LiberatED Podcast

Don and Ashley Soifer of the National Microschooling Center join me to talk about some of their microschooling predictions for 2025.

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Giselle McClymont knew from second grade that she wanted to be a teacher. She went on to earn an education degree in college and taught in Florida's Broward County public elementary schools for six years before leaving the system in 2022 to be a stay-at-home-mom with plans to homeschool her daughter. A year later, she learned about microschools and was hooked. Giselle soon launched Tree Stars Learning, a microschool in West Sunrise, Florida. She is now in the process of opening a second location in Coral Springs.

Read more about Giselle's entrepreneurial journey in Kerry's latest article at The 74.

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Susan Haws is the founder and Executive Director of Insight Colearning, a private learner-centered, micro-high school located in Durham, North Carolina. She began her career as a Teach For America member in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas in 1993. She went on to teach middle school and high school in traditional public schools, until she left the classroom to earn a Ph.D. from UNC-Chapel Hill. Insight Colearning began as a homeschooling collaborative in 2018 and is now a state-recognized private school. In 2022, North Carolina became the ninth state to enact a universal school-choice program enabling education funding to follow students to their preferred educational settings. Insight Colearning participates in the state's school-choice scholarship programs.

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Our guest today is Coi Morefield, founder of The Lab School of Memphis in Tennessee whose newest endeavor is Microschool Masters, a masterclass program for innovative schools and spaces that provides professional development resources for microschool teachers and leaders.

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Melanie Leone is a former public school teacher with a Master's degree in Educational Leadership. Over the course of her career, she's worked in multiple states and spent five years as a childcare center director which changed her philosophy of education. In fall 2023, she founded Anchor Center for Learning in Stow, Ohio as a three-day-a-week, multi-age microschool that emphasizes student autonomy, academic personalization, and a sense of wonder.

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Today's podcast guest is Tyler Thigpen, co-founder and CEO of The Forest School: An Acton Academy, The Forest School Online, and the Institute for Self Directed Learning in Fayetteville, Georgia. Tyler is also the Academic Director at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, a guest lecturer at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and co-author of the new book, The Playbook for Self-Directed Learning: A Leader's Guide to School Transformation and Student Agency.

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Kate Brockmeyer is the founder of Off the Page Co-Learning, a microschool located just outside of St. Louis, Missouri that now serves nearly 200 students, ages 4 to 17. Kate launched her microschool in the fall of 2022 and has seen the program's popularity soar since then. She's attentive to the needs and wants of the homeschooling families she serves, and is continually adding and adapting programming, including introducing a new career and technical education (CTE) program for teens 13 and up.

Boys Are Falling Behind But New School Models Can Help (Forbes.com)

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Melissa Borkowski is the cofounder, along with her husband Nick, of Acton Studios of Rochester in Rochester, New York that is part of the vast Acton Academy network of learner-driven schools serving thousands of learners around the world.

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Debra Ross is a homeschool mom and the founder, publisher, and CEO of Kids Out And About, LLC, a media and marketing company that provides information on family-focused resources and events in communities across the country through its two main platforms, KidsOutAndAbout.com and BeyondTheNest.com, which reach 11 million visitors.

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Sara Casey Taleff has been involved in education for more than 20 years, working in public schools in New York City as well as at the state Department of Education in Montana. For the last 10 years, Sara has lived between Montana and New York creating innovative learning environments. She founded and directs the nonprofit, Cottonwood, which operates learning centers Helena and Brooklyn.

Jenna Hill is an experienced Montessori educator and co-founder of CASCO Learning, a microschool in St. Louis, Missouri. We had Jenna's microschool cofounder Maria Casco on the show back in 2022 to talk about her founding journey.

Jenna and Sara are working to create CoLearnCo, an interactive virtual campus that aims to connect microschools and build community.

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