive
a weekly email with short episodes summaries in case you
happen to miss an episode, or if you prefer reading
about our incredible guests, we'll be right back. I can't
(12:33):
tell him many times i've heard. First of all, I've
said it. I can't how many people in the business,
you know. I've got a fairly big business people. When
I hear professors talk so knowingly about some issue economic issue,
especially as it pertains to geopolitics, I want to reach
(12:54):
through the TV and strangle them. And my immediate response
is that's what happens in academia, when you're steeped in academia.
And there's this old adage that those who can do
those who can't teach right, and you're breaking that down
with your staff. Yes, I love that. I don't think
(13:17):
I got that from Alex's I'm starting to kind of well,
it's a nice job, but I'm starting to feel that
you wanted to give them some of the real world
experience you got prior to coming into teaching.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
So the kids are going to come as kids, right,
They're going to come at whatever level, with all their
gifts and all their challenges. But the one thing I
could completely overturn control fix investment was it als in
this equation. And that's what we did. We put teachers
into project management training and said, look, if you're going
to truly be the guides in the classroom and you're
(13:50):
going to be facilitators of learning, you need to understand
what it looks like to be project managers and to
coordinate different aspects of this.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
Well, you certainly weren't hiring teachers that were worried about
their seat in the faculty longe. She must have been
getting kind of young aggressive I want to go after.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
And so here's what's interesting, and we had a really
we start with a smiling star.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
The teacher recruitment had to be different.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
So there was a different profile of who we were
looking for, and so by mid year it was really interesting.
We had a fairly traditional language arts teacher, but very
excited about the model. But she was a little bit
still really bent on, you know, following her standards and
really being more traditional. And she came in mid year
and she said, I really need.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
To talk to you guys. And I was like, dang it,
this isre we go.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Here we go, right, And she said, I just need
to show you something, and she laid out a whole
bunch of test scores from mid year and she said,
what do you see. We had completely closed the literacy
gap for all of our Hispanic males in six months.
No way, Yes, And she said, I don't know what's
(14:53):
going on here. And I said, kids are learning. That's
exactly what's going on here, kid. And so it just continued.
Kids were It didn't become about tests, it didn't become
about any of the traditional stuff schools about. It literally
became about kids solving real world problems in their community.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Give me an example that first year world world problems
that you tasked children with.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yes, one of my favorite examples kindergarten class five year olds.
So in Colorado at least probably nationally as well. One
of the big things kids learn about at nauseum in
kindergarten is what it makes a good community, what makes
a healthy and thriving community.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
It's a social science standard.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
So the teacher decided that around that standard they would
start mapping their community. And they started looking around at
all the things that make a healthy and thriving community
and realize that their community did wasn't that food, desert, recreation, desert,
medical care, desert, wasn't healthy, wasn't thriving, and they lived there.
And so in little groups of five and six year olds,
(15:56):
they decided to start tackling each of those different types
of problems make our community better, safer, thriving. And one
of my favorite groups was the medical care group. And
my favorite day ever was they organized themselves. They did
all this research and they came to me and said,
we have decided that we want a mobile medical care
unit to come to our school twice a week and
(16:17):
provide care for anyone in the community who needs it
at the school where my grandma can get on the
bus line and get here. And I want that to happen.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Well, well, not just the students, anybody in the community.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Anybody in the community. And I said, that's awesome. They
had a marketing plan, they had to budget, and they
presented it to me. So I got to call three
mobile medical care companies and ask them to come to
the school and present, and I didn't tell them who
they were presenting to. I just said, come meet with us,
we want to maybe engage your services.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
You did not have them present to a board of
six year olds.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yes, so this only works. It's if authentic. It only
works if you're going to live out these solutions. It
only works you're going to.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Pop like shark tank and had grown ass adults present to.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Them with their briefcases, walked into the mind sit in
chairs where their knees worked through their ears. And they said, oh,
we're not meeting with you with you and the school
board or you in the group. And I said, nope,
you're going to meet with my kindergarteners because they're going
to just choose if you're worthy to be in their
community and provide services.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So the kids had all their questions.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
What did they say When you said that, they.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Were appalled and they instantly loved it. You could tell
right you that was a good gauge because instantly you're like, okay,
probably not going to work out for you, but we'll
give it a chance. So they sat down and there
was a panel of kindergarteners who fired questions at them
and you know, how are you going to take care
of my grandma? How are you going to make sure
that we, you know, are safe, like all these pieces,
and they had a hold stick questions and at the
(17:48):
end they actually decided who comes. And still today a
mobile medical care unit shows up twice a week to
the school.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
And they did everything.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
They advertised it, they got it the word out there,
They built little posters. This one of the schools is
located in the largest trailer park network west of the Mississippi,
and so they would use different networks within the trailer
park to advertise and it's thriving.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
That is freaking great.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
And they're five. Yeah, I mean this is not rocket science. Literally. Yeah,
we've had kids, you know, patents, We've had kids start businesses.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
We've had what yeah, no, don't just say that, tell
me a patent, tell me a business.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, we've had kids start their own software storage.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Companies, software storage company.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yeah, figuring out how to create like they created a
platform for us.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
What was the problem that led them.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
To this so this was a high school group and
in it they actually just had to create an app
to solve a problem in their community that was open ended,
just look around and trying to make it. And at
first they you know, used kind of design thinking. They
laid out what they thought the problem was, how they
were going to figure out an app to do it,
and I think they thought it was a simulation, like
we're not going to really build an app, We're going
(19:01):
to just kind of pretend. And then we got in
software companies to help them.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
Build out front, we're building an app, building an.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
App, So they got to build apps. And then one
group was so into what they had built, which was
literally helping this was early days. There's a probably million
of them now, but helping homeowners find care for their
pets when they're on vacation, and you know, and this
was early kind of two thousand, so they it was
kind of a novel idea. But it was also to
(19:29):
employ young people to do this. So you had kids
who needed jobs, people who needed care for their pet,
matching them up together.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
That was their app. That was our idea. So it worked.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
It worked so well that they still run it today
and they are making a lot of money still still Yeah,
so they we moved them off.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
We didn't let somebody get these kids idea.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
So this is also what happens is now when we
have people come in and kids present in front of them,
they have to sign NDA. The companies have to send
an NDA because you're not taking my kid's idea. That's
not going to happen. No, yeah, oh my god, it's
the easiest cycle. Kids get immersed in a real world problem.
Industry brings it forward because it's authentic. They stay alongside.
(20:16):
They provide the expertise and the mentorship because teachers don't
know about AI and quantum and all these things, right,
So industry provides that content, that expertise, They provide experiences.
They immerse kids in this problem. Kids come up with
a viable solution, they present it back to industry, and
the solution gets lived out. That's it, over and over
and over from age five to high school.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Okay, So where does Latin English, current events, Spanish, and
conjugating verbs fit into this model?
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:49):
So that all fits because what happens is when you're
immersed in this type of problem solving, you're authentically reading
and researching for that you're authentically writing for that type
of audience or that type of topic.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
And so kids are.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Having to learn skills, right, They're having to learn how
to do proper grammar and how to conjugate verbs and
how to do these things, but they're doing it in
a way that's authentic. They're doing it because they have
to come up and present to you, know.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
To you. So your kids don't just get this good
applied education through doing the applied education. They're still doing
fun on the standard score, getting those faces.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Well, yeah, the standards are there, right, we don't this again,
there's no exceptions, so you don't get to not have standards,
you don't get to not do these things. But we
do so in a way where the kids are learning
these things and then they're directly applying them and a story.
So you're reading for a purpose, you're writing for a purpose,
you're learning math for a purpose, and they get to
see that and it builds on itself. And again that
doesn't mean that there's not direct instruction right where teachers
(21:50):
aren't saying, Okay, this is exactly how we're going to
solve this algorithm. That's exactly how we're going to do this,
but then you turn in and say, Okay, in engineering,
this is why we need to know this, because in
engineering is applied math and that's what it looks like.
And now we're going to go and do this problem.
I mean, it's bringing relevancy to an authenticity to learning
and kids get that like they love it. Right, you
have kids wanting to learn more, wanting to go deeper
(22:13):
into topics.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Back to that, we're still on that first year. You
open the door, two hundred and fifty kids. By the
end of that first year, you had four hundred and
eighty three families on a wait list, and we closed
the reading gap for our Hispanic metals by midyear.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
What was the gap?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
So they were underperforming their white counterparts by about sixty percent?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
How much sixty.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
And in half a year you closed it. Yeah, completely closed.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yep, they were on level.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
That is.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I don't understand why every district in the United States
is not flocking to where for Colorado to sit on
your doorstep and say show the.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, I mean, we do get a lot of visitors
to see these schools in action, because I don't I
don't think people believe it can happen or they don't
believe it can happen in a public.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
School with all the constraints.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
So we get hundreds and hundreds of people to come
see it, and that's why we have so many schools,
and that's why the nonprofit started and all these things.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
Well, that's good because that in the case that there's
people still that do care and whether make it right.
They just need to learn how. Yes, we need to
reinvent the way we think about that.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
And I think, yeah, an education week, we're so fast
to do this pendulum swing from one extreme to the other,
and that's not what this is.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
This is just solid teaching and learning.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
I would have killed to have seen a bunch of
five and six year olds interview and a bunch of
people in tiz presenting a business plan. That is absolutely
there needs to be a movie with that scene in it.
So I've read that you're up to six student run
fully registered LLCs, the youngest of which is a second grader,
(24:09):
and then you have like fifteen or sixteen patents.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
I mean, is that really right?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
So in one in this system, which is a K
K two, K three, it's and then in twelfth grade
we actually that's doubled since those stats, so we have
twice as many. So we have about twelve to fifteen
patents right now registered with the State of Colorado. And
then yeah, LLCs formed a lot. It was a really
cool thing in Clorado. We started a fund where there's
(24:35):
just a little bit of seed money at Young Americans Bank,
which is a bank for kids.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
There's a bank for kids, right it's a bank.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
For kids in Colorado, but it's in Cherry Creek, which
is the most one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Colorado,
and so a lot of families who want to teach
their kids financial literacy set up acounts there or things
like that. But the kids I'm working with didn't even
know about it nor had access to it. So we
set up a fund there and they can come and
pitch their ideas for a business. And you can be undocumented,
(25:01):
you can be homeless, you can be in foster care.
You don't need an adult to sign off, and you
can get a loan to start your own business with
a two percent interest rate and if you don't pay
it back, nothing bad happens to you. You just get
to learn and go through a course about failure.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
And people have used that thing to fund businesses that
are over running.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yes, and as they pay their.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
Loans, give me an example of a business.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Because they pay it back, it just replenishes the fund.
So they've I mean, we've had everything started from small
lemonade stands that have grown to be huge enterprises. To
the boys that I was talking about with this app.
They went there to get a loan to have software,
so they get sure stuff they needed to build their app. Big, small,
it doesn't matter, and they have to pitch to a
(25:45):
group of adults that get to approve or not approve
their loan. All the loans are generally approved, but still
they have.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
To go through the process of the learning process of
what that is.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I commit to getting them there. The schools commit to
getting them down there because it's a ways from the schools,
and again transportation is hard for a lot of the families.
So that's our commitment is we'll get you there. You
put your idea, let's go from there.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
All right. That's crazy.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
When you took the STEM problem based learning model to
a struggling high school in your district, they went from
like a seventy percent graduation right to over a ninety percent.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Graduation sixteen nine percent, yeah too, over ninety ninety two.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
When what was that? When did you do that?
Speaker 1 (26:24):
So we did that in two thousand and like twenty ten,
twenty eleven school year.
Speaker 4 (26:31):
It's just unbelievable, not not unbelievable, wrong word. It's it's
not incredule's that's also I believe you.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
It's just it's shocking. That's the word.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
And it almost it seems so obvious.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, I mean when I walked in, because that was
like sort of the next step was we had s
somewhere for eighth graders to go where they suddenly weren't
thrown into a high school. They didn't match the type
of learning they had, so this sort of floundering high school,
the district said take that over, have it be a
Stem high school and see what will happen. And when
I walked into announce a staff, you know, there was
a couple of hundred teachers all dressed in their union colors, sitting,
(27:13):
you know, cross armed, and I said, guess what you
get to become the next big Stem high school? And
basically they've you know, flipped me off, booed me, one
stood up and said I'm going to do this just
to spite you and show you how stupid of an
idea this is. We're not we don't want to do this.
We're not going to do it.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
How did you lose?
Speaker 1 (27:34):
So this is the crazy part of the story. None
of them left and some a lot of them should have.
But they all stayed. They stayed for a year and
we just started working again. It's required no materials. This
was literally just professional learning saying we're going to seems to.
Speaker 4 (27:49):
Be a little lack of commitment and their anger and
angst if none left there.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
They're very much again, I don't want to change, I'm
dug in And here here's the other thing, right, And
you probably know this when you work with at risk
schools and hard to serve regions and populations. There's no
one on the outside screaming about this. So you can
be a really terrible teacher and no one cares. No
(28:15):
one's going to say to you, this is not okay
for kids. Parents just want their kids to go to
school because they've got so much on their plate. They're
worried about so much in their life that school is
where their kids go. But if you were in a
white or affluent or you know, other type of school
and you did any of this stuff that I saw
going on, Oh my gosh, parents would be up in arms.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
It would never happen. It would never fly.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
What I started saying is, if you don't get on
this bus with me and figure this out, I'm going
to start shining a big bright light on what you're
not doing for kids.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
End of story.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
We're going to lay it all out there, so you
either figure it out and start doing right by your kids,
or everyone's going to know that you can't do this.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
And we just started three categories. Okay, a small handful
that actually cared and were like, hell, yeah, I'm on
your side.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Let's go girl. Thousand small, i'd say fifteen percent less.
Speaker 4 (29:12):
Then there's the greatest percentage that really hate your guys
because now they have to work and they're going to
be exposed for being horrific of what they do. And
then there's another small percentage that actually really love your
idea but are too afraid to speak up against the whole.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
You named it like you nailed it. Yep, that's exactly
what happens.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
That's a weird dynamic advantage for you.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
The other thing that's happening in the school at the
same time.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
I had to have been wondering where the knives were.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Every day, was yeah, no, I'm serious, No, I mean, yeah,
you talk about having some thick skin for sure. The
other interesting thing that was happening at the same time
was they also had you know, they get to see
how much they love their school and feel connected to
their community. Teachers do they get to kind of rate
their school, and there's a climate culture survey and they
had the lowest rating.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
What a surprise.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, And so besides, you know, one of the metrics
besides changing this graduation rate for kids and flipping the
script on that, the other thing that happened was by
the end of you know, after a year year and
a half, they had one of the highest climate culture surveys.
What the teachers wanted to come to work. They felt
strongly about what they were doing. They had even the
ones they hated.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Me, did you turn them most of them?
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I think we turned most of them. And then you know,
the principal did a good job of, you know, pushing
out those who really truly didn't didn't fit and shouldn't
be there.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Well, they probably shouldn't be in any school.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
No, they should not.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
I mean, it's a it's a flow exactly, it's a
it's a career. You know, it's maybe not their career
for you conversation, but yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:50):
So I mean, it's another career for you conversation that's funny,
but yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
I mean.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
And so that was very compelled to people because, you know,
the first school was the sort of lesson and we
get to start something new, we get to have people choicing,
we get to kind of figure this out, and this
one was taking a big mess, big hairy mess, and
saying no, no, no, no problem, big problem, and saying no, no, no,
We're going to show you what's possible with the resources
(31:19):
and the people that you have and the families that
you have.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
So then you said, I think and correct me if
i'm chronological matter or but I think that's when you said,
we have a bona fide thing here that works, and
we've modeled it now from kindergarten through high school, and
(31:43):
we've modeled it from a startup lookike jail with no
budget to the crappiest school in the district with the
worst scores. It's worked from five year olds to eighteen
year olds and all kinds of socioeconomic situations, title schools, everything.
There's more than just maybe something here. This is a thing,
(32:05):
a thing. And that's when you started bund Spark's that right?
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah? So I was actually, wah.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
What was the genesis? Why not just keep doing this
with more schools? What was your thinking behind it? When
I when I understood, when I read your whole story,
I was like, well, why not just keep doing more
of this? What is mind spark and why? What was
the you know what fueled you?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
That So the little bit of space in between the
high school was there was also another K in the
district that was actually being closed down. It was a
failing middle school had been failing for years.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
And so the superintendent said, I think we should make
it as K Stems School and be sister schools with
the one you started in this high school? Do you
want to go be the principal? And I that was
not something I'd ever wanted to do in my life.
And I told him he really need to take the
weekend and.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Think about that. And he told me, you need to
take the weekend and about you to.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Be the principal and you said you need to take
the weekend. They might have might have considered that a
bit condescending.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Maybe, and he said no, you need to take it,
and so I ended up saying yes.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
And so part of this sort of odyssey to get
to bind.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Spark, that's sassy, This is odyssey to get to minind Spark.
Part of it is that I spent I couldn't walk
away thinking there's something here without having played a part
in all these different roles, and one of those was
leading this effort from within. Right, I had done a
lot of work with principles, I'd done a lot of
work with teachers. I had been a teacher. Felt like, yeah,
and here's the thing I walked in. You know it's
(33:43):
going to be shut down. There was an eighth grader
who raped a first grader on campus. An eighth grader
had raped a first grader on campus, and so it
was a decimated parents were leaving. It made the papers.
The only reason it didn't get national attentions because they
found Jessica Ridgey's body the same week they found what
Jessica Ridgeway's body. Yeah, the same niche that this happened.
(34:04):
So it didn't get national tations.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
How do you emotionally deal with that?
Speaker 1 (34:09):
I mean, there was no safety measures in place. It's
a K eight school, so you have big kids and
little kids. So the K eight models in jeopardy of
being decimated. Our STEM model that we worked so hard
for is in jeopardy of being decimated because this really
poor leadership that was there and this mess. You have
all these teachers who signed up for this and are
super excited to do something cool in a place that
really needs them, they want to leave. I mean it
(34:30):
just I walked into this message.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
Absolute dumpster fire.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
And that concludes Part one of our conversation with Kelly Low,
and you do not want to miss part two that's
now available to listen to. Together, guys, we can change
this country, but it starts with you.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
I'll see in Port two
Host
Bill Courtney
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