School Growth Mastery: Recent Episodes
Andreas Marinopoulos
Every day, your school confronts a basic yet crucial challenge: reaching the parents you need to reach, in ways that resonate with THEM.
In School Growth Mastery, we're bringing together school leaders to tackle exactly this.
How can schools drive deeper engagement with prospective families?
We will reveal untapped marketing strategies that make for the best kind of parent engagement.
Our guest today is Indra Sofian, the cofounder fo Sora School, an online project-based-learning high school.In this episode, we catch up after our first chat 2 years ago. Then the school was just starting, now there is an innovative yet mature high school operating entirely online. It is the first digital-native high school I have studied closely, so I wanted to dig into their entire operating system. We discussed how they motive learners, how they structure their academic standards, how students select the skills they need to master, the projects they design and complete. How the Sora team designs incentive mechanisms so that students navigate through a sea of skills and standards at an accelerating pace, a bit like a video game.Here are some resources mentioned in our discussion:Virtual School is the Future, by Garrett Smiley - https://soraschools.com/virtual-school-is-the-future/Redesigning School for Students To Thrive - https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/village-globals/redesigning-school-for-ij6_CO4w1z-/MTC Mastery Transcript® - https://mastery.orgWhere to learn more about [Name]:Twitter - https://twitter.com/indysofianWebsite - https://soraschools.com/Where to learn more about Enrollhand: Website - www.enrollhand.comWebinar - http://webinar-replay.enrollhand.com
In this episode, we catch up on the last 2 years since our first podcast interview in August 2019. We talk about how Prenda uses a unique learning model with a mix of blended learning, PBL and inquiry-based learning to increase confidence and curiosity. We see how they enhance grit and perseverance, helping learners to stick with their problems longer, as Albert Einstein would say.Some interesting highlights from our discussion:The focus is on helping the child choose to be a learner. Nurturing their curiosity, setting goals, not quitting despite the tears, as per Albert Einstein, staying with their problems longer.The learning model takes all the progressive learning research and packs into a simple, 3-part daily schedule. We compared it to how the Homebrew Computer Club tinkerers ended up with the Apple II - decades of trial and error packaged into a simple, beautiful box.The learning guide does not teach or instruct. The role is flipped. They coach. With the simple, beautiful learning mode, kids are always on their learning frontier. They progress FAST, wizzing through grade levels.Prenda is a growing, remote team, and is gradually making it's way from the South West to any state that welcomes them. Working with public and charter schools, the microschools are free.Here are some resources mentioned in our discussion:Previous episode: https://blog.enrollhand.com/launching-80-schools-in-8-months-with-kelly-smith/Quote: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." - Albert EinsteinPrenda Town Hall Intro video - https://youtu.be/cHrOWvEKSvQ?t=46Dan Meyer's Three-Act Math Tasks - https://blog.mrmeyer.com/category/3acts/Homebrew Computer Club - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_ClubI, Woz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C2UUB9QWhere to learn more about Prenda:Twitter - https://twitter.com/prendalearnWebsite - https://www.prenda.comYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn6GcJFx_Yh1CpKzUUuzzQgLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellysmith35/Where to learn more about Enrollhand:Website: www.enrollhand.comOur webinar: https://webinar-replay.enrollhand.com
SummaryOur guest today is Victoria Ransom, the CEO at Prisma. Victoria is a serial entrepreneur from New Zealand, having sold her last company to Google and is currently living in the U S with her partner and co-founder Alain Chuard. We are going to talk about their newest venture Prisma, a full-time virtual program (with a physical component) for middle school learners. Prisma is a full-stack connected learning network that is rethinking school from first principles.Listen and take note of what happens when you combine a stellar team, great technology and a state-of-the-art, progressive learning framework.In our discussion, we cover:Many education leaders integrate peer learning, but at Prisma they have thought deeply about how learning from & teaching another child is so beneficial.Victoria seems an inflection point before middle school, where kids start racing after grades and tests. Prisma catches them before middle school starts to keep and kindle their sense of wonder.A coach appears as the governor of Wisconsin, a task force is put on a major water problem. Is it a classroom or a Hollywood set? Kids get clues and reports. Curiosity and motivation kick in. They launch a PR campaign, a budget...oh, and hit all their learning goals as well.Teachers still do so much grunt work, so much waste, so much multitasking that takes their focus off the learners. Prisma is using technology and learning science to strip away the noise and let their coaches focus on delivering a pure, seamless learning experience.Zoom doesn't cut it for the kiddos. Victoria is bursting with ideas, both for sync & async learning that enrich and gamify the learning experience. One example: Expressing support in a virtual settingHere are some resources mentioned in our discussion:The concept of Hard Fun by Seymour Papert - http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.htmlPrisma's Learning Framework - https://www.joinprisma.com/frameworkPrisma LIVE - https://www.joinprisma.com/prisma-liveWhere to learn more about the guest:Prisma's Twitter account - https://twitter.com/joinprismaVictoria's Twitter account - https://twitter.com/victoria_ransomAlain's Twitter account - https://twitter.com/AlainChuardWebsite - https://www.joinprisma.comWhere to learn more about Enrollhand:Website: www.enrollhand.comOur webinar: https://webinar-replay.enrollhand.com
SummaryOur guest today is Ryan Delk, the co-founder and CEO at Primer. Ryan spent the last decade building tech companies at Square, Gumroad and Omni. He has now co-founded Primer to free the next generation of kids to be more ambitious, more creative, and to think for themselves, starting with homeschool.In this episode, we discuss Ryan's ambitious plans for the future of Primer, how parents are equally important to kids in the learning equation, why observing the "user-experience" is so important, why not stratifying by age creates some sort of magic and much more.Listen and take note of how Primer creates ambitious, global communities of learners based first and foremost on children's interests.Where to learn more about Primer:Twitter - https://twitter.com/withprimerWebsite - https://withprimer.comTeam - https://withprimer.com/teamWhere to learn more about Enrollhand:Website: www.enrollhand.comOur webinar: https://webinar-replay.enrollhand.com
Our guest today is Kelly from Galileo XP. Kelly and her co-founder Vlad redesigned school from scratch. Galileo a global online school soon to have access to physical spaces as well.
In this episode, Brian and I discuss what it takes for an educational program to find product-market fit. This means that the students are happy and engaged, they are succesfull in their learning goals, and the experience is amazing for everyone involved, so that they all keep coming back for more.
It has become popular to sneer at our education system’s factory model. We call for the death of schools in favor of Airbnb-like learning communities. Our SAT/ACT testing culture, our boring direct-instruction content-dumping, our mental health issues -...
Our guest today is Trevor McKendrick, Chief of Staff at Lambda School, where students graduate and get the job because they got the skills - and it’s free until they get a job paying over $50K.
In education, the obvious place to cut your teeth is as a teacher. Joel Rose knows the classroom well. He began as a 5th-grade teacher in Houston before moving into a variety of leadership roles in education.
From where do contemporary, resilient changes begin - from a top-down mandate, or from a bottom-up, tech-driven evolution? Today’s guest, Matt Greenfield, is an investor in entrepreneurial companies that drive transformative social outcomes through the power of using technology in education.
If you had to pick your moniker, being called a 'guru' by Fortune Magazine and a 'maverick' by CNN would not be a bad place to start. Our guest today, Clark Aldrich, is on the frontline of the learning revolution.