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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#142: She Quit Teaching After 24 Years to Build THIS School | Barefoot Unschooling Success Story
Discover how former UK teacher Kate transformed 24 years of mainstream education experience into "The Hive Adventure" - a revolutionary barefoot unschool in the Dominican Republic. In this inspiring episode, Kate shares her journey from French grammar teacher to creating a human-centered learning environment where students grow their own food, tackle global sustainability challenges, and learn emotional regulation from the inside out.
What You'll Learn:
- How to create child-led, project-based learning experiences
- Teaching emotional regulation and self-awareness to children
- Building a food forest and garden-to-plate education program
- Implementing social impact projects focused on UN global goals
- The difference between coddling feelings vs. teaching healthy emotional processing
- Why barefoot learning and outdoor education improve mental health
- Starting alternative education programs (micro-schools, learning pods, unschools)
Perfect for homeschool families, alternative education advocates, and parents seeking nature-based, child-centered learning approaches. Kate's story proves you can create meaningful educational change anywhere in the world.
The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide - Thinking about homeschooling but don't know where to start? Cheryl created this comprehensive guide which compiles insights from her interviews with over 120 homeschooling families across the country. From navigating state laws to finding your style to working while homeschooling- this eBook covers it all. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident. Purchase Here!
Let's Talk, Emergencies!
The most important lessons we can teach our kids aren't reading, writing, and math - they're how to keep themselves and others safe. Cheryl created this essential children's book which covers everything from dialing 911 on a locked cell phone to staying safe online, water safety, fire safety, and more. Let's Talk Emergencies! gives children the knowledge and confidence to handle real-world situations. These are conversations we shouldn't put off. Available on Amazon
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Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl, and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why people are homeschooling? How do you do it? How does it differ from region to region? And should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome. And with us today, I have Kate from the Hive Adventure in the Dominican Republic. Welcome, Kate. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to speak Kate. I saw one of your comments maybe on Instagram and had reached out to say, hey, come on my podcast anytime. So I don't remember what your exact comment was, but I was looking at your Instagram account just now, and you have a really unique story. So I'm not surprised that I asked you to come on the show. You were a teacher in the United Kingdom, and now you have changed everything and you're in the Dominicans. Why don't you just start out by telling us how long you had been a teacher?
Speaker:So I started teaching in 2001, so 24 years ago. Um, and I stayed in mainstream education for about 15, 16 years, and then I shifted across to education consultancy, and from there I kind of kept going, kept going, kept going until I dropped off the mat and ended up here in Dominican Republic, where I opened my own education center, which isn't really a school.
Speaker 1:So what where along the line did you say, hey, maybe kids aren't supposed to learn like this? Maybe there's a better way.
Speaker:In my first job, the first job I had, I went into went into the classroom determined to be, you know, the best teacher ever. And I very quickly saw that despite my best efforts, there would be some students who were doing really well at learning in the way that I was teaching, and others who would just stare at me blankly. And I began to wonder whether it wasn't just about me and my teaching, whether it was about them and what's going on inside them and how they view themselves as individuals and learners, and what might be in the way of them being able to access learning in that way. And so I started to change up the way that I did things and just a much more human approach. Just wanting to get to know the children and what did they need and what could I provide. And so I very slowly made my way along the continuum from very I started off as a French grammar teacher. So, like very traditional into now very alternative.
Speaker 1:So, what did alternative look like?
Speaker:So now I run what I'm calling a barefoot unschool for change makers. So it's kind of like school in that there are lots of young people there gathered together and we learn in the same space, and that's probably where the comparison ends. There's no real timetable, we don't have bells, we decide what we want to learn, we decide how we want to learn it, when we want to learn it, when we think we've learned enough. So everything is different. Everything is much more human-centered, so we kind of go right from the nervous system outwards. So every day we check into how we're feeling and whether or not we think that we are in the right frame of mind and we have the right energy and the right vibe for what we plan to do today. And if we don't, then we either change how we feel or we change what we were going to do. So we have complete freedom and flexibility to make sure that what we want to achieve and how ready we are to get that done match. And so, if not, we're kind of always playing this game of figuring out how we can meet in the middle so that we can get into flow, so that we can do what we want to do and learn what we want to learn in the most effective and healthy way.
Speaker 1:So I have two questions for you. One, well, I guess first I'll ask you, how come you decided to go to the Dominican Republic to do this? Could you not do this in the UK?
Speaker:So it would be much harder to do this in the UK. And also, it wasn't my plan to end up here in Dominican Republic. I had this plan that I would go off on a whole year and research different alternative educational provisions and meet the families who use them because I don't I'd grown up in a tradition I went to a traditional school, my parents were very traditional, I had a very traditional start to my education career. So I hadn't really spent a lot of time with people who chose to do it differently. So that was my plan. My plan was to really understand all of the different models that were out there. And so I sold my house, I sold my car, I sold everything I owned to fund this incredible trip around the world to meet the most interesting people I could find. And we set off about two weeks ahead of COVID. And so we only made it as far as the Dominican Republic, and we had to decide whether we were going to stick or twist. And so we decided to stick, and then the hive kind of all of a sudden we were in the right place at the right time with the right skills, and there was the right need in the community to do something different for the children because all of the mainstream schools had closed, and so we started just in a little local yoga sharla with about 10 or 11 children, and we kind of started to design our own model for learning based on work that I'd previously done, and it kind of grew from there and it's been growing ever since.
Speaker 1:That is so cool. What did COVID look like in places like the UK or the Dominican Republic?
Speaker:So in the UK it was tough. It was masks and lockdown, and you couldn't go out of your house, everything closed down, it was really difficult. And in the Dominican Republic, it didn't feel like that because you mostly live outdoors anyway. So there was a um you you'd have to wear a mask if you went into a public space, if you went into a supermarket. But apart from that, it wasn't it wasn't really noticeable. We managed to set up a pod, so we had a small group and we made sure that we all met the criteria so we could still meet in person and we didn't have to wear masks and the children were all running around barefoot outside, which I think is why it became popular so quickly, because people were desperately looking for somewhere that they could bring their children to where they would be able to just have a more natural childhood.
Speaker 1:Normalcy, yes. So I guess that makes me really sad. I kind of assumed that places like the Dominican or, you know, that weren't so corporate that they didn't I was kind of hoping like they didn't change at all, you know. It makes me sad to think that even they fell for it. They had to wear masks in the grocery stores. Come on. People like they've been through a lot. These people that live there have been through a lot. They're really worried about some sniffles. But it's government, I understand. It's government, yeah.
Speaker:And they stayed open, so it was one of the only countries that you could easily fly in and out of. So so they did as little as they could get away with, it looks like. Um and we were watching the statistics, and it either looked like nobody was getting sick or nobody was counting. It was it was hard to understand why the data was the way it was, but it really didn't it didn't appear to hit as hard here as it did in other places.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and even that's debatable. Like Did you really have COVID or did the hospital just kill you?
Speaker:You know, or just from looking at the data, yeah.
Speaker 1:Crazy, crazy times, whoever thought we'd be living through something like this. Okay, so now I love what you're saying with like the barefoot, and you you have like a food forest that you are growing. So are the kids actually growing their own food that they eat for lunches and stuff too?
Speaker:Yeah, so we have our little herb garden, we have lots of fruit, different fruit that we just go and pick in the morning, whatever's ripe. And then we have plantain and yucca and yeltia. There are all these root vegetables that are from here. So we dig those up and we make them into arapitas and we have them for lunch. So there's lots of kind of organic garden to plate. Today we were making coconut oil. So they did the whole process of coconut oil by hand. So it's taken about a week to do it day by day by day. But yeah, yeah, we do lots of things like that.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so cool. Okay, now when you're talking about like we all talk about our feelings and kind of figure out what we have to do to all get on the same page. Okay, I love that. But you also have, at least here in the States, where in the school system or even in colleges, you see it. My husband was just working in a college because he does HVAC, and he goes, There's a room for like when kids aren't feeling emotionally safe, they can go and like. So there is also this spin on coddling to kids and college students' feelings, and like, oh, we can't say that because we have to coddle. We can't, you know. So it what is the difference? Where's that line where you're teaching kids to actually understand what they're feeling and maybe think about why am I feeling this way? Which it's holds true for me too. I'll yell at my kids like earlier today, you know, I'm talking about it, just give me five minutes. And it's like, it's not really about them, like what's going on inside of me, you know, what happened in my childhood? Why am I feeling this way? And then, and then totally going the other way, where like these 18-year-olds just feel so entitled to be like, I can't work or do anything because I'm feeling triggered. You know, do you where is that line? It's a fine line. How do you do it in a healthy manner?
Speaker:So the whole purpose of doing it is so that your window of tolerance gets bigger, not smaller. So when you get to the point where you think that you can't cope with a challenge, whether that challenge is this big or this big, it's your capacity to cope with the challenge. So, what we're learning is that challenges will arise and we will feel feelings in response to the challenge, and then we have the choice to manage those feelings and to find a way through that challenge so that we can get to the other side. And so, if you get dysregulated very easily, your window of what you can tolerate shrinks, and so you get overwhelmed really quickly. And so, when you learn self-regulation and you practice kind of dancing to the edge of what feels comfortable and learning how to stay there, it's a bit like you know, like cold water therapy is really all the rage now. Like you have a cold shower and you learn to breathe through it, right? You're what sets sets off when you get in the cold shower is your like existential threat alarm goes off. You're gonna die, it's freezing. Obviously, it's not, it's just a cold shower, right? And you can override that just through breathing and reminding yourself that it's just a cold shower. Well, the same goes for this is a room full of people I don't know. It's okay, it's not an existential threat, it's just a room full of people you don't know. This is something I think I'm gonna really suck at, and I don't want to humiliate myself, but that's okay because it's not gonna kill you, right? You might suck at it, it might feel humiliating, but you have all of these like levers inside your body that you can use. You can use your breath, you can ground your feet, you can roll your shoulders back, you can make yourself wider. There are all these little tricks and hacks that you can do for your nervous system, which makes it kind of stand down from putting you into this sense that you are genuinely at threat.
Speaker 1:Thinking about homeschooling but don't know where to start? Well, I've interviewed a few people on the topic. Actually, 120 interviews at this point with homeschooling families from across the country and the world. And what I've done is I've packed everything I've learned into an e-book called The Homeschool How to Complete Starter Guide. From navigating your state's laws to finding your homeschooling style, from working while homeschooling to supporting kids with special needs. This guide covers it all with real stories from real families who've walked this path. I've taken the best insights, the best resources, and put them all into this guide. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident. Get your copy of the Homeschool How-To Complete Starter Guide today and discover that homeschooling isn't just about education. It's about getting what you want out of each day, not what somebody else wants out of you. You can grab the link to this ebook in the show's description or head on over to the homeschoolhowto.com.
Speaker:You think you're in threat, but you're not really. It's not like a lion or a tiger in the real world. It's just a social situation that you feel uncomfortable in. So we're learning how to do that every day. So we're checking into how we feel, understanding why we feel that way, and then and then it's like, well, what are you gonna do about that? Like, how are we gonna get from how we're feeling now to how we want to be feeling so that we don't get stuck there? So it's really the antidote to this sense that that we can't because it feels uncomfortable. It's learning how to be comfortable whilst being uncomfortable. That's what self-regulation is. I love that.
Speaker 1:I feel like I could have paid a lot of money in therapy to learn that. But here you are, put right in front of me. Is it too late for me at 41?
Speaker:No, not at all. We I'm I I do training in this for parents and educators, police officers, social workers, anyone who really is in that human-to-human interface on a daily basis. And once you understand dysregulation and how somebody else's dysregulation can impact you, and how yours can impact somebody else, you can then stop it coming in towards you, and you can change what you're putting out into the world. So it's great for parents, especially if you're getting to that point where you either have toddlers with really big feelings or teenagers with really big feelings, and everybody's kind of prefrontal cortex is going through something. Understanding why and having strategies that you can use is hugely beneficial to just manage to kind of keep calm, even when everything around you is chaos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is so important. They don't teach us that in public school at all. They you know what they do? They medicate you. Yes.
unknown:That's what they do.
Speaker 1:Yes. And it took me a while to realize I would always get triggered with my son because he's so hyperactive and he's always loud and he's always pounding his feet as he's running from this room to that room. And one day I realize I would have these big reactions. Stop doing it! And one day I realized I'm like, oh my God, it's because my father was always loud and pounding around when I was a kid. So I probably do go into that fight or flight. I just envision him as that, you know, drunk that's making a lot of noise and slamming doors and stuff. So yeah, I don't, I in my mind, and that now I mean, I guess I'm getting kind of used to it because he's seven, but I've explained that to him before. I'm like, listen, I don't know how to regulate my emotions, but this is why I'm yelling at you for it.
Speaker:That's nothing to do with you. And then and then we talk about we talk about possible solutions, like what can you do? That's one of the reasons the hive is barefoot. Yes, there's all the the health benefits of being barefoot, um, and I think they're well understood, but also it just slows you down. It just makes you move more gently through the world, it keeps you connected and grounded, and it gets rid of that thumping noise that children make when they're running through somewhere with their shoes on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a great point. So so you're you're are you staying in the Dominican now for the duration? This is where your home and heart is?
Speaker:I think so. So I have a home here, but my daughter's now 13, so she's spent the last five or six years here with me, and so she's now wanting to branch out a bit and to go to bigger cities and do some other things. So this is always gonna be my home, and then we sort of adventure out from here to try and give her a broad experience of different places and different cultures too. So we're enjoying that. I'm ready to I'm ready to retire and stop, and she's just kind of getting into this I want to see the whole world, and she still wants me to come with her, and that's not gonna last for much longer, so we're doing lots of exploring too, which is nice.
Speaker 1:Well, how cool! So, do you have people that can maintain the hive while you go do that?
Speaker:So at the moment, I've just got my friend Beth. She's come over from the UK. We've been working together on and off for the last four or five years. So, yes, I can now hop away.
Speaker 1:So, people will pay you as if you're sort of a private school there?
Speaker:Yeah, but we we run in short bursts, so we do these programs that run for six weeks, and so families all fly in from different places on the planet. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's not just Dominican children, or is it any?
Speaker:Some, sometimes. So in the summer we have Dominican children, but most of the time in winter, they're international students, and so they come together from all over the world, and we work on a themed project together around one of the global goals, and we look at a global challenge and how that is felt in different places in the world, and how it's felt here in Cabrera, and then we look at we get inspiration from people who are working on that problem, and we come up with our own ideas and we implement them somewhere in the local community, so that we're doing these little social impact projects that we leave a legacy of something positive in the local community, and the skills that we learn through doing it, we then take back to where we came from, and so we can reintroduce those skills again when we come across another challenge in our local community. So that's kind of why it's called the hive. We all come together, we work on something, and then we sort of buzz away and can be busy little bees somewhere else on the planet.
Speaker 1:My goodness. So is it mostly homeschooled students that come to you?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is so cool. And you've been doing it since 2001, you said? Or I'm sorry. No, that's when you started teaching. Um, 2021? 2020. We started in the summer of 2020. Wow, so five years now. That's just amazing. What is an example of one of the problems, world problems that you've worked on?
Speaker:So we, for example, clean water and sanitation is one of them. And so that means very different things in different places. So maybe in in England or in New York, you're looking at how many chemicals are pumped into the water that comes out of the faucet that you drink, or in flint in in Michigan, right? Like, what does that mean to have clean water and sanitation? And then here in Dominican Republic, there's no water that comes, there's no drinking water that comes through the faucet. All the water comes directly from the river. So then we're looking at the problem much further back. Like, how do we keep our rivers clean so that the water that comes into our houses is clean? How do we get clean drinking water? Where does that come from? How does that impact on all of the choices that we make? Um, and then what can we do about it? So make things like rainwater catchers to irrigate the garden. We've made water filters to filter the water that comes through. So we're and then we're looking at what goes into the water system. So what shampoos do we use, what all of those different things that they're all interconnected. And last year we met um the Kogi tribe from Colombia, and they're, I don't know if you know about them, but they're a pre-historic tribe that disappeared into the mountains in Colombia when Christopher Columbus came, and they stayed there and they hid, and they've been there the whole time, still dressed in white, still living in exactly the same way. What are their names?
Speaker 1:The Kogi tribe, K-O-G. Oh my gosh. Right, because Christopher Columbus actually never touched like our soil up here, wasn't he? Down in South America. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:And so they taught us how their understanding of the world is is very different from ours and how everything is interconnected. And so when we're looking at water cycles, we're looking at it now, even on a on a in a spiritual way. Like apparently, every cloud has a place that it's supposed to be, and every water drop has a place that it's supposed to be, and so and they're supposed to move, and so the rain knows which cloud it came from, and it's when it turns into vapor, it wants to get back to its original cloud. It just has this beautiful way of looking at the world. So when you move rivers and when you pollute the water, you're stopping that from being able to happen, you're stopping the earth from being able to heal itself. So I've learned way more by doing this than I ever did when I was a standard teacher.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I learned more homeschooling my seven-year-old than I ever did in my own education with four years at the university. It's crazy. Even just yesterday, we were reading a kid's book on the Erie Canal, and I live right near it. I mean, you know, we grew up next to it, grew up next to the Hudson River. He never taught us anything about that stuff. And here I am reading these kids' books to him, and I'm like, oh my gosh, this started America. This is amazing. And and it's funny that today we were taking a walk at my near my sister, well, uh, at my sister's house, and we walked past a building that said 1760 on the front, you know, established in 1760. And I go, Well, that's amazing. That's before America even became America. Like, what happened? What was going on that made these people come to this location and build this house? How'd they get the bricks here? And I'm like asking all these questions that the old me never would have even thought to ask. I mean, I I lived on that road actually at one time, never gave that house a second look. And here I am now paying attention to the date and wondering what happened and looking at what they have across the street from them, um, all the headstones, and I'm like, oh, can I sneak over there and see the dates on those? And it it really, once you're out of that matrix, yeah, it's a whole world opens up. So I wonder, did anybody die of COVID in the Kogi tribe? That's my next question. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker:I wouldn't I would suspect not.
Speaker 1:No. They're not vaccinating either. None of them have autism. Oh my goodness. So this is so cool. So, all right, you are where is your next adventure with your daughter?
Speaker:So we're going back to Europe this summer. She's gonna go into a British secondary school for six weeks, kind of to try it out so that she can compare and contrast homeschool and this kind of unschooling that we do at the hive and traditional real school, if you like. So that's gonna be fun. And then we're looking at maybe doing working up towards a United World College or something like that. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see how the school experiment goes. At the moment, she has this romantic notion of how wonderful it's gonna be, and I don't know, maybe it will be, maybe it won't, but we have to try it out to see.
Speaker 1:She was in school before 2020, though, right? She would have been really young.
Speaker:Yeah, she started and she started off really enthusiastic, really bright, and very quickly was coming home and saying, Why do I have to sit with my legs crossed in the same way? And why do I have to stop when I'm really enjoying what I'm doing? And why do I have to why do I have to? Why do I have to? Why do I have to? Again and again. And I just looked at her and I went, You don't, you don't have to. I know that this isn't the best way for you to learn. I know it. I've been learning about it and doing it my whole life, and now I'm watching the light go off inside you. I'm like, enough, enough, enough. That's it. We have to get out.
Speaker 1:And so we did. So amazing. What has been like the most impactful experience that you've had at the hive, like watching children or maybe something a child accomplished, or really changed, I don't know, what what changed you, um, I guess.
Speaker:So the bit I always enjoy, so I kind of designed this whole model for learning that follows the self-regulation cycle of the child. And so you kind of come in and then you get ready for learning, and then you go on this learning journey, and then you come to the end, and you stop, and you come out, and you integrate what you've learned and you move on. And every time, every time we get get everybody going, and they go round and round and round, and it gets to the point where we're just coming to the end, and it's chaos, and I think it's not gonna work. This time it's not gonna work, and and then every time it does, every time it comes together, and the children have this incredible moment where they realize that they did something that they genuinely didn't believe that they could, and even on the outside, I'm looking at it and going, I'm not sure if they can. And then and then they get there and it comes together, and and you see them walking out of the experience, saying, I know more about myself, I know more about other people, I know more about the planet, I know more about my place in all of this, I know that I can do hard things.
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Speaker:And so we get feedback from the kids, things like, I've never been listened to before, nobody ever cared what I thought before. And it breaks my heart to think that that that's true. I know that that's true because I used to be inside the system. And so, um, so I think that's never gets old. Even after 24 years of teaching, when you see kids really light up and start to really believe in themselves, that's that's what keeps me doing it for sure.
Speaker 1:You know, and there is something to be said for like growing the food, and then, you know, they're picking it or they're making whatever meal they're going to have with what they've helped grow. There's a sort of whole cycle to that, and then an accomplishment at the end, a satisfaction to it. Same thing with let's find this problem, let's see what other, what other impacts it has, and let's figure out how we can fix this and implement that into society and actually, you know, that is a cyclical kind of thing with a very fulfilling, you know, some sort of fulfillment at the end. And there's just not any of that in school. They make test scores be what they want to fulfill kids, and it's just not going to happen because you're teaching kids something. First of all, you're separating every subject in school. So you can't integrate, you know, French with any sort of history or philosophy or science, you know, food. You all of those are separate. And so it doesn't mean anything when I'm just learning French to learn, here's a sentence in French, repeat it. You know, it's like, why? Like your daughter's saying, why do I have to do this? But when it can all integrate, and then at the end, you actually feel accomplished because you had the struggle. And then you even with picking food, it's like, I don't feel like going over there, just you know, hand me food. Well, no, you do it and you water the plants and you weed them and plant them. And um, there is just such a satisfaction to where I I have thought this for a while that depression would not be what it is today if kids actually felt fulfilled in in any sort of way.
Speaker:Yeah, but getting your hands into the earth and growing something is an incredibly sort of grounding, empowering. It's really good for your mental health, it's good for your body. And we do things like nearly every child that comes plants a pineapple because you just plant the top of the pine, you know, the spiky bit that you pull off? That's you plant that, but it takes three years for one pineapple to come out of each plant. So the pineapples that they pick were planted by children three years ago, and so every time there's like new a new crop of pineapples coming, and then they grow, then they plant them again. So there's this real sense of leaving something behind for people that are gonna come after you, and so doing something that isn't just about you, that's bigger than you, and that's lovely as well. And so we've had families that have come back after a couple of years, they go, I don't know which one is my pineapple, but they're all they're all in there together.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's brilliant. How did you come up with this concept for all of it? I mean, this is really brilliant.
Speaker:It all came together. So when I left teaching in England, we had it was just a moment in time in the UK around 2015. A lot of the Middle East was at war, and we had a huge number of people coming in through as refugees, and they would get to the top of France and they were aiming for the UK, but they couldn't get to the UK because they couldn't get across. And so it just built up with this huge unofficial refugee camp, and it wasn't recognized by the United Nations, there was no Oxfam, there were no there was nobody there helping. And so I was I kind of had time on my hands. I was supposed to be setting up my education consultancy, but I spoke French and I was a mum and I was available and I could go. And I thought that at that time my son was 17, maybe that kind of age. And I thought that if if I had had to send my son out into the world, if I thought that was the only way that I could save his life, and he'd walked for miles, who would I want to receive him? And it wouldn't be like the racist people waving flags and saying, Go back. I would I would want somebody like me to give him a hug and give him a hot meal and help him figure out how he was going to start his life. So I went there to work in the refugee camp, and it was at that point that I realized that we needed a more human-centered approach to everything. That that underneath everybody's experience were their nervous systems and their feelings. And so that's how I developed this model and this framework that we use, and and that became the central piece from which everything else grew over the years. And then now I've ended up with a whole unschool that that teaches teaches that from the inside out.
Speaker 1:Ah, that's just amazing. You should write this business model down and sell the business model to people so they can replicate this. I mean, we need these types of schools all over. We do have stuff, you know, like like my son tomorrow is going to a wilderness class that he does for six or eight weeks every fall and every spring, you know, where they're outside. But I mean, this just sounds so cool. I really feel like that would be a gold mine. I and I see these little schools popping up everywhere in the States at least. People are definitely realizing. That, yeah, sitting for seven hours a day, especially as a child, is not the way to do it. Are the schools in the UK very similar to the ones in the States? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah. And we we learn from what you do in America. So you had charter schools, then we had something similar. So yeah, they're very similar.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Well, I love this idea. I'm going to attach the link to your school in the show's description and you know, share some of this on the social media so that people can check you out and whether they can come visit you and be a part of your school or, you know, just kind of start this sort of stuff on their own. I mean, this is just so great. Like what I mean, I can't wait till the future when you hear what these kids are actually doing. I mean, have you heard talk to some of your original students that you've had and what they're doing today and how this impacted them?
Speaker:So funnily enough, I I started a model that was similar to this but inside mainstream school. So it was it was about as um as creative as I was allowed to get within the paradigm of a mainstream school. And those students now are like 24, something like that. Um, and a colleague of mine bumped into some of them at an event in the town where I used to live. And they were the like the first ever cohort of what we called learning to learn, our learning to learn students, where we focused on how to learn, not what to learn. And they're all doing really interesting things, they've been really successful. And when they took their exam results, all their exam results went up. Not that that was the point of it, it was a happy byproduct of this model that we designed. And so that that was really lovely to see them as fully grown adults in the world and to know that they remembered it fondly, they remembered the lessons, they remembered the model, they remembered us, and they felt that it had supported them to feel more confident in themselves and braver to try new things, and all the things that we wanted it to do. So it's been it's been a labor of love. It's been a kind of a 20-year journey to get to here, and I suppose to get to the point in life where I feel brave enough to talk about what I'm doing and to say, you know, I guess there's more sand in the bottom of my sand timer than there is in the top. And so I don't have time to like playing small and just doing it quietly in my corner. I feel like I need to start shouting about it a bit more. So thank you for having me on so I can.
Speaker 1:I hope you continue shouting about it and people start realizing. I think they're waking up, but to hear this sort of business model is just amazing. Congratulations to all that you've accomplished and all that thank you for all that you're doing in the world. Not even just with the students, but giving them an idea of how can we make the world better. Imagine if every student graduated with that in mind. How can we we can all agree that the water is not clean, that's not a political thing. Yeah, there are so many chemicals, so many things being dumped in there. Um, yeah, and we all drink it. So, and our kids, it's all gonna be legacies for our kids. So, yeah, we it is definitely something that you need to fix. That's brilliant. Kate, thank you so much for being on today. Um, I will put the link to your website and your Instagram in the show's description and anything else that you would like me to include. So I hope you all go check that out. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for having me. It was lovely talking to you. Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.