August 10, 2025 • 29 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Berry Show. I will first give thanks to
the newest edition to our show team, and that is
Darryl Kunda Akakonda man see you n DA. Daryl Kunda
was the production director of iHeartMedia in Houston, which is
where our flagship station KTRH is. He worked with all
(00:22):
six of the stations doing production. He's a great voice man,
and he's very good at editing and writing in the sort.
He now runs our daily blast at Michael Berryshow dot com.
You can go there and sign up for free. You'll
now be getting I think we're getting. We're sending out
six e blasts, one every day Monday through Saturday. I'm
(00:44):
hoping we can send one on Sunday, but we'll see,
because we're adding a lot to his plate overnight. But
now that we feel like he's got his footing, he's
been with us long enough, hopefully we'll be able to
add a seventh show. We'll see. That is a free
blast that we send out a free newsletter every day.
It has links to what we talk about on the show.
The articles. A lot of our folks want to go
(01:04):
and read the article for themselves after I talk about it.
We usually put a couple of silly fun memes in there.
We do some dad jokes and if I have anything
in particular I want to share on a program here
administrative note. I put a note in there for that
as well. We keep it pretty short and simple so
that you can get in and get out in two
minutes or less, because you're busy and you've got a
lot of emails and you don't want to be spammed.
(01:27):
So we're not does too asky. We're not going to
keep you in for the winner reading the entirety of
our newsletter. But this Sunday Bonus podcast is something we
wanted to do for a long time. We started the
Saturday podcast, and Jim Mutt, our creative director, took that over,
but we didn't want to add something else, pile another
thing on his shoulders. Poor fellow works pretty insanely long
(01:50):
hours as it is, so Darryl Kunda said, I am
ready here, am I send me in the Book of Elijah,
And so Daryl Kunda will be handled our Sunday podcasts
and we are delighted. And this is the first of
our Sunday podcast. Hopefully if you love it and you
(02:12):
share it with your friends and it turns out to
be wildly successful, as almost everything we've ever done, not all,
but most things we've ever done has, then we will
continue to devote the resources to it. The genesis of
it was that folks would listen all week and then
on Saturday they'd say, you know, I've gotten used to
(02:32):
you hanging out with me, and so I'm out mowing
or I'm out you know, cleaning out the garage or
washing my car or tinkering on my classic car, or
cleaning the house or cooking for the family or driving
to the grandkids events or whatever you're doing, and I
really like to listen to more of the show. And
(02:53):
so Jim Mudd said, all right, I'll start the Saturday show.
And we've had a lot of fun with it and
a lot of success with it. And then folks say, well,
I kind of like Cavin the Saturday show. Would you
mind doing a Sunday show? And our team, look, we'd
love to do an There's one hundred other things we'd
like to add to what we deliver, but we've got
to stay true to doing what we do already well
(03:16):
before we add new things. So I think we're ready.
This is our first Sunday Podcast. If you listen and
enjoy it, send me an email. Where do you listen?
Where do you live? You know what city and state?
And where do you listen? In terms of while you're
driving in your earbuds, while you're riding your bike, while
you're doing chores? What are those chores?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I love?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I love the details of your lives. I find those
very very interesting. How you found the show, Things you enjoy,
things you find. Some things that we do on the
show are referrals from you of I read this book,
I saw this movie and you give me a or hey,
you should talk to this guy and you give me
(04:00):
their name and their phone number when you have it.
Or you should watch this movie, here's a link to it.
Or you should watch this clip. Here's a link to it,
or you should watch this speech. Here's a link to it.
And I will usually watch a few seconds and see
if it catches my attention. If it does, many times
we use those sorts of things, and it makes our
show a whole lot better because we have so much
great listener engagement. That's why I devote so much time
(04:22):
to reading emails. So with that, here is our very
first Darryl Kunda directed a Daryl Kunda production Sunday podcast.
I hope you enjoy it and I'll look forward to
hearing from you.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Imagine what would be possible if we were going to
reimagine school?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
What is Alpha school? And how did you get here?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
In only two hours a day? Our students are learning
twice as fast as students in the rest of the country.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Only two hours a day on academics.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Now, what we're finding is that artificial intelligence is enabling
us to raise human intelligence. And ultimately we had our
kids say from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas over
five days. I'll tell you what that is. What we
call a test to pass.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Now, most people think that the future is grim for
their children.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Education is going to get better, and I think the
best way to do that is really turn the teacher
in front of the classroom model on its head and
allow technology to do what it can do really well.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Mackenzie, let's talk about innovative education that works.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
That is my favorite topic to talk about. So I'm
glad I'm here.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Awesome, Well, so many of my episodes are about things
that we need to warn people about. Parents need to
find out about what's going on and this is the
episode that people can just relax and hear some really
good news and some real good innovative experiences that you
can share with us.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Let me tell you some really great news. There's never
been a more exciting time to be a five year old,
and this is also a really exciting time for teachers.
So have no fear, like education is going to get better.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Okay, let's get this party started, because I think a
lot of people will find even that statement pretty surprising.
I gave a speech a few months ago and I
asked parents to raise their hand and tell me if
they think that the future of their children will be
better than their lives as children, and most people did.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Not raise their hands.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Most people think that the future is grim for their children.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So I think from perspective that is absolutely true that
and if you think about the current state of the world,
I can see why parents arrive at that right. When
you think about how academics has been doing in the
K through twelve world the last several years, it's really
been abysmal. A lot of things that are going in
and being focused on in schools is stuff that you know,
is not where we want it to be. But I
(06:38):
think we're at this incredible precipice where we are going
to see a change. And I always talked about the
future of education, and I believe the future of education
is here.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Now, amazing. Well, the reason you are an innovator in
education you started Alpha Schools was because you almost went
in that direction, right, You almost had that despair that
so many parents around America are having, and then you
did something about it. So share with us what is
Alpha school and how did you get here?
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah? Well, I'll take you way back to just my
experience going to school. And I think that's always something important,
because we all had our own personal experience, you know,
being educated, and it shaped so much of how we
think about school and what we believe school should be
for kids. I was one of those kids who was
really good at school. I knew how to jump through
the hoops, I knew how to get the grades, but
(07:27):
I hated school. Did you like school? Yes?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I did because I identified as a troublemaker from the
second I was born.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Okay, and so for me.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
That rigid experience of school was just an opportunity to
cause trouble everywhere. But you better have a very specific personality.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Well, Okay, well, I was like the do gooder. I
knew how to follow the rules, but I was always
that kid who would raise my hand and be like,
why do I need to know this? Like how does
this apply to whatever it is that I'm interested or
how I'm going to go out in the world and
what I'm going to do. And so fundamentally, I didn't
feel like my school experience prepared me well to be
able to figure out like that intersection of my passions
(08:05):
and my talents. So that was kind of the backdrop.
Now I went to a great university, graduating kind of
went on the treadmill of life. But then it was
time for my girls to go to school. And I
live in Austin, Texas, and my husband and I were
both products of public school education, and so we said,
you know, it's time to send them down, get them
on the bus, and go to the school district near
(08:27):
our house, which is a phenomenal school district in Texas.
But what I also found is that my little girl,
who I dropped off at kindergarten the first day, who
had this like incredible insatiable curiosity and desire to learn
and just want to kind of see how things worked,
which all kids have. All kids start out like that.
(08:49):
After a while, I just saw the spark was like
kind of dying. And the reason is because there wasn't
a lot of ability in that classroom experience to have
any sort of personalization. And that was everything from like,
you know, if she was already reading in kindergarten, you know,
she come home with worksheets that were like A is
for aunt, B is for bat, and it was like, well,
(09:10):
is there anything we can do? And I really felt
for the teachers in the situation, because, you know, this
poor teacher had twenty two kids in the classroom who
all came at totally different levels, and you know, it
was hard to figure out how do you personalize education
for every kid? But ultimately that culminated about two and
a half years later, in second grade. My younger daughter
(09:30):
was now in kindergarten and experiencing the same thing. And
my daughter came home one day and she said, I
don't want to go to school tomorrow. I looked at
her and I said, what do you mean, you love school?
And she just looked at me and she said, school
is so boring. And I just had this moment of like, oh,
my goodness, in two and a half years, they've taken
a kid who's like Taylor made to be enthusiastic and
(09:52):
excited about school, and they've wiped that passion away. And
I went and talked with the principal of our school,
who was a really great administrator and had become a
friend of mine at that point, and I had expressed
more about my concerns and she looked at me and
she said, Mackenzie, I gotta be honest with you. This
is like trying to steer the Titanic. It just can't
be done. And so at that point I knew it
(10:13):
was my time to exit because I didn't want to
see my girls go through the same experience I had
where it was just like, go through the motions, do
what you need to do. I wanted that twelve years
of my kids' lives to be something exciting. I mean,
they're going to spend five days a week, nine months
a year, for hours a day in school. It should
(10:33):
be a place that is invigorating and exciting, and it
should be something that like unlocks our kids' potential. And
that wasn't happening. And actually, did you know there's been
research done on the level of enthusiasm between kindergarten and twelve,
And can you guess the highest level of enthusiasm like
day one of kindergarten, literally kindergarten, it goes down every
(10:56):
year until junior year of high school when they finally
start to see like a light the end of the tunnel.
And that is not the way our kids should be
experiencing so many of those formative years. So I looked around,
and I will say I knew I couldn't homeschool heroes
the people who are able to homeschool, and I didn't
see any other school for me. It wasn't about a
(11:17):
public school versus a private school. It was really fundamentally
the model of a teacher in front of a classroom,
teaching a group of kids in a time based system
who are all at different levels. It's just an impossible job.
And I think teachers have been given this very impossible
job where they've been asked to like empty the ocean
with a bucket full of holes in it. They can't
(11:38):
possibly meet every kid's needs when they're saying I also
am responsible for delivering third grade curriculum. So I looked
around and I kind of imagine, like what would be
possible if we were going to reimagine school? And the
question I kind of asked is like how high is high?
What are kids capable of when you give them great
(11:59):
levels of support and you hold them to high standards
and just are what are they able to do? And
I decided in twenty fourteen to start my own school.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Well, how do you do anything that's different? Right? You
still have a group of kids that are coming in,
they have different levels of abilities, They're still in one place.
How do you create this personalized learning that you're saying
that the other schools couldn't give to your children?
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Well, here's what's really exciting about the time that we
have been in. And this was true in twenty fourteen
when my girls were in third grade and first grade
when I started the very first school. Technology has enabled
us to do so much more and more recently in
the last three years, with the advent of generative AI,
we have the ability to provide a truly personalized, one
(12:46):
to one mastery based learning experience for every single kid.
And you know, if I take you back, you know,
want to go way back in history for a second,
you know, think about the way that Socrates tutored Plato,
who tutored Aristotle, who tutored Alexander the Great. That was
this one to one, very mastery based like follow the interest,
(13:08):
you know, really teach people in depth. Now, of course,
that was only reserved for the very, very elite and
a couple hundred years ago when it was time to
figure out, okay, the industrial revolution is here. We got
to create factory workers. We need to create compliant people
who are educated at a base level that we can
understand how do we educate the masses. And that is
(13:29):
when that teacher in front of the classroom model was
really born. And you know what, it did allow more
people to be educated. And it did that, but in
a couple hundred years nothing had really changed, right, And
there have been learning science papers written by leading universities
that talk about how kids can learn two, five, ten
(13:50):
times faster when they're in a one to one mastery
based environment, But every single one of those papers starts
or ends with the same thing. Unfortunately, these result are
not possible in a teacher in front of the classroom model.
And so what's really amazing now and why it's such
an exciting time in education, is that Artificial intelligence is
(14:11):
the tool that is going to finally allow learning science
to become a really precise and measurable science, just like
when you know the microscope was created and what that
did for biology. Right there is so much potential now
because basically what we do at our schools is every
(14:32):
student receives a personalized learning plan that is created based
on assessing what a child knows, what don't they know,
and then creating a lesson plan that combines both the
knowledge that they have as well as the ability to
take interest that a child has and give them that learning.
And so what we found is that when kids are
(14:54):
learning at the level and the pace that they need,
they're able to do great. But it's only part of
the solution, which I'm happy to tell you about too. Well.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
You mentioned AI, which I can't not focus on that
because there's a lot of fear around it.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
What about the cheating? What about the human connection? What
about the child's ability to actually sit down and read
and write themselves. If you expose them to AI, they're
going to be cheaters for the rest of their lives.
Of I can't even tell you how many things I've
heard about the concern of AI replacing humans and you,
as a headmistress of multiple schools, is that you're actually
(15:34):
bringing AI to children. I know, no wonder you're getting
all this hate.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Well, so here's the thing. There is no question that
there is so much fear and a lack of understanding.
And one of the things that I'm helping families understand
and become aware of is that it's not this dystopian
robot terminator teacher standing in the front of the classroom,
you know, tea a bunch of kids on this. What
(16:02):
it is is we're basically using llms that are feeding
K through eight common Core and then at the high
school level AP curriculum through these personalized learning experiences, and
then we use a vision model to make sure that
we're able to understand how accurately and how efficiently a
(16:22):
child is learning. Here's what we don't use and this
is what so many people associate artificial intelligence with a chatbot. Okay,
here's the thing. A chatbot, think chat GPT or conmego.
It would be amazing if every kid interacted with a
chatbot and said, let's have a Socratic discussion to learn
more about World War two history, and go deep into that. Unfortunately,
(16:45):
the reality is that when kids use chatbots, they tend
to use them to cheat, right, They will copy and
paste the question and answer, and that's what they do.
So that's actually the one aspect of artificial intelligence that
we don't use with our students. Instead, these personalized learning
plans are what kids are able to learn and go with.
(17:06):
Now here's what we see as far as results. In
only two hours a day, our students are learning twice
as fast as students in the rest of the country.
Our classes are in the ninety ninth percentile across the
board and all subjects. In fact, I don't know of
another school who's delivering the kind of academic results, and
(17:27):
especially when you add that we're doing it in two hours.
And here's the big question that kind of comes up,
What in the world do you do with the rest
of the day when you get academics done in a
couple hours. And for us, the answer is we spend
all afternoon developing life skills. And that's kind of the
short summary. We can go into more detail on what
(17:47):
that is, but let me tell you the secret sauce
of what makes this all successful. It is our teachers.
We have transformed the role of the teacher in our
classroom so that instead of having to spend their time
creating lesson plans and delivering lectures and grading papers and homework,
they are able to focus all of their attention on
(18:07):
motivational and emotional support and mentorship. And what that does
is that creates that motivation that a child needs in
order to go and crush their academics. And so what
we're finding is that artificial intelligence is enabling us to
raise human intelligence, both for children from an academic perspective
(18:27):
as well as the time and ability to develop life skills.
But also because we're taking those teachers and we're putting
them right at the center where they can spend time
getting to know every single child, understanding what makes them tick,
what gets them excited when they're struggling with something, what
are the things they say to themselves, and how can
we incorporate better growth mindset strategies. And that's kind of
(18:49):
where the magic is happening and why we're able to
really unlock the potential for every single kid that comes
into our doors.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Wow, so interesting. So one thing you've said is that
is it academics that the Alpha, students only spend two
hours a day on only two hours a day on academics.
And what is is it an app that your team developed?
Is it a software? Because they're obviously not going to
outside apps that anybody can just go and download, right.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Actually they are doing some of that. What are curriculum
or what our we call it time back That is
our learning platform. And what our learning platform does is
we use an a tutor that we built that creates
the lesson plans that match for each student depending on
their level and where their pace is. But what our
students experience when they sit down in the morning, they
(19:40):
come to school, first of all, just to kind of
set the stage. It's a full day school program because
we knows they need that, right, And there's so many
other great things that do come from school, right, So
opportunities to socialize with other students, all of those things.
But they start school every morning and we do a
fifteen minute limit launch think Tony Robbins for kids. This
(20:03):
is a chance for kids to come together and get
excited about the day. There's usually some sort of physical
activity and some sort of maybe impossible challenge that helps
us introduce some sort of a growth mindset concept, so
that when the kid then goes to sit down for
their academic part of the day or whatever else they're doing,
they've taken this energy and this attitude and they're like,
(20:23):
I'm ready to go, right, So we start every day
like that. Then our kids go into the two hour
learning block of their own. Well, they're together in a
class and they've got teachers, we call them guides, but
our teachers are in the classroom, so these kids are
able to be with, you know, similarly aged other children,
but they do. They grab their computers and they go
(20:44):
and they are able to click on the learning plan
that they need for math or reading, science, English, whatever
that is. They go in there and then we practice
something called the Pomodoro method where they spend about twenty
five minutes of focus time in that subject. Then they
get to go and take a break, go run around,
have a recess. They go back to the next subject.
(21:07):
And what we find is that in two hours, our
kids are able to cover all of their academic content
by receiving this personalized thing. And the other thing that's
really cool about it is, you know, you can have
two seven year old kids sitting right next to each other,
and one seven year old is working on algebra while
the other kid is working on his addition and subtraction.
(21:29):
These kids are able to go exactly where they need
to be, and yet they're hanging out with each other.
And during that time, our teachers, they're not teaching academic content,
but what they're doing is they're coaching and supporting these
kids as they're going through their academic lesson to understand like,
have you looked at the resources you need to learn something?
(21:50):
Have you read the explanation? Have you watched the video
that helps? And what we're really doing is we're creating
self driven learners who have the life skill of life
learning how to learn, and that is a skill that
is so important, especially in today's world where we really
do have all the information in the world right at
our fingertips. How do we take that information and use
(22:13):
that to do something bigger? You know, one of the
things I think Risu's true now is it's no longer
just about reading, writing, and arithmetic. It's about what I
call the foresees. It's critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration.
Those are the skills that we want our kids to
really learn, and so when we have all of our
(22:34):
academics done in the first half of the day and
then the rest of the day is filled with life
skills workshops and collaborative, project based, really interactive kind of activities.
It is a fun place to be. And actually that
kind of goes back to our number one commitment that
we make to our families is that kids will love
(22:55):
school because when a kid loves school, it unlocks the
ability for so many other things to happen for them.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Well, then they remember what they actually learned, right, So
I just kind of want to envision myself in that
classroom during those two hours. So is it the kids
are sitting in front of a computer and you have
these motivators. I'm going to call them motivators. I know
you have your own name for it, but basically their
job is to motivate the kids to complete whatever it
(23:21):
is that they're doing. Is it like I excel? Is
it like that kind of stuff where they make the progress?
But it's it is reading and writing and arithmetic essentially
during those apps.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, they're the core academic skills that they're doing. They're
using a combination of apps that we have built ourselves
as well as third party apps, you know, things like
math Academy is a great math app, I excel as
something else, Grammarly, Egump. There's all kinds of different apps
that have been out. And here's the issue with ed
tech over the last fifteen years because you know, as
(23:51):
as I mentioned, when I started the school in twenty fourteen,
we were using those apps. But just giving a kid
an app and kind of saying hey, go to town
and just work on it doesn't necessarily ensure great, you know,
academic results. Kids can waste time on it, they can
just not even be engaging with the app. And so
(24:11):
what our AI tutor is doing is really making sure
kids are learning through that process very efficiently and then
feeding in the knowledge that they need to be learning
to create these personalized lesson plans. And so, yeah, if
you come into one of our classrooms in the morning
when kids are working, each kid is working on their
own computer, and they're working in kind of groups together
(24:35):
near each other, and our teachers, our guides as we
call them, are you know, supporting them as they needed.
But I will tell you one of the things that's
so fun to see, especially when you walk into one
of our younger classrooms like a kindergartener first grade classroom.
You'll see some kids that are sitting at a table
with one of our guides and they're working on it.
And inevitably you'll always see some kid who's like sitting
(24:58):
in the corner like a couch with his feed up
and his computer upside down doing his work, and you
might think, what's he doing? And what we've realized is
this kid knows how to get his work done, and
he has got that like autonomy over himself to be
able to say, you know what, I'm comfortable when I'm
able to sprawl out and do this and get that
work done. I will say our schools are very much
(25:19):
merit based cultures where we teach kids early early on
how to set goals and how to work towards accomplishing
those goals because they really are in the driver's seat
of their education. And as a result from an early stage,
our kids become really aware of like, hey, this is
the you know, the math that I want to learn today,
(25:41):
and here's how I did on that, And it creates
really a great sense of ownership and control that they have.
And as far as motivation, we are willing to do
whatever it takes to get a kid excited, because if
a kid's not motivated to learn, then you're kind of
up the creek. And so that could be anything from
you know, we had a little girl this past year
(26:02):
who whenever she would get one of her goals, she
and her guide would go in the corner and they
would do a fifteen second Taylor Swift dance party, and
that was enough to get that little girl excited. Right.
We pay our students a school currency for when they
hit their goals. And you know, that's one thing that
people go paying students to learn that seems wrong. Here's
(26:25):
a thing. It is an incredible motivator. And one of
the things that we find is that extrinsic motivation will
eventually lead to kids performing well, and competence leads to confidence,
and suddenly when you're good at math, you're like, I
kind of like math. Math is fun and it's interesting,
(26:46):
and that invariably leads to intrinsic motivation as well. And
so it's a really beautiful kind of system that we've
been able to create here where you get kids that
come in and maybe they're not excited about, you know, school,
or they're feeling behind or they feel like they're not smart,
and when you show them the ability to say, hey,
(27:06):
when you work at your pace and your level, you
can be really capable and you can get great results.
And then suddenly these kids turn on and they get
excited and they have time to develop those interests and
you know, figure out that that intersection again between their
passions and their talents. If you like the.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Michael Berry Show and Podcast, please tell one friend, and
if you're so inclined, write a nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions,
and interest in being a corporate sponsor and partner can
be communicated directly to the show at our email address,
Michael at Michael Berryshow dot com, or simply by clicking
(27:48):
on our website, Michael Berryshow dot com. The Michael Berry
Show and Podcast is produced by Ramon Roeblis, the King
of Ding. Executive producer is Chad Knakanishi. Jim Mudd is
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(28:14):
by Chance MacLean. Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily
Bull is our assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated
and often incorporated into our production. Where possible, we give credit.
Where not, we take all the credit for ourselves. God
(28:35):
bless the memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis, be
a simple man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God
bless America. Finally, if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD,
call Camp Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven
(28:56):
PTSD and a combat veteran will answer the phone to
provide free counseling
Speaker 3 (29:05):
M
The Michael Berry Show. I will first give thanks to
the newest edition to our show team, and that is
Darryl Kunda Akakonda man see you n DA. Daryl Kunda
was the production director of iHeartMedia in Houston, which is
where our flagship station KTRH is. He worked with all
(00:22):
six of the stations doing production. He's a great voice man,
and he's very good at editing and writing in the sort.
He now runs our daily blast at Michael Berryshow dot com.
You can go there and sign up for free. You'll
now be getting I think we're getting. We're sending out
six e blasts, one every day Monday through Saturday. I'm
(00:44):
hoping we can send one on Sunday, but we'll see,
because we're adding a lot to his plate overnight. But
now that we feel like he's got his footing, he's
been with us long enough, hopefully we'll be able to
add a seventh show. We'll see. That is a free
blast that we send out a free newsletter every day.
It has links to what we talk about on the show.
The articles. A lot of our folks want to go
(01:04):
and read the article for themselves after I talk about it.
We usually put a couple of silly fun memes in there.
We do some dad jokes and if I have anything
in particular I want to share on a program here
administrative note. I put a note in there for that
as well. We keep it pretty short and simple so
that you can get in and get out in two
minutes or less, because you're busy and you've got a
lot of emails and you don't want to be spammed.
(01:27):
So we're not does too asky. We're not going to
keep you in for the winner reading the entirety of
our newsletter. But this Sunday Bonus podcast is something we
wanted to do for a long time. We started the
Saturday podcast, and Jim Mutt, our creative director, took that over,
but we didn't want to add something else, pile another
thing on his shoulders. Poor fellow works pretty insanely long
(01:50):
hours as it is, so Darryl Kunda said, I am
ready here, am I send me in the Book of Elijah,
And so Daryl Kunda will be handled our Sunday podcasts
and we are delighted. And this is the first of
our Sunday podcast. Hopefully if you love it and you
(02:12):
share it with your friends and it turns out to
be wildly successful, as almost everything we've ever done, not all,
but most things we've ever done has, then we will
continue to devote the resources to it. The genesis of
it was that folks would listen all week and then
on Saturday they'd say, you know, I've gotten used to
(02:32):
you hanging out with me, and so I'm out mowing
or I'm out you know, cleaning out the garage or
washing my car or tinkering on my classic car, or
cleaning the house or cooking for the family or driving
to the grandkids events or whatever you're doing, and I
really like to listen to more of the show. And
(02:53):
so Jim Mudd said, all right, I'll start the Saturday show.
And we've had a lot of fun with it and
a lot of success with it. And then folks say, well,
I kind of like Cavin the Saturday show. Would you
mind doing a Sunday show? And our team, look, we'd
love to do an There's one hundred other things we'd
like to add to what we deliver, but we've got
to stay true to doing what we do already well
(03:16):
before we add new things. So I think we're ready.
This is our first Sunday Podcast. If you listen and
enjoy it, send me an email. Where do you listen?
Where do you live? You know what city and state?
And where do you listen? In terms of while you're
driving in your earbuds, while you're riding your bike, while
you're doing chores? What are those chores?
Speaker 2 (03:38):
I love?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I love the details of your lives. I find those
very very interesting. How you found the show, Things you enjoy,
things you find. Some things that we do on the
show are referrals from you of I read this book,
I saw this movie and you give me a or hey,
you should talk to this guy and you give me
(04:00):
their name and their phone number when you have it.
Or you should watch this movie, here's a link to it.
Or you should watch this clip. Here's a link to it,
or you should watch this speech. Here's a link to it.
And I will usually watch a few seconds and see
if it catches my attention. If it does, many times
we use those sorts of things, and it makes our
show a whole lot better because we have so much
great listener engagement. That's why I devote so much time
(04:22):
to reading emails. So with that, here is our very
first Darryl Kunda directed a Daryl Kunda production Sunday podcast.
I hope you enjoy it and I'll look forward to
hearing from you.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Imagine what would be possible if we were going to
reimagine school?
Speaker 2 (04:41):
What is Alpha school? And how did you get here?
Speaker 3 (04:43):
In only two hours a day? Our students are learning
twice as fast as students in the rest of the country.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Only two hours a day on academics.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Now, what we're finding is that artificial intelligence is enabling
us to raise human intelligence. And ultimately we had our
kids say from the Florida Keys to the Bahamas over
five days. I'll tell you what that is. What we
call a test to pass.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Now, most people think that the future is grim for
their children.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Education is going to get better, and I think the
best way to do that is really turn the teacher
in front of the classroom model on its head and
allow technology to do what it can do really well.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Mackenzie, let's talk about innovative education that works.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
That is my favorite topic to talk about. So I'm
glad I'm here.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Awesome, Well, so many of my episodes are about things
that we need to warn people about. Parents need to
find out about what's going on and this is the
episode that people can just relax and hear some really
good news and some real good innovative experiences that you
can share with us.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Let me tell you some really great news. There's never
been a more exciting time to be a five year old,
and this is also a really exciting time for teachers.
So have no fear, like education is going to get better.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Okay, let's get this party started, because I think a
lot of people will find even that statement pretty surprising.
I gave a speech a few months ago and I
asked parents to raise their hand and tell me if
they think that the future of their children will be
better than their lives as children, and most people did.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Not raise their hands.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Most people think that the future is grim for their children.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
So I think from perspective that is absolutely true that
and if you think about the current state of the world,
I can see why parents arrive at that right. When
you think about how academics has been doing in the
K through twelve world the last several years, it's really
been abysmal. A lot of things that are going in
and being focused on in schools is stuff that you know,
is not where we want it to be. But I
(06:38):
think we're at this incredible precipice where we are going
to see a change. And I always talked about the
future of education, and I believe the future of education
is here.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Now, amazing. Well, the reason you are an innovator in
education you started Alpha Schools was because you almost went
in that direction, right, You almost had that despair that
so many parents around America are having, and then you
did something about it. So share with us what is
Alpha school and how did you get here?
Speaker 3 (07:05):
Yeah? Well, I'll take you way back to just my
experience going to school. And I think that's always something important,
because we all had our own personal experience, you know,
being educated, and it shaped so much of how we
think about school and what we believe school should be
for kids. I was one of those kids who was
really good at school. I knew how to jump through
the hoops, I knew how to get the grades, but
(07:27):
I hated school. Did you like school? Yes?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
I did because I identified as a troublemaker from the
second I was born.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Okay, and so for me.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
That rigid experience of school was just an opportunity to
cause trouble everywhere. But you better have a very specific personality.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Well, Okay, well, I was like the do gooder. I
knew how to follow the rules, but I was always
that kid who would raise my hand and be like,
why do I need to know this? Like how does
this apply to whatever it is that I'm interested or
how I'm going to go out in the world and
what I'm going to do. And so fundamentally, I didn't
feel like my school experience prepared me well to be
able to figure out like that intersection of my passions
(08:05):
and my talents. So that was kind of the backdrop.
Now I went to a great university, graduating kind of
went on the treadmill of life. But then it was
time for my girls to go to school. And I
live in Austin, Texas, and my husband and I were
both products of public school education, and so we said,
you know, it's time to send them down, get them
on the bus, and go to the school district near
(08:27):
our house, which is a phenomenal school district in Texas.
But what I also found is that my little girl,
who I dropped off at kindergarten the first day, who
had this like incredible insatiable curiosity and desire to learn
and just want to kind of see how things worked,
which all kids have. All kids start out like that.
(08:49):
After a while, I just saw the spark was like
kind of dying. And the reason is because there wasn't
a lot of ability in that classroom experience to have
any sort of personalization. And that was everything from like,
you know, if she was already reading in kindergarten, you know,
she come home with worksheets that were like A is
for aunt, B is for bat, and it was like, well,
(09:10):
is there anything we can do? And I really felt
for the teachers in the situation, because, you know, this
poor teacher had twenty two kids in the classroom who
all came at totally different levels, and you know, it
was hard to figure out how do you personalize education
for every kid? But ultimately that culminated about two and
a half years later, in second grade. My younger daughter
(09:30):
was now in kindergarten and experiencing the same thing. And
my daughter came home one day and she said, I
don't want to go to school tomorrow. I looked at
her and I said, what do you mean, you love school?
And she just looked at me and she said, school
is so boring. And I just had this moment of like, oh,
my goodness, in two and a half years, they've taken
a kid who's like Taylor made to be enthusiastic and
(09:52):
excited about school, and they've wiped that passion away. And
I went and talked with the principal of our school,
who was a really great administrator and had become a
friend of mine at that point, and I had expressed
more about my concerns and she looked at me and
she said, Mackenzie, I gotta be honest with you. This
is like trying to steer the Titanic. It just can't
be done. And so at that point I knew it
(10:13):
was my time to exit because I didn't want to
see my girls go through the same experience I had
where it was just like, go through the motions, do
what you need to do. I wanted that twelve years
of my kids' lives to be something exciting. I mean,
they're going to spend five days a week, nine months
a year, for hours a day in school. It should
(10:33):
be a place that is invigorating and exciting, and it
should be something that like unlocks our kids' potential. And
that wasn't happening. And actually, did you know there's been
research done on the level of enthusiasm between kindergarten and twelve,
And can you guess the highest level of enthusiasm like
day one of kindergarten, literally kindergarten, it goes down every
(10:56):
year until junior year of high school when they finally
start to see like a light the end of the tunnel.
And that is not the way our kids should be
experiencing so many of those formative years. So I looked around,
and I will say I knew I couldn't homeschool heroes
the people who are able to homeschool, and I didn't
see any other school for me. It wasn't about a
(11:17):
public school versus a private school. It was really fundamentally
the model of a teacher in front of a classroom,
teaching a group of kids in a time based system
who are all at different levels. It's just an impossible job.
And I think teachers have been given this very impossible
job where they've been asked to like empty the ocean
with a bucket full of holes in it. They can't
(11:38):
possibly meet every kid's needs when they're saying I also
am responsible for delivering third grade curriculum. So I looked
around and I kind of imagine, like what would be
possible if we were going to reimagine school? And the
question I kind of asked is like how high is high?
What are kids capable of when you give them great
(11:59):
levels of support and you hold them to high standards
and just are what are they able to do? And
I decided in twenty fourteen to start my own school.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Well, how do you do anything that's different? Right? You
still have a group of kids that are coming in,
they have different levels of abilities, They're still in one place.
How do you create this personalized learning that you're saying
that the other schools couldn't give to your children?
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Well, here's what's really exciting about the time that we
have been in. And this was true in twenty fourteen
when my girls were in third grade and first grade
when I started the very first school. Technology has enabled
us to do so much more and more recently in
the last three years, with the advent of generative AI,
we have the ability to provide a truly personalized, one
(12:46):
to one mastery based learning experience for every single kid.
And you know, if I take you back, you know,
want to go way back in history for a second,
you know, think about the way that Socrates tutored Plato,
who tutored Aristotle, who tutored Alexander the Great. That was
this one to one, very mastery based like follow the interest,
(13:08):
you know, really teach people in depth. Now, of course,
that was only reserved for the very, very elite and
a couple hundred years ago when it was time to
figure out, okay, the industrial revolution is here. We got
to create factory workers. We need to create compliant people
who are educated at a base level that we can
understand how do we educate the masses. And that is
(13:29):
when that teacher in front of the classroom model was
really born. And you know what, it did allow more
people to be educated. And it did that, but in
a couple hundred years nothing had really changed, right, And
there have been learning science papers written by leading universities
that talk about how kids can learn two, five, ten
(13:50):
times faster when they're in a one to one mastery
based environment, But every single one of those papers starts
or ends with the same thing. Unfortunately, these result are
not possible in a teacher in front of the classroom model.
And so what's really amazing now and why it's such
an exciting time in education, is that Artificial intelligence is
(14:11):
the tool that is going to finally allow learning science
to become a really precise and measurable science, just like
when you know the microscope was created and what that
did for biology. Right there is so much potential now
because basically what we do at our schools is every
(14:32):
student receives a personalized learning plan that is created based
on assessing what a child knows, what don't they know,
and then creating a lesson plan that combines both the
knowledge that they have as well as the ability to
take interest that a child has and give them that learning.
And so what we found is that when kids are
(14:54):
learning at the level and the pace that they need,
they're able to do great. But it's only part of
the solution, which I'm happy to tell you about too. Well.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
You mentioned AI, which I can't not focus on that
because there's a lot of fear around it.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
What about the cheating? What about the human connection? What
about the child's ability to actually sit down and read
and write themselves. If you expose them to AI, they're
going to be cheaters for the rest of their lives.
Of I can't even tell you how many things I've
heard about the concern of AI replacing humans and you,
as a headmistress of multiple schools, is that you're actually
(15:34):
bringing AI to children. I know, no wonder you're getting
all this hate.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Well, so here's the thing. There is no question that
there is so much fear and a lack of understanding.
And one of the things that I'm helping families understand
and become aware of is that it's not this dystopian
robot terminator teacher standing in the front of the classroom,
you know, tea a bunch of kids on this. What
(16:02):
it is is we're basically using llms that are feeding
K through eight common Core and then at the high
school level AP curriculum through these personalized learning experiences, and
then we use a vision model to make sure that
we're able to understand how accurately and how efficiently a
(16:22):
child is learning. Here's what we don't use and this
is what so many people associate artificial intelligence with a chatbot. Okay,
here's the thing. A chatbot, think chat GPT or conmego.
It would be amazing if every kid interacted with a
chatbot and said, let's have a Socratic discussion to learn
more about World War two history, and go deep into that. Unfortunately,
(16:45):
the reality is that when kids use chatbots, they tend
to use them to cheat, right, They will copy and
paste the question and answer, and that's what they do.
So that's actually the one aspect of artificial intelligence that
we don't use with our students. Instead, these personalized learning
plans are what kids are able to learn and go with.
(17:06):
Now here's what we see as far as results. In
only two hours a day, our students are learning twice
as fast as students in the rest of the country.
Our classes are in the ninety ninth percentile across the
board and all subjects. In fact, I don't know of
another school who's delivering the kind of academic results, and
(17:27):
especially when you add that we're doing it in two hours.
And here's the big question that kind of comes up,
What in the world do you do with the rest
of the day when you get academics done in a
couple hours. And for us, the answer is we spend
all afternoon developing life skills. And that's kind of the
short summary. We can go into more detail on what
(17:47):
that is, but let me tell you the secret sauce
of what makes this all successful. It is our teachers.
We have transformed the role of the teacher in our
classroom so that instead of having to spend their time
creating lesson plans and delivering lectures and grading papers and homework,
they are able to focus all of their attention on
(18:07):
motivational and emotional support and mentorship. And what that does
is that creates that motivation that a child needs in
order to go and crush their academics. And so what
we're finding is that artificial intelligence is enabling us to
raise human intelligence, both for children from an academic perspective
(18:27):
as well as the time and ability to develop life skills.
But also because we're taking those teachers and we're putting
them right at the center where they can spend time
getting to know every single child, understanding what makes them tick,
what gets them excited when they're struggling with something, what
are the things they say to themselves, and how can
we incorporate better growth mindset strategies. And that's kind of
(18:49):
where the magic is happening and why we're able to
really unlock the potential for every single kid that comes
into our doors.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Wow, so interesting. So one thing you've said is that
is it academics that the Alpha, students only spend two
hours a day on only two hours a day on academics.
And what is is it an app that your team developed?
Is it a software? Because they're obviously not going to
outside apps that anybody can just go and download, right.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Actually they are doing some of that. What are curriculum
or what our we call it time back That is
our learning platform. And what our learning platform does is
we use an a tutor that we built that creates
the lesson plans that match for each student depending on
their level and where their pace is. But what our
students experience when they sit down in the morning, they
(19:40):
come to school, first of all, just to kind of
set the stage. It's a full day school program because
we knows they need that, right, And there's so many
other great things that do come from school, right, So
opportunities to socialize with other students, all of those things.
But they start school every morning and we do a
fifteen minute limit launch think Tony Robbins for kids. This
(20:03):
is a chance for kids to come together and get
excited about the day. There's usually some sort of physical
activity and some sort of maybe impossible challenge that helps
us introduce some sort of a growth mindset concept, so
that when the kid then goes to sit down for
their academic part of the day or whatever else they're doing,
they've taken this energy and this attitude and they're like,
(20:23):
I'm ready to go, right, So we start every day
like that. Then our kids go into the two hour
learning block of their own. Well, they're together in a
class and they've got teachers, we call them guides, but
our teachers are in the classroom, so these kids are
able to be with, you know, similarly aged other children,
but they do. They grab their computers and they go
(20:44):
and they are able to click on the learning plan
that they need for math or reading, science, English, whatever
that is. They go in there and then we practice
something called the Pomodoro method where they spend about twenty
five minutes of focus time in that subject. Then they
get to go and take a break, go run around,
have a recess. They go back to the next subject.
(21:07):
And what we find is that in two hours, our
kids are able to cover all of their academic content
by receiving this personalized thing. And the other thing that's
really cool about it is, you know, you can have
two seven year old kids sitting right next to each other,
and one seven year old is working on algebra while
the other kid is working on his addition and subtraction.
(21:29):
These kids are able to go exactly where they need
to be, and yet they're hanging out with each other.
And during that time, our teachers, they're not teaching academic content,
but what they're doing is they're coaching and supporting these
kids as they're going through their academic lesson to understand like,
have you looked at the resources you need to learn something?
(21:50):
Have you read the explanation? Have you watched the video
that helps? And what we're really doing is we're creating
self driven learners who have the life skill of life
learning how to learn, and that is a skill that
is so important, especially in today's world where we really
do have all the information in the world right at
our fingertips. How do we take that information and use
(22:13):
that to do something bigger? You know, one of the
things I think Risu's true now is it's no longer
just about reading, writing, and arithmetic. It's about what I
call the foresees. It's critical thinking, communication, creativity, and collaboration.
Those are the skills that we want our kids to
really learn, and so when we have all of our
(22:34):
academics done in the first half of the day and
then the rest of the day is filled with life
skills workshops and collaborative, project based, really interactive kind of activities.
It is a fun place to be. And actually that
kind of goes back to our number one commitment that
we make to our families is that kids will love
(22:55):
school because when a kid loves school, it unlocks the
ability for so many other things to happen for them.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Well, then they remember what they actually learned, right, So
I just kind of want to envision myself in that
classroom during those two hours. So is it the kids
are sitting in front of a computer and you have
these motivators. I'm going to call them motivators. I know
you have your own name for it, but basically their
job is to motivate the kids to complete whatever it
(23:21):
is that they're doing. Is it like I excel? Is
it like that kind of stuff where they make the progress?
But it's it is reading and writing and arithmetic essentially
during those apps.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Yeah, they're the core academic skills that they're doing. They're
using a combination of apps that we have built ourselves
as well as third party apps, you know, things like
math Academy is a great math app, I excel as
something else, Grammarly, Egump. There's all kinds of different apps
that have been out. And here's the issue with ed
tech over the last fifteen years because you know, as
(23:51):
as I mentioned, when I started the school in twenty fourteen,
we were using those apps. But just giving a kid
an app and kind of saying hey, go to town
and just work on it doesn't necessarily ensure great, you know,
academic results. Kids can waste time on it, they can
just not even be engaging with the app. And so
(24:11):
what our AI tutor is doing is really making sure
kids are learning through that process very efficiently and then
feeding in the knowledge that they need to be learning
to create these personalized lesson plans. And so, yeah, if
you come into one of our classrooms in the morning
when kids are working, each kid is working on their
own computer, and they're working in kind of groups together
(24:35):
near each other, and our teachers, our guides as we
call them, are you know, supporting them as they needed.
But I will tell you one of the things that's
so fun to see, especially when you walk into one
of our younger classrooms like a kindergartener first grade classroom.
You'll see some kids that are sitting at a table
with one of our guides and they're working on it.
And inevitably you'll always see some kid who's like sitting
(24:58):
in the corner like a couch with his feed up
and his computer upside down doing his work, and you
might think, what's he doing? And what we've realized is
this kid knows how to get his work done, and
he has got that like autonomy over himself to be
able to say, you know what, I'm comfortable when I'm
able to sprawl out and do this and get that
work done. I will say our schools are very much
(25:19):
merit based cultures where we teach kids early early on
how to set goals and how to work towards accomplishing
those goals because they really are in the driver's seat
of their education. And as a result from an early stage,
our kids become really aware of like, hey, this is
the you know, the math that I want to learn today,
(25:41):
and here's how I did on that, And it creates
really a great sense of ownership and control that they have.
And as far as motivation, we are willing to do
whatever it takes to get a kid excited, because if
a kid's not motivated to learn, then you're kind of
up the creek. And so that could be anything from
you know, we had a little girl this past year
(26:02):
who whenever she would get one of her goals, she
and her guide would go in the corner and they
would do a fifteen second Taylor Swift dance party, and
that was enough to get that little girl excited. Right.
We pay our students a school currency for when they
hit their goals. And you know, that's one thing that
people go paying students to learn that seems wrong. Here's
(26:25):
a thing. It is an incredible motivator. And one of
the things that we find is that extrinsic motivation will
eventually lead to kids performing well, and competence leads to confidence,
and suddenly when you're good at math, you're like, I
kind of like math. Math is fun and it's interesting,
(26:46):
and that invariably leads to intrinsic motivation as well. And
so it's a really beautiful kind of system that we've
been able to create here where you get kids that
come in and maybe they're not excited about, you know, school,
or they're feeling behind or they feel like they're not smart,
and when you show them the ability to say, hey,
(27:06):
when you work at your pace and your level, you
can be really capable and you can get great results.
And then suddenly these kids turn on and they get
excited and they have time to develop those interests and
you know, figure out that that intersection again between their
passions and their talents. If you like the.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Michael Berry Show and Podcast, please tell one friend, and
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Michael at Michael Berryshow dot com, or simply by clicking
(27:48):
on our website, Michael Berryshow dot com. The Michael Berry
Show and Podcast is produced by Ramon Roeblis, the King
of Ding. Executive producer is Chad Knakanishi. Jim Mudd is
the creative director. Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery and Shenanigans are provided
(28:14):
by Chance MacLean. Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily
Bull is our assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated
and often incorporated into our production. Where possible, we give credit.
Where not, we take all the credit for ourselves. God
(28:35):
bless the memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis, be
a simple man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God
bless America. Finally, if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD,
call Camp Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven
(28:56):
PTSD and a combat veteran will answer the phone to
provide free counseling
Speaker 3 (29:05):
M
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