LiberatED Podcast

Our guest today is Dr. Lisa Scott, founder of The Art of Words Community School, a small private school in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, NY. Lisa earned her PhD in Education from Claremont Graduate School and taught classes in the history and philosophy of education at both CUNY-Queens and Hunter College before leaving to launch her microschool in September 2020.

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Today's guest is Michael Strong, a longtime education entrepreneur and innovator and now founder of The Socratic Experience, an online school that emphasizes personalized and purpose-driven education, which I highly recommend.

Michael is the author of the 2009 book, Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems, which includes a Foreword by John Mackey, the cofounder and former CEO of Whole Foods Market, with whom Michael has collaborated on initiatives related to conscious capitalism and entrepreneurship. Michael is also the author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice, and we'll hear more about what that looks like in his new online school focused on Socratic principles.

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Turan Rush grew up in West Virginia on Charleston's West Side and was a star football player at Capitol High School, going to on to play at the collegiate level at Eastern Michigan University. He decided to come back to Charleston after graduating in 2021 to make a positive impact on the youth in his neighborhood. He teamed up with Jeff Biddle, a pastor and mentor to Turan, to open a thriving, sports-focused, youth after school program in Charleston. The duo now has their sights set on opening a low-cost private school in the same location as their after school program to provide greater learning opportunities to Charleston's young people.

"Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline, One Microschool At A Time" (Forbes.com)

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In the summer of 2019, after 15 years of teaching in the Portland, Oregon public school district, Greg Brown resigned to pursue Activate full-time. During COVID, Activate evolved into a full-time microschool with a dyslexia focus, and it continues to expand today to serve more learners in the Portland area.

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Today marks one year since the launch of this podcast! It has grown so much, with inspiring stories of microschool founders and other education entrepreneurs who are building bottom-up learning models to challenge longstanding, top-down systems. I am thrilled to celebrate today's podcast anniversary with Sarah Tavernetti and Yamila De Leon, cofounders of Bloom Academy, a self-directed microschool in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Nick Lachen is a former high school physics teacher with a Master's degree in teaching who, along with his wife, decided back in 2020 to launch a self-directed Sudbury-model school in the Des Moines, Iowa area. The state told them they couldn't. Iowa has some of the most restrictive private school regulations in the US, constraining the entire private education sector there long before introducing school choice policies. Hear Nick's story, including what's next for his family, in today's episode.

Iowa Enacts Universal School Choice, But Regulations Will Limit the Supply of Options for Families (Forbes.com)

Planning Kit for Sudbury Schools

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Tamara Becker has been an educator for over 25 years, working in both district and virtual schools as a teacher, administrator, special education director, assistant superintendent, and most recently, as the superintendent of Primavera, Arizona's largest online school. In August 2021, she launched her first tuition-free Adamo microschool with 12 students in kindergarten through seventh grade in Fountain Hills, Arizona. In August 2022, Tamara opened her second Adamo microschool in Queen Creek, with plans for additional microschool locations in the coming months.

Watch the podcast--and today's tour--on YouTube.

Read Kerry's Forbes article about Adamo.

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Mara Linaberger worked for 25 years as a public school educator, teacher trainer, and administrator. She has a doctorate in Instructional Technology and has become a leader in the microschooling movement, launching her organization, Microschool Builders, in 2018 that helps to support microschool founders around the world. Mara's book, The Micro-School Builder's Handbook, is a wonderful resource for current and prospective founders.

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Melissa Mohr worked for 17 years as a teacher and an administrator in a traditional private school in West Virginia, but last year she and some of her colleagues decided to venture out on their own to create a microschool. Her City on a Hill microschool opened in Bridgeport, West Virginia in September 2022 with about 50 kids and continues to attract families who want an alternative to a conventional public or private school. City on a Hill blends the freedom, flexibility, and personalization of homeschooling with the structure and support of a classroom experience. West Virginia's new microschool legislation helped to carve a pathway for founders like Melissa.

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Amar Kumar, founder of KaiPod Learning, recently introduced a new program called KaiPod Catalyst which helps entrepreneurial parents and educators to launch a microschool in their local community. One of the entrepreneurial parents who has teamed up with KaiPod is Ben Ashfield, who was on the podcast in September talking about his New Jersey microschool, The Village Electric. In this episode, Ben updates us on his microschool while Amar shares more about KaiPod Catalyst and how it can help aspiring education entrepreneurs to launch a microschool this year!

Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.