Education is evolving, shifting from traditional classrooms to personalized learning environments through micro-schools, as seen in Kelly Smith's journey with Prenda. This conversation highlights the importance of autonomy, connection, and engagement in the learning process while addressing common concerns about micro-schools.
• Discussion on the shift from traditional to modern learning models
• Kelly Smith's inspiration and vision behind Prenda
• Benefits of micro-schools and personalized education
• Impact of COVID-19 on interest in alternative education methods
• Importance of connection and engagement in student learning
• Strategies for integrating technology in education
• Real stories showcasing the transformation of students' learning experiences
• Future visions for micro-schools and the education landscape
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
There was a time where information was a scarce
resource and so you neededsomebody who knew the
information so they could standup and deliver the information
to the kids, so that they wouldlearn the information right.
That's no longer the world welive in.
That's been outdated by justthe change in information
availability and the informationin age.
(00:21):
So now it's much more about howdo you unlock a human for
learning, and our system's justit's not set up with that in age
.
So now it's much more about howdo you unlock a human for
learning, and our system's justit's not set up with that in
mind.
It was designed arounddifferent goals and so you know
adapting and doing thingsdifferently.
Now you do see it like thereare classroom teachers who have
figured these things out.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hey everyone, thanks for listening Today.
I'm excited to welcome KellySmith to the show.
Kelly is the founder and CEO ofPrenda, a company that's
redefining education throughmicro-schools.
Micro-schools are small,personalized learning
communities that aim to empowerboth students and facilitators.
Kelly launched Prenda in 2016after knowing the growing
interest in coding programs thathe was running at a local
(01:02):
library.
Since then, prenda has raisedits Series B with a total of
nearly $46 million in funding,and has grown into a platform
that supports passionateindividuals in creating
educational environments thatfocus on curiosity, empowerment
and mastery.
In this episode, we're going totalk about Kelly's unique
approach to education challenges, how micro schools are
disrupting traditional educationmodels and how they're
(01:23):
integrating technology todeliver customized learning
experiences while addressingcommon concerns like
socialization and screen time.
We're going to talk aboutKelly's inspiration for starting
Prenda, his vision for thefuture of education and how
micro-schools are shaping thebroader landscape.
So with that, I hope you enjoy.
Welcome to Seed to Exit, thepodcast where we uncover the
(01:44):
stories, strategies and insightsthat power the startup
ecosystem.
I'm your host, rhys Keck,founder of MindHire, a talent
acquisition firm specializing inhelping startups build
exceptional teams.
Each week, I sit down withfounders, investors and industry
leaders to explore the journeysbehind iconic companies and
game-changing ideas.
Whether you're building,investing or just curious about
(02:06):
what it takes to succeed in thestartup world, I want this
podcast to be your go-toresource for actionable insights
and inspiring conversations.
Now, if you enjoy the show,please don't forget to subscribe
, leave a review or share itwith your network.
Your support means the worldand really helps bring more
incredible conversations to life.
Kelly, thanks for coming on,excited to have you.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Welcome, rhys, good to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
All right.
Well, I'm excited for this one.
Obviously, I love talking toCEOs of venture-backed companies
, but this one is near and dearto my heart because of what you
guys do and my own personalbackground of being homeschooled
, which is, of course, aslightly different model than
what you're doing over at Prenda, but obviously I have a lot of
relatability to it.
So I'm excited to dig into thiswith you.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Sure, this is going to be fun.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
It is All right so tell me about Prenda.
I've, of course, looked at thewebsite and have done my own
research.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
But for the listeners who haven't had the chance,
take it away.
Prenda helps people open andrun great micro schools.
Micro school, if you haven'theard of this yet, is a small
group.
It's micro.
It's five, ten kids meeting inperson.
Typically it's in an informalspace like a home or a community
center or church.
So a small group of people, oneadult who really knows those
kids, cares about them and helpsthem become what we call
(03:21):
empowered learners, helps themreally take ownership of
learning and get into it in away that maybe wouldn't happen
in a traditional classroom.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
How did you come up with the idea?
How did you launch?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So I have kids of my own four of them and you know,
as every parent does, we get outthese conversations.
You know what do you do, what'sthe right choice for your kids
and how can we support them.
I had seen my kids graduallyget to a place where they were
really doing fine in school asfar as all the metrics go.
But engagement was dying outgradually.
I mean really saw the light goout in their eyes.
(03:55):
They weren't excited to bethere, they weren't curious like
they were when they startedlife.
You know they wanted to learneverything and understand
everything, and traditionalschool for them was kind of
gradually beating it out of them, so to speak.
And I think that happens for alot of kids and for a lot of
different reasons.
Meanwhile I had beenvolunteering at the public
library teaching kids computerprogramming, and as I watched
(04:17):
these kids in an after schoolenvironment really catch fire
and just be excited aboutlearning and capable of doing
all kinds of cool things, Ithought what's the disconnect?
Why do these same kids do sowell in this environment and not
very well in that traditionalclassroom environment?
And that's when I started toask some of those bigger, more
(04:38):
dangerous questions what if wedid the structure differently.
What I found is interesting.
The ideas for changingeducation have actually existed
for a really long time, andyou'll find great educators
doing really everything we'redoing in our micro schools.
Many of the educators that wemeet today say you know, I wish
I was allowed to do this as apublic school educator.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So it's just really giving permission to innovation
and doing education in adifferent way, and how old were
your kids when you realized thatthey were starting to lose
interest in more traditionalschooling?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, it's an interesting question.
A lot of the research shows Ididn't have this research at the
time, but it shows fifth gradeis kind of one of those spots
where it starts to die out, andmy son was a fifth grader when I
pulled him out to do our microschool.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Okay, so you came up with the idea, but then how did
we get from maybe we can dothings differently to actually
launching Prenda and then growinto where it's at today?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Well, it put me in a funny spot right when I thought,
okay, we could do thisdifferently.
I ran a micro school in myhouse.
I was the learning guide, sothat the primary educator for
these kids with no expertise,teaching degree, any sort of
background that anybody should,you know, acknowledge as
qualifying me to do this.
So it's like if I can do thisand really did put together a
(05:54):
learning model that had kidsworking at their own pace
through online curriculum, butdoing a lot of creative projects
and small groups and thenmeeting together once a day to
do things in a Socratic way,hands-on science experiments,
things like that.
My role was different than ateacher.
I wasn't writing lesson plansand grading papers.
I was definitely facilitating,coaching, mentoring, supporting
(06:15):
these kids, and it worked.
And so I got to see these kidsgo from disengaged to engaged
you know, hate school to loveschool and seeing that change
happen for them.
Their parents noticed it tooand I recognized like, yes, you
know it happened to be me, but Iactually believe there's people
, lots of people out there thatwould do a much better job than
(06:36):
what I did as a facilitator fora micro school, and that was
kind of the magic moment wherewe started offering this up and
allowing other people to do itpersonal friends at first and
then that expanded and grew andwe've since helped over a
thousand people start microschools.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
How did you convince those original few people to
take the leap into becoming the,not only enrolling their own
kids, but also becoming theguides, as you call them?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, well, you study startups.
I mean, early adopters don'tactually need a ton of
convincing.
These are people who are veryaware of the problems.
In some cases that came from aparent perspective.
Right, you've seen your ownchild struggle.
Right, if your child is I'mthinking of some of these early
folks if their child is advancedacademically and they're just
bored out of their mind, everyday is just a chore.
(07:23):
It's like forcing that kid to gosit in a class that you know is
not engaging his or her brainand they don't want to go.
You feel that as a parent,right, and you're saying what
can I do for this kid?
Differently, a lot of the folksthat we worked with in the
beginning were really on theverge of homeschool.
They're thinking about takingit to that next level and saying
(07:45):
, all right, could I beresponsible for the entirety of
my child's education?
And that feels like a prettybig lift.
A lot of people have concernswhat if I do it wrong?
I want my kid to be aroundother kids.
It's a lot of work.
Am I going to be able to have alife or sanity in
homeschoolinging?
Right, and so if homeschoolingis out there as this is possible
(08:07):
solution, I think a lot ofpeople say, well, if I could get
the benefits of that but stillhave it, have some normalcy,
some structure, some you knowstandards, aligned curriculum, a
group of kids that's meetingtogether, an adult in the room
that's trained and paid and youknow, understands what to do.
That's a nice compromise, right.
(08:27):
You get the good parts abouthomeschool and the good parts
about traditional school.
You're still able to doeducation in a way that's very
student-led, that opens up kids'minds and really captures their
imagination, but you don't haveto, you know, do it all alone
with your own kids.
So that's that, that trade-off,and we found those people.
In fact, I would say they foundus.
(08:49):
We grew very quickly beforecovid and then, of course, covid
came along and shut down allthe schools and by that point,
uh, it was.
The only option really was totry to get a micro school going.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So a lot of people did it in 2020, 2021 right, yeah
, what was covid like for you inthat couple years?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
insanity.
I can imagine, yeah, you getthese feelings like people are
just beating down your door like, please, let us start a micro
school.
The organization wasn'tequipped, wasn't set up, we
didn't have the you know, oursoftware wasn't built to the
maturity level that it is today,we didn't have things sorted um
, but we wanted to help andaccommodate.
So we did a lot of work to justtry to be there for folks,
(09:28):
probably in retrospect, likesaid yes too much, like we could
have said no more often.
Of course, a lot of those folkswhen school reopened they went
back to traditional school andso it left us in an awkward spot
as an organization too.
We had to adapt to that.
Us in an awkward spot as anorganization too, we had to
adapt to that.
But putting that all together,I mean it definitely changed the
(09:49):
way I would say changed foreverthe way parents think about
their kids' education, and itmade all of us recognize like,
hey, you know, we need to wakeup on this and be involved and
really be an agent and a chooserin how education works, as
opposed to just passively, youknow, shipping your kid off and
hoping that everything turns outokay.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Are you thinking about yourself more as an
alternative to homeschooling ormore as an alternative to public
school?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
These days the number's slightly more towards
public school.
I mean, people are coming to usfrom a more traditional whether
that's a district school, acharter school, a private school
.
You know every kid's differentright and so the right solution,
you know, is going to depend onthe kid.
What we see is, you know,probably something like 60, 70%
(10:38):
of the kids that come in todayto Prenda are coming from
something more traditional.
And then there's still a goodcontingent 30, 30, 40% that are
homeschool.
We get a lot of we callhomeschool-ish families, right,
People who have maybe done itfor one year and then went back,
have thought about doing it buthaven't yet pulled the trigger.
They're doing all the research,they're thinking about all the
(10:58):
things and for one reason oranother, it's not their core
identity or their way of life.
Like you, you definitely meetthe all-in homeschoolers who are
just like this is what we'redoing k through 12, like you're
gonna be homeschooled, andoftentimes that's motivated by
something really deep.
And and sometimes those peopledon't even like micro schools.
(11:19):
Right, they say we've got thiscovered, thank you very much.
But there are a lot of otherpeople that are like I see the
benefits of that, but I don'tknow if I want to go all in on
it.
And for those people, microschools are a great solution.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Why do kids to go back briefly to the one we
talked about you know the kindof delight going out in your
little guy's eyes when he was infifth grade.
Why does that happen, in youropinion, in public schools?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Well, you could ask psychologists.
There's this thing calledself-determination theory.
It's the same three kinds ofthings that Dan Pink has written
about.
There's a book called Driveabout what motivates humans.
There's basically three thingsyou need, and one of them is
connection with other people.
Specifically for a child, it'sconnection with an adult who
cares about you and sees you andknows you.
(12:03):
The structures that we have inplace today in public education,
they're definitely not designedaround connection.
In some ways they thwart it orundermine the ability to
actually connect.
I mean, imagine a junior highteacher with literally 120 kids
that they're trying to know byname and to know their names at
all is one thing, and then toknow anything about them or to
feel any sort of genuineconnection, it's mathematically
(12:26):
impossible, right and so to get10 kids and an adult that really
cares about them.
We really try to solve forconnection in these micro
schools.
So make an explicit focus onthis, both in who the guide is,
in why the parents choose theguide, and then also how the
guide operates.
Connection is just one piece ofit, another one's mastery.
So people, humans of all ages,want to win right.
(12:49):
We want to take on a challenge,learn it, get good at it, feel
competent in it.
Some of the researchers willcall this competency or
competence, and that's importantto people, right, and I think
there's this sense in schoolswhere we've got this kind of
cheap counterfeit to that gradesand test scores and some of
these structures.
But I think if you're anunaware, I'd maybe call it a
(13:14):
cynical kid, like I was.
You see through it.
It's like I know how to get anA, I know how to get the test
score.
It's not really competence forme, it's not really mastery.
I not learning, in fact, mywhole goal, unfortunately, I've
seen this over and over againkids that are, you know, taking
a test on the red badge ofcourage and the whole game is to
(13:34):
read the you know summary notesonline, as you know, as quick
as possible, get the informationinto their head and keep it
just long enough to do well onthe quiz and then forget it all
like it never happened and it'slike it's not learning.
All of us know that that's notlearning right, so, um, so
that's another reason.
I mean it's disengaging to feellike you're playing some sort
(13:55):
of sham game.
Uh, and then the last one ismaybe the most important one.
It's hard to choose betweenthese.
They're all three veryimportant, but it's it's about
autonomy, choices for yourself.
I mean, there were so many timesin my experience through school
where you know it would havebeen very easy to just say,
write about something that'sinteresting to you, and instead
(14:16):
it's no, here's the assignmentyou have to write about.
You know what I want you towrite about?
And it becomes this formula inthis game of like just meeting
the rubric and kind of playingby the compliance, just jumping
through compliance hoops.
Kids, I mean, they're humans,they just they are.
So to treat a kid like a humanand to honor agency, to honor
(14:39):
autonomy, to give themopportunities for mastery and to
do it in an environment that'sconnected, I mean those are the
kinds of things that are theproblems, but they also,
thankfully, stand out assolutions and it's allowed us to
have just great success, greatexperiences doing micro schools.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's not really any secret that
the public school system,although there certainly are
exceptions, isn't generally agreat one.
What's your opinion on just whyit is the way it is?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I don't think it's anybody's fault.
I think so much of this youknow was well-meaning and it
came about in the you know youreally trace some of this back
to Horace Mann visiting Prussiain 1843.
I know it goes back a while.
There was a time whereinformation was a scarce
resource and so you neededsomebody who knew the
information so they could standup and deliver the information
(15:31):
to the kids so that they wouldlearn the information right.
That's no longer the world welive in.
That's been outdated by justthe change in information
availability and the informationage.
So now it's much more about howdo you unlock a human for
learning and our systems justit's not set up with that in
mind.
It was designed arounddifferent goals and so you know
(15:53):
adapting and doing thingsdifferently.
Now you do see it like thereare classroom teachers who have
figured these things out.
I remember doing a Socraticdiscussion in seventh grade.
I was in a honors socialstudies class or something and
my teacher went to some sort ofconvention and we did a Socratic
discussion.
It really like stood out to meas one of the great educational
(16:15):
moments of my life.
Part of why it did was wasliterally the only one that I
can remember doing right thewhole time I was in school.
So it's like we had that onebeautiful day.
So you do see people that aretrying inside of the system.
But often you know you talk toteachers, they're busy, they've
got a whole list of things thatthey have to deliver, the
(16:36):
standards they need to push,push onto kids and it kind of
gets in the way of, you know,engaging with those ideas of
connection and autonomy andmastery.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
OK, so we've.
We've built a system off of ahierarchy or paradigm that's
really no longer you know asrelevant in today's society.
So if you were to wave a magicwand and fix things whether that
be making adjustments to thecurrent system or tearing it all
down and building something newin its place yeah, that be what
(17:07):
everybody be doing.
Micro schools Is theresomething you'd change within
the way things are currentlydone?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, I think what I would do is make a micro school
available to everyone.
I mean, basically what we see,even among micro schools, there
are different specialties,different focuses, different
approaches.
Some of the guides are soft andnurturing.
Some of the guides are a littlecold, prickly, but like push
you to be your best.
You know there's there'sdifferent ways to do all these
(17:35):
things, and more options to meetthe needs of a very diverse
group of kids is really whatit's all about.
And, frankly, you know I have alot of friends that still work
really hard to make publicschool districts work well and
to improve them.
I feel proud of the workthey're doing.
I feel like we're all in ittogether.
So it's not like I would blowanything up.
(17:57):
I think what I would do is justsay, hey, here are options, and
I think more options isgenerally better, because kids
are different and families havedifferent priorities, and I do
talk to parents that are likeyou know what?
Yeah, I hear you aboutengagement and autonomy, but
like I want my kid to be like inthe normal thing that everybody
else is doing and I don't wantto do a micro school right now.
(18:20):
To me that's adoption curve andit's perspectives and you have
to honor that as well.
So yeah, with agency is such animportant piece.
I would never force everyone todo micro schools, but I think
the existence of micro schoolsand as people hear about them
and find you know, find thebenefits of it, what you're
seeing is it kind of pushes thewhole system to think harder
(18:41):
about just innovating andproviding more options for kids.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So what does a day in the life actually look like for
apprentice student?
We understand the format smallgroup guided by an adult but
what do they do all day?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So apprentice micro school.
I'll go quickly through this,cause I know we're short on time
, but there's four.
There are four learning modesin the day.
So the first one's calledconnect picture, a 20 minute
kind of mini activity that'sfocused explicitly on the, the
mindsets and the kind of purposedriven thinking.
It's really about who you'rebecoming as a learner.
That's a short, you know, groupactivity.
(19:18):
We typically have a couple hoursof conquer mode.
Conquer is where kids set theirown goals.
They are working on math andEnglish and you know anything
else you want to work on.
You'll see kids with you knowart goals or coding goals or
writing.
You know different pieces oftheir academic mastery and
they're really just tackling itone lesson at a time, taking
(19:40):
little assessments, learningfrom their results, consuming
tutorials and things like that.
That piece of the day isfollowed by collaborate mode,
and collaborate is all about getthe whole group together,
engage in a Socratic way.
Um, it's really trying to driveinquiry is what the you know
experts will call this.
So just getting kids curious,getting them thinking um, and
(20:04):
you picture, you know,researching together um, aspects
of an ancient society.
Or, you know, producing a playor some other sort of work of
literature, doing scienceexperiments together.
So that's the collaborate mode.
And then create mode istypically two or three kids
working together on a project,so you'll have a room of a lot
(20:27):
of engagement.
Kids are working on differentpieces of different projects, or
maybe the same project, butthey're doing it in different
ways, so a lot of choices inthere as well, and the idea is
just to have kids as engaged aswe possibly can so that they're,
you know, actively making thechoice and becoming learners.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
The different learning modalities sound great.
How many subjects do they studyon a given day?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's the same subjects, we just don't organize
the day so there'll be.
You know, typically you'll havea math goal, for example, but
then there may be math as partof your collaborative activity
and if you're, you know, createproject later in the day is
about, you know, one of them isis making a little water bottle
business, right?
There's like spreadsheet maththat kids are doing, even young
(21:12):
kids.
Where they're um, they'recalculating profit margins and
figuring out how many will theyhave to sell to break even on
their inventory costs.
And so you know, you'll seemath in all of the modalities
reading, writing, obviouslyreally important to so so many
facets of learning.
So it's not really like, okay,everybody, now we're reading.
(21:33):
It's like we're doing thisactivity and using literacy and
numeracy as part of that is kindof the flow.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
So a lot of this sounds service-based.
Where does the technology comeinto it?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, so the business really exists to help people
start their own micro schools.
I would say there's twoproblems that somebody has if
they're trying to start a microschool.
One of them is business related.
It's just like how do youactually start your own little
school and we help people marketthemselves, put up a website
for them.
That's a you know, a wholesoftware product that we provide
(22:06):
.
We also help them with thepayments system.
So we're, you know, invoicingparents on their behalf,
collecting the funding, oftenfrom state entities.
There's kind of a regulatorycomponent to this.
When there's funding availablefor school choice, there's also
(22:26):
I'm trying to think of the otherkind of business services.
There's a huge contingentaround learning and development,
which is typically done more ina service-based way.
Those other pieces are, youknow, hard software.
The other big problem thatpeople have is running the
learning model.
So, you know, we've put thislearning model together, but
(22:46):
there's also a web app that thekids log into and the guide has
an you know admin view that thekids log into and the guide has
an uh, you know admin view andthey, uh really are able to
operate a fully, you know, acomplete curriculum, a complete
learning model that uh, willhelp kids.
You know, hit all the the mainpoints and we've built in um,
you know, kind of measurementand communication back to
(23:08):
parents as part of that so theparents can see like, okay, I
know my kid loves school, butwhat are they doing all day?
Right now it's important to beable to show like here's your
goal in english, here's whereyou're at today, um, and we're
tracking progress, you know,over time.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So those types of things are all built into our,
you know, software platform andthen are the are the guides
creating their own curriculum oris there a standard bre
curriculum?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
We provide a curriculum out of the box.
Now what you find is, becausekids are different and guides
are different, everybody kind ofwants to tailor it and tinker
with it, so we we give them alot of flexibility.
It's like here's, here'ssomething that will work.
Uh, you start there and thenyou adapt it over time.
I was visiting a guide thisweek.
That's in her fifth year.
You know she does things, sheuses print of pieces and really
(23:57):
holds the same structure thatwe've provided, but she's filled
in a lot of the pieces with.
You know other things.
Either she's created themherself or she's pulled from
other places.
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Now you don't require the guides to have teaching
credentials, which I can see theargument for, but then also, at
the same time, if they'reresponsible for the education of
the kids, I could see a concernaround why they don't have one.
So what was the reasoningbehind that decision and how do
you handle it when a kid youknow let's says, hey, I'm having
a trouble with this eighthgrade math problem and one would
(24:29):
hope the guide would help them,but maybe they can't.
What do we do then?
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah.
So I think, reframe it at thevery beginning as, um, this
isn't a traditional teacher-ledclassroom.
So I think the picture most ofus have in mind I mean maybe not
you because you've homeschooled, but most people picture
sitting passively while schoolis sort of done to them, right,
and the teacher's job is toquote do school to you like, I
(24:53):
will school you.
So I will stand up here andtell you stuff and then I will
give you homework andassignments to see if you
understand it, and then test youultimately and put a grade in a
grade book.
That whole model is flipped onits head here.
So it's really about providingthe kids with a path forward.
I can give an example of this.
So one thing we have is calledthe well, there's, there's goal
(25:17):
setting, right?
So in conquer mode, you'll havea goal for math and a goal for
language at least, and you oftenwill choose other goals that
you'll add to that.
When you set a goal, youbasically start the year with an
assessment and we say here'swhere you're at.
This is information for yourown good.
It's not for us to like,measure you or brag about our
(25:38):
school or anything.
It's just like here's thecurrent reality of where you are
today on language and on math,and then from that data point we
have what's called the GPSmeeting the guide, parent,
student and these three sittogether.
We provide training for how todo this as well as a software
interface that guides theconversation.
So this meeting is reallyimportant because it's both a
(25:59):
kind of hard look at where thekid currently is and an
ambitious kind of forward lookat where they could be, or where
they want to be by the end.
We give the kid a chance to,you know, identify a long-term
goal, like by the end of theschool year.
Yeah, I'm currently, you know,say I'm a fourth grader and I'm
currently testing at likehalfway through third grade math
(26:19):
.
Like, I understand some ofthird grade but not all, so I'm
not completely up to grade level.
What we're going to say iswe're definitely going to go
back and make sure you're fullon third grade and you've got
time through this year toprogress so you could set a goal
to be finished with fourthgrade math by the end of the
year.
That would be what we'd calllike a one point five grade
(26:40):
level goal.
Right, but for the whole schoolyear.
Well, what we do from there is.
Our software will break that up.
Given the, you know theacademic calendar of the year.
We'll break that up for you,and it'll say OK, every day that
you're in school, you need todo this many lessons, master
this much content, and thentrack it.
We have integrations built tothese various third-party ed
(27:03):
tech tools that we're workingwith, so we're tracking their
progress as they go through theyear.
So it is a very deeply humanexperience.
Obviously, this is about a kidfeeling empowered and able to
kind of set a goal and tackle it.
This is about a kid feelingempowered and able to kind of
set a goal and tackle it.
What we do, though, is reallytry to provide all the tools so
(27:26):
that that's it's a very scalableexperience.
It doesn't require, you know,some sort of special expertise
on the kids part, or the parentspart, or the guides part.
We can put this all together, sowe see this happening in micro
schools all over the country.
In fact, the average goalthat's set is 1.8 grade levels
in a year, so you see kidsreally shooting for the stars,
in the sense that you know ifyou were sitting in a regular
(27:47):
fourth grade class, the goalimplied, the goal given to you
would be 1.0.
You're going to finish fourthgrade math regardless of where
you started and regardless ofhow fast you're understanding it
and we do.
We see these kids set big goals.
They don't achieve them all theway.
The average final outcome isabout 1.3 to 1.5.
But that's mastery data andit's more than what kids would
(28:11):
have got in a traditionalclassroom, so we feel excited
about it.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
That's great, yeah, because in traditional
classrooms I mean you have theno child left behind which got
implemented in 2001, which atthe time obviously had a very
noble goal.
But I think it backfired in alot of ways in the sense that
you now move at the pace of theslowest student and so kind of
to the detriment to everyoneelse and so essentially under
your model, kids can move attheir own pace.
(28:36):
So you're calling it one tothree, one to five, so currently
you have grades K through eight.
So does that mean that I couldthen theoretically finish eighth
grade at an age when I might bein like sixth or seventh grade?
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, see it all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Okay, and then how do you?
And so then are we having?
Are we having 11 year oldsgoing into high school, or what
happens in that Delta?
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, there is definitely a, an interface, I
guess, at the end of Prenda.
So when, when you reach youfinish Prenda, we don't, we go K
through eight.
Typically kids will eitherchoose you know there's
different paths that you cantake, right, so some of them
will choose a traditional path.
They'll say I want to go to aregular high school kind of
participate for that kid,no-transcript, a trade-off, like
(29:42):
some of the materialacademically is review for him,
I guess, to say the least.
I think there's often timeswhere, um, you know he does find
individual teachers withinthose systems that you know kind
of encourage him to like thinkoutside the box and he'll engage
in sort of differentconversations, just
hypotheticals.
This is a kid that likes to sitaround and debate philosophy and
(30:04):
things like that.
This is the same kid that wasin that first um, first micro
school.
Now you're in your um.
I mean just one of these people, right, that like knows how to
hang with adults and kind oftake ownership of his own.
But he definitely has classesthat he's, he's playing the game
, right, he's just sort of I'lldo whatever I need to to get an
A and then move on.
So I think, fortunately for himand for all of us.
(30:29):
You can get to this point whereyou're an empowered learner and
you kind of know how to reallytake ownership of your learning,
and then an empowered learnercan function in a variety of
situations.
We do have other kids that youknow have different goals.
So if somebody is really aboutmaybe a single topic, I've met
some kids that get into, likeyou know, tech.
For example, I want to learn inins and outs of full stack
(30:50):
software development, like thosekids might do some sort of
online program or homeschool, sothey have plenty extra time, uh
, to just dive all the way in totheir field.
Um, but academically it's, it'sreally not an issue.
Eighth grade doesn't quotecount, it's not on the high
school transcripts, uh, we havekids that will go test into a
(31:11):
higher math class or somethinglike that, but uh, they're,
you're treated the same asreally if you had homeschooled
or done anything else kind ofcoming into into the traditional
system as a as a high schoolerand is that why you stopped it
in grade eight?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
just because of the issues of the official high
school transcript or what?
What was the?
The?
Speaker 1 (31:32):
yeah, kind of three reasons.
I mean one is just resources.
We wanted to really focus anddo well the piece that we we.
It is a different world thanhigh school.
One of them is regulatory, justthese rules and thinking about
interfacing now with colleges.
It's like a different kind of afull, different game we would
have to build out.
And the third one is I justkind of alluded to this but the
(31:54):
market's different People havedifferent things.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I think we probably will provide high school at some
point but we've just been sofocused on getting K through
eight Right, so that's that's acouple of times throughout this.
(32:16):
So I was homeschooled for a lotof the reasons that you've kind
of shared was skepticism aroundthe quality of public education
and you know it's funny myparents none, neither of them
went to college, and so theywere it's not like they were
educators that knew everythingthat they were doing and came in
, it was primarily my mom whodid it, but it was very much a
(32:40):
self-paced self-taught.
You know, when I was, when I wasyounger, she would help out
with the math problems and whathave you.
But by the time it got to likesixth grade, in any sort of
geometry or algebra, it's likeno, you're on your own, read the
book, figure it out.
Which is what I did.
And then I did.
I did do the first couple ofyears, uh, in high school,
homeschool, went to publicschool in my junior year, but
(33:02):
then that that is when the issuewith the transcripts came up.
As I went to, I had a 4.25 GPAmy junior year, so clearly
something on the homeschoolingside went right.
Uh, but then when I went back todo my, my uh course planning
for my senior year, they told mewell, you know, your first two
years of high school weren'tfrom an accredited institution,
(33:24):
so you can come back for yoursenior year, but you can't walk,
you can't graduate, you can'tdo anything like that.
Um, so I ended up, I finishedup the year, just test it out,
did the not?
Not the GED, but I think theycalled it in California the high
school equivalent degree.
Um, and I was done.
I think they called it inCalifornia the high school
equivalent degree and I was done.
So, yeah, interesting,interesting way of doing things
(33:44):
for sure.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Well, and it's funny, right, Because you think about
what that means, like that test,if that test in fact means you
have the knowledge that societyhas deemed important for a high
school graduate to have.
Yeah, you know my son the sameson you know, kind of a smart
aleck.
He took the ged test just forfun, like two years ago as a, as
(34:06):
a sophomore in high school, andhe aced it like he, oh yeah, he
was like does this mean?
I'm done?
Like what does this?
What does this exactly mean?
And of course he's just messingaround, but he just knows.
You know, it's not really aboutlike getting information
transfer as a learner.
I think everybody sees thatformal structure of An example
(34:27):
of this.
Right, I fix stuff around myhouse sometimes.
I'm not super handy.
I didn't grow up doing that.
I don't have Some people justmagically know what to do and
they have the tools.
So I'm trying to fix a thingaround my house.
I'm like what do I do?
Well, I go to the internet,google it.
I find a youtube video.
I watch the youtube video, Ipause it.
I will like then go to homedepot to get the tools that are
in the youtube video and then Iwill like start trying to like
(34:49):
follow what the guy's doing inthe youtube video.
I mean it the equivalent, likethink if instead I was like okay
, I'm gonna go sign up for aprogram in like electrical or,
um, you know, home repair orsomething, and I'm gonna like
here's the syllabus and there'sthese lectures and there's like
homework assignments, and I'mgonna do like a whole semester
(35:11):
so that I can like fix one thing.
I mean, there there are placeswhere there's value to that.
But I think all of us have thisintuition nowadays.
It's's like it really you learnwhat you need in the moment and
the world's changing so fastand anyway.
So what we want is kids thatare equipped for that and that
are less, much less deterred bythese systems of gatekeepers and
(35:33):
rules and and just limits.
I mean, so much of that isholding kids, you know, into
structures that are notproductive for them.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's.
It's so funny you mentioned thehandy thing, because I'm not
particularly handy either, butI'm working on it and so, yeah,
I mean you, youtube has alwayskind of been a go-to.
But there was a few months agoI had to change a light fixture
and usually anything that likein my past where, like, if it's
electrical, I hire it out like Idon't want to shock myself.
(36:02):
But this time I was like, screwit.
And I took a picture of thelight box and I put it into a
chat gpt and I was just like,here's what I'm doing, walk me
through.
And it fully walked me through,just based on the pictures I
sent it.
Um, so yeah, I mean we're,we're in a completely new
learning paradigm.
It's.
It's fascinating to think whatyou know the kindergartners and
(36:23):
you know Prenda, what they'regoing through and what, what it
will be like you know the nextseveral years, any particular
story from either students orguides that's really resonated
with you as a result of Prenda,that that stands out.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
I mean so many stories, I could tell you them
for a very long time.
The moral of every story isthis was my kid before and it's
often some version of you knowsitting in the car parked
outside the school.
The child's in tears Like,don't make me go in there every
day, you know, and that can be avariety of reasons Right
Boredom, bullying, likediscouragement.
(37:04):
There's, there's so many thingsthat can happen inside of a
system like that, where you havekids that just are deeply
unhappy and and then they switchand they switch.
My favorite story about theafter portion is is the kids
crying again?
Actually?
But they're crying because it'sspring break or it's Saturday
and there's no school.
You know, and you, if youimagine going from crying
(37:27):
because you have to go to schoolto crying because you can't go
to school, I mean that's the 180that we're talking about and
it's it's just so powerful.
I'll share just quickly.
I got brave this year and I putup my one political post on
social media.
You know most of us are likelet's not talk about politics
and in fact I'm so burned out onit.
(37:48):
But there are discussions atthe state level around school
choice policies and so I put a,you know, an explainer and
advocacy like this is schoolchoice.
And I kind of said, look, thisis, this is making a difference
for families.
And somebody that had had puther son in years ago piped into
(38:10):
the thread and it was a reallytouching moment because she was
able to just say, like, looksome, for some people this is
abstract politics.
Like, for me, this is personaland here's why.
And she talked about her sonand just how unhappy and how at
risk he was.
I mean, there were lots ofproblems and by creating a new
environment for him and givinghim opportunity to just see
(38:33):
himself differently as a humanand as a learner, being part of
this micro school group andhaving a learning guide, that's,
you know, fully invested in himand cared about him, and so to
put that together, for him itwas night and day contrast and
things changed and she gave alittle update.
Now here he is in high school,years later and things are just
going so well for him and shereally attributes so much of
(38:55):
this to what happened to him inthat micro school.
That was a turning point in hislife.
I mean, obviously it's her asthe parents and there's so many
factors that goes into that.
But to be even a small part ofthat kind of change for a human
being is humbling for me, andit's it's work that just
energizes me every single day.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I love that.
Well, I would have loved todive a little bit deeper into
the business and growth and allthat, but we'll probably have to
save that maybe for a round two.
But you know, looking forward,how do you see Prenda evolving,
as well as the broader educationlandscape, over the course of
the next few?
Speaker 1 (39:29):
years, help deliver these services and this value to
people like help them starttheir own micro schools and help
them be as successful as as wepossibly can with their micro
schools.
So, like I said, a thousandpeople starting micro schools, I
think 10,000 should start microschools.
I think that should happen inthe next couple of years.
(39:51):
There are, you know, policyquestions around funding, so
that this doesn't isn't limitedonly to people that can afford
thousands of dollars out ofpocket.
Obviously, we want this to beavailable to everyone, so that's
a potential limitation.
But, assuming the funding'sthere, I think lots of people
will be interested in this andwe want to be ready for them.
(40:12):
Our job is to make it aseffective and successful as it
possibly can be, so we're reallyfocused on that.
I've got a great team and we'rereally grateful to just be able
to do this work every singleday.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Well, I'm excited to see how you continue to grow.
So, kelly, thank you so muchfor coming on.
Really had a good time.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
It's a pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Thank you for tuning into this episode of seat to
exit.
I hope you found today'sconversation insightful and
valuable.
If you enjoyed the episode,please take a moment to
subscribe, leave a review andshare it with your network.
Your support means the worldhelps us continue to grow and
bring more incredible guestsonto the show.
Now for more content andupdates, follow me on LinkedIn
(40:51):
or Twitter, or you can check outMindHire, where we help
startups build exceptional teams.
No-transcript.
There was a time where information was a scarce
resource and so you neededsomebody who knew the
information so they could standup and deliver the information
to the kids, so that they wouldlearn the information right.
That's no longer the world welive in.
That's been outdated by justthe change in information
availability and the informationin age.
(00:21):
So now it's much more about howdo you unlock a human for
learning, and our system's justit's not set up with that in age
.
So now it's much more about howdo you unlock a human for
learning, and our system's justit's not set up with that in
mind.
It was designed arounddifferent goals and so you know
adapting and doing thingsdifferently.
Now you do see it like thereare classroom teachers who have
figured these things out.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hey everyone, thanks for listening Today.
I'm excited to welcome KellySmith to the show.
Kelly is the founder and CEO ofPrenda, a company that's
redefining education throughmicro-schools.
Micro-schools are small,personalized learning
communities that aim to empowerboth students and facilitators.
Kelly launched Prenda in 2016after knowing the growing
interest in coding programs thathe was running at a local
(01:02):
library.
Since then, prenda has raisedits Series B with a total of
nearly $46 million in funding,and has grown into a platform
that supports passionateindividuals in creating
educational environments thatfocus on curiosity, empowerment
and mastery.
In this episode, we're going totalk about Kelly's unique
approach to education challenges, how micro schools are
disrupting traditional educationmodels and how they're
(01:23):
integrating technology todeliver customized learning
experiences while addressingcommon concerns like
socialization and screen time.
We're going to talk aboutKelly's inspiration for starting
Prenda, his vision for thefuture of education and how
micro-schools are shaping thebroader landscape.
So with that, I hope you enjoy.
Welcome to Seed to Exit, thepodcast where we uncover the
(01:44):
stories, strategies and insightsthat power the startup
ecosystem.
I'm your host, rhys Keck,founder of MindHire, a talent
acquisition firm specializing inhelping startups build
exceptional teams.
Each week, I sit down withfounders, investors and industry
leaders to explore the journeysbehind iconic companies and
game-changing ideas.
Whether you're building,investing or just curious about
(02:06):
what it takes to succeed in thestartup world, I want this
podcast to be your go-toresource for actionable insights
and inspiring conversations.
Now, if you enjoy the show,please don't forget to subscribe
, leave a review or share itwith your network.
Your support means the worldand really helps bring more
incredible conversations to life.
Kelly, thanks for coming on,excited to have you.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Welcome, rhys, good to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
All right.
Well, I'm excited for this one.
Obviously, I love talking toCEOs of venture-backed companies
, but this one is near and dearto my heart because of what you
guys do and my own personalbackground of being homeschooled
, which is, of course, aslightly different model than
what you're doing over at Prenda, but obviously I have a lot of
relatability to it.
So I'm excited to dig into thiswith you.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Sure, this is going to be fun.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
It is All right so tell me about Prenda.
I've, of course, looked at thewebsite and have done my own
research.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
But for the listeners who haven't had the chance,
take it away.
Prenda helps people open andrun great micro schools.
Micro school, if you haven'theard of this yet, is a small
group.
It's micro.
It's five, ten kids meeting inperson.
Typically it's in an informalspace like a home or a community
center or church.
So a small group of people, oneadult who really knows those
kids, cares about them and helpsthem become what we call
(03:21):
empowered learners, helps themreally take ownership of
learning and get into it in away that maybe wouldn't happen
in a traditional classroom.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
How did you come up with the idea?
How did you launch?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
So I have kids of my own four of them and you know,
as every parent does, we get outthese conversations.
You know what do you do, what'sthe right choice for your kids
and how can we support them.
I had seen my kids graduallyget to a place where they were
really doing fine in school asfar as all the metrics go.
But engagement was dying outgradually.
I mean really saw the light goout in their eyes.
(03:55):
They weren't excited to bethere, they weren't curious like
they were when they startedlife.
You know they wanted to learneverything and understand
everything, and traditionalschool for them was kind of
gradually beating it out of them, so to speak.
And I think that happens for alot of kids and for a lot of
different reasons.
Meanwhile I had beenvolunteering at the public
library teaching kids computerprogramming, and as I watched
(04:17):
these kids in an after schoolenvironment really catch fire
and just be excited aboutlearning and capable of doing
all kinds of cool things, Ithought what's the disconnect?
Why do these same kids do sowell in this environment and not
very well in that traditionalclassroom environment?
And that's when I started toask some of those bigger, more
(04:38):
dangerous questions what if wedid the structure differently.
What I found is interesting.
The ideas for changingeducation have actually existed
for a really long time, andyou'll find great educators
doing really everything we'redoing in our micro schools.
Many of the educators that wemeet today say you know, I wish
I was allowed to do this as apublic school educator.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
So it's just really giving permission to innovation
and doing education in adifferent way, and how old were
your kids when you realized thatthey were starting to lose
interest in more traditionalschooling?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, it's an interesting question.
A lot of the research shows Ididn't have this research at the
time, but it shows fifth gradeis kind of one of those spots
where it starts to die out, andmy son was a fifth grader when I
pulled him out to do our microschool.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Okay, so you came up with the idea, but then how did
we get from maybe we can dothings differently to actually
launching Prenda and then growinto where it's at today?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Well, it put me in a funny spot right when I thought,
okay, we could do thisdifferently.
I ran a micro school in myhouse.
I was the learning guide, sothat the primary educator for
these kids with no expertise,teaching degree, any sort of
background that anybody should,you know, acknowledge as
qualifying me to do this.
So it's like if I can do thisand really did put together a
(05:54):
learning model that had kidsworking at their own pace
through online curriculum, butdoing a lot of creative projects
and small groups and thenmeeting together once a day to
do things in a Socratic way,hands-on science experiments,
things like that.
My role was different than ateacher.
I wasn't writing lesson plansand grading papers.
I was definitely facilitating,coaching, mentoring, supporting
(06:15):
these kids, and it worked.
And so I got to see these kidsgo from disengaged to engaged
you know, hate school to loveschool and seeing that change
happen for them.
Their parents noticed it tooand I recognized like, yes, you
know it happened to be me, but Iactually believe there's people
, lots of people out there thatwould do a much better job than
(06:36):
what I did as a facilitator fora micro school, and that was
kind of the magic moment wherewe started offering this up and
allowing other people to do itpersonal friends at first and
then that expanded and grew andwe've since helped over a
thousand people start microschools.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
How did you convince those original few people to
take the leap into becoming the,not only enrolling their own
kids, but also becoming theguides, as you call them?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Yeah, well, you study startups.
I mean, early adopters don'tactually need a ton of
convincing.
These are people who are veryaware of the problems.
In some cases that came from aparent perspective.
Right, you've seen your ownchild struggle.
Right, if your child is I'mthinking of some of these early
folks if their child is advancedacademically and they're just
bored out of their mind, everyday is just a chore.
(07:23):
It's like forcing that kid to gosit in a class that you know is
not engaging his or her brainand they don't want to go.
You feel that as a parent,right, and you're saying what
can I do for this kid?
Differently, a lot of the folksthat we worked with in the
beginning were really on theverge of homeschool.
They're thinking about takingit to that next level and saying
(07:45):
, all right, could I beresponsible for the entirety of
my child's education?
And that feels like a prettybig lift.
A lot of people have concernswhat if I do it wrong?
I want my kid to be aroundother kids.
It's a lot of work.
Am I going to be able to have alife or sanity in
homeschoolinging?
Right, and so if homeschoolingis out there as this is possible
(08:07):
solution, I think a lot ofpeople say, well, if I could get
the benefits of that but stillhave it, have some normalcy,
some structure, some you knowstandards, aligned curriculum, a
group of kids that's meetingtogether, an adult in the room
that's trained and paid and youknow, understands what to do.
That's a nice compromise, right.
(08:27):
You get the good parts abouthomeschool and the good parts
about traditional school.
You're still able to doeducation in a way that's very
student-led, that opens up kids'minds and really captures their
imagination, but you don't haveto, you know, do it all alone
with your own kids.
So that's that, that trade-off,and we found those people.
In fact, I would say they foundus.
(08:49):
We grew very quickly beforecovid and then, of course, covid
came along and shut down allthe schools and by that point,
uh, it was.
The only option really was totry to get a micro school going.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So a lot of people did it in 2020, 2021 right, yeah
, what was covid like for you inthat couple years?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
insanity.
I can imagine, yeah, you getthese feelings like people are
just beating down your door like, please, let us start a micro
school.
The organization wasn'tequipped, wasn't set up, we
didn't have the you know, oursoftware wasn't built to the
maturity level that it is today,we didn't have things sorted um
, but we wanted to help andaccommodate.
So we did a lot of work to justtry to be there for folks,
(09:28):
probably in retrospect, likesaid yes too much, like we could
have said no more often.
Of course, a lot of those folkswhen school reopened they went
back to traditional school andso it left us in an awkward spot
as an organization too.
We had to adapt to that.
Us in an awkward spot as anorganization too, we had to
adapt to that.
But putting that all together,I mean it definitely changed the
(09:49):
way I would say changed foreverthe way parents think about
their kids' education, and itmade all of us recognize like,
hey, you know, we need to wakeup on this and be involved and
really be an agent and a chooserin how education works, as
opposed to just passively, youknow, shipping your kid off and
hoping that everything turns outokay.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Are you thinking about yourself more as an
alternative to homeschooling ormore as an alternative to public
school?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
These days the number's slightly more towards
public school.
I mean, people are coming to usfrom a more traditional whether
that's a district school, acharter school, a private school
.
You know every kid's differentright and so the right solution,
you know, is going to depend onthe kid.
What we see is, you know,probably something like 60, 70%
(10:38):
of the kids that come in todayto Prenda are coming from
something more traditional.
And then there's still a goodcontingent 30, 30, 40% that are
homeschool.
We get a lot of we callhomeschool-ish families, right,
People who have maybe done itfor one year and then went back,
have thought about doing it buthaven't yet pulled the trigger.
They're doing all the research,they're thinking about all the
(10:58):
things and for one reason oranother, it's not their core
identity or their way of life.
Like you, you definitely meetthe all-in homeschoolers who are
just like this is what we'redoing k through 12, like you're
gonna be homeschooled, andoftentimes that's motivated by
something really deep.
And and sometimes those peopledon't even like micro schools.
(11:19):
Right, they say we've got thiscovered, thank you very much.
But there are a lot of otherpeople that are like I see the
benefits of that, but I don'tknow if I want to go all in on
it.
And for those people, microschools are a great solution.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Why do kids to go back briefly to the one we
talked about you know the kindof delight going out in your
little guy's eyes when he was infifth grade.
Why does that happen, in youropinion, in public schools?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Well, you could ask psychologists.
There's this thing calledself-determination theory.
It's the same three kinds ofthings that Dan Pink has written
about.
There's a book called Driveabout what motivates humans.
There's basically three thingsyou need, and one of them is
connection with other people.
Specifically for a child, it'sconnection with an adult who
cares about you and sees you andknows you.
(12:03):
The structures that we have inplace today in public education,
they're definitely not designedaround connection.
In some ways they thwart it orundermine the ability to
actually connect.
I mean, imagine a junior highteacher with literally 120 kids
that they're trying to know byname and to know their names at
all is one thing, and then toknow anything about them or to
feel any sort of genuineconnection, it's mathematically
(12:26):
impossible, right and so to get10 kids and an adult that really
cares about them.
We really try to solve forconnection in these micro
schools.
So make an explicit focus onthis, both in who the guide is,
in why the parents choose theguide, and then also how the
guide operates.
Connection is just one piece ofit, another one's mastery.
So people, humans of all ages,want to win right.
(12:49):
We want to take on a challenge,learn it, get good at it, feel
competent in it.
Some of the researchers willcall this competency or
competence, and that's importantto people, right, and I think
there's this sense in schoolswhere we've got this kind of
cheap counterfeit to that gradesand test scores and some of
these structures.
But I think if you're anunaware, I'd maybe call it a
(13:14):
cynical kid, like I was.
You see through it.
It's like I know how to get anA, I know how to get the test
score.
It's not really competence forme, it's not really mastery.
I not learning, in fact, mywhole goal, unfortunately, I've
seen this over and over againkids that are, you know, taking
a test on the red badge ofcourage and the whole game is to
(13:34):
read the you know summary notesonline, as you know, as quick
as possible, get the informationinto their head and keep it
just long enough to do well onthe quiz and then forget it all
like it never happened and it'slike it's not learning.
All of us know that that's notlearning right, so, um, so
that's another reason.
I mean it's disengaging to feellike you're playing some sort
(13:55):
of sham game.
Uh, and then the last one ismaybe the most important one.
It's hard to choose betweenthese.
They're all three veryimportant, but it's it's about
autonomy, choices for yourself.
I mean, there were so many timesin my experience through school
where you know it would havebeen very easy to just say,
write about something that'sinteresting to you, and instead
(14:16):
it's no, here's the assignmentyou have to write about.
You know what I want you towrite about?
And it becomes this formula inthis game of like just meeting
the rubric and kind of playingby the compliance, just jumping
through compliance hoops.
Kids, I mean, they're humans,they just they are.
So to treat a kid like a humanand to honor agency, to honor
(14:39):
autonomy, to give themopportunities for mastery and to
do it in an environment that'sconnected, I mean those are the
kinds of things that are theproblems, but they also,
thankfully, stand out assolutions and it's allowed us to
have just great success, greatexperiences doing micro schools.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's not really any secret that
the public school system,although there certainly are
exceptions, isn't generally agreat one.
What's your opinion on just whyit is the way it is?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I don't think it's anybody's fault.
I think so much of this youknow was well-meaning and it
came about in the you know youreally trace some of this back
to Horace Mann visiting Prussiain 1843.
I know it goes back a while.
There was a time whereinformation was a scarce
resource and so you neededsomebody who knew the
information so they could standup and deliver the information
(15:31):
to the kids so that they wouldlearn the information right.
That's no longer the world welive in.
That's been outdated by justthe change in information
availability and the informationage.
So now it's much more about howdo you unlock a human for
learning and our systems justit's not set up with that in
mind.
It was designed arounddifferent goals and so you know
(15:53):
adapting and doing thingsdifferently.
Now you do see it like thereare classroom teachers who have
figured these things out.
I remember doing a Socraticdiscussion in seventh grade.
I was in a honors socialstudies class or something and
my teacher went to some sort ofconvention and we did a Socratic
discussion.
It really like stood out to meas one of the great educational
(16:15):
moments of my life.
Part of why it did was wasliterally the only one that I
can remember doing right thewhole time I was in school.
So it's like we had that onebeautiful day.
So you do see people that aretrying inside of the system.
But often you know you talk toteachers, they're busy, they've
got a whole list of things thatthey have to deliver, the
(16:36):
standards they need to push,push onto kids and it kind of
gets in the way of, you know,engaging with those ideas of
connection and autonomy andmastery.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
OK, so we've.
We've built a system off of ahierarchy or paradigm that's
really no longer you know asrelevant in today's society.
So if you were to wave a magicwand and fix things whether that
be making adjustments to thecurrent system or tearing it all
down and building something newin its place yeah, that be what
(17:07):
everybody be doing.
Micro schools Is theresomething you'd change within
the way things are currentlydone?
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, I think what I would do is make a micro school
available to everyone.
I mean, basically what we see,even among micro schools, there
are different specialties,different focuses, different
approaches.
Some of the guides are soft andnurturing.
Some of the guides are a littlecold, prickly, but like push
you to be your best.
You know there's there'sdifferent ways to do all these
(17:35):
things, and more options to meetthe needs of a very diverse
group of kids is really whatit's all about.
And, frankly, you know I have alot of friends that still work
really hard to make publicschool districts work well and
to improve them.
I feel proud of the workthey're doing.
I feel like we're all in ittogether.
So it's not like I would blowanything up.
(17:57):
I think what I would do is justsay, hey, here are options, and
I think more options isgenerally better, because kids
are different and families havedifferent priorities, and I do
talk to parents that are likeyou know what?
Yeah, I hear you aboutengagement and autonomy, but
like I want my kid to be like inthe normal thing that everybody
else is doing and I don't wantto do a micro school right now.
(18:20):
To me that's adoption curve andit's perspectives and you have
to honor that as well.
So yeah, with agency is such animportant piece.
I would never force everyone todo micro schools, but I think
the existence of micro schoolsand as people hear about them
and find you know, find thebenefits of it, what you're
seeing is it kind of pushes thewhole system to think harder
(18:41):
about just innovating andproviding more options for kids.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
So what does a day in the life actually look like for
apprentice student?
We understand the format smallgroup guided by an adult but
what do they do all day?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So apprentice micro school.
I'll go quickly through this,cause I know we're short on time
, but there's four.
There are four learning modesin the day.
So the first one's calledconnect picture, a 20 minute
kind of mini activity that'sfocused explicitly on the, the
mindsets and the kind of purposedriven thinking.
It's really about who you'rebecoming as a learner.
That's a short, you know, groupactivity.
(19:18):
We typically have a couple hoursof conquer mode.
Conquer is where kids set theirown goals.
They are working on math andEnglish and you know anything
else you want to work on.
You'll see kids with you knowart goals or coding goals or
writing.
You know different pieces oftheir academic mastery and
they're really just tackling itone lesson at a time, taking
(19:40):
little assessments, learningfrom their results, consuming
tutorials and things like that.
That piece of the day isfollowed by collaborate mode,
and collaborate is all about getthe whole group together,
engage in a Socratic way.
Um, it's really trying to driveinquiry is what the you know
experts will call this.
So just getting kids curious,getting them thinking um, and
(20:04):
you picture, you know,researching together um, aspects
of an ancient society.
Or, you know, producing a playor some other sort of work of
literature, doing scienceexperiments together.
So that's the collaborate mode.
And then create mode istypically two or three kids
working together on a project,so you'll have a room of a lot
(20:27):
of engagement.
Kids are working on differentpieces of different projects, or
maybe the same project, butthey're doing it in different
ways, so a lot of choices inthere as well, and the idea is
just to have kids as engaged aswe possibly can so that they're,
you know, actively making thechoice and becoming learners.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
The different learning modalities sound great.
How many subjects do they studyon a given day?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
It's the same subjects, we just don't organize
the day so there'll be.
You know, typically you'll havea math goal, for example, but
then there may be math as partof your collaborative activity
and if you're, you know, createproject later in the day is
about, you know, one of them isis making a little water bottle
business, right?
There's like spreadsheet maththat kids are doing, even young
(21:12):
kids.
Where they're um, they'recalculating profit margins and
figuring out how many will theyhave to sell to break even on
their inventory costs.
And so you know, you'll seemath in all of the modalities
reading, writing, obviouslyreally important to so so many
facets of learning.
So it's not really like, okay,everybody, now we're reading.
(21:33):
It's like we're doing thisactivity and using literacy and
numeracy as part of that is kindof the flow.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
So a lot of this sounds service-based.
Where does the technology comeinto it?
Speaker 1 (21:43):
Yeah, so the business really exists to help people
start their own micro schools.
I would say there's twoproblems that somebody has if
they're trying to start a microschool.
One of them is business related.
It's just like how do youactually start your own little
school and we help people marketthemselves, put up a website
for them.
That's a you know, a wholesoftware product that we provide
(22:06):
.
We also help them with thepayments system.
So we're, you know, invoicingparents on their behalf,
collecting the funding, oftenfrom state entities.
There's kind of a regulatorycomponent to this.
When there's funding availablefor school choice, there's also
(22:26):
I'm trying to think of the otherkind of business services.
There's a huge contingentaround learning and development,
which is typically done more ina service-based way.
Those other pieces are, youknow, hard software.
The other big problem thatpeople have is running the
learning model.
So, you know, we've put thislearning model together, but
(22:46):
there's also a web app that thekids log into and the guide has
an you know admin view that thekids log into and the guide has
an uh, you know admin view andthey, uh really are able to
operate a fully, you know, acomplete curriculum, a complete
learning model that uh, willhelp kids.
You know, hit all the the mainpoints and we've built in um,
you know, kind of measurementand communication back to
(23:08):
parents as part of that so theparents can see like, okay, I
know my kid loves school, butwhat are they doing all day?
Right now it's important to beable to show like here's your
goal in english, here's whereyou're at today, um, and we're
tracking progress, you know,over time.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
So those types of things are all built into our,
you know, software platform andthen are the are the guides
creating their own curriculum oris there a standard bre
curriculum?
Speaker 1 (23:35):
We provide a curriculum out of the box.
Now what you find is, becausekids are different and guides
are different, everybody kind ofwants to tailor it and tinker
with it, so we we give them alot of flexibility.
It's like here's, here'ssomething that will work.
Uh, you start there and thenyou adapt it over time.
I was visiting a guide thisweek.
That's in her fifth year.
You know she does things, sheuses print of pieces and really
(23:57):
holds the same structure thatwe've provided, but she's filled
in a lot of the pieces with.
You know other things.
Either she's created themherself or she's pulled from
other places.
Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Now you don't require the guides to have teaching
credentials, which I can see theargument for, but then also, at
the same time, if they'reresponsible for the education of
the kids, I could see a concernaround why they don't have one.
So what was the reasoningbehind that decision and how do
you handle it when a kid youknow let's says, hey, I'm having
a trouble with this eighthgrade math problem and one would
(24:29):
hope the guide would help them,but maybe they can't.
What do we do then?
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Yeah.
So I think, reframe it at thevery beginning as, um, this
isn't a traditional teacher-ledclassroom.
So I think the picture most ofus have in mind I mean maybe not
you because you've homeschooled, but most people picture
sitting passively while schoolis sort of done to them, right,
and the teacher's job is toquote do school to you like, I
(24:53):
will school you.
So I will stand up here andtell you stuff and then I will
give you homework andassignments to see if you
understand it, and then test youultimately and put a grade in a
grade book.
That whole model is flipped onits head here.
So it's really about providingthe kids with a path forward.
I can give an example of this.
So one thing we have is calledthe well, there's, there's goal
(25:17):
setting, right?
So in conquer mode, you'll havea goal for math and a goal for
language at least, and you oftenwill choose other goals that
you'll add to that.
When you set a goal, youbasically start the year with an
assessment and we say here'swhere you're at.
This is information for yourown good.
It's not for us to like,measure you or brag about our
(25:38):
school or anything.
It's just like here's thecurrent reality of where you are
today on language and on math,and then from that data point we
have what's called the GPSmeeting the guide, parent,
student and these three sittogether.
We provide training for how todo this as well as a software
interface that guides theconversation.
So this meeting is reallyimportant because it's both a
(25:59):
kind of hard look at where thekid currently is and an
ambitious kind of forward lookat where they could be, or where
they want to be by the end.
We give the kid a chance to,you know, identify a long-term
goal, like by the end of theschool year.
Yeah, I'm currently, you know,say I'm a fourth grader and I'm
currently testing at likehalfway through third grade math
(26:19):
.
Like, I understand some ofthird grade but not all, so I'm
not completely up to grade level.
What we're going to say iswe're definitely going to go
back and make sure you're fullon third grade and you've got
time through this year toprogress so you could set a goal
to be finished with fourthgrade math by the end of the
year.
That would be what we'd calllike a one point five grade
(26:40):
level goal.
Right, but for the whole schoolyear.
Well, what we do from there is.
Our software will break that up.
Given the, you know theacademic calendar of the year.
We'll break that up for you,and it'll say OK, every day that
you're in school, you need todo this many lessons, master
this much content, and thentrack it.
We have integrations built tothese various third-party ed
(27:03):
tech tools that we're workingwith, so we're tracking their
progress as they go through theyear.
So it is a very deeply humanexperience.
Obviously, this is about a kidfeeling empowered and able to
kind of set a goal and tackle it.
This is about a kid feelingempowered and able to kind of
set a goal and tackle it.
What we do, though, is reallytry to provide all the tools so
(27:26):
that that's it's a very scalableexperience.
It doesn't require, you know,some sort of special expertise
on the kids part, or the parentspart, or the guides part.
We can put this all together, sowe see this happening in micro
schools all over the country.
In fact, the average goalthat's set is 1.8 grade levels
in a year, so you see kidsreally shooting for the stars,
in the sense that you know ifyou were sitting in a regular
(27:47):
fourth grade class, the goalimplied, the goal given to you
would be 1.0.
You're going to finish fourthgrade math regardless of where
you started and regardless ofhow fast you're understanding it
and we do.
We see these kids set big goals.
They don't achieve them all theway.
The average final outcome isabout 1.3 to 1.5.
But that's mastery data andit's more than what kids would
(28:11):
have got in a traditionalclassroom, so we feel excited
about it.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
That's great, yeah, because in traditional
classrooms I mean you have theno child left behind which got
implemented in 2001, which atthe time obviously had a very
noble goal.
But I think it backfired in alot of ways in the sense that
you now move at the pace of theslowest student and so kind of
to the detriment to everyoneelse and so essentially under
your model, kids can move attheir own pace.
(28:36):
So you're calling it one tothree, one to five, so currently
you have grades K through eight.
So does that mean that I couldthen theoretically finish eighth
grade at an age when I might bein like sixth or seventh grade?
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, see it all the time.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Okay, and then how do you?
And so then are we having?
Are we having 11 year oldsgoing into high school, or what
happens in that Delta?
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Yeah, there is definitely a, an interface, I
guess, at the end of Prenda.
So when, when you reach youfinish Prenda, we don't, we go K
through eight.
Typically kids will eitherchoose you know there's
different paths that you cantake, right, so some of them
will choose a traditional path.
They'll say I want to go to aregular high school kind of
participate for that kid,no-transcript, a trade-off, like
(29:42):
some of the materialacademically is review for him,
I guess, to say the least.
I think there's often timeswhere, um, you know he does find
individual teachers withinthose systems that you know kind
of encourage him to like thinkoutside the box and he'll engage
in sort of differentconversations, just
hypotheticals.
This is a kid that likes to sitaround and debate philosophy and
(30:04):
things like that.
This is the same kid that wasin that first um, first micro
school.
Now you're in your um.
I mean just one of these people, right, that like knows how to
hang with adults and kind oftake ownership of his own.
But he definitely has classesthat he's, he's playing the game
, right, he's just sort of I'lldo whatever I need to to get an
A and then move on.
So I think, fortunately for himand for all of us.
(30:29):
You can get to this point whereyou're an empowered learner and
you kind of know how to reallytake ownership of your learning,
and then an empowered learnercan function in a variety of
situations.
We do have other kids that youknow have different goals.
So if somebody is really aboutmaybe a single topic, I've met
some kids that get into, likeyou know, tech.
For example, I want to learn inins and outs of full stack
(30:50):
software development, like thosekids might do some sort of
online program or homeschool, sothey have plenty extra time, uh
, to just dive all the way in totheir field.
Um, but academically it's, it'sreally not an issue.
Eighth grade doesn't quotecount, it's not on the high
school transcripts, uh, we havekids that will go test into a
(31:11):
higher math class or somethinglike that, but uh, they're,
you're treated the same asreally if you had homeschooled
or done anything else kind ofcoming into into the traditional
system as a as a high schoolerand is that why you stopped it
in grade eight?
Speaker 2 (31:25):
just because of the issues of the official high
school transcript or what?
What was the?
The?
Speaker 1 (31:32):
yeah, kind of three reasons.
I mean one is just resources.
We wanted to really focus anddo well the piece that we we.
It is a different world thanhigh school.
One of them is regulatory, justthese rules and thinking about
interfacing now with colleges.
It's like a different kind of afull, different game we would
have to build out.
And the third one is I justkind of alluded to this but the
(31:54):
market's different People havedifferent things.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I think we probably will provide high school at some
point but we've just been sofocused on getting K through
eight Right, so that's that's acouple of times throughout this.
(32:16):
So I was homeschooled for a lotof the reasons that you've kind
of shared was skepticism aroundthe quality of public education
and you know it's funny myparents none, neither of them
went to college, and so theywere it's not like they were
educators that knew everythingthat they were doing and came in
, it was primarily my mom whodid it, but it was very much a
(32:40):
self-paced self-taught.
You know, when I was, when I wasyounger, she would help out
with the math problems and whathave you.
But by the time it got to likesixth grade, in any sort of
geometry or algebra, it's likeno, you're on your own, read the
book, figure it out.
Which is what I did.
And then I did.
I did do the first couple ofyears, uh, in high school,
homeschool, went to publicschool in my junior year, but
(33:02):
then that that is when the issuewith the transcripts came up.
As I went to, I had a 4.25 GPAmy junior year, so clearly
something on the homeschoolingside went right.
Uh, but then when I went back todo my, my uh course planning
for my senior year, they told mewell, you know, your first two
years of high school weren'tfrom an accredited institution,
(33:24):
so you can come back for yoursenior year, but you can't walk,
you can't graduate, you can'tdo anything like that.
Um, so I ended up, I finishedup the year, just test it out,
did the not?
Not the GED, but I think theycalled it in California the high
school equivalent degree.
Um, and I was done.
I think they called it inCalifornia the high school
equivalent degree and I was done.
So, yeah, interesting,interesting way of doing things
(33:44):
for sure.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Well, and it's funny, right, Because you think about
what that means, like that test,if that test in fact means you
have the knowledge that societyhas deemed important for a high
school graduate to have.
Yeah, you know my son the sameson you know, kind of a smart
aleck.
He took the ged test just forfun, like two years ago as a, as
(34:06):
a sophomore in high school, andhe aced it like he, oh yeah, he
was like does this mean?
I'm done?
Like what does this?
What does this exactly mean?
And of course he's just messingaround, but he just knows.
You know, it's not really aboutlike getting information
transfer as a learner.
I think everybody sees thatformal structure of An example
(34:27):
of this.
Right, I fix stuff around myhouse sometimes.
I'm not super handy.
I didn't grow up doing that.
I don't have Some people justmagically know what to do and
they have the tools.
So I'm trying to fix a thingaround my house.
I'm like what do I do?
Well, I go to the internet,google it.
I find a youtube video.
I watch the youtube video, Ipause it.
I will like then go to homedepot to get the tools that are
in the youtube video and then Iwill like start trying to like
(34:49):
follow what the guy's doing inthe youtube video.
I mean it the equivalent, likethink if instead I was like okay
, I'm gonna go sign up for aprogram in like electrical or,
um, you know, home repair orsomething, and I'm gonna like
here's the syllabus and there'sthese lectures and there's like
homework assignments, and I'mgonna do like a whole semester
(35:11):
so that I can like fix one thing.
I mean, there there are placeswhere there's value to that.
But I think all of us have thisintuition nowadays.
It's's like it really you learnwhat you need in the moment and
the world's changing so fastand anyway.
So what we want is kids thatare equipped for that and that
are less, much less deterred bythese systems of gatekeepers and
(35:33):
rules and and just limits.
I mean, so much of that isholding kids, you know, into
structures that are notproductive for them.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Absolutely.
Yeah, it's.
It's so funny you mentioned thehandy thing, because I'm not
particularly handy either, butI'm working on it and so, yeah,
I mean you, youtube has alwayskind of been a go-to.
But there was a few months agoI had to change a light fixture
and usually anything that likein my past where, like, if it's
electrical, I hire it out like Idon't want to shock myself.
(36:02):
But this time I was like, screwit.
And I took a picture of thelight box and I put it into a
chat gpt and I was just like,here's what I'm doing, walk me
through.
And it fully walked me through,just based on the pictures I
sent it.
Um, so yeah, I mean we're,we're in a completely new
learning paradigm.
It's.
It's fascinating to think whatyou know the kindergartners and
(36:23):
you know Prenda, what they'regoing through and what, what it
will be like you know the nextseveral years, any particular
story from either students orguides that's really resonated
with you as a result of Prenda,that that stands out.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
I mean so many stories, I could tell you them
for a very long time.
The moral of every story isthis was my kid before and it's
often some version of you knowsitting in the car parked
outside the school.
The child's in tears Like,don't make me go in there every
day, you know, and that can be avariety of reasons Right
Boredom, bullying, likediscouragement.
(37:04):
There's, there's so many thingsthat can happen inside of a
system like that, where you havekids that just are deeply
unhappy and and then they switchand they switch.
My favorite story about theafter portion is is the kids
crying again?
Actually?
But they're crying because it'sspring break or it's Saturday
and there's no school.
You know, and you, if youimagine going from crying
(37:27):
because you have to go to schoolto crying because you can't go
to school, I mean that's the 180that we're talking about and
it's it's just so powerful.
I'll share just quickly.
I got brave this year and I putup my one political post on
social media.
You know most of us are likelet's not talk about politics
and in fact I'm so burned out onit.
(37:48):
But there are discussions atthe state level around school
choice policies and so I put a,you know, an explainer and
advocacy like this is schoolchoice.
And I kind of said, look, thisis, this is making a difference
for families.
And somebody that had had puther son in years ago piped into
(38:10):
the thread and it was a reallytouching moment because she was
able to just say, like, looksome, for some people this is
abstract politics.
Like, for me, this is personaland here's why.
And she talked about her sonand just how unhappy and how at
risk he was.
I mean, there were lots ofproblems and by creating a new
environment for him and givinghim opportunity to just see
(38:33):
himself differently as a humanand as a learner, being part of
this micro school group andhaving a learning guide, that's,
you know, fully invested in himand cared about him, and so to
put that together, for him itwas night and day contrast and
things changed and she gave alittle update.
Now here he is in high school,years later and things are just
going so well for him and shereally attributes so much of
(38:55):
this to what happened to him inthat micro school.
That was a turning point in hislife.
I mean, obviously it's her asthe parents and there's so many
factors that goes into that.
But to be even a small part ofthat kind of change for a human
being is humbling for me, andit's it's work that just
energizes me every single day.
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I love that.
Well, I would have loved todive a little bit deeper into
the business and growth and allthat, but we'll probably have to
save that maybe for a round two.
But you know, looking forward,how do you see Prenda evolving,
as well as the broader educationlandscape, over the course of
the next few?
Speaker 1 (39:29):
years, help deliver these services and this value to
people like help them starttheir own micro schools and help
them be as successful as as wepossibly can with their micro
schools.
So, like I said, a thousandpeople starting micro schools, I
think 10,000 should start microschools.
I think that should happen inthe next couple of years.
(39:51):
There are, you know, policyquestions around funding, so
that this doesn't isn't limitedonly to people that can afford
thousands of dollars out ofpocket.
Obviously, we want this to beavailable to everyone, so that's
a potential limitation.
But, assuming the funding'sthere, I think lots of people
will be interested in this andwe want to be ready for them.
(40:12):
Our job is to make it aseffective and successful as it
possibly can be, so we're reallyfocused on that.
I've got a great team and we'rereally grateful to just be able
to do this work every singleday.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Well, I'm excited to see how you continue to grow.
So, kelly, thank you so muchfor coming on.
Really had a good time.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
It's a pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Thank you for tuning into this episode of seat to
exit.
I hope you found today'sconversation insightful and
valuable.
If you enjoyed the episode,please take a moment to
subscribe, leave a review andshare it with your network.
Your support means the worldhelps us continue to grow and
bring more incredible guestsonto the show.
Now for more content andupdates, follow me on LinkedIn
(40:51):
or Twitter, or you can check outMindHire, where we help
startups build exceptional teams.
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