KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments through microschooling. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED | The Prenda Podcast
Episode 81: Embracing your Child's Uniqueness. A Conversation with Matt Bowman.
We explore how to choose schooling with intention and build an “open education” that taps every resource that fits your child. Matt Bowman shares five building blocks that move families from one-size-fits-all to agency, community, and practical pathways beyond high school.
• partnering with parents as primary educators
• the myth of the average student and unique needs
• choosing your child over your reputation
• mapping interests, family needs, and resources
• giving kids a real voice in decisions
• two-week learner sprints and showcase nights
• play, limits, and latitude for engagement
• microschools and community as an antidote to AI noise
• flexible post–high school pathways including apprenticeships and certifications
About our guest
Matt Bowman is an innovator in education and technology and is deeply dedicated to transforming the way children learn. He and his wife, Amy, founded OpenEd together, and the Bowmans have spent over three decades championing personalized education, combining cutting-edge technology with an entrepreneurial spirit to help students thrive in a rapidly changing world. A former sixth-grade teacher and tech executive, Matt has been at the forefront of online education since the 1990s.
Connect with Matt
Open Education
OpenEd.co
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About the podcast
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
Important links:
• Connect with us on social
• Get our free literacy curriculum
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Being intentional. If you if the there's one thing you want to take away, people listening, be intentional about what you're doing with your kids because you love your kids more than anything else. You want what's best for them. It's time to force yourself through the discomfort of you know all that pressure. I I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, and I trust that this is gonna work out great. So whatever, yeah, and I agree with you, Matt. Whatever you choose, as long as you're choosing it and not just sort of allowing it to happen to you. Hey, I'm Kelly Smith. Welcome to the Prenda Podcast. I'm excited today to be talking to Matt Bowman. Matt's an innovator in education and technology. He's deeply dedicated to transforming the way children learn. He and his wife Amy founded Open Ed together, and the Bowman's spent over three decades going all the way back to being a teenager helping personalize education for kids. They've combined cutting-edge technology with an entrepreneurial spirit to help students thrive in a rapidly changing world. Matt's a former sixth grade teacher and a tech executive, and he's been at the forefront of online education since the 1990s. We're gonna talk all about Matt's journey, the principles and guiding building blocks that really motivate him and drive him. And he's built this up over working with a lot, a lot of kids over a long period of time. I think you'll find it super interesting just to look into Matt's brain and his soul in this conversation and hopefully take something away that can help you and your efforts to empower kids and help other people become learners. So, with that, let's get into it. I'm so excited to be here with Matt Bowman. Matt is the founder and CEO. We'll talk about your background specifically here in a little bit of open ed and what you've done before that. But Matt, can you give us just like a quick intro? And I'd love to start as far back as you're willing to go with your encounter with this thing we call school.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's great to be with you, Kelly. Uh, so happy with everything that Brent has been doing, very mission-aligned with your work. So uh I'll go back to birth. Uh, I was born to two educators. So there you go. That's that's the short story. Um, I started actually my first education company when I was 17. I ran a summer sports camp for neighborhood kids and just loved teaching kids stuff. And then I ended up going to college and getting my degree in elementary education, and just educator is just in my DNA. So I even looked up and like I think I had a grandma and a great-grandma that were teachers, so it goes a long way back in education in my blood.
SPEAKER_02:And you were a teacher yourself at one point. Can you talk a little bit about your experience in the classroom? What were you hoping that would be and and what was it like?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I taught sixth grade up in Washington State, loved it. That age group is just one of my favorite age groups, honestly. It's just so exciting to see that transition from young to teen to, you know, into adulthood. So, you know, to answer your question on what, you know, I I jumped into teaching thinking I, you know, really wanted to change the world and help kids, as teachers do, and educators want to. Um, you know, looking back, we stifle so much of that energy in the classroom. Teachers aren't given that freedom to just excite and inspire young minds. We have turned teaching into test preppers, and that's it. And it just drives me crazy. So, anyway, that was yeah, I love teaching. I loved helping. We did a lot of self-directed learning projects. I really saw that that can work if you give kids space to think on their own instead of trying to overly structure every minute of their day, uh, especially that 10 to 14 year old age group. I actually got my master's degree during that time and focused my research on the 10 to 14 year old forgotten child because we often treat them as, you know, oh, they're too old for elementary school, but they're too young for high school. And so it's like, what do you do with this age group that is, you know, research shows child development, they change more during those four years than any other time in their life, except birth to three. And if we think of birth to three change, yeah, that's massive. And then 10 to 14 year olds, they change the that next most.
SPEAKER_02:Well, they're just crazy. Wow. So you were there. I think it is a special type of person that can see the beauty in that age group. I you definitely hear, yeah, they they get a bad rap in the teacher's lounge, let's just say. And uh my wife and I were just at a church camp. We were volunteering with kids around that, you know, kind of the upper end of that age group. And it's uh it's fascinating. I mean, you can see that it's not the most natural thing in the world to love them the way you know you want to scoop up a baby and and hold them. And yet, if you can see past all of the shenanigans, there's something truly beautiful about it. I mean, they're so scared and they're encountering all these changes, and that's that's amazing that you were able to see that as a teacher. Did you feel like you were authorized or allowed to do some of the student-centered things that you wanted to do? I mean, tell tell more of your story because I think this is gonna lead to what you've done since.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so it was funny. I realized that early on, teachers do have a lot of control. They have some outside pressures, but at the end of the day, depending on your principal or district or whatever, but we had a really great principal, a really great team, and it was kind of like just help help kids. And it was interesting. I found myself more accountable to the parents in my classroom than to the system or to administrators. And so as long as I was trying to communicate well with parents and say, here's what we're doing, here's where we're going, that was a really key learning insight for me that the parent, the most engaged parents were the ones that really were keeping me on track and making sure that I was doing things that were helping their children.
SPEAKER_02:Now, Matt, let's just pause there. How did that's really rare in a traditional classroom to get that sense of accountability to the parents and this idea that these are my customers and I want them to be happy? You didn't have to feel that way. I mean, how did that happen? I I imagine there were people in the same building as you running classes that didn't feel that way about the the parents. So, where did that come from for you and how did you get to that?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you're correct that I was a lone wolf in the in that sense that not many teachers shared that perspective that I had. And where it came from, I don't know. I think just the general principle, the DNA in me is we're there to help families. Like I had the perspective that parents need help. And so that's what I was doing. I was providing a service to partner with the parent to help raise this fun and energetic 11-year-old, right? And so, you know, it's a good question. I don't know where it came from. My mom, her DNA is just helps everybody. She just, that is just who she is, and I've got to give some credit to her on that. Just raise me as just always try to help and and see where people need help. And parents, especially of 11-year-olds, need help. And so I wanted to be, you know, help a helpful person for that.
SPEAKER_02:It's interesting to hear you use this word help. I mean, I think there's been debate in recent years in education about whose kids these are anyway. That that sort of question. And, you know, I think there are educators, and I think it's well-meaning in in a majority of cases, that really take primary, they feel primary responsibility. Like the parents don't know, I have to get them to this place. But even embedded in what you're saying, you're saying I'm looking at these parents. Implicitly, you're saying it's their responsibility to raise the best versions of these young people as they can. And I see myself as a a helper, a servant to support that cause. I mean, I would just want to like, I'm dwelling on this a little bit extra because I hope our listeners are reflecting on just the underlying assumptions behind what education even is. It's not give us your children for 13 years and we'll turn them into something amazing. It's let me help you. And in each case, that's something amazing that I think everybody wants for their children. It could look different, right? And and I will get into the personalization aspect of it as well. But I think that servant leadership and that desire to help, like you're talking about, is really at the at the core. So where did it where to go from there? I mean, you didn't teach forever. You you spent some time in the classroom and then you you did other things.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, well, let me just cite something uh because I'm I'm glad you went deep on that, on that principle of partnering with families and not saying that it's the public school's role to do it all. Right? Because and in our book, my wife and I, we have five children and we're raising them, and part of that story we can get to. But we I share this, or she writes this in in the foreword, assessed how many hours a day children are in a traditional public school setting versus at home. And we said, you know what, let's allocate ten hours a day as potential learning opportunities, right? On a very generous term of what learning is, right? So we said, let's give ten hours. That's still 14 hours that we're saying non-learning, which is probably not even accurate, but we'll just give ten. And if there's three hundred and sixty-five days a year, that's an easy math, that's three hundred and you know, three thousand six hundred and fifty hours. They're only in school, quote unquote, the public school setting for like twelve hundred of those hours. The other thirty, what, uh, twenty thour hundred hours is at home or under you know direct control and supervision of the parent. So that's I think what initiated that was that the what and and I and we say this in the book too, I is whatever testing we do in school, they're measuring what's happening outside of school more than what they're measuring inside of school. And so when I realized that, you know, 180 days for six and a half hours or whatever, that's such a small contribution to the child's uh overall learning experience that you've gotta partner with parents. And it is the parent's primary role of education of their children and tap into all the resources that they can find to help make their child be successful.
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely. And it's it's so beautiful. I I want to pause here just a minute and make sure readers know this book is really fascinating. I'm ordering my copy right now, so I I've just checked out the intro work. But the title of the book is Open Education, and the subtitle I think is just fascinating: How to Reimagine Learning, Ignite Curiosity, and Prepare Your Kids for Success. Your kids, right? And and I think getting back to what we're talking about, I think that's what parents want. I happen to be at a conference right now. I'm in Northern California meeting with a lot of you know people thinking hard about the future, and it's mostly technology and things like that. A lot of these folks don't even have kids yet, and yet they're being proactive, they're asking themselves questions about what they want for their kids and what kind of family culture do they want to create, and what educational opportunities and you know, what are their values and their issues. So what we're seeing is a a generation that's coming up really much more um, I don't know, empowered, much more proactive as opposed to I think what you know, my parents were amazing, but I think what they thought was, I'm gonna send my kid to school and just make sure they do their homework and then hope that the system does its thing, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, no, I mean we could unpack all those things that you just said. It's so powerful. Uh yes, the next generation of parents, uh even if they have young kids now or they're they're about to have children, are asking themselves, what is the role of education, right? And and and traditional public school system. And I kind of have reflected on that, you know, we things move in in you know, let's say 10 or you know, a couple of decades, but only 20 years ago or or so, we barely had the internet, right? And so then you add in that mobile phones, and then you throw in COVID, and what I now add is kind of a a messy higher ed is also then thrown into that, and Michael Horn and Rick Christensen predicted that 20 years ago, right? Higher ed would crumble a bit or consolidate. But then this last kind of nail in the in the coffin of what is traditionally the the tr the path to just be safe is AI. It literally has within a year made everyone question now what is the future of job, what is the future of workforce. That in and of itself is making every parent question high school diploma to college diploma to career to retire, a promise that is even legit. And it's not. And so you have to start thinking differently about education, and that's that's what's so fun about what we're what we're involved in doing together.
SPEAKER_02:It is totally fun and it's totally interesting. And I've been shocked to see how much of that conversation it goes quickly from okay, AI's changed the world and and learning, and all the all of these fundamental things that we've just assumed, the assumptions are shattered, right? And yet the the question and the discussion becomes what does it mean to be human? And what does it mean to be in a human relationship and a human connection? And that's been one of my favorite things about microschools, is just being able to create this little bubble for a small group of people to form very genuine human connections facilitated by really cool cutting-edge technology, but it's not about the technology, it's about what education in some ways has always been about, way before Horace Mann, going all the way back. It's about thinking and being and experiencing this life together. So not to get too philosophical.
SPEAKER_01:No, I th I think you'll like a conversation we had around the dinner table last week, which was maybe AI is going to return us all to our communities because you can't tell what's real or fake anymore with AO3. Like, and so all you can do is let's just return to our communities. And micro schools are a perfect example of let's just connect as a community, solve community problems, you know, rally together as a community because you just quite frankly can't trust what you know you might be seeing from some video in another country, like or another, like so. I thought that was really insightful. Our daughter-in-law shared it was perhaps the globalization and stress we've carried upon ourselves will start to go away when you can't trust anything you see, and you just got to return to your friends and neighborhoods. Super interesting.
SPEAKER_02:I want to say we met 10 years ago, Matt. I mean, you and I, you were down in Arizona, you you had been doing some great work in Utah around in the homeschool community and helping people get access to new resources, really in line with this. Can you talk about how My Tech High started and then you know how that's evolved? I want people to understand what you're doing right now with open ed, because I think there's something truly powerful and exciting about the work you're leading.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I was down in Arizona. We were, yeah, I was meeting with charter schools, kind of exploring that world, came across what Prenda was doing. Super, always been a big fan of the micro school model of really returning education to its roots inside the home as the starting point, but not ending there, right? Always being able to take the next, you know, the neighborhood and then the community and just branch out from there. So it's it's fun to kind of go full circle on that. So my tech high started in 2009 during the time when my wife and I were raising our five children. And we were, you know, raising our five children in a in the exact same home. We lived there the whole time. We had the same cadences, family nights, you know, discussions, expectations, chore charts on Saturdays, like everything was very much the same. And all five children were different, right? Go figure, right? Every parent realizes after you've had one, the next one is all you know, they're all different from each other. And so we started asking ourselves, well, if they're so different from each other, should we have them all do the exact same schooling experience? And the answer is no. So we started saying, Well, what does each child need for their schooling experience? Once you just ask that question, it unlocks all kinds of emotions, right? Insecurity, doubt, fear, excitement, you know, what's possible. So all those roller coaster emotions went, you know, went through us. And the a charter school was just opening in our town, the first one, and our son came home and said, Hey, I want to go to that charter school. My friend's going there. It sounds interesting because it's different. Yeah. And we thought, no, you can't go to a charter school. You know, I was a public school teacher, they're, you know, anti-public school, but of course they're not. And so we looked into it and we're like, this sounds like a really good fit for our oldest. And so we sent him and it started in seventh grade or whatever. And so then our next son, when he got to seventh grade, we sent him and he liked it. Our third son came and we sent him and he hated it. And he said, No way am I staying there. I'm going to the district school. And so all of a sudden, we, you know, we thought we were all invested in this new charter school. We're everyone's gonna go. But our third went there for a year and said, No, thanks, I'm out. And we gave him a voice. We let him say, Maybe that's not the right fit for me, mom and dad. And we said, Oh, well, now we're gonna have to have carpools for four different schools, right? And we said, Well, let's just figure it out. So that's part of that story, is we realize then I bet other families are dealing with the different children that need something differently.
SPEAKER_02:It's so funny, and I think too often we're so conditioned on one size fits all, right? It's like here's the here's the way this works, and everybody does it, and there's comfort in that. Maybe humans are tribal, inherently tribal, that's part of how we operate. But we're scared to then get off that assembly line and do something different. But then what's crazy is even the people who do that, and you guys make this move to a charter school, you can still get stuck in one size fits all. It's just it's a different size. It's like not that size, this size, right?
SPEAKER_01:And so Well, that's what that's what really open education message is is no longer be constrained by a box of even the box of homeschooling, or oh, do you do unschooling, or do you do classical unschool? Like there's all these boxes inside of homeschooling. Yeah, and then there's the box of public school or charters, you know, district school or charter school box. And then there's private school box. So we're like, break down all the boxes and just say open education is tapping into everything that works for your child, period. Yeah. You know, even microschooling has its own little subset, right? Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it's not again, not for everyone. There's kids that come and it's like that's not the right fit for me. Maybe it's this micro school and this culture, or it's like, I really want to be around like large numbers of kids, which isn't possible in a microschool.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you'll get this. I was chatting with a with a group of parents last week, and one of them said, I felt bad when my two oldest kids were loving the microschool, and my third wasn't. Because when I moved him to a different micro school or a different co-op or something, everyone said, Well, how why would you leave your other two if if you're leaving, it's bad, it must be bad. Right? That emotion is real that if I if I transfer one kid out, but leave another kid where they are, which one am I valu am I valuing one over the other? Right. No, you're just saying what's working best for each one each of them.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. And you see this, I mean, enlightened parents today, they shop, they look into lots of things, they're well informed, and they make choices. I mean, unfortunately, you do get that drive around town. I have too many friends that are just spending their whole days just driving kids everywhere. But but to really ask themselves what's best for this child. Give us the rundown. Open education is kind of the extension or the evolution of what you guys have been doing with My Tech High and talk a little bit about that. And I I definitely want to get into these five principles that you guys have have written down and talked about for open ed. So will you kind of share a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. So let me just end with our uh younger children as they came, they ended up doing much more flexible of everything, right? Including the final one, just worked on her associate degree in the morning and then met her friends for lunch, release time, and ceramics, and was a three-sport athlete. And so it was just like the total mix of everything we've been talking about, we saw in our youngest finally come to pass. And so that was super cool. And with my tech high, we've been running it, you know, since 2009. Last year, my wife and I, who have been, you know, we co-founded it together. We've been pretty much, you know, we're not business management people by DNA. We're educators. And since COVID, the spike of enrollment never went away because people loved what they found when they got personalized education. We were really looking for a team of experienced business people to run it. So last July, July 1st, so we're coming on our one-year anniversary, we hired an executive team to come in, and I stepped down as CEO. We hired an executive team to run it, and they have just been phenomenal. And it was funny. The first thing that they said after they got into the business a little bit said, My tech high doesn't describe what you do. That doesn't sound naturally what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, which there is a high tech high that people get confused.
SPEAKER_01:They think it was the high tech high of San Diego. Right. They think you're, you know, just focused on tech and STEM, and in fact, and and that you're a high school, and in fact, our average age is like nine. So, you know, Matt, your brand is a little bit off. And we said, Yeah, that's kind of been the sense since day one, but we didn't know how to change it, right? Yeah. And they came in and within a month, they said, We're rebranding as open ed. Okay. And and they're like, Matt, we want you to write a book called Open Education. Document everything that you've done over 30 years working with kids, write it down, and that will be the headline message of open up your child's education, tap into everything that works from microschooling to homeschooling to districts to charters to public to whatever. Like, don't say, don't, don't judge any one category as negative. And so that's really what the openness of it is. And so that we rebranded from my tech high to open ed last fall, uh, and it's just been phenomenal. And now they're growing a ton, and and the message is going out there of people just take adopting what we say, adopting the open ed mindset. Those are the five building blocks that you're referencing. That yeah, I'd love to just kind of go through some of those and help people.
SPEAKER_02:I think it's important help people begin to do it. Yeah, because you're gonna get people listening to this that are thinking, yeah, sure, these these lofty ideas, but where where do I actually you make changes in my life? So, yeah, can we can we go through these five building blocks together? I have them written down, or you probably know them by them.
SPEAKER_01:I yeah, so you're right. It can be so overwhelming and cause so much stress to try to adopt an open-ed mindset. But this book really breaks it down to the very basics. Like it is accessible, it's readable, it's not a textbook, and it has some very practical exercises any family can do to just increase a little bit of their openness and start to see what that feels like. So, yeah, I'll just run through these real quick. First one, embrace your child's uniqueness. You know this. How many children do you have, Kelly?
SPEAKER_02:I have four. Yeah, they're all different, just like they're all different.
SPEAKER_01:So start there. Start by saying, you know what? Yeah, every child's different, and maybe their education should be too. Yeah, right. That's the that's the first building block, is just acknowledge they're not sameness, they're not identical. And how in the world can one single system serve something so unique as a human child? Right. Right? So embrace that uniqueness. Uh, and I love that. And and part of one of the stories we share in that is the Air Force back in the day did a study of like 10,000 attributes of pilots, and they designed a perfectly average cockpit seat for pilots, and it increased injuries and even deaths because nobody fit it.
SPEAKER_02:It was no one. Todd Todd Rose tells this story. We've had him.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, no, that's that's what we cite. We cite Todd Rose's story of that. It's is that nobody fits it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's it's a powerful like illustration of this idea that there is no such thing as that one size that you just designed the whole thing. The myth of the average student is what part of that beautiful chapter is. Beautiful. All right, let's go to the next one.
SPEAKER_01:Building block number two, this is a powerful one. Put your kids before your reputation. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to that says, Well, if I tell my aunts and uncles at the next family barbecue or family reunion that I'm doing something different, they're just gonna lay into me as a bad parent. Or I need to be able to say, Oh, Johnny's going to, you know, this college or this university, or he's pre-med, or, you know, I have to be able to say these things because of my own reputation instead of saying what's best for my child. So we really hit that head on and say, this could be the biggest stumbling block is putting you your children ahead of your reputation. Have you seen that?
SPEAKER_02:I absolutely have. I mean, you can think of it at at so many levels, but yeah, I think the the fear is so powerful, you know, and we're very attuned to think about what other people are are thinking of us. And as I think parents, we get we feel it even more acutely, because I think the the reality is imposter syndrome is the norm, right? We we all have no idea what we're doing. That first baby comes home from the hospital and you're just looking at each other like, I can't believe they let us take this this child. Exactly. And it really is like we we don't know. There are people with good ideas, but you don't you don't know anything, and and you know that. And so then if someone comes at you with I mean, this is a very minor version of this story, but we had our first kid in in Massachusetts, it was a little bit more, I don't know, like hippie-ish, like the the um medical profession just had different ideas about some things than maybe we had grown up with. And the pediatrician, she was awesome, she saved our baby's life, actually. Who there were some complications, and I'll always love her, but she was so disgusted that we weren't that our the diet didn't include goat cheese. She she was like, You need to be giving goat cheese to the baby, like as he got a little bigger. And I remember being like, We don't eat goat cheese. Like, I don't even know, I don't know anyone that eats goat cheese. Like, I remember these like you know, podong kicks from out west, and and it was like, I remember being feeling so judged, and and it was it was weird. Like, I'm sure she just meant it as an off-handed comment, but for us, it was like we're doing everything wrong. Oh no, you're wrong, yeah. And it doesn't feel good, like so. Your ego's screaming at you to please not do the weird thing because if these comments come, like your ego says, We can't, we can't handle this, we gotta just stay in line, do what everyone else does. And I love that you're just giving it a name and saying, don't allow your your that fear, that rep reputational fear to get in the way of what you instinctively know to be right, which is your child is I mean, you you do want what's best for your child.
SPEAKER_01:Trust your instinct, yeah. And part of that too is you know, one of the stories, I'll just share a quick story from that chapter, which is Isaac was doing an apprenticeship program for an alternative to college and meeting with a mom with a daughter that was a college graduate and a son that was had just dropped out of college. And she said, Quote, I wish my son were more like my daughter. And so Isaac dug deeper and said, Tell me about your daughter. And she said, Oh, she's always just gotten perfect grades, she graduated from college, but now, you know, he's like, Well, what's she doing now? Well, she's has high anxiety, depression. She has a big you know debt, and she can't find a job in her profession, so she's unemployed right now, just living in my basement. And he said, Okay, but she was great, she followed all the rules, right? And he said, She's and Isaac said, Well, tell me about your son that you're so concerned about. He took one semester college, dropped out, he's making five thousand dollars a month running a business that he started himself, and he won't ever go back to college, and he's happy as can be and thriving. It's crazy. But because she couldn't tell her grandma that he was in college, she criticized his choice. Yeah, and it was just so eye-opening that that happens over and over again. Parents need to get past that and be able to say, what I want to answer is that my child is thriving. Right. It's not that they are just following a prescripted path.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's beautiful. And the fear in that is I don't know if I trust myself to be the judge of thriving. And it's easier in some ways, feels safer to allow external, you know, arbitrary standards, literal academic standards, credentials, degrees, you know, career track, progression, resumes, like all these things that we've come to accept as the scoreboard. It's like at least I can point to the scoreboard and say, well, look, you know, doing great. But not doing great, I think is the whole point. And so, yeah, I love this one. It's it's so great.
SPEAKER_01:All right, building block number three, map the learning landscape. So this is where it gets really tactical for families. We invite families to do kind of a what we call an interests, needs, and resource analysis. What that means is try to figure out what you or your child is interested in. So that takes some time. You have to kind of detox them from a structured world and environment to observe what they do when they don't have to do anything. Start identifying what they're interested in naturally, and also equally important, what they really are not interested in. Like make a list of both sides is helpful sometimes. Is and yes, things change and kids change, and so let it be fluid, but identify some things that they are naturally interested in and things that they just aren't naturally interested in. And each child's different and kind of navigate that. Once you kind of identify what their their interest lists are, at least today, which could change tomorrow, but later on we'll talk about the fifth one is uh two-week learner-driven sprint. So only go two weeks out. So that's and that's okay. So, anyway, to identify the kids as interests and then sync those with family and community needs. That's an important threshold. You can't just say, oh, kid can explore whatever they want that they're interested in. There's some sort of needs that the family and community have that you need to sync with their interests. Now, the better you can align the interests with needs, the more learning occurs. Like the magic happens when those work really well together. When a family is all interested in something and that there's a need to go solve or to help or to contribute, that's where some real magic occurs. But then wrap around those needs and the the balance of your interests and your needs with the resources available to you. And we start with free. Like that's a great place to start. There's lots of resources that are free and good quality. So take it from free all the way up to fee. Wherever that scale goes for you, decide do you need to make financial adjustments in your life because some of those fee-based resources are valuable enough that you want to give up some portion of your budget to fund? Or if not, figure out where the best line of free resources or really low-cost ones exist. And there really are so many. So it's like identify your family's interests, your child's interests, what are the needs, and then wrap around what are the resources I have at my fingertips in the home, in the neighborhood, online, in the community, from mentors to you know, business coaches to tutors to AI support to Khan Academy, everything along the line. And you know, microschools, of course, in that is a resource and often a very low-cost, affordable, accessible resource that you can access along that spectrum of free to fee.
SPEAKER_02:That's beautiful. Okay, so you've done all that. The parents have sort of made this map and they've tried to figure out is now the time to just sort of like hand it to the kid, be like, hey, I've come up with your personalized plan. This is what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01:No, that's that's building block four is treat them as an equal equity partner in the in the boardroom, right? Give your child a voice. You'd just be surprised at how little will trust a voice of a child and and just say, we know better. Yeah. Now, yes, there's all the adults need to be adults in the room and provide some structure, but even our open ed, our open ed logo is a parentheses, not an O for a reason. You have to fill, you know, yeah, fill in the blank, but there are some structures around the edges. Yeah, and we even like quoting a parent strategy that I learned from BYU when I was there, which is love, limits, and latitude. Show a whole lot of love, give limits and structure, but then figure out the latitude amongst all that love and lit and limits. So the same thing with your child. Give them a voice, let them again. This parent conversation I had last week, someone said, My daughter just hates math. Say, well, you know what? It might be that she hasn't found a curriculum that has clicked with her brain yet. Ask her to go find the math that syncs with her brain and come back and report to you. And she's like 12, right? Yeah. And the parent said, Can they do that? Yes. Is that allowed? Yeah. Have your 12-year-old go research and do demo, you know, demo accounts for a bunch of different programs or get the books and check them out of the library, whatever. Let her research the best math program for her. That's giving them a voice instead of just saying it's adult, you know, adult imposed. Just sit in this chair, we're gonna do math to you, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's a very different experience. Yeah, we we spend the first couple weeks of every student's experience in apprenticeschool really saying, like, let's try out some things. Like, let's try this one on, try that one on. And then we don't we deliberately hold off on our big goal setting because we want kids climbing a mountain and staying focused, but we wait a while to do that until they've had a chance to, you know, just participate. And then our our big meeting where that goal setting happens, it's called our GPS meeting. That's the guide, parent, and student sitting down together and charting that course. Really, it's incredibly powerful. And I know that's so awesome.
SPEAKER_01:That's exactly what exactly the future of education looks like, Kelly. Like it's seriously, that is where we all need to be. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Well, parents, if you're listening, you can do this without being part of Prenda or without being part of anything. You just, you know, do do what Matt's talking about, like map the landscape, try some things out, listen to your kid, and then sit down together. And you'd be surprised. This is another thing that, you know, I wasn't sure where this would go, right? People think, okay, you let the kids set the goal, then maybe they're gonna set easy goals. Like, I just want to eat pizza and play video games. Our average goal is 1.8 grade levels worth of math. So if you think of going to school for a year, you would get 1.0 grade levels of content, but we're measuring mastery, so it's actually a different thing, right? You're you're really learning the full material. So 1.8 means almost two full grade levels. Almost two years, yeah. And kids don't achieve that, they achieve 1.3 in the microschools. It's like they're shooting high. And the fact that they're willing to do that says a lot about these kids. I think we just, like you said, we don't trust them to take that ownership. And and I think you and I have both seen it enough times to say, hey, give these kids a chance because they'll they'll surprise you, even the ones that you've labeled already as a problem or broken in some way.
SPEAKER_01:One and maybe especially. Yeah, especially they just haven't felt like they had the reins to click their own way. Yeah. Yeah, no, I just love that. And and just adding that trusting them, you know, kind of modeling for them, hey, this is your life. This is, you know, you're growing up yourself. Like, how can we help you become the adult and future person you want to become? It's not just on me to make all that happen. Like, you know, this is a joint effort together. Incredible. Let's let's solve that together. I love it.
SPEAKER_02:Well, let's talk about the fifth building block. We've got these sprints that you were referring to. Give us a sort of a picture and an example of what that might look like.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's once you identify need the interests, needs, and resources, invite the child to do a self-learner project for two weeks. What do you want to study? What do you want to learn about? Dinosaurs, the moon, entrepreneurship, rockets, like whatever it is that they're interested in. Just say, great, study that for a couple weeks. We're the resources that we can circle and feed you with and prepare a presentation of some sort of showcase night in two weeks of what you've learned and celebrate it with food or pizza, ice cream, whatever, and have the the have everybody just share what they've learned over the last couple weeks.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And it's not much more structured than that. Like, don't go overstructured. Yeah. And what's fun is inviting them to figure out how they want to present is also fun. Uh do they want to create a little card game or board game or a Kahoot or a you know, uh, you know, a stop motion animation film, or you know, or a poster board or a food, like whatever it is, right? You pick how you share it also.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Yeah, I can imagine. I I I'm picturing myself in one of those rooms with parents who are genuinely interested and kids who feel high agency and high autonomy and driven. And then I think what the result is is engagement through the roof, but also learning that will blow you away. You just again, I think we undersell what these kids are capable of, and we think we have to sort of overscript it all and just push, push, push. And we're in that tug of war that's frankly unproductive in so many ways.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it is. We actually cite in our book research, uh, a research study around it. Turns out the more we try to structure learning, the less learning occurs.
SPEAKER_02:Katie from our team does a demo with our guides because we're training them on this, and um, she'll have somebody stand up and she'll just start pushing against their hands, you know. And and if you if you're pushing on their hands, they push back. It's like this instinctive reaction. It's like then she pushes harder and harder, and she's not like a super big, strong person, but she's pushing really hard and they're pushing, and then she's like, Okay, now let's try it again. And she just sort of like lets go, and they just kind of like you know, it's it's just easy. Like they they come in, and um, I think there's just so much power in in doing that. Now that sounds fluffy, and there's ways of doing that. What you're describing with love and limits and latitude. I it's not just the principle of it. There's some tactics and some advice here that there really are.
SPEAKER_01:And we spent a good chunk of the book talking about the of this chapter, the value of play and unstructured play, and how our society has gone way too far away from unstructured, uncontrolled by adults play. Yeah. There is so much learning that can happen both in the play itself and the idea that especially young boys learn best when they're physically exhausted. And I I tell that to as many parents of young boys as I can. If you if they're having struggle, if if they're struggling learning some math principle, have them go run around for two hours outside and come back and they might get it in five minutes. But if you keep going for two hours on math, they're never gonna get it. Right. Powerful.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I I love these building blocks. I hope people check out the book and find, you know, just ways to apply this. I know you guys have given a lot of really good examples, and I just would love to see a world where every parent feels one that they're even allowed to ask these questions and think differently. It's just this permission idea. But then once you're once you've made that leap, it's getting over the fear. And then how do I actually, you know, turn our family culture into a culture of learning? Now that's whether you're homeschooling or choosing an alternative path of some sort, or yeah, right.
SPEAKER_01:If you choose to go to your local public school as the resource and solution, that's great. Totally. As long as you've started with this is the right fit for my child. Like we don't we don't bash on one or the other. Yeah. Just conscientiously, intentionally choose it instead of just have it be a default.
SPEAKER_02:Being intentional. If you there's one thing you want to take away, people listening, be intentional about what you're doing with your kids because this is, I mean, you love your kids more than anything else. You want what's best for them. It's just, it's time to and force yourself through the discomfort of you know, all that that pressure. You hear stories from the homeschoolers, right? That you know, people will corner your kid and start giving them math facts just to see if like you're really teaching anything. It's like people can be kind of awful to each other. You have to somehow allow that to be their problem and you're not worried about it, right? I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, and I trust that this is gonna work out great. So, whatever, yeah, I and I agree with you, Matt. Whatever you choose, as long as you're choosing it and not just sort of allowing it to happen to you.
SPEAKER_01:And then we do wrap up the book with open education pathways after high school. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that. Oh, well, you know, whatever time, but I just wanted to point out that sometimes we resist making changes in the K-12 world because we're afraid of what will happen after high school. Yes. So just know that there are so many options, open education pathways after high school, from entrepreneurship to early college, if you need it. Start with your why, vocational industry certifications, apprenticeships, internships. You know, what we we say what's old is new again, and that's from learning from others who who are in the business that you want to be in already. Go ask them for guidance, coaching, mentorship, and and the old apprenticeship model is real and alive. Like you can do that, and you don't have to just have one singular four-year university degree, is no longer a promise that fulfills for almost anybody.
SPEAKER_02:It's uh such a powerful point. I mean, I look back at my first micro school in my house was 2018. There were seven kids in that class, and the youngest of them are now just graduating from high school. So I'm I'm I've followed these kids, right? One of them's married with a baby, one of them's off kind of pursuing a fast-moving, like East Coast lifestyle, one of them is doing uh very vocational work. I just talked to one of the one of the younger ones, um, is doing an apprenticeship program in electrical work, and he's really excited to do that. Uh, and then there's another one that's you know, my son just graduated, he was in that that class, and he's planning on, you know, going to college and and taking a high finance world. So they're all different, and you could almost see it at the time too. Right. It's fascinating to see how, but I think there's so much anxiety, and it's almost like you want to just invite everyone to breathe together.
SPEAKER_01:It's like, let's take some breaths and just yeah, I tell that story of I was chatting with a dad whose daughter was miserable, and it was April of that year, and I said, just kind of to challenge him. I said, Don't send her back the rest of the school year. Like there was five weeks left or something, and see if you know, see she see how she does. And he said, Can I do that? I said, Yeah, write an write a note, whatever your state requires to excuse her. And then he said, Okay, my other concern is will she get into a good college still if I if I take her out for the remainder of the year? And I was thinking she was a junior or senior or something, and so that's why he was worried about her. And I said, How old's your daughter? Like, who are we talking about? And he said, She's eight. And I said, friend, take her out today. Don't ever carry the stress of will she get into a good college right now? Like, drop that and focus on her health, well-being, joy, love of learning. Like that will be the gift you give her, better than pressure to get into a good college in 12, 13 years from now.
SPEAKER_02:Powerful advice. Yeah, I think we we're trapped in this idea of like get on the escalator and ride the escalator to the right destination. Well, Matt, this has been so much fun for me. And I just love your the way you think about this, the way you talk about this. I know you've worked with, I think your estimate is 100,000 kids. I mean, you you've been a presence in the world of of parenting and education, and I'm lucky to know you and and be, I feel like an ally and a supporter in in what you're doing. Can you actually I feel the same way, Kelly? You guys have been doing great work. So let's keep up, keep it up together. Let's do it. As we wrap up, I like to ask people this question of somebody that's kindled a love of learning for you in your life. Can you can you give a shout out or think of somebody like that?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. I had the great pleasure of having being an experiment when I was in kindergarten, first, and second grade. I had the same teacher. It was uh they called it a primary family in this public school. Wow. And she was my teacher for three years, and I just always loved her. And, you know, as you can imagine, just that age, and she was so amazing. So get get this, Kelly. So her name is Mrs. Lewis. When I went to college and was in education, I asked to go student teach at that school where I went to school. And I didn't, I wasn't with her, but I go to the I didn't even know she was still there. I go to the teacher's lounge with my student teacher advisor, and she's in the teacher's lounge. Mrs.
SPEAKER_02:Lewis is sitting there?
SPEAKER_01:Mrs. Lewis is still there. And because I was apparently one of her first couple years she was teaching, and we reminisced on that cake environment. She loved it and thought it was so good for kids to have kind of that multi-age group experience with which is I have a big advocate for multi-age groups of kids. So we just reminisced on that and how much he loved it, and then the district moved away from it because teachers didn't, you know, some teachers didn't like it and wanted to have their own set year, you know, it's just interesting. What an experience. But the story doesn't end there. So we connected, you know, that was now 30 years ago that I was in college and student taught. I looked her up a few years ago and connected with her. She had retired and she was teaching at a micro school on a farm uh in Heber, Utah. No, and so I went and visited her farm micro school where she was kind of volunteering, teaching, you know, helping them there. And it turns out that several of the kids in that micro school were enrolled through open ed. So that's that full circle. And then it actually is even cooler. Last month, when open edge when the book launched, I texted out and emailed out a bunch of friends and everyone, and she was on the list. She attended my book launch in May 2025 of someone who I was in class in 1975 with. That's incredible. So she is my inspiration for that, Kelly, of someone who has always cared about kids and me, and I love her uh more than I can even describe.
SPEAKER_02:Well, this is you can't fake that kind of connection. You can't even really teach it. I mean, you can point to it, but it sounds like a really special person, and thank you for sharing. Pretty special. She's amazing. Shout out to Mrs. Lewis, wherever you are, Hiver Utah. Well, Matt, this has been a delight. Thanks for taking the time, and I wish you all the best with Open Ed and everything you're doing. Let's go ahead. Lots of kids need this. Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00:The Kindled Podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy to start and run an amazing microschool based on all the ideas we talk about here on the Kindled Podcast. Don't forget to follow us on social media at PrendaLearn. And if you'd like more information about starting a microschool, just go to Prenda.com. Thanks for listening and remember to keep Kindling.
