Transcription
We're going to start seeing in the next 6 months our friends and people that we work with or maybe even ourselves losing jobs to AI. We have to prepare our kids for a different reality.
This is McKenzie Price, founder of America's first AI powered school where kids do academics 2 hours a day and test in the top 1% nationally.
We're using technology to provide a better learning experience for kids and as a result, our classes are crushing it.
And you don't have teachers, right?
They are not in charge of delivering academic content. Our AI tutor is doing that.
Education is changing and most of us were prepared for a world that no longer exists.
The industrial revolution model of education did a great job of raising factory workers who knew how to follow rules and be obedient and compliant. I think the world's in for a pretty big wakeup call. What's this world going to look like in 5, 10, 20 years? I don't know a lot of those answers, but here's what I do know.
Education is what I breathe because uh I have a business in education. I have a whole channel where I help people speak English more like Americans and accent everything. And I came here from Russia 10 years ago and so went through school in Russia which is like a completely different system compared to what my kids are doing here in the US. Strong focus in academics. Nobody cares about your feelings. But at the same time, we we see a lot of people who come from that system. Well, like in China, they have similar system and then they win all of the world Olympiads, right, in maths or we see people who came from postsviet countries start amazing companies. Yeah.
If you look at top researchers, right, a lot of them are Eastern European. Do you think that system can still survive or is it useful in today's world?
I think that what you're describing that your school experience was was an environment with really high standards, but probably the support was a little more minimal. It was sort of just this, you know, top down, you will do as instructed. And I think that uh what's happened in the United States is that uh we've gotten much more into like let's be supportive, let's be thoughtful, let's meet kids a little bit where they're at, but the system can't actually do that. So as a result, standards have gone down and what we've done at Alpha and what I think is really the key is that if you can build an environment where there are high standards and we believe high standards are key to kids happiness along with high support and mentorship and connection. Um and that's where you really see true motivation lies.
Yeah, I I like how you um mixing these two systems and I think both should exist. But also when I think about my education, I remember times when I was sitting in a class absolutely hating the subject, not liking the teacher. But now when I think back about that experience, I think it actually taught me persistence like okay, I can handle this. It's a tough situation. I don't like being here, but I can also talk to myself internally. Yeah. And I can overcome this.
There's a bunch of things there, but I think that, you know, the importance of building resilience is is critical. What I think is there are so many other ways that you can teach resilience and grit and how to work with difficult people. You know, that a lot of times people will say, well, you sometimes you have that bad teacher or that teacher that's hard to get along with. You have to get used to that. There's so many other ways that we can do this while making sure kids are able to stay engaged and not be bored.
And I also think that, you know, in the US that's happening in a lot of classrooms, too. I think if you look at, you know, a a rural school in India or you go to a high-end private boarding school in Connecticut, you're going to see the same thing. You're going to see a teacher in front of a classroom teaching kids in a timebased system all at the same pace when those kids are at wildly different levels. You know, there are kids who are sitting there before the teacher's even opened her mouth to explain a concept. They understand and they know that concept. So, as a result, it's like, okay, I'm bored. And at the end of that explanation of the concept, there are kids who it's like totally over their head. They have no idea what's going on. In either case, the teacher just has to continue moving forward. And that's a real testament to the fact that the model is broken. the onesizefits-all timebased system. It doesn't work. And it doesn't work in Russia. It doesn't work in the United States. And what it's doing is it's leading uh to a large group of kids who are just sort of going through the motions or not participating at all and just refusing.
And you've been running the system which is a 2hour per day academics system. And you measure your success by standardized test scores. Correct.
We do. And as far I've seen some stats that some kids exceed. Like can you talk to me about like a median outcome?
Yeah. Uh so our schools are full day schools. Kids get dropped off at 8:30 in the morning and picked up at 3:30. Uh but what we do during that school day is uh very different. We are only spending 2 hours doing the academic part of our day. So when you think about the traditional classroom that you and I grew up in where you're spending 45 minutes in every every class and maybe you get one elective uh and a little bit of lunch uh instead our students are just doing these 25 minute focused sessions of math and reading and language and science and history uh those types of core academics that kids are learning in a traditional school uh but in so much shorter time because they're getting personalized learning that meets them at their level and their pace. And as a result, our classes are crushing it. So, top 1% across all grades and all subjects. Uh, and one of the things that's really cool about this that I'm very proud of is we're not choosing students for our school just based on the kids who already come to us at 95th percentile. uh we can take those kids that are 95th percentile and we can have growth rates in the 80s and 90s, but we can also take kids who show up to us in the 25th percentile and give them exponential increases in their learning. And it's really what's so awesome about leveraging artificial intelligence to finally allow kids to have that onetoone mastery based tutoring experience that for years researchers have known results in kids learning two five 10 times faster. It just hasn't been possible in our current system.
So can you read the top 1% across every grade?
Every grade every subject. Yeah. our classes are and and that's uh yeah, no, it's it's I think it's so much an example of what's needed uh in education. Um, but more than that, it just points to when you can help a student find, you know, here's what you know, here's what you don't know, which is part of what our standardized assessments are able to do. They're they're really just feedback tools for okay, this is what maybe this sixth grade student might be uh having holes in their math knowledge down in fifth and fourth and third grade.
And you go back and
and you can go back and fill holes uh and really get that mastery learning. And you know, I think math is a great example to talk about with this because uh you know, I remember sitting through math class being like, I am so confused. I don't know what I'm doing. Well, probably the reason I was struggling is because there were some foundational concepts that I didn't fully understand. And so, as you get more and more sophisticated in the material you're learning, uh, it gets harder if you don't have that foundational concept. Right? Learning algebra, if you don't have your multiplication tables memorized, is is harder than if if you do. And um that's what's really cool about this this true ability to finally have a mastery based system where kids are learning at the pace that's right for them.
Okay. And so and you don't have teachers, right?
It's just, you know, it's so funny that that comes up very often. We're always that school with no teachers. And here's the thing. We have the most unbelievably incredible adults in our classes. Uh our ratios are like 1:15, you know, 1:5 for for younger students. Uh but we don't call our staff teachers, we call them guides. And the reason we don't call them teachers is because they are not in charge of delivering academic content or teaching that material. Our AI tutor is doing that. Uh but instead what they are doing is they are truly coaching and supporting and guiding students on their learning journey. Uh and so their focus is motivational, emotional support and they're also the ones who are really running the whole school day around life skills development and building out the ability for kids to become self-driven learners. Uh and you know you probably talk to a lot of people in the edte world and see technology you know there is a huge graveyard of failed edte platforms.
Yeah. Here's the reason. Our edtech is not better than some other edte platform. Our reason for success is because of what our guides are able to do, which is focus on what is 90% of creating a great learner. They're motivated.
Motivation 100%. That's
if you're not motivated, it's like if if the kid's spinning in a chair and not even looking at the material, how are we going to help them learn? And that's that's the key is focusing on that motivation part. And uh it's funny because we'll often see, you know, I'll read articles or something that'll say, "Well, alpha only works for like motivated kids." And it's like, "No, no, no. That's the whole point of our school is that our guides have the time to focus on figuring out what motivates this kid, what gets him excited, and here's the really cool part, Marina. When a child is motivated and starts doing the work and they're met with the same level, you know, and pace that's right for them, they they develop competence and then that competence turns into a confidence. They start seeing themselves as like I am capable. I can like I can go crush my academics. I can learn that. And I think that's one of the coolest things uh to watch kids really um change how they feel about themselves and what they're capable of.
And that's the key difference. I'm thinking back about my school system and my best friend was not doing well in any subject. So the teachers would always tell him you're like a failure. And I feel like when you live with that, you you don't even want to try.
Yeah.
So whenever I think about those kids in those systems, they are the ones really struggling cuz if you're like I mean you like trying to navigate the system, then you get all the good grades and you feel great and you develop that confidence. What about the kids who can't navigate the system?
And that by the way is the majority of kids nowadays. This part of the episode is sponsored by Hey Jen. I want to break here because what McKenzie just said is really important for me personally. I've been talking about learning English on Lingua Marina for 10 years. And in that time, I've tried everything. Long form, short form, live streams, courses, and recently we started something new. We created an animated character of me to deliver some of the lessons. Our methodologist build the content, the AI character presents it, and the channel keeps posting consistently while I focus on this podcast. So, compell girl because it takes a lot of my time. And honestly, it fits right into what McKenzie is describing. Alpha School uses AI tutors, adaptive methods, video, text, a mix of everything to create more visual, more personalized, more ondemand content. Animated educational content is part of that shift. Even three years ago when I was thinking about this, like creating a cartoon for English language learners, making an animated educational video meant weeks of work and thousands of dollars. Now we can do it in 15 minutes. What we decided to do for our channel is the animated cartoon version of me. And the way we did it, we uploaded a photo, wrote a few prompts, and the short was done. One thing I actually appreciate, Hunen only creates an avatar with your explicit consent and identity verification. They don't use your face or your voice without your permission. The AI handles delivery, humans handle the thinking. If you're running a course, an educational channel, or any business where consistency matters more than you have hours in the day, Han lets your team scale without faking who you are. Use my link in the description and try it yourself at hij.com.
Yeah. And you hire ex uh sports people, right, who are really good at motivating.
Yeah. So what we really look for is uh we want the people who come work in our schools uh to be world class at motivation and about 50% of our guides come from a traditional teaching background. Uh and they get so excited when they finally have been given the the room to really make that positive impact that they got into teaching for. But this whole other population of people are also coming in to work as guides that probably wouldn't want to be traditional teachers, but they love the idea of connecting and motivating uh young people. And so we get a lot of people who were uh former coaches, former athletes, uh people who were in the business world, all kinds of stuff that uh they're bringing their kind of talents, their experience into the classroom uh and focusing on that that motivation piece. And it is so much fun to see uh you know that type of person. We're we have had really incredible uh success with with just so much interest because unlike in the traditional teaching world where teachers are leaving the field in droves and it's hard to attract good talent, uh we're finding really good talent. Part of it is we pay them really well. Uh because I think anybody who is working in a classroom every day with kids, they're a hero and they should be well compensated. um and we've just made their jobs um a lot easier to really provide that that impact.
I get how they're great and motivating, but I also remember when at school like there is a concept in algebra that I don't understand and sometimes I would use like books, technology and I still don't understand. What happens in that situation where it's something really complicated and someone whose excoach like didn't really take that subject. What happens in that situation when a kids needs an explanation from a human?
So there's a couple of things that can happen there. Let's say a student is um working through a math concept and they are struggling to understand that. First of all, they have a variety of resources that their guide will be coaching them through like hey did you check a different video explanation or did you read this other thing or did you see you know uh this part that you can learn. It also is able to understand, you know what, maybe the reason the student is having trouble with this particular concept is because we need to go back and revisit a concept from earlier just to help you again understand this. Let's go back and refresh your your understanding of something else as you're going into this difficult material. Um, but let's say a student still is struggling with that. Uh, then what they have the ability to do is um schedule basically an academic coaching call. So we have a learning science team and academic coaches who are able to go in and one of the things that's great about that is during this experience our our coaches and our AI system are able to understand where is this student getting tripped up in the lesson because if this one student is getting tripped up here there's a chance that especially as we scale to millions of kids that there'll be lots of other kids that could get tripped up and so it helps us improve the quality of you know the the teaching concept that's happening. both in our technology and where students are struggling. And I think one of the things that sometimes people have a really hard time understanding because we're so used to the way we all grew up, which is at some point you have to have a teacher sit down and talk with you and work with you or a parent, you know, more often working through the subject.
Do you have academic conversations?
Yeah. You you think you have to do that, but then I also go back to, well, it seems like it's working because our results are showing that our kids are, you know, learning to mastery. they don't move ahead until they've mastered the concepts and the results are showing that it does. And I think the other thing that happens is just I I go back and remember how often when I was confused about something, I I'm sitting in class, it wasn't like I had the teacher standing over me saying, "Let me help you with this." Because the teacher's busy trying to teach everybody. So maybe you get to go into office hours or more often you're asking, you know, a friend or a parent for help. Yeah. or a tutor. Yeah. I mean, the amount of money that families spend on their private tutoring and their Russian math after school and all of those types of things is just insane. Um, and you know, and that's something. So, I think um sometimes what happens is people have this romanticized what I think of as mismemory of what's actually happening in traditional classrooms. And as much as we would love to believe that every English class is this Socratic discussion where all the kids are super engaged and they've fallen in love with Shakespeare, >> that's not really what's going on on there. And so what we're seeing instead is like we're using technology to uh provide a better learning experience for kids that is getting results again for for every kid wherever they're at. Um, and then where it gets even more exciting is is what that really enables the rest of the day to be, which is where I think the human element and the human experience are just like on fire.
Interesting. Okay, we talked a lot about motivation. Uh, another concern with motivation that I have from my childhood is that uh, kids get motivated by weird things. Like I I heard this story, which is a cool story of a girl who was when the coach asked her what she was motivated by and she said nothing. And then he asked, "What do you do when you're alone at home?" And she's like, "I'm scrolling through TikTok and I think about boys."
Think about boys.
That's like a typical 80% 16year-old female answer. Right.
It is.
And when I told something like this to my parents, well, my my interest was different. I told them, "I love English, so I'm going to become a translator from Russian into English." My parents told me, "Sounds amazing, but you're going to do math." And I'm so glad they did because what is an like how does a 16-year-old understand the world like from what they see around themselves. But adults who are guiding them have a different experience. I'm actually glad that my parents didn't follow my passion. They're like you can do whatever you want as a second degree, which I did eventually. But you know what? I studied mathematics and economics and I I'm really happy I did because that really helped me build a business cuz you learn all the concepts. you learn how to um think through very complicated problems and yes I didn't understand 50% of what was going on in the class but it actually helped me navigate that world. So I'm like thinking what if my child I don't know 12year-old says oh I'm like my my daughter tells me she wants to be a puppy yoga teacher.
I'm like what kind of job is that? Isn't it helpful to sometimes not follow the passion of a child and tell them like, hey, you know what?
So, I think that what your line of thinking is assuming it's got to be either this or that. And in our opinion, we believe that it can be end. So, for example, that student who really did say, you know what, I guess I'm like the world's best Tik Tok scroller and I and thinking about boys. And actually, the way that she came to that conclusion is we have our students do a workshop called 68 hours where they track the uh amount of time in their week, what they do with it. You know, how much time are you doing sleeping? How much are you studying? Where are you spending time with friends? Are you playing music? What are you doing? And that's where she had this realization of like gosh,
yeah, I don't I don't like do anything. I just kind of we should all do that exercise. And so it was there. Now, her guide when she told uh her guide that story, first of all, I love that they had a relationship where the student felt comfortable enough to be honest and didn't feel like they had to make up a I am interested in curing cancer. Right? She was very honest about that. Her guide could have said, "No, get your head out of the gutter. 14-year-old boys are not worthy of having a lot of thought around right now. Like, you you shouldn't be doing that and get off social media. Go focus on math and e economics instead." um she didn't do that and she also didn't say um hey you know what that's cool just hang out you should enjoy your Tik Tok experience instead she said well let's figure out how we can go in deeper to um understand if there's if there's a problem there like what's going on in the teen dating world and so it allowed uh her to say okay I'm going to take this interest and see if I can create something productive out of what a lot of people would think was just a random kind of superfluous you silly girls, you know, interest. And um and so what she did was she went through and she uh, you know, proceeded to do research and understand that boy, the dating world is incredibly unhealthy for teenagers right now. And she started building out expertise in what is healthy dating habits look like. And to be clear, it wasn't even dating habits. This is coming out of COVID when kids didn't even know how to like say hi to someone that you're interested in, you know, like say hello, introduce yourself, any of those things. She built up an audience, which when you think about any product or business that you're going to do, a podcast, if you don't have an audience, you're kind of out out of the water. So, she built up an audience, uh got millions of views on TikTok with her advice. Then she was able to build an AI uh avatar that was able to give advice and she built an LLM that was based on this expertise. Now that led her down the path of let's actually do some research to understand is the expert expert advice that she's giving is it good? And so she ended up doing a research paper where she looked at uh the quality of advice from her LLM a chachi PT and suburban moms. And of course, I think most of us would guess, I certainly would as a mother uh of two girls. Well, moms give the best advice. We really do. And what she ended up finding out was that moms were actually dead last. Uh her LLM was was top rated and ChachiPT was in the middle. Now, again, you go, "Okay, well, cool. I guess this is like she wrote a research paper." Well, that research paper is now in the final stages for approval in Nature, which is the number one scientific journal in the world. And if she goes through that last hurdle and gets submitted or gets in, uh, she'll be the youngest female ever and the only high school student to ever be published in nature. And that same student is actually right down the street today at her admitted student days at Stanford University. And so you really take
it's a beautiful spin-off.
Yeah. You take this scrolling.
So I think that's the answer is, you know, let's say it's okay. I want to do I want to be a puppy yoga instructor. Um, and you know what? This is actually a really fun exercise that you can do with your six-year-old is like, "Okay, let's think about this. What if we were building a business? How would we go about building that? And where can we make it like, you know, 10x?" In fact, for our high school students, when we're when we're talking about our alpha x projects, we call them Olympic level projects. And the reason we use the term Olympics is because it's such a clear standard for being the best in the world, right? If somebody is an Olympic runner, you don't think, oh, they must be a pretty good runner for being 18 years old. They are literally the best runners in the world. Um, and so we we put that kind of classification because we don't want our kids to just be good for their age. We truly want them to be, you know, the best and seen as experts in that. And there are so many places you can do this. I I'll never forget, and this is another your kids are a perfect age for this. My oldest daughter came home one day and she said, "Mom, I saw some kids doing a lemonade stand, you know, down the street. Let's do a lemon lemonade stand." I said, "That's a great idea. We should totally do that." I said, "But then let's go through and think about this. Where would we do it?" She's like, "Well, I guess at the top of the driveway." And then I said, "Well, let's think about this. Let's count how many cars go by." Well, we live in a pretty quiet place, so not a lot of cars. And so, we started thinking, "Well, if we really wanted to sell, what would we do?" And, um, she was about six years old u when this was happening. and her little sister was four and she's jumping into it and we walk through this thought exercise where okay where do you find a lot of people and she said you know mom your your exercise place that you go to seems to have a lot of people maybe we could do something there I'm like that's a great idea and I said but do you think exercise people do you think they want to drink like lemonade or something else and we land on no they probably would like coconut water and you know waters and then we came up with this idea of they might need a snack after they're done exercising, but it's got to be a healthy snack. So, she ended up creating these paleo cookies and, you know, called the gym owner and and asked at 6 years old, would it be okay if I came and sold? And she did this and it worked so well and actually her product was so good, she ended up getting to go to larger and larger gyms and athletic competitions. Um, now here's the only problem, the the backfire of this story. Uh, she went to an athletic competition where she was selling her paleo cookies and her coconut water and water and she made about $1,600 in profit. Well, here's my problem. Six-year-old's like, I'm set for life. I never have to work another day in my life.
You don't understand that they're getting paid because they're so cute and everything.
No, no, no. It was a really good product and it was doing it was a great exercise, but then I was like, we should do this. Like, you could do this every weekend. She's like, why? I I like I I bought a Barbie doll. What else am I going to do with this money? uh which is funny, but I think these are examples where you can take an interest that somebody has and figure out how do you take that further and you know I I'll tell you there's some crazy uh puppy yoga and goat yoga businesses that that business owners are probably doing pretty well at. And so I think sometimes we we underrate what kids could be capable of and what we need to do is reframe. There's some interest that a kid has. How do we take that? Video games is another example. I mean, there are so many moms and dads out there going, "I wish I could get my kid off the game console. All they want to do is play video games." And we we see boys come into our school who are literally will say, "If you could just pay me to play video games for my whole life, that's all I'd want to do. It'd be the best job in the world." And then when you start saying, you know what, we could like teach you to vibe code a video game. And then maybe you could like host an event and you could be the shout cer and, you know, work on these things. And suddenly these kids get excited about something that they're doing and they start realizing like, "Oh my gosh, great. We have a student who, you know, was absolutely that boy who would say, "I would play video games every day for the rest of my life." And now he's like, "I'm too busy to play video games cuz I'm out building this business, you know, and doing these things." And you know, if you can inspire kids to it's going to go something hard.
That That's what I'm seeing, right? not just go straight into this like scrolling playing the game, but go behind the scenes and become the creator behind your
What is it you do? And really, that's what what I think is another thing that is so important to teach young people, especially in our society today where being a a consumer is so easy to fall into. It's like, okay, I can just I can scroll TikTok. I can play video games. I can just hang out and watch YouTube. What we need to do is instead create creators and contributors. How can you go out and be someone who builds? And you know what? People naturally, they want to be builders. They just often aren't given the tools, the time, or the mentorship to do that. And you know, again, not to bag on traditional school too much, but you know, kids go to school every day and they say, "Okay, I'm going to sit in this chair and I'm completely uh beholden to what the teacher is going to be giving out for curriculum." instead of saying, "Hey, I I know I've got to learn this material and I can go forward and I go as quickly as as I'm capable of doing well." Uh, and they're si sitting here just like do this or let's say, you know, they're working on this, you know, project in a class. As soon as that class is over, it's like project's done. And last spring in the spring of 2025, it was about May, a bunch of our students were doing a pitch for a VC firm, uh, you know, for funding for their businesses. One of the questions uh that one of the VCs asked was, "So, what's going to happen this summer when school gets out?" And the kids look at them like, "What do you mean what's going to happen? I I keep going. I got work to do." And in fact, our high school students came to us last spring and said, "Can we please keep our high school open for the summer?" Because they didn't have this attitude of, "Well, my business is done because I got the A in the class and so it's over." They're like, "I got work to do, and why would I not want to be uh surrounded by my friends and classmates and getting the mentorship and and support that our guides are able to provide while they're going forward with this?" And it just creates this like amazing energy and environment where um it's an ambitious and it's exciting and it's also supportive and collaborative because every kid is working on something different. It's not like there's only one spot at the varsity tennis captain, you know, and you got to you you get that or, you know, you can only have the one winning robotics team at the competition. Um, we've got kids doing things from such varied backgrounds. Uh, and they're all there kind of saying like, "Let's support each other. Let's help." And we really find that that when you put kids in that environment and call them to something greater with that support, they they get just psyched. And it's a fun place to hang out.
Yeah, that that sounds incredible. Hearing that story, the thing I keep coming back to is that it wasn't talent, it was the system around her. And it made me think about something very simple. Most people use Claude like a search engine. They type in a question, they get an answer, most times they're not really satisfied with it, and they close the tab. I did the same thing for months and I was looking at people who were saying AI is changing their life and I'm like then I spent one afternoon setting it up properly. Uploaded a few files about how I think and how I work and it completely changed. I wrote the whole process up step by step. You get it when you subscribe to my newsletter future proof. It's free. The link is in the description. Let's uh talk about screen time something that a lot of parents are concerned with. And also Sweden did this experiment. I know if you know about this they abandoned books. They introduced iPads and then literacy went down. So they had to ban iPads and intro reintroduce the books. Do you have books in your school or is it just iPad even for four-year-olds? Is it like two hours on the screen?
No. So we do start um as early as four years old in a prek program. They are doing some work on screens um and but it's a shorter period of time uh than that two hours. And actually, fun fact, the, you know, average amount of time kids are spending on screens in the United States right now is two and a half hours a day. So, our kids actually spend less time on a screen uh than kids there.
Oh, it's cool.
Yeah. But here's the other big key component. There
is not equality between all screen time. I myself with my kids, we were a screen-free family. And I recommend that like, you know, putting an iPad in front of your kid, you know, at the dinner table or even in school to say, "Hey, let's do this online." You know, that could have been just a worksheet, right? But we're doing doing it online. It's just it's like technology for technologies sake. And the key difference here for us is it's not just doing something on a screen. It's having that engaged level of interaction with your academics that's keeping you in what's called the zone of proximal development where the answer, you know, the the the work isn't so hard that you've kind of turned off and so easy that you're not really engaged. So, it creates a very proactive uh kind of connection with what students are doing. Uh which is why we're seeing, you know, better learning results than just putting something on screen. That said, uh yes, of course we have books. One of the things that I think is such an important thing for kids to learn is we got to teach them not just to read, but to fall in love with reading. Yeah.
And what better way to do that than first of all teaching them the skill of reading, which we're able to do very well with this environment. And I will say uh the importance of onetoone out loud reading with a human is so critical. And so that's what our reading specialists are able to have time to do that onetoone pull out reading time with every kid uh as part of their learning. Um, but then it's also teaching them to say okay let's figure out how we can encourage you to love to read. And an example of that we have an app that we have created called Teach Tales. And what it does is it's uh basically an AI app that allows kids to create stories that match their interests and it's at the difficulty level that's exactly right for them that keeps them in that zone of proximal development. So basically, you can take that little boy who maybe would rather be just like going around on his scooter than sitting down and reading a book, but suddenly he's the main character with his best friends in a save the world kind of adventure that matches his favorite, you know, movie that he's got and all of a sudden he's excited about reading and these are things we have to do. So yes, our kids get to be exposed to Shakespeare and yes, our kids are reading the great books, you know, and they're doing that stuff. Um, it's it's one part of, you know, what I think is important to for education. Ed Hirsch has 5,000 facts, concepts, and and what what they call core pieces of knowledge that are considered important to be an educated person. And we're able to put that information into our curriculum in order to make sure that, you know, that kids are uh getting that education. And so, you know, the wonderful thing that I think people often forget is that when you only have to spend two hours working on that academics, it opens up the whole rest of the school day to be able to do things like, okay, you're going to do a great book check. Uh, we call it a check because it's on a check. You've got to read a certain number of books and then you're writing reflections on them, you know, and and having kids have that opportunity.
Are they writing on iPad or handwriting?
No. What happens to handwriting?
Guess what we do? We teach cursive.
Uh, we teach.
This is what I really want my kids to learn because I spend
days and weeks learning.
Well, months probably.
You know what's crazy? I only write in cursive. Like, I still think cursive is like a pretty important art.
I think it's a great skill.
I Oh, it's a great Well, and it's a great skill because of what it does with just your hand eye coordination, how it helps develop the brain. Same thing with music. Same thing with art. There's so many different different types of things that we want to give kids to do. And so, yes, they're doing that on pencil and paper. Here's another thing that our kids get to to do. They're learning to sew, right? They're doing a woodworking class. Like stuff that, you know, has actually been torn out of the traditional school day because there's not enough time. Everyone thinks we just need more time on academics in order to see success rates go up. And that's not really true. We're showing that in less time, kids can learn more effectively and then open up all of those other kind of life skills experiences. But if it's anything like when our kids, you know, our five and six year olds were riding back and forth on the Golden Gate Bridge in their alpha biker gang where they finished finish that ride as a team. Or, you know, they've climbed 40 foot rock walls or our middle schoolers have been able to complete a triathlon together. Um, there are so many different activities that we're seeing. Kids can absolutely rise to the occasion. And part of what what helps us do that is we're making sure that it's fun like that the kids are having fun even when it's hard, right? It doesn't mean when we talk about kids loving school, which we think is critical. Kids need to love school. In fact, it's our first commitment that we make to our families, which is that your kid will love school. The reason that's so important isn't because every day is Disneyland. It's because when kids feel this fire in their belly and are like, I like being at school. I love being at school. It allows us to challenge them to do hard things, to take on uh tasks that maybe they wouldn't know how to do. Uh and they've got that support. Uh and it it it's what helps unlock potential, which is what I think school needs to be.
And so you basically compress I'm thinking about a typical school day. It's six hours of academics, right? In a typical and you compress that to so 3x less
and you still cover the same material and same depth just because everybody moves individually within actually argue we cover it in greater depth. Um because again when you think about what let's say fifth grade uh academic knowledge you know is for math as an example kids in a traditional system they're moving through the math concepts uh and whether they know it or not they kind of move forward. Again it's why a third of kids in this country are actually proficient in their grade level in math or reading. That means twothirds are not at mastery. U whereas in our system, kids don't move up in their academic grade level until they've mastered. They've got to be above 90% in order to master. And so it it goes to a a larger depth. This is the other reason we get sometimes this question. So our second commitment is that kids will learn twice as much in only two hours. And so oftenice twice as much. And we measure that with something called the NWA MAP assessment. And it's a it's a standardized assessment that's taken by about 10 million kids all over the country. Home school, public school, private school,
and they actually remember what they learned.
Yeah. And then again, what happens is is when you set kids up for success by giving them mastery of earlier content, it again, it makes more sophisticated content easier to grasp and go deeper on that. And so >> at our high school, our kids are taking the same advanced placement courses that, you know, some kids are taking. and they're taking four years of English and foreign language and science and math uh and all of those types of history. They're doing that, but they're doing it in less time. At the high school level, it's it's 3 hours. Uh it's a little bit longer on there. Uh but yeah, we have basically been able to compress that time and make it more efficient and more effective. Uh so I think they are learning at a deeper level than kids in a traditional classroom.
That's very interesting. Yeah.
Okay. So, if somebody's listening to this and you have a pretty high check, right? Is it like 70 17? How much is it in?
So, um our alpha schools, Alpha School is kind of the school that's gotten a lot of the attention. Um and that is like super high-end private school kind of redefining what parents expect out of their kids' private school experience. So, you know, when kids are learning teamwork and adaptability through sailing and then they get to sail from Florida to the Bahamas, you know, over time they're doing that and that's basically between 40 and $75,000. Um, those schools are opening all over the country. Um, and it's been really cool to see the amount of demand we have from families who are excited about not just the the part we've spent time talking about, the academics, but really all the life skills.
So somebody who can't afford 70k, if it's just well 2 hours a day, can a parent like me replicate part of this experience? Because I am a dedicated parent. I spend like two to three hours at least per day with my kids just doing stuff with them
if I want to do something like that. What are the steps that I need to take? And I also feel like it's really because all the skills that you're teaching, it's not just for kids. is for adults who are understand that the world is changing and they need to be constantly learning, adapting. Basically world changes every week. So that's that's what we're up for.
I love this question uh because it's been so fun to watch people who are replicating a lot of um the alpha magic um in their own homes with what their kids are doing. And so that's everything from, you know, we've got uh families that are using our Alpha Anywhere homeschool program. That's $10,000 a year to get the same academic platform, you know, that our kids in school are getting. And then their afternoons get to be, you know, the life skills development that the family decides. That is interesting. And, you know, there are so many ways that you can teach great life skills. You know, sports obviously has always been a really popular way of um teaching grit and resilience and teamwork and leadership uh and receiving feedback, you know, and learning to mastery as well. You know, one
Of the things we think about with sports, that it's harder to understand with academics, but we're taking the same approach. You know, if you're a basketball player, you're not working on your dunking if you don't know how to dribble the ball down the court, right? It's start with the basics, master the basics, and then move up. Uh, you know, you analyze game film when you're finished, you know, what with a game. You're watching to see where you could do better. We're doing a lot of that same stuff on the academic side.
Um, but there are things that families can do at home. I always think entrepreneurship is such a great tool, and we talked about that with the lemonade stand. So, those are great ways to learn financial literacy. Um, and those are things that parents can be doing at home.
Now, here's the challenge. A lot of times, uh, the big, big issue with this is there's only so many hours in the day. So, when kids are going to school all day long, they come home, they get hopefully a little bit of a break. They often are ending up doing homework, which is starting earlier and earlier. They've got homework, you got to eat dinner, you're doing piano practice, or you're going to play soccer, whatever it is. There's only so much supplementing that can be done. And that's one of the reasons I think uh families are starting to realize, like, it's time for us to to demand change in our school districts and to ask our schools, what are you doing to try and improve academics?
>> What about academics? If somebody wants to deploy part of your system at home, what can they do with their kids? Is it like watching particular videos or I don't know, like VIP coding an app?
Let me give you an example on the academic side. There is an app called Math Academy that we absolutely love. It's not one of our apps. Um, it's built by uh, you know, an outside team that they've just done a great job with Math Academy. It's a great app. And so that's an example of something that, you know, if you're wanting your kid to be able to spend some time doing, you know, some app work, going there.
Um, I think the other thing that's, you know, so much fun now is, you know, working on so many of these AI tools that are coming out. In fact, a bunch of our our students went to New York uh last month, and they did an open class for parents, you know, to teach them what to do. And, you know, when we're thinking about a a super important skill uh as an employee uh in order to have a job, you're going to have to always understand like, how do I take whatever I'm doing and add the most value from it? How do I become AI first?
>> Oh, yeah. How do I automate part of my skills and rise up to the most?
>> Use AI to give me superpowers, right? That's what's going to make people job resilient, you know, when and and employable is if they are constantly knowing, all right, here's how I can take something and use it to my advantage to build something big.
>> And also use personal judgment when interacting with AI.
>> Absolutely. You know, and and here's the other thing. I think there's a lot of fear around AI. Uh, and in schools there is, and it's rightly so because chatbots in schools are cheap bots. Um, and, you know, we don't use chatbots in our schools because kids do switching apps.
>> Do you have like a blogger?
>> So, yeah, so our our kids are working on computers, so they've got they've got um, basically in the Timeback platform, it's it's monitoring so that they can't say, okay, I'm moving from here to here, or if if they're able to somehow, we can see it. We're screen recording to be able to see how kids are moving through this. It's also what allows us to give coaching to kids when it's like, "Oh, okay. I noticed that you you maybe skimmed the reading. You didn't spend enough time reading the whole the whole thing in order to do that." And then coaching, you know, often times slowing down will actually help you go faster than trying to rush through something. And, you know, getting that kind of skills um is important to do. Uh, so it's a, you know, there's a lot to do, but yeah, in education, we've got to make sure that we're implementing AI in a in a good way. And what I would hate to see is just, you know, every kid gets a computer with a chatbot on it and say, "Wow, we're AI first."
>> Yeah, that that's my concern time. Like, I really want them to watch some videos. There are some TED talks I absolutely love, which also very visual, so I can show them with my kids. But my concern is that if there's a phone call and I leave the room, they're going to figure out how to switch to shorts.
>> Oh, yeah. If your kids like Mark Rober, who does all the science stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I just showed them the glitter bomb. They were fascinated.
>> Yeah. No, there's some interesting ways to do it. And, you know, that's another thing that I think we have the ability now to like be able to watch a heart surgery, you know, on YouTube versus, you know, just dissecting a pig, you know, in class. There's so many cool ways that we need to take advantage of what the world has to offer in the right way where where we can say, "Okay, let's learn this. Let's get inspired by something here." Mark Rober is a great example of a really good influencer who makes kids fall in love with science and activities um like that. And so you got to pepper in that right amount. And I think uh, you know, parents at home who are kind of being able to say, "All right, I'm going to intentionally have my kid do some work using adaptive apps. I'm going to also have, you know, a way for them to develop life skills at home."
>> We grow up in a particular system and we think it's the best system for our kids. But then what I also do realize that the world has really changed. Do you think higher education matters? Do you think universities are going to matter in five to ten years?
Here's what we're telling our students is that we want you to be prepared to go do whatever it is that you want to do. And if that means you want to go to an Ivy League school, then you should be able to have, you know, the resume that gets you into that. And if you want to be ready to go out and hop into business or go straight into the working world, you should be prepared to to do that as well. Um, so I think that's a very personal choice.
Now, if you ask me in general about higher education, I think the university system is, you know, following very closely behind the the K through 12 one, which is that, you know, if you took AI tools, just like what Alpha is doing, and said, "Hey, let's do all our basic courses, you know, this way," and then free up the professor's time to to really spend time in more sophisticated discussion with kids who are, you know, at that level. Let's go be doing research. Let's go build up, you know, build a build a startup together, do whatever that is. Um, I think that would make it really exciting.
Now, I believe university, and I've got one daughter who's um in college and another who's heading there next year. Both those girls were so excited to go to college because they're excited to be around other ambitious young people, right? They're excited to build their network. And I think university does an amazing job at building out, you know, networks. It's where you often can meet your your spouse. uh, there's your best friends for life. That's what they want to go to college for. They want to have that experience. But I think again, their time spent in classes is, you know, pretty inefficient.
>> Yeah. How do they adjust from two hours to eight hours?
>> Yeah. It's funny. Uh, we actually looked at this cuz that that's a big concern that people have is, okay, what happens when your kids go back into a traditional environment? And here's what we've found. They do great. They are able to very quickly understand, okay, here's how I can I can learn. uh, and I they have an proactive attitude of taking on ownership of their learning. Um, but they will say, and my daughter was one of them. She called me up after the first week of school and she's like, "Wow, mom. I mean, these lectures are so inefficient." Like in a 45-minute class, you know, there's probably five minutes of real information that was worthwhile. But do they do well in grades? Absolutely. Uh, more importantly than that though, I think what it feels like our Alpha grads tend to do is they have a desire towards just mastery, even when the system isn't doing it.
We had a student uh who went off to university and he wrote a paper for one of his classes and he got the paper back and he had a 95%, but there were no notes. So he went and met with his professor and he said, "Hey, I see that I got a 95%, but I don't see any notes on how I could improve." And she just said, "Well, you know, that's a good grade. That's an A. you should be happy with that." He's like, "I am happy with it, but I just want to know what would make it better. Like, what would get 100?" And she said, "Well, you know, writing, you're never going to get to 100. There's always improvement." He goes, "Great. Share with me what what I could improve upon." And, you know, she looked at him and she just crossed out the 95 and put a 99 and sent him on his way.
>> So, he didn't get he actually didn't get the feedback he was looking for. Um, and it's just an example that even teachers are programmed to be like, it's just about the grade. Just here's the grade. Go on your way. And, you know, I think Alpha students realize like, oh, I can go learn this because, you know, it's interesting and I have an ability to get better.
>> Interesting. Okay. So, you're saying all of this and I'm like, what would be the version of uh self-imposed Alpha school for adults?
Oh. Um, well, first of all, I think, um, you know, for me, if I had a little bit more time, I sometimes think, you know what, I'd love to go back and do some, you know, hole filling, you know, and remember where am I at in in, you know, my math and history, uh, those types of things. So, I mean, I think that one of the things that that parents can do is start doing some of these apps with their kids. Not with them, but but do them too so that they can understand how they work uh and what they do. Find a thing that you're interested in learning more about and go deep. Our middle school students, we do this all the time. Actually, we start earlier than that, which is we'll have kids go down a two-week long rabbit hole around a subject that they find interesting. And so, that's something as an adult, go find a a topic that you're interested in learning about and say, I'm going to go and I'm going to build what we call a brain lift. uh, which is basically a a list of everything I learned. Who are the experts in this area? You know, I'm at the point where I'm starting to think, oh, I should start learning about hormones and, you know, menopause and all those kinds of things that are that are going to be happening in my next stage. So, go and and find out who's the expert, who's built, who's doing this. And then, this is what a lot of our students do is they they spend, you know, a half an hour each day doing research on their topic of interest. they build a brain lift and then they can actually build an LLM uh out of that and they can search constantly, you know, okay, here's what do I know about this topic, you know, from what I've studied and they're continuing to add. And so I think it's a great example of um really encouraging this idea of continuing to go deeper and learn and becoming an expert in something.
>> And when you talk about professions to your kids, do you what is your thinking around this? So you're basically replacing teachers and you you're moving them to more like a coach cohort. The thing that I'm getting from this conversation is that you're raising a lot of entrepreneurs, which is amazing. And I feel like if you don't have entrepreneurial qualities, it's going to be really hard to survive in ten to twenty years when a lot of manual work is automated. Uh, who else do you think doesn't have a future?
Um, I don't like asking young people, what do you want to do when you get older? Like, what do you want to be when you grow up? There's a few reasons I don't like that. First of all, I think it can box kids in to think, oh, I have to say I want to be a lawyer, right? Or something like that. Um, so I think I think one of the things is you have to say, what are the things you enjoy doing? And uh, my daughter is a great example of this. I think uh, she would probably want to be a lawyer. I think the field of law is going to be a really interesting place because now you can literally write up a legal document in two seconds, you know, and save the money on this. And so I think the law profession is an example of, you know, lawyers are going to have to elevate themselves to say, okay, here's how we're automating the things that can be automated, and here's where the real focus should be is, you know, as we're incorporating strategy and what are we doing and how are we uh negotiating and communicating, you know, on that. Uh, I think there there's going to be so much change. You know, doctors, you know, I don't think are we ever going to replace doctors? Absolutely not. But it's so interesting. I was at my last uh dermatology appointment where they're doing my yearly skin check, and instead of the doctor coming and looking at my moles with a little mirror, you know, the doctor is literally taking a camera and scanning my body and using AI to analyze if anything. And guess what? They have the record from last year to be able to know, hey, that mole looks different than it did this year versus a human eye who's like, I don't know. Now, does bedside manner become even more of an important skill? Absolutely. Right? you know, those are some places where we're going to have to see change. So, I again, I think with with our students, we have no idea what they're going to want to be when they get older, but if we can help them develop the skills that that will be helpful in whatever they do, I think it's a very important question to ask yourself, what instead of what profession you want to be doing, what you actually enjoy doing, the skills, the process.
>> Yeah. And that's the key because professions are going to change.
>> Absolutely. We have our middle school students and our high school students do an Ikigai values chart. What are you good at? What do you love to do? And what does the world need? And that is something that I think we should all be revisiting on a regular basis. You know, as as adults, too. Um, these are things that we should do. And and that helps um people kind of see like, who do I want to be? What do I want to do? How do I want to contribute? How do I want to build and create? Uh, and then where can this be helpful? Plug into what what you can see as a need that's uh that you can meet.
>> Have you ever thought about what to say to your daughters if they graduate and they don't get a job like in this world that's changing so fast?
That's a really interesting question. That's a great question to ask. So, um, yeah, I've got a daughter who um is a sophomore in college and she's, you know, was was hustling to find her internship for the summer. And um, I've got another daughter who's really different, actually, cuz she's a very well-known influencer. So uh, she's now she's got a different thing, which is she's going to have to make sure to to take advantage of her fifteen minutes of fame and figure out how to grow and develop, you know, and move through that. Uh, and so this, but gosh, if if they didn't get a job, I that's a very interesting question and I I think I'm such an optimist that I really struggle to ever think that kids are going to be in a position where it's like, I can't get a job.
Um, here's what I do believe. I think the value of knowing how to work hard is important. So, I would say there's got to be some place that you can find, you know, work to get to do and make sure, you know, now that you're building those skills that are going to be resilient and, you know, finding that work. This this opens up such a another question. You know, I think I was reading something that Elon Musk had posted, you know, on X the other day around, you know, what happens when we really are in a world of total abundance, right? Where we can have universal income. Again, I think there we have to help people plug into what they believe their purpose and their passion is.
>> So that they have a desire to get up each day and go create even if it's not out of necessity. And that's what you help kids figure out, which is amazing, instead of just following whatever is >> whatever teachers tell them to do. They explore themselves.
>> Okay, my last question. Let's do the one-sentence takeaway. If one person watches this, takes one action this week, what would it be? A professional, a parent, whoever was watching.
>> Uh, if you're a parent, ask your kid like, what's interesting to you these days? I think that right there is something that uh can open up so much. Like, what do you what are you interested in? What do you find yourself curious about? And then you take that and actually, you could even do that with your spouse, right? Or your business partner, someone your friend that you're at dinner with. You know, what's something that's been interesting to you that you've been thinking about learning learning about? And then say, hey, if we were going to go do a deep dive on learning about this, how would we go about learning this? you know, and maybe that turns into this book that was recommended, or maybe it turns into uh going into ChatGPT and like, you know, following something. But I think getting curious and asking questions uh is something that I would absolutely do. And I don't think there's a better way uh to connect with your kids than ask that kind of open-ended question. Not a yes/no question, but like, what's something you're curious about these days? And then how do we go into into depth on it?
>> I love that. And also maybe ten cents from me just changing the mindset around the fact that your kids don't have to be raised the way you were raised. That's such a tough thing for me cuz because I grew up in the system and my parents grew up in that system and grandparents. I'm like, my kids have to follow the same system and they're in a different country. They're in a different age. We're in a different world.
>> Yeah. Well, we often will say, hey, I turned out fine, so how bad can it be? Exactly. But I think it's also it's a mindset change. uh from uh, you know, just kind of a scarcity like, what do what do you need to get by >> versus abundance, you know, what can really set us up for that? And, you know, I talked to families all over the country who are looking into Alpha School and our founding families, the families that say, "Hey, I want to be one of the first twenty-five families to come into New City." Um, they're my like my spirit twins because I was very much like, I cannot watch my kids go through this, you know, obedient, creating, just follow the rules, go through the the the system experience. Um, but there are other families who say, "I got to wait and see how this looks, you know, let me just wait and see." Um, and I think there's going to be some level of that. But the other thing I think we're going to start seeing in the next six months is when we start knowing our, you know, friends and people that we work with, or maybe even ourselves, losing jobs, you know, to AI and starting, we're going to start to realize, you know what, we have to prepare our kids for a different reality than the one we've grown up and the one your parents were in. Parents. And, you know, the industrial revolution model of education, uh, you know, it's been around for a couple hundred years and it did a great job of raising factory workers who knew how to follow rules and be obedient and compliant. Um, but I think the world's in for a pretty big wake-up call. And it's one where we don't have to be doomsday about it. I think it can actually be a really exciting place if we're equipping ourselves and our kids with the skills to be successful.
>> Yeah. Being open-minded and trying new things. Thank you so much. This is fascinating. I think this is the conversation I really needed because I feel like, you know, with this new country, I'm like, "Oh, are they doing the right thing?"
>> Well, thank you for having me. This is so much fun. Thank you.