491: MacKenzie Price—The Most Talked About School in the World

What if school could be reimagined from the ground up? This week, Mike sits down with entrepreneur and education innovator MacKenzie Price https://2hourlearning.com/founder/, the founder of Alpha School https://alpha.school/, a model that's attracting global attention for helping students learn twice as much in half the time. Using artificial intelligence, personalized learning, and an unconventional approach to education, MacKenzie is challenging nearly every assumption about how kids should be taught. She also makes the case that meaningful change in education won't come from top-down mandates, but from bottom-up solutions created by parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs willing to rethink the status quo. From test scores to life skills, she explains why some believe the future of education has already arrived—and why the world's most talked-about school may be just getting started. Learn more about Alpha School at: https://bit.ly/4xGuTNU

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Hey guys, this is The Way I Heard It. I'm Mike Rowe and the title of this episode is not "Let's Get Edumicated," even though

• 0:10Speaker 01

  It should be.

• 0:11Mike Rowe?

  I know.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:12Mike Rowe?

  I mean, there's still time to change it, but

• 0:14Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 0:14Mike Rowe?

  I don't think so either. We're gonna call it "The Most Talked About School in the World." My guest is Mackenzie Price, who I know through an organization called Stand Together. And what Mackenzie has done is built a series of schools over the last decade or so. They're called Alpha Schools. And, you know, I don't know if we actually said this in the conversation, but what I was left with, and this is an amazing talk, by the way, if you've got kids, or if you were one

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:46Mike Rowe?

  Once upon a time.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Or if you know any.

• 0:48Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, or if you've ever been to a school, or driven by one. The time has come to at least consider the possibility that everything you know about education is, I won't say wrong, but subject to review.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  I would've gone with entirely wrong, but

• 1:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, well, see, that's the problem, Chuck. As broken as our public schools are, you and I are still products of them, and we're sentient, we're functioning.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  I think they're different. I think they changed, because I remember, when we were kids, I remember like giant kids who were in a grade that you thought, "You should have a job by now, dude, and you're, you know, you're in the ninth grade? What is happening?"

• 1:30Mike Rowe?

  Yes, there was a time when if you failed, the consequences were not moving forward.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:37Mike Rowe?

  You were left behind. But then there was no child left behind, and they took it quite literally. And so, the results today, as many of you know, are just some of the most dismal test scores imaginable. We've got giant cohorts of high school graduates who can't do basic math, and who struggle with basic literacy.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02Mike Rowe?

  And if it's not a national scandal, it ought to be. And as we wait for the scandal to unfold, well, not everybody is waiting. You know, we featured a couple people on this podcast who have really taken it upon themselves to find a better way to educate our kids. And Mackenzie is one of those people, but she now has a tool at her disposal that really nobody's ever had before, and that's essentially an AI tutor.

• 2:29Mike Rowe?

  And so for me, what really came out of this is that the greatest form of education that ever existed was Socrates and Aristotle, you know, and the way that Alexander learned how to be Alexander the Great, who went on to conquer the world. That was a mentorship program. It's the opposite of a cookie cutter approach. It's the opposite of a teacher presenting a lecture to a room full of kids. And my guest today believes that AI can fundamentally replace the Plato and Socratic method and be a proxy for that. And the data is crazy.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:12Mike Rowe?

  I mean, they're they're finding that a two-hour lesson with a guide and an AI approach that is bespoke to the kid in question is just so exponentially more effective than what we're doing now.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Yes, the students in her school, according to the stats, perform in the top 2% nationwide and learn two times faster.

• 3:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, which begs the question, what do you do with all that spare time? And we will spend a fair amount of time talking about that because these kids at these Alpha schools are engaged in ways that I think at one point I say, it sounds like the Boy Scouts. It sounds like the merit badge program. So many different ways. It's not just athletics or speech or school plays. It's everything you can imagine. The engagement levels are off the charts. And look, it's pretty unique right now. I mean, there's a very small percentage of people who are going to these schools, but the schools are growing rapidly. And at the very end of the conversation, she just casually mentions that Alpha is the most talked

• 4:23Mike Rowe?

  about school in the world. And according to the very AI, with which we've been focused on, it is.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:33Mike Rowe?

  With which we've been focused on. What a great example of a sentence fragment that is the product of a public education. Folks, we can do better than this.

• 4:44Mike Rowe?

  But I doubt you'll hear a more passionate conversation anytime soon. Mackenzie's on a mission.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 4:51Mike Rowe?

  It's the way she heard it, it's the way I heard it, and hopefully, in mere moments, it'll be the way you listen to it. Mackenzie Price, right after this.

• 5:04Mike Rowe?

  Couple of weeks ago, on this very podcast, I talked with Brooke Rollins, our Secretary of Agriculture, about the incredibly complicated business of delivering affordable beef to our citizens without disadvantaging American ranchers. We also discussed the very controversial decision to import 300,000 metric tons of ground beef from various foreign countries, and the maddening policy that allows meatpackers to label imported meat as a product of the USA. Well, shortly after that conversation, one of my sponsors, Good Ranchers, reported an unusually high level of interest in their product. And this is not surprising. Given a choice, most people would prefer to buy their meat from American ranchers.

• 5:49Mike Rowe?

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• 6:53Mike Rowe?

  You rolling? Yep. Fantastic. Look at this. Look at you. Look at all this press, man.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  It's crazy, man. I'm out there.

• 7:01Mike Rowe?

  What is like, when did this happen? When, I mean, everywhere I look now, people wanna, they want a piece of Mackenzie.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Change in education, one kid at a time. That's what we're trying to do.

• 7:11Mike Rowe?

  This journey began over a decade ago. I'm reading from, what do you guys call this? Like a leaf behind?

• 7:16Speaker 02

  What do they call it? It's like a press kit? Some sort of a press package that tells you a little bit about who I am? I guess you guys look at that and decide, do we actually want to talk to this lady?

• 7:24Mike Rowe?

  I did not look at this.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Okay, well, someone on your team probably did.

• 7:28Mike Rowe?

  Unlikely.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  And we do, but I will tell you, I think I'm more interesting than a piece of paper.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  There you go. I have it right there as well.

• 7:33Mike Rowe?

  You know, oh, you do? Oh, look at that.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  That's page one. I didn't print that up because it had.

• 7:38Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Photograph, basically.

• 7:40Mike Rowe?

  Wait a minute. Is that how you spell your name?

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:42Mike Rowe?

  We got it right?

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:43Mike Rowe?

  The first and the last name?

• 7:44Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 7:45Mike Rowe?

  Good.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  That's my name.

• 7:46Mike Rowe?

  For the record, it's Mackenzie Price. All she's doing is changing education as we understand it in the free world. I have so many questions for you. Full disclosure, no, I didn't see you interviewed on any of these things. I first heard your name from friends at Stand Together.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Oh, wonderful. I love those guys.

• 8:05Mike Rowe?

  And they were like.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  They do so much great stuff.

• 8:07Mike Rowe?

  They connected me last year with an organization called Vela.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Yes, I've heard of them.

• 8:13Mike Rowe?

  And I thought this whole notion, you know, they're all about bottom-up solutions in lots of different categories. And I just can't imagine a category more in need of a bottom-up solution than education. So I sniffed around, saw what you were doing, saw you interviewed in various places. And I listened to a guy called, I think, Joe.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:36Mike Rowe?

  He must be your principal.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  He's our principal.

• 8:38Mike Rowe?

  He was fabulous.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's pretty great.

• 8:41Mike Rowe?

  So.

• 8:43Mike Rowe?

  Before we talk about how you're fixing it, what's busted? And how bad is it?

• 8:48Speaker 02

  How long do you have, Mike?

• 8:49Mike Rowe?

  How long do you have? I mean, honestly, this tape's cheap and Chuck's asleep already, so...

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Wait, what? Sorry, are we talking to me?

• 8:55Mike Rowe?

  We got all the time you need.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Well, so, I think education is such an interesting area for a couple reasons. First of all, everybody has their own personal experience with education, right? We all grew up in it. And really, we all grew up in a relatively similar situation. So, I think you and I could probably say we went to, you know, a school. I actually went to kind of a one-room schoolhouse for a little bit, my early days. Yeah, public school, because I was born in North Dakota, lived out in the country, and then went to like a little farm school, you know, country school. I actually rode my horse to school. And then during recess, we would ride horse. And it was, that was awesome. We should bring that component totally back into schools. But, here's the story with that. I was one of those kids who was really good at school growing up. Were you good at school?

• 9:42Mike Rowe?

  I was clever. I was facile, I think. I didn't really like the structure, but I adapted.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was good at it. I knew how to get the grades. I knew how to do that. But, I hated school growing up. And I was always that kid who would raise my hand and be like, "Sorry, why do I need to know this? Like, how does this apply? What do I do?" I would sometimes get in trouble with my teachers for being a little too smart back to them in terms of just like, that questioning, and they didn't like that. And I think what I noticed is what I think is a bigger issue in education, which is this one-size-fits-all teacher leading a group of kids who are all at wildly different levels through material in a time-based system. And that system was born out of the Industrial Revolution, so...

• 10:30Mike Rowe?

  Todd Rose talks about this.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Todd is such a smart dude. He understands it. And it's really not that hard to understand the benefits that came out of that system when it was started, you know, 200 years ago. They needed to raise compliant, obedient, rule-following workers who would, you know, follow rules, do as they're told. And that... System was really helpful for educating the masses because prior to that, education was for the elite.

• 10:58Mike Rowe?

  What every parent dreams of for their kid, right? A subservient, one dimensional drone.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Well, but yes, however, I'm gonna just, I'm gonna compliment a little bit of it. Kids, you know, kids were learning basic reading and writing and math skills, right? They were doing that. But what's interesting is in the last 200 years, nothing has really changed in that model. It's the one place where we haven't seen a difference. And if you go to a rural school in India, or you go to some high end, private boarding school in Connecticut, you're gonna see basically the same thing, which is a teacher leading a group of kids that are all about the same age, through material, at the same pace. Building might be nicer in one versus the other, but it's that model. And that model is something that I, as a kid, noticed myself as a problem, and we're seeing it as a big issue now. Not to mention the fact that, you know,

• 11:48Speaker 02

  it's not preparing kids for this new world we're in. It's not even doing a good job of teaching the academics that it used to do better at. And that has become something that is so apparent that more and more families are realizing like, okay, school needs to change. And it's the one place that has been so resistant to change.

• 12:06Mike Rowe?

  Why?

• 12:07Speaker 02

  I think that, first of all, we have this feeling of, well, hey, I grew up in it and I turned out fine. This is just something you do. And another attitude that people have around school is that school is like spinach. It's good for you, you may or may not like it, but that's just the way it is. You're just gonna spend your time. And for me, I questioned that during my experience growing up. And then when I became a mom and watched my own two girls embark on that journey, it's where the alarm bells started going off and like, is this really, is this really what we need to expect?

• 12:37Mike Rowe?

  Well, the other thing Todd wrote about, I mean, he talks a lot about the impact of the industrial model on the academic model. Everything from bells ringing to just all the rigor you would expect to find on an assembly line, somehow got pulled into the way we teach kids. Crazy. He also talks about the end of average, you know, and this idea that the average thing becomes the target. But average doesn't really exist. And so in your example, if there's a teacher in front of 30 kids, a percentage of them Are confused because they're not getting it. And another percentage are probably bored because they already understand it.

• 13:19Mike Rowe?

  And I can't imagine a bigger enemy of education than boredom. Or confusion, but.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Which are both primary characteristics of our traditional education system right now.

• 13:29Mike Rowe?

  Because who's left in the way of a student in that thirty student example? Who actually is is just sitting there like getting it? I don't know that anybody really is.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Well, and it, yeah, it used to be more than it is now. And if you look at our country, you know, less than a third of students are reading or doing math at grade level. So you think about that fifth grade teacher who is expected to teach fifth grade math curriculum. And she's got two thirds of her students who are behind grade level. She's got some kids who are sitting there bored stiff because they could be doing more. And a very small percentage of kids that are at that curriculum. How in the world is that teacher supposed to go in and catch these kids up? While teaching fifth grade material when it's like, and by the way, you've got nine months to do it. A hundred and eighty days, that's what it is. And so I think that's part of the reason we're seeing so much trouble in the teaching industry. Teachers are leaving the field in droves.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  It's hard to attract good talent to come in because they have been put in this model. That is such an uphill battle, it's impossible. So we see burnt out teachers and of course, our answer to that is let's make sure we also pay you very little amounts of money. And so it's just, it's a broken system and it's not doing the service that we need. And of course, it's only gotten worse since COVID happened because everybody talked about. We're going to have a COVID catch up, you know, get kids back in school and they'll catch up. And the problem is if you're a student who has missed fundamental, you know, knowledge in first, second, third, fourth grade. You can't go do the more sophisticated concepts. The worst time to be learning, you know, your multiplication tables is when you're trying to understand algebra.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  Right? And so when you think about education, it is very much this, think of a Jenga tower, right? Your building blocks, kindergarten, first, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, you know, doing more. On that, you can see where my math skills end, I can't go beyond division. On this, but you you look at that and then you realize, okay, when kids miss certain foundational pieces, you're building a Junga tower that's got holes in it. And at some point, that's when you're going to see people fall off this cliff and they don't learn. And I'll tell you what.

• 15:38Mike Rowe?

  You're gonna see the whole tower come down.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  The whole tower comes down. And on top of that, that's where you also see just more and more disengagement. People sit there and go, what is the point of this? I'm literally not learning anything. I am confused or bored. And add to it a whole other side of it, which is, how is this applying to what I might go out and do in the working world?

• 15:59Mike Rowe?

  So all that tracks. All that tracks for me, like, I mean, how else would you realize the system was broken unless you, you know, were self aware enough to, you know, test and watch and observe and then ultimately conclude? We've done all those things, but we're still doing it. We're not only still doing the same thing, the same way that's been demonstrably proven to leave the majority of kids behind. We're, we're just doubling and tripling down.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Well, you think of the trillions of dollars that have just been put down the drain. And the challenge is that everyone thinks, okay, the thing to teach us, we got to do better teacher training, lower student teacher ratios, do that. But what all of that is, it's like trying to put lipstick on a pig, right? You can't change the fundamental issue, which is that this one person teaching to many, same size fits all, it doesn't work. And we've actually known for 40 years, researchers have done studies to understand that kids can learn two, five, 10 times faster if they're put in a one to one mastery based tutoring experience. Right? If you and I were sitting here and you were able to teach me math at exactly the level and pace that I needed, and when I had a question, I could say, wait, Mike, I don't understand this part.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  And you could either say, let's go over it this way, or you know what? Let's go revisit a concept that will help you understand this new concept better.

• 17:22Mike Rowe?

  Well, isn't that how we got? Isn't that how we got Alexander the Great?

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 17:27Mike Rowe?

  I mean, wasn't it Plato and Socrates and Aristotle?

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, to Alexander the Great and, you know. People were doing amazing things. The other thing that's kind of interesting about that example with Alexander the Great is young people were doing big things back in the day and today's society. I think we so underrate what young people are capable of. And as a result, we treat them like they're kind of in prisons at school. It's like you don't have permission to go to the bathroom. You've got assigned seats at lunch. You've got protection around what kind of recess you can do, what activities. And that's the kind of thing that's just like.

• 18:00Mike Rowe?

  I mean, never mind learning. The system is designed to make you conform to the system itself. And I guess the devil's advocate would argue, well, look, the alternative is chaos. You've got 30 kids in a room. You just can't have them getting up and leave whenever they feel like it. And, you know, raising hands, maybe that becomes a doorway to manners, you know? I mean, it's not like it's completely nuts. It's just that it's all been weighed and measured and found wanting.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Now, there are still fierce defenders of this model, but I will tell you, I wasn't one of them. I realized there's got to be something different and that really hit home for me when I was watching my kids go through the experience.

• 18:42Mike Rowe?

  You know, I want to say too, personally, when I think about the Aristotelian or the Socratic method of teaching and learning, like there is a corollary in modern times. It's called the apprenticeship model. It's not like we lost it. We just took it out of the kind of learning that you're describing that typically takes place in public schools. And maybe, I mean, we kind of brought it on ourselves. We took shop class out of high school, which was really like, that's the gateway to an apprenticeship model, you know?

• 19:22Mike Rowe?

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• 20:45Speaker 02

  Well, and it's also, you know, school should be a place that helps unlock your potential and helps you find that intersection between your passions and your talents. Like, what are you good at? What do you love to do? And what does the world need? And there are so many different ways that we need to get young people out there in the world trying things instead of saying, you know what? Maybe you'll be interested in this when you graduate college, have a bunch of debt that comes out of it, and finally get your first job to then realize, oh, I don't like this job. I don't like what I'm doing. And I think, you know, so much of what we've thought about when we're kind of reimagining what education can look like is trying to get better answers to those challenges and give kids that time to go get their hands dirty, try something, fail.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  I mean, how great is failure as a lesson for people? And when you think about this, you know, you said you were a pretty agile student growing up. I was a great student growing up, and I will tell you, the relationship I had with failure was stay away from anything that might hurt my GPA, right? That might hurt my ability to have this facade of like, I'm a good, smart, talented student who should be able to get into Stanford University. And that's the exact opposite thing we want. We want kids to have opportunities to go out and try things, see what, again, they're good at, and take that experience with them. And failure is a huge part of it.

• 22:04Mike Rowe?

  And the school itself, it just seems, it's so, schools get all the press, you know, when we talk about the Ivy League, when we talk about Harvard-Westlake, when we talk about, you know, these premier schools, it just seems like the real rock stars are the teachers. Like, I remember three or four teachers who affirmatively changed my life, had nothing to do with the school that they happened to be teaching in, or that I happened to be attending. Again, back to the human, hands-on model.

• 22:36Speaker 02

  And I would even go further, and this is a question we ask our students. We say, every adult would say they have one or two teachers, it sounds like you had three or four. We say, one or two teachers that changed their life, is your guide, who's the equivalent of a teacher in our school system, that person for you? And I think that's something that is so important, but I'm going to challenge you a little bit about this, too. Think of how many teachers you had throughout your, your school career.

• 23:01Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  And that you say, okay, three or four made a difference. For me, my fifth-grade teacher was awesome, my business teacher in high school was great, but I'll tell you what I liked about them most. It wasn't how they taught business to me, right? It was the way they made me feel connected.

• 23:17Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  And they were, they had enthusiasm and engagement, and that's what I think matters. And it's part of what, we've taken the magical parts of, you know, the education model, which is, first of all, socialization in terms of having your friends around, and adults that now have time to actually connect and mentor and focus on motivation, which unfortunately, teachers in our traditional system, they just don't have that time.

• 23:41Mike Rowe?

  I had an English teacher who said something that was so impactful to me. I got an A- minus on a paper that I had written, and she told me later that it's the highest grade she ever gave. You know, she does give As, she only, A-minus is the highest grade you get.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 23:58Mike Rowe?

  And she had a whole, you know, thesis for that. But her only comment at the bottom was, she said, "Mike, you have a big decision to make." Dan Rather had a career.

• 24:11Mike Rowe?

  That you could maybe have, and so did J.D. Salinger.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 24:16Mike Rowe?

  And I wasn't super familiar with either of these, you know?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  And you couldn't Google them at that time. You had to go hit the Dewey Decimal System.

• 24:22Mike Rowe?

  I had to go to the library. I had to go to the library. And I realized it was such an extraordinary compliment to get as a senior. And it certainly wasn't anything to do in, you know, the compendium or the curricula or, I mean, that's this is such a bespoke

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:44Mike Rowe?

  thing to say, and it really impacted me.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, she showed she believed in you. She said, "You are capable of greatness."

• 24:51Mike Rowe?

  She believed in a version of me that didn't exist.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Right, but she was like, "There is something here," and that's what, you know, adults, when they are freed up to really make that positive impact that I think everyone who gets into education wants to do. They just need to be put in a situation where they can have that time to really get to know their students. Do you know Carol Dweck? She's a professor at Stanford University. She's all around growth mindset and grit. She teaches those things.

• 25:17Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yes, grit.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  And, yeah, and she does a lot of stuff around growth mindset, and she was working on trying to figure out how we could help improve outcomes in algebra classes. And here's the story she told that was so interesting. She wrote a script that the teacher would state on the first day of class and then about halfway through the semester. And it was basically real short. It's like a minute and a half long. "I believe that you're all here in this class because you're capable of being algebra superstars. And, you know, you're going to be able to put in the work, and we're going to work together to make sure that you understand this material. And if you're ever struggling, come into my office hours, and we will walk through and go through this because I believe you are capable and you can do it."

• 25:57Speaker 02

  And so what she found was the teachers who read these scripts during this semester, their kids' reports and results were way higher than teachers who didn't. Here's the biggest problem she had. She couldn't get the teachers to read the scripts. And I looked at her, I'm like, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Yeah, they're like a minute and a half long, twice in a semester. Can you guess why teachers weren't reading the scripts?" I gave you a hint in that story.

• 26:23Mike Rowe?

  Because they're illiterate.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  No. You know why? Because one of the pieces in that script was come to my office hours. And teachers don't have time. They are so overburdened that they were like, oh, my gosh, if I tell my my kids, like, come to my office hours, I might get to, you know, I don't have time to do that. I don't even have office hours. I was on Twitter yesterday and there was a teacher talking about, we don't have scheduled bathroom breaks. Like, we can't do this. And you think about how hard this system has been built to actually produce, you know, excellent results. And I would argue that even those kids who do succeed in the system, and I would be an example of one of them, I still think most often, they're just learning

• 27:06Speaker 02

  how to play the game, how to check the boxes, how to do the thing, and puts them on sort of this path of just, go grab the next carrot, you know, versus really use school to help develop who are you going to be as a person? And what are the skills that are going to take you out in life?

• 27:22Mike Rowe?

  All right. We could spend hours talking about what's broken.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, it's way more fun to talk about what works.

• 27:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. I mean, but it's also shocking. So the results you're saying, in your own words, go ahead and tell me how you want me to process it, because it's a lot.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Well, let me tell you first what it is. Because I think people are always wondering, they hear something about the AI school, and they think this robot dystopian, human void environment, and kids isolated, you know, locked in computers. And couldn't be further from the truth. What we have done is we have really reimagined what school can be around a few fundamental concepts. First, kids should love school. And when I say love school, we even ask, like, would you rather go to school or go on vacation? Would you have ever gone to school over vacation, Mike?

• 28:18Mike Rowe?

  As a rule, no.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  As a rule, no, but every once in a while?

• 28:20Mike Rowe?

  There were times.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 28:21Mike Rowe?

  Chuck and I went to the same high school.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  You did? Wow. Long time friends.

• 28:26Mike Rowe?

  We had a music teacher who made it great. I mean, it was really, really fun. And he was, but he's an outlier.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:34Mike Rowe?

  He was Mr. Holland. And every day was Mr. Holland's opus.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:39Mike Rowe?

  And so when we were engaged in projects or plays or whatever, yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  You liked going there.

• 28:45Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  That's great. I love that. Then, you know, God bless that teacher. Love those people who are able to do that. I will tell you, I was so glad when I graduated and I literally tipped my head and said, there's no more school in my future, like I'm done. But we think that school should be a place that kids love being at because when kids love school, we enable them to go do hard things. They'll take on challenges. It doesn't mean every day is Disneyland at school. Sometimes kids will struggle, they'll fail, maybe even cry on their road to success. But when you have this kind of fire in the belly engagement where kids are excited to be there, that's super important. Now, what do we do in that day to make kids love some, love school so much?

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Kind of our second commitment is kids can learn twice as much in only two hours a day. And this is kind of the magic difference. We do not use academic teachers to teach academics. So we're not doing a six hour school day, 45 minutes of math, then you go to science. Instead, we are using an AI tutor to do a few things. Number one, very precisely and accurately measure and assess what a kid knows and what they don't know. And then create the lesson plan that puts them in the exact level and pace in that subject that is right for them.

• 30:02Mike Rowe?

  So I'm still in a room with 20 other kids?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  You're still in a room, you're hanging out with your buddy sitting next to you. And what's cool is you can literally see two kids sitting right next to each other. One seven year old is working on algebra while the kid right next to him, same age, is doing his addition and subtraction tables.

• 30:20Mike Rowe?

  Are they on a screen?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  They are on computers. Um, yeah, some kids are on headphones. Uh, one of the things that's great about this way of. Learning is you can have kids learn with auditory visual support. They can be watching videos, they can be reading, they can be engaging in this stuff. And that's the key right there is what this AI tool has enabled us to do is put kids into these adaptive app learning experiences where it's hitting them at exactly that right level that keeps them engaged, not too hard where they kind of turn off and get overwhelmed, and not too easy where they're just sort of like do, do, do, going through the motions. And what we're finding is that these students are able to not just complete academics in two hours a day, but crush their academics.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  So our classes, top 1% across all grade levels, all subjects. And one of the things that's really interesting about these results is we don't select students based on they already have to be great, right? We'll take kids from wherever they are because we can meet them at their needs. So we can take a kid who shows up to us in the 95th percentile, and we can have them growing at rates in the 80s and 90s, which by the way is unheard of in a regular school, that a kid who's already really excelling is excelling even more. Usually they're told to like chill out, you know, like you're, you're learning well. But we can also take that kid who comes to us in the 15th percentile, and we can show them with growth rates in the 80s and 90s.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  So what AI has enabled us to do is raise the floor for the kids that need help and just blow the ceiling off of what's possible. And we're doing all of that in that two hour period.

• 32:00Mike Rowe?

  In the same classroom?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  In the same classroom. Kids are there.

• 32:02Mike Rowe?

  So wait a minute, so what happens to gifted and talented?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  They're, they're hanging out right next to the kid who needs some extra, you know, extra help.

• 32:09Mike Rowe?

  And that's not a, that's not a, doesn't pose a social?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  No, and actually this is the best part about it. Every kid is working at their own pace. So there's not this competition or this feeling of like, gosh, I'm dumb because I don't understand what the teacher is saying, but my friend here is already finished with the test, you know, in five minutes. Everybody's put on there and fundamentally, that's what we're doing. We're creating self-driven learners who are developing the skill of learning how to learn. And they're very proactively, finally in the driver's seat where they, they sit down and say, okay, these are the goals that I have for my academics each day. Here's how I'm doing against those goals versus sitting in a traditional classroom where you go into your seat and you sit back and you go. All right, I'm here for 45 minutes. I'm just gonna listen to what comes.

• 32:55Mike Rowe?

  Let's just get through this.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  And by the way, once we get through it, I may never see that material again because it's over. It's done. Whereas for us, we're teaching in this mastery experience where kids don't move on until they've mastered the material. And that's what makes such a difference.

• 33:13Mike Rowe?

  Hey, if you are a fan of returning the favor, or people you should know, you need to be listening to a podcast called An Army of Normal Folks, because you will love it. This is done by my old friend, Bill Courtney, famous football coach and the subject of a documentary called Undefeated. The doc told the story of Bill's impact on the football team at a very poor school in a very poor part of Tennessee, I think it was. You should watch it. It is terrific. Anyway, Bill is hosting An Army of Normal Folks. It's a podcast that shines a light on the people that I used to call bloody do-gooders, just the normal, everyday people who, taken upon themselves, to go on a mission to do something to make their zip code a better place, usually with some kind

• 33:58Mike Rowe?

  of bottom-up solution. Bill calls these bloody do-gooders his army of normal folks, and every week he shares one of their stories. These are just regular people who are genuinely moving the needle in a surprising way on any number of issues. He's done over 150 episodes, all of which prove the power of what can happen when regular, like-minded people decide to attack a problem from the bottom up. The stories are all true. They're inspirational, empowering. Some are funny. Most are poignant. But they're all guaranteed to leave you feeling hopeful about the future and about our species. Listen and subscribe to An Army of Normal Folks on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or just go over to normalfolks.org. It's a great website, and this is a terrific

• 34:43Mike Rowe?

  podcast. You'll love it. But be advised, listening to Bill and his guests has been known to inspire in his many listeners, an overpowering desire to make a difference in their own communities. It could happen to you too. So heads up. Listen and subscribe to An Army of Normal Folks wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah, I'm super interested in retention and memory. And the way sometimes you would think six hours of intensive focus and work would lead to a stickiness, right? That might be a little more profound.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Well, except, six hours of intensiveness and focus, that's not what's happening in schools, right? Think about your 45-minute math class that you used to sit in. Well, first of all, there's 10 minutes of getting your books out and sit down and teacher's saying, "Oh, get over here and hey, did you turn your homework in?" There's a few minutes, you know, to kind of clean up at the end. And then during this time, you know, again, the level of information you're getting may not meet you where you need to be. And so, we have this mistaken kind of memory of what school is, and it's just not happening, you know, at that level. Whereas what we're able to do is take all these learning science principles, everything from, again, mastery-based learning, the one-to-one, go at your pace, as well as like spaced

• 36:01Speaker 02

  repetition, which is that whole thing of you study a concept and then you revisit it again, you see it later, you don't miss it two months from now. If you're learning a new concept and we realize, okay, you're struggling with this concept, you know why? You got to go back and fill some holes from third or fourth or fifth grade. And that is something that is, that is so easy to do with technology.

• 36:23Mike Rowe?

  So what's the cohort? Is it K-12?

• 36:25Speaker 02

  So we have, yeah, our youngest students are four and our oldest are seniors in high school. And we're seeing that this is working across the board. You know, we are able to make this work. Now, I want to just make one thing super clear. It is not our ed tech that is making this work. There is a huge graveyard of failed ed tech, you know, experiences that have not proven to be that holy grail answer in schools.

• 36:49Mike Rowe?

  This is educational technology?

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, educational technology, that does not work. Here's the secret for why this works. Two things. We have focused on giving kids their most valuable resource, which is time. Time back to go do the things that they love in the afternoons, which is what they get to do at our schools. Starting after lunch, they're doing project-based group workshops, they're doing physical activity, they're doing passion projects, all those kinds of things. That's one of the things. But number two, we are focusing on the motivation issue, the motivation challenge. And the way we're able to do that is because we have transformed the role of the teacher in the classroom.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Instead of having to spend their time planning lessons and delivering lectures and grading homework and trying to figure out how to meet 20-plus kids at different needs, their whole focus is motivational and emotional support and figuring out how to get kids connected and finding their why and implementing growth mindset strategies, all of that.

• 37:50Mike Rowe?

  On a percentage basis, where does motivation fall?

• 37:55Speaker 02

  Well, I will tell you, I think it's 90% of what creates a good learner. 10% is getting the right level and pace of learning. And think back again to traditional school. If a kid's not doing well in school, it's considered the kid's fault. You know, it's either like, oh, he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, you know, he's not... Or he's not willing to put in the work. He's not willing to study for the test. He's not willing to spend time writing the paper. He doesn't turn in the homework, whatever. He doesn't pay attention in class. You know, those are those things. At our schools, we take the exact opposite approach. In fact, our quarterly kind of accountability reports that we put out every seven weeks, at the top of it, it says, "This is not a report card of your child. This is a report card on us.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  How are we doing of delivering to your kid?" Because we realize if we can't figure out a way to motivate your child, that's on us. And we are willing to do anything to motivate kids, to get them engaged. Because when you get a kid who's motivated and you pair them with the right level and pace of material, the sky's the limit on what they can do.

• 38:59Mike Rowe?

  Well, say it the other way, too. If you get a kid who's not motivated, who cares how good the delivery system is?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Sure, it doesn't work. Yeah, and that's why, again, sitting a kid in front of our time back learning platform, if they're spinning in their chair, or they're not even in front of the computer, or they're just going D, D, D, and randomly guessing, that's not going to work. And so the reason we've had this success is because of that transformed empowered role of the adult in the classroom. And so what you see in our schools, these are full, full day schools in person. You know, you've got kids all hanging out next to each other and you'll have what we call guides, they're not teachers, they are guides. Although about 50% of our guides come from a traditional teaching background.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  They are there to coach kids on how to learn and they're there to motivate kids. And that's everything from, did you know we pay our students for getting their academic goals done?

• 39:54Mike Rowe?

  I did not know that.

• 39:55Speaker 02

  They make cash, baby. So they get, they actually get paid in what are called alphas. It's one alpha is equal to a quarter, so four alphas to a dollar. And they can take this money and first of all, they're learning the life skill of earning, right? They earn based on hitting their goals. Then they can take this alpha money and they can go buy stuff in the emporium. That, by the way, the guides have specifically curated, knowing that, you know what? Mike loves tractors and we're going to have a tractor Lego set in there because he's excited about this.

• 40:26Mike Rowe?

  You've got a curated emporium?

• 40:29Speaker 02

  We do.

• 40:29Mike Rowe?

  In every alpha school?

• 40:30Speaker 02

  We do.

• 40:31Mike Rowe?

  How many alpha schools are there?

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Oh gosh, we're, we're getting pretty big now. We're kind of going all over the country. It's hard to keep track, but we'll probably have like 30 open in, you know, in the fall of 2026.

• 40:42Mike Rowe?

  How many students so far?

• 40:43Speaker 02

  We've got over a thousand students that are in our in-person schools. And then, this is pretty exciting, we've got a whole other thing called Texas Sports Academy. A little bit different thing, same academic model, same learning platform. The difference is what kids get to do in the afternoons there. And when you think about motivation, they get to go out on the sports field or the court starting at noon instead of after school, you know, doing this. And we're giving kids, again, time back to go do the things they love and are excited about. We've got thousands of kids who'll be a part of that program. So it's kind of spread. And it's going there, but um, I think what you know, what we think about with getting these kids excited about, you know, financial literacy, right? When you can earn money based on the work you put in,

• 41:28Speaker 02

  go spend, we also teach how to invest, we teach how to save.

• 41:32Mike Rowe?

  That's a, that's its own course.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  How to donate. Well, it's just baked into the whole culture because kids are earning their alphas every day and then they're, they're learning that they can invest in, you know, they can invest in something. Uh, we've got kids who invest in Bitcoin, real Bitcoin. They are able to put their money in a savings account. We even have a credit card system where kids are able to, um, you know, borrow and then also learn the realities of high interest rates because the alpha credit card is, uh, pretty steep.

• 42:00Mike Rowe?

  All right. It's great. Can I just kind of be a douche for a second?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 42:04Mike Rowe?

  I mean.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  That's what I think. Micro douche.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Kind of douche. I've heard it before.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  Wow, not from me. Maybe that was.

• 42:10Mike Rowe?

  You've said it before.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Maybe that was Jade who said that. Okay.

• 42:14Mike Rowe?

  Quite likely. Um, so I've been spending a fair amount of time talking with some real eggheads over at some of the biggest Silicon Valley companies. I mean, from Nvidia, everybody in the AI space.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:32Mike Rowe?

  And I'm this, I'm painting with too broad a brush, which of course is the exact reason we're here today. One size fits all, makes no sense, but let me generalize and just say that it seems like two thirds of the country is deeply skeptical about the Kraken being unleashed, right? And we're scared. We're not sure what kind of bargain it is we're in the midst of making. And a lot of the guys I'm talking to at these big companies, they're, they've realized that, you know, and they're looking at a $10 trillion infrastructure build out and they need to hire hundreds of thousands of electricians and plumbers. And so they're, they've got skin in the game all of a sudden. But the reason there's such a threat is because we haven't accepted this new tool.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:17Mike Rowe?

  Yet. And I guess maybe in the same way a microscope or a calculator or you know, or maybe it's not quite the same, but there's always a there's a there's a period of time where we have to get through that skepticism.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:36Mike Rowe?

  And so I think.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, remember when writing was going to ruin the art of communication and storytelling? I mean, that really is true.

• 43:45Mike Rowe?

  I don't recall that, but I do.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:47Mike Rowe?

  I remember reading something about it.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  We're not that old. Yes, exactly. But I think you're right, and we are at this tipping point right now where everybody's talking about what is AI going to do to our world? What is it going to do to our our our skill set, our jobs, everything? And we are on the precipice of making a decision. We can either use this for good or we can just get run over by it. But the Kraken has been let out.

• 44:10Mike Rowe?

  It's out. Okay. Well, we'll circle back and really dig into the AI.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  I don't feel like you were very douchey in that conversation.

• 44:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, I didn't get to the douchey part.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  Okay, got it. Okay.

• 44:19Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  He likes to warm up to it, you know?

• 44:21Mike Rowe?

  So, you know.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Well, you did say it takes a while, like you in small doses and then as they get to know you better. Okay, so at the end of the podcast, we'll see how it goes.

• 44:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, to really know me is to be ultimately disappointed. Why am I going to send my kids to this janky school where they can learn about Bitcoin and dive into a screen that I'm already nervous they're spending too much time in front of? And what's going to happen to collaboration? And aren't they going to go?

• 44:47Speaker 02

  There's the douchey part. Now I get it. Yeah, that's it.

• 44:49Mike Rowe?

  Aren't they going to be, aren't you going to turn them inward?

• 44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:54Mike Rowe?

  At a time when I I want my kid just completely immersed and engaged? And, you know, I'm not so sure. I don't feel nervous about him not feeling as smart. You know what I like?

• 45:12Speaker 02

  You are, you're doing such a good job of getting like every single critical skeptical thing into that one statement, and I love it.

• 45:19Mike Rowe?

  Well, you're such an upbeat lady, and it's also, there's so much technical stuff going on.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  And and I love this this line of questioning because here's what I. What I find, and I talked to thousands of people around the country now about what our schools are. And there's always this initial fear, skepticism, and even just downright disgust. I know I would never want to send my kid to a school like that. And then what I find is when they take just a couple of minutes to really look under the hood and realize a few things. First of all, giving kids the ability to really have great academic knowledge. In this world with AI, you have people going, oh, I guess is it time to just outsource all thinking? And not do that. And the answer is absolutely not. We need to make sure that people are always going to be on that gray frontier of what's new knowledge acquisition. AI knows the black and white of what's there.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  How are we going to make sure that that people have the critical thinking skills? And the knowledge in their head to go out and create new knowledge? Because I'll tell you what, people doing critical thinking without knowledge in their heads, you know what that's called? Hallucination, right? It is. It's hallucination. So first of all, it's imperative that we make sure kids are learning. They're not learning in this current system. If that model worked, then it would be awesome, but they're not. We're showing that that it does.

• 46:34Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's why I wanted to spend 20 minutes.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Shorter time.

• 46:37Mike Rowe?

  Yes, that's why I think it's really important to set the table.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, you have to set that table.

• 46:41Mike Rowe?

  We're not in some sort of like, hey, it's all the same. Which flavor do you prefer?

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Everybody also compares things to like Prince Charming. You know, like there's this version of this perfect education charming that's all perfect. And unfortunately, that's not the reality of what the current system is. But when you can sit there and say, okay, we have a way to deliver academic knowledge that meets every kid where they're at and leads to that success and do it in a shorter time to give more room for, I think so much of what you described, which is engagement with others, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking. You know, all of those things are what people are going to need to have those skills.

• 47:22Mike Rowe?

  Well, you mentioned athletics. I mean, athletics is a big deal. That's where a lot of kids learn how to. How to grow up and leadership.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  It's actually probably the main place that people learn, you know, those skills, sports. But you know where else they learn them is in those after school activities. Speech and debate and the performing arts, band, music, all of those kinds of things. And what we're doing is we're giving kids the ability to spend the majority of their school day engaging in that stuff with each other, with other kids and with caring adults who are serving as mentors and coaches and connecting. And then add the fact that, you know, there's no homework to do at night. And I'm going to throw in one more thing. You talked about this kraken that's been unleashed, AI. What are we going to do with it? Most schools around the country are burying their heads in the sand. They're saying, okay, we're going back to pen and paper. We are going to not allow any AI. Here's what we need to do.

• 48:15Mike Rowe?

  That ain't gonna work.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  We need to teach young people and old people too, how to use AI tools to give them the skills that give them an advantage, not to outsource their thinking, not to cheat, but instead be able to say, and so examples of that is when you can help kids learn tools like using Open Cloud to create businesses that are generating revenue of four and five figures a month for a 16 year old. Those are some of the skills we want. And really what it fundamentally gets down to is that idea of learning how to learn, learning how to put in the work and finding that thing, which is going to be honestly even more important in this new world where we could at some point just plug into the matrix and just kind of hang out. You got to find what's the thing that's going to get you out of bed every morning and excited to go contribute.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  And we are raising creators and contributors, not consumers.

• 49:10Mike Rowe?

  Ever since Chapter started advertising on this podcast, I've been getting letters and emails from satisfied customers all over the country. Last week I got one from Joseph, a retired veterinarian in Texas, who just learned his Medicare plan was shutting down. I can't tell you Joseph's last name because his medical history is complicated and personal, but his situation is not uncommon at all. Given his medical history, Joseph was unable to find a local provider that would include the doctors he'd come to rely on. Happily, Joseph listens to this podcast and Joseph heard me talking about Chapter just last week. And Chapter exists for one reason, to help people on Medicare find the plan that's right for them.

• 49:56Mike Rowe?

  It's a free service. Anyhow, Joseph called Chapter. He connected with an advisor named Heidi. And Heidi caught something that most people miss. Because his current plan was about to close. Joseph had a limited window to continue with his current coverage through a new plan without any additional medical underwriting. In other words, Heidi found a way to get Joseph the coverage he needed with the doctors he preferred. Then she found great coverage for his wife, too. Moral of the story? Medicare plans are constantly evolving. You are too. Call Chapter. Make sure you're on the best plan for you. Also, people who switch plans after calling Chapter

• 50:39Mike Rowe?

  save an average of $1,100 a year. 804-Chapter. That's the number. Call it today. It's free. Whole thing takes about 20 minutes. 804-Chapter.

• 50:53Mike Rowe?

  Okay. You know, there's a scene in The Matrix. I keep quoting this thing because it was on the other night.

• 51:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 51:01Mike Rowe?

  There's so many great moments. But what you just said reminded me of my, my favorite beat, which is when Morpheus, or maybe Neo, asked Trinity if she knows how to fly that helicopter.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And she's like, not yet.

• 51:16Mike Rowe?

  She says, not yet. Now I did, right? And you talk about compartments and like people's brains, as I understand, like the basic IQ testing. Part of what that evaluates is how many compartments you have and how you're able to access those compartments. And I mean, God, I'm just hoping a question comes out of this free association. But isn't it ultimately, like, when do you figure out? If you're smart?

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Oh, this is such a cool topic.

• 51:46Mike Rowe?

  Thank God I got to it.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  You did. That was good, Mike. I was worried about you, but I felt like I brought you out. I brought you to where you need to go.

• 51:52Mike Rowe?

  If there's one thing that's worse than being douchey, it's being incoherent.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  You threw me a softball because I'm so excited about this. Here's what you're actually talking about. We're talking about working memory and something called cognitive load theory. It's a learning science principle that basically understands how Can, how much information can a person take on? And at what point does their information they're learning go from their working memory to their long-term memory? Now, you, Mike, might have like 12 slots available of working memory, and I only have four. And so, the way I come at some new material is going to be different than the way you come at it. And, again, in a traditional school, we're getting it thrown at us at the same time. Whereas, when we can really personalize education, where it's like, "Okay, Mackenzie, I get it, you're a little bit slower on this," but they don't say that, right? We can go in and we focus on making sure that your, your working memory gets put in

• 52:40Speaker 02

  your brain so that you can put it over into, you know, your long-term memory. And I'll give you a real practical example of that. Let's say you're taking on a harder, you know, let's say you're actually looking at the revenue for your, your TV show for the year, and you're calculating, what was your net profit? What were you doing? And if it takes you a while to go, "Well, wait a second, what's 100 minus 63?" That's working memory that's going on here. Versus, if you just know, "Okay, that's 37," and I am able to go on, that moves your brain available to go do higher-order thinking.

• 53:13Mike Rowe?

  You play darts?

• 53:14Speaker 02

  I will say, I don't really play darts. Have I played darts? Yes. My brother's a farmer in Minnesota, and we do sometimes find ourselves in the, like, little rural town bars, and they seem to always have darts. But no, I don't.

• 53:25Mike Rowe?

  There's a game, there are a lot of dart games, but, you know, the big one is called, it's either 301 or 501. And you basically race to zero.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 53:35Mike Rowe?

  And you start at whatever number it is.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:37Mike Rowe?

  When you see these guys playing, you've got to double in or double out, and there's trips, and of course, there are all the numbers there. And, you know, you've got to work your way down to an out that you can cleanly hit. My point is that there's so much math that's going on in a game of 01. I know they don't teach that in school.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  That, that is a great workshop idea. We can do fast math with darts, right? And you're exactly right. That's the thing. We want to make sure that people have that kind of knowledge just embedded so that it's quick. And did you know, by the way, they're not, they're not teaching fast math in schools? They have stopped teaching multiplication tables in schools.

• 54:15Mike Rowe?

  What do they, what do they teach instead?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  They, well, so there's a couple of things that, this gets into a little bit bigger debate that happens in education. We at Alpha are big fans of direct instruction, which is just like, hey, Memorize your multiplication tables, right? So we have, we have games we've built, we've got apps where we're just doing it. We even do calisthenic physical exercise where our guides are, are having kids go through their fast math. But I think a lot of other theories that have come out about school in recent years is kind of like, hey, kids will learn math by like going to the grocery store and, and calculating how many apples and how much does it cost? And they'll kind of like figure this out. And it's really been a move towards like project-based learning. And I think project-based learning is great, but the problem we've had with some alternative

• 54:59Speaker 02

  schools is they've, they've gotten rid of like direct instruction and worked examples, you know, in, in order to do this. And what we've found, and I think why our model is doing so well is we're really taking the best of both worlds. Again, rigorous academics and doing it in less time to open up time for all those other really cool things.

• 55:17Mike Rowe?

  So it's reading, writing, arithmetic, still the basics, but what's replaced reading, writing, and arithmetic? I mean, is there another, I don't know, something like I read something about collaboration and like, and like the Cs. I forget what they are.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Thank you. You've kind of done your homework. Yeah, I always talk about the four Cs.

• 55:38Mike Rowe?

  I've always kind of done my homework.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  No, it's creative, creativity, it's collaboration, communication, and what is my other one? I always forget. I can't believe it.

• 55:49Mike Rowe?

  The other C? Character?

• 55:50Speaker 02

  Well, that's a huge part, right? We think about character, but creativity, collaboration, communication, and I don't know, critical thinking. You have to have all those things.

• 55:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, critical thinking.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  And those are such important skills. And, you know, again, when we have all of the information that we could possibly know right there at the tip of our hands on our phones, what are we going to teach people to do with that information? And our answer is we believe you still have to have it and you have to know then what to do with it, how to become an expert. And I don't know if you've seen this in your day-to-day world, but I am finding every day something new is coming out that I'm like, okay, I didn't even know about this and now I got to go learn. Like the days of saying, you know what? I've learned everything I need to know to be successful at my job and it's going to get me through the next 20 years. The half-life of knowledge is like three months right now. And the jobs we're going to do are so different.

• 56:39Mike Rowe?

  I'm exhausted. This is another one of those conversations where I've been, I've been really lucky for the last 25 years to interview a lot of people and work on a lot of different shows. And, you know, I've written a lot of stories about people who were consequential in our, in our time. And I forget, I'm starting to think something's, I mean, I've been drinking from my own fire hose. That sounds dirty, but you know what I mean? I've been, I've been so busy saying, hey, America, get a load of him, get a load of her.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:13Mike Rowe?

  And then the next one comes along, and maybe it's my, my random access memory. Like, people are getting pushed out before I've had a chance to fully appreciate the, again, if there's a question in here, it's like, how much time do you need to have as a student to sit with whatever enlightenment just smacked you over the head? And does Alpha give you enough time to do that if you're, if the whole lesson thing is happening in, in two hours?

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Well, I think it absolutely does, especially when you add the fact that kids are learning to mastery, right? So it's not like, okay, you do your two hours of learning on this topic, and then the next day, the topic is different. You go back to what you're doing. And I'll give you an example of this. Okay, on a Monday, when a kid comes in and says, okay, I've got my, my two hours of work to do. I'm gonna do 25 minutes and I'm gonna earn, you know, 25 XP's. That's what kind of experience points, we borrowed a game from video, video game, or a term from video game, uh, knowledge around this. Uh, they're saying, okay, I'm gonna focus on learning fractions. Well, at the end of the day, uh, if they're not finished with that unit, they come back the next day and they're still

• 58:28Speaker 02

  working on their fractions. So what's happening is they're taking the time that their brains need to truly absorb and remember this information. And then it's something that they revisit. There's no world where it's like, I took one test and then that was the end of it, no matter what I got on the test, right? Think about in school, if you get a 70% on a test, you know, teacher maybe curves it and you move on. You don't learn all of that material. And so that idea of having kids really be able to sit down and think through the academic core knowledge that they're getting and learn its mastery makes for better retention. It makes for more successes. They go into more sophisticated topics. And then there's some level of connection that kids are able to get in the afternoons

• 59:12Speaker 02

  when they're doing things like, you know, creating food truck businesses. And the number of kids that we had who said, oh, my gosh, now I'm connecting some of these math skills that I'm learning in the morning to how we're calculating what our profit margins are going to be on our breakfast foods, right? And, you know, how much does our permit cost and how much are we paying people? You know, those types of things. And this is the kind of thing that I think really cements for kids what I would consider practical learning, along with that kind of academic knowledge. And not only that, but how about this, just on a more fundamental level? Giving kids time to just have fun, play, be outside, do physical things, get brain breaks. Those are things that are missing in our schools.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  I'll give you a little test here. Do you know what the average time for recess is in the United States right now?

• 1:00:03Mike Rowe?

  Forty-five minutes.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  Twenty-two minutes. Twenty-two minutes. There are, oh, here's another one.

• 1:00:09Mike Rowe?

  I was a hundred percent off.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Let me give you another one that's absolutely crazy. Did you know that a lot of, not a lot of schools, but schools have started implementing silent lunches?

• 1:00:18Mike Rowe?

  Oh, no.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  During lunch in the cafeteria.

• 1:00:21Mike Rowe?

  No talking.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  No talking. And you know what they'll do then? Based on who's been the quietest, they will release tables based on like the most quiet table. You get to go out first for the rest of your recess or whatever. And I will tell you for the life of me, I've heard parents and kids tell me that their school has silent lunches. I've never gotten to meet one of these administrators because I'd love to know what in the world are you thinking that this is the right, right answer to do? It's, it's crazy, but this is something we got to do is give kids that time to go try things, play to get that. We've got a school.

• 1:00:53Mike Rowe?

  Wait a minute, wait a minute.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Yes. I'm ready.

• 1:00:56Mike Rowe?

  That fire hose I was talking about. You gotta, there's so much, there's just so much. There's so much coming at me. I can't. Okay. Like, what's the argument?

• 1:01:07Mike Rowe?

  For sending a kid to the fifth grade, who has clearly demonstrated

• 1:01:13Mike Rowe?

  he hasn't mastered anything in the fourth.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Mike Rowe?

  What's the argument?

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Well, the argument is, what are they gonna do with these kids? You've got to move them through this conveyor belt system in the traditional world. Because our schools aren't built to have seventeen-year-olds who are sitting back in fourth grade, right? And actually, there's policy decisions that were made years ago, no child left behind type things that say you've got to do it, which now has resulted, the grade inflation is insane, Mike. You talked about like, oh, getting a, you know, a C or something like that. That doesn't really happen anymore.

• 1:01:46Mike Rowe?

  It's the worst example of everybody getting a trophy I can think of.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  Participation trophy award, and let's move. In fact, we have a really good public school district in my hometown in Austin, and they have just rolled out in basically K through eight. They've gotten rid of grades. Here's what they're doing instead. As and Ms.

• 1:02:06Mike Rowe?

  Ms.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Ms. are mastered. As, which, you know, sound really good to parents when they're looking at a report card, is approaching mastery. Approaching mastery. Now, that could mean-

• 1:02:17Mike Rowe?

  I thought it was asshole.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  That might be that people making up these ideas. But 1%, if you fail a test, you're approaching mastery. You're not there yet, but don't worry. This is like, you're getting closer to being a fully actualized person. You're almost mastered here. What are we doing? And that, it's like, the whole world has decided to just dig its head in the sand and just say like, we're gonna pretend la la la. Now, again, I understand why they were doing it because they didn't have a better solution, but we finally do. And that's why, one of the things I will say, I take it as a compliment. A lot of people, when they spend time with me, they're like, you're so optimistic and you're so happy. And I'm like, yeah, because what?

• 1:02:54Mike Rowe?

  You are an upbeat lady, man.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  This is freaking awesome, what we have enabled kids to do. And we see this when we've got 96% of our students say they love school. And when we've got, you know, 100% of our kids in little things, I won't say that high. Let's say, I think I looked at the last survey. It's like, you know, in the 90s of my guide is changing my life, right? I love my guide. It's a fun place to be. Can take that kid who's been struggling and comes in so far behind and then they can literally go up three grade levels in a matter of months. That's fun. And you can take that kid who's like, I could be doing so much more. And you're like, great, here you go. Go for it.

• 1:03:32Mike Rowe?

  Well, what do you do if, I mean, do you even deal with kids who aren't motivated? Or is there a?

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Now, here's the challenge. This is what our guides get paid the big bucks for. And when I say big bucks, we do believe they should be paid well. So they all start at a minimum of a hundred thousand dollars a year. Because anyone who is going to devote their time and their career to working in a child's classroom, they should be paid well. So that is the guide's job is to go, okay, how do I take a kid who really struggles with motivation? They're not having any of it themselves. How do I get them connected? And that can be everything from, like I said, paying kids to, you know, we have a kindergarten classroom where I walked into recently and this little girl taps her nose and that's her secret sign with her guide that she's hit one of her academic goals on her computer and that signals a 15 second silent dance party.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  And that's enough to get that little girl excited.

• 1:04:24Mike Rowe?

  Why's it have to be silent? The service I'm about to recommend to you is absolutely free and it can easily save the average user over a thousand dollars a year. It's called Chapter and it's the best way to make sure the Medicare plan you're on is the one you should be on because every year Medicare plans change and so do you. And just because your plan might've been the best choice when you were 65 doesn't mean it's the best choice today. At Chapter, independent advisors compare Medicare plans nationwide. They look at your doctors, your prescriptions and your budget to help you find coverage that fits your needs and they're not paid more to recommend one plan over another. You don't need to sort through all the options yourself.

• 1:05:09Mike Rowe?

  You can talk to somebody who understands them, ask your questions and get help comparing the costs and benefits. So if your current plan is still the right fit, they'll tell you. If there's a better option, they'll tell you that too, and they'll help you switch. Again, the service is free, and a review can take less than 20 minutes. This is the time of year to make sure you're squared away for 2027. So if you haven't checked your Medicare coverage lately, give Chapter a call. It's a simple way to make sure your plan still works for you. And with potential savings of $1,100 a year, it's worth a free review. 804-Chapter. Call them today. 804-C-H-A-P-T-E-R.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Well, sometimes they actually, I was in another classroom once where they went and did a 15-second Taylor Swift dance party in the, in the corner. But here's why, because they're sitting here, all these kids are focused and locked in, and it's just, it's not disruptive.

• 1:06:03Mike Rowe?

  So it's not like a lunch where you should, you gotta be talking?

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  It's just 15 seconds, just like, hey, I see you, and I see that you're crushing it. Good job. And that gets them so excited, you know, to do that. To that squishy that's been, you know, curated into the emporium to do that. Or how about things like when kids hit their goals, it earns them the ability to go work in the tent in the classroom, like, or go have...

• 1:06:25Mike Rowe?

  The tent? What's the tent?

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've got cool tents, we've got, you know, bean bags, we've got couches, we've got comfortable chairs, you know, all these things. We give kids a lot more autonomy. And here's what we, a criticism we get, Mike, is, oh, you're so reliant on like extrinsic motivation. What about that, you know, intrinsic motivation? And here's what I say, you know what? It'd be amazing if everybody was just intrinsically motivated all the time. But I can tell you, every person in this room, they're showing up because they're getting a paycheck. They may love their job as well.

• 1:06:56Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, about that, Chuck.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  But they're also getting that.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  He'll talk to you about that later. But, and so first of all, it's not reality. And then the other thing is, great, so are you going to just say, sorry, if you're not intrinsically motivated, back to that earlier point, it's your fault.

• 1:07:09Mike Rowe?

  Well, what kind of consequences?

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  And our answer is, we gotta do this.

• 1:07:11Mike Rowe?

  What do you do for the douchey kid? I mean, is there a dunce cap? Is there the clapping of erasers?

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  No, let me give you...

• 1:07:17Mike Rowe?

  Is there detention?

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so let me give you some examples of things like that. No, that's, we're not quite in that, that day and age anymore. That's probably one that's been left, left better in the past. Although, you know, my old school, like back when I was a little kid, they did do some of the paddles.

• 1:07:32Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  It's crazy. And I, you know, I was like, I was born in 1976. That's not that long ago. It's insane. But, uh...

• 1:07:39Mike Rowe?

  I was born in 1976. I'm very young. No, no, I get it.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, so there's things, so first of all, there's a few things that we've incorporated in order to create behavior standards so that kids can realize, okay, number one, it is a work hard culture, it is a meritocracy culture. So for example, if you don't hit the goals that you have for a workshop, if you don't pass the workshop, you may not go on the snowboarding trip to Utah because you didn't hit your goals. And that's something that sometimes parents go, wait, what? We're gonna miss this? But again, we believe that kids learn so much when they try something hard, when they fail, and they're surrounded by support and coaching to help get them better. We also have something called Town Hall.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  This is our basically student governance system where kids are able to come within their grade level, basically, and say, all right, here's an idea or a proposal I have for the community, or here's a problem we're seeing in this community, and here's what we want to work through. And here's what we find, is that when kids have a sense of ownership in their community and culture, they raise themselves and each other to a higher standard than when it's this top-down authoritative, you will do as I say, you will sit where I say on that. And one of the most beautiful things I see is when new students come into our culture, and they might try to do the things that were cool in their old school, like goof around, or heckle, or kind of not pay attention. And pretty quickly,

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  it's like, oh, no, actually, you know what's cool to do here is to try something and to, you know, achieve your goals and to connect with something you're interested in. And that, it's almost like they're able to take off this cloak of trying to fit in, and instead truly embrace who they are and what they want to be. And it gets back to another point of socialization. I think almost every parent I talk to would say probably the most important thing about their school is that kids get socialized. They get to be with their friends. But think about, again, traditional education, the way we socialize kids, just throw them in, hope they figure it out. Good luck to you. Hope you find your place in the pecking order. We believe that kids can get coaching and development around relationship building,

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  around connecting with others, around being interesting and interested in other people. And so, we help create so much space and time and work that kids get to do. Here's an example of a project our kids do. Have you ever done an escape room?

• 1:10:07Mike Rowe?

  Every day.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Every day. Well, next time I'm in town.

• 1:10:10Mike Rowe?

  What do you think this place is?

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. This is gonna be really fun. I've got a flight this afternoon.

• 1:10:15Mike Rowe?

  It's fun.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  So, we have kids do escape rooms, and what we're really doing is we're teaching communication, and basically upholding community standards. And so, we will mic these kids up after they've gone through a lot of our coaching and work they've done over a period of six or seven weeks. They'll go into an escape room, and we're miking them up, and we are measuring how much of their behavior, or their language, is considered uplifting. They have to get basically a positivity score above 80%. And I will tell you, you take a bunch of fifth graders and put them in an escape room without that coaching versus after, you see significant differences because kids are starting to be thoughtful about, oh, what is the best way to be a leader? What is the best way to be a team player? Those are things that

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  we want everyone to be able to develop. I will tell you, there's probably some adults that could use a little AI coaching when it comes to how they communicate, you know, with other people on their teams. And these are just some of the skills. In addition, grit and hard work. You know, our kids are doing firefighter challenges. They're running Spartan races as a team. We've got kindergartners who are learning how to climb a 40-foot rock wall, or ride five miles as a team. We're teaching, you know, leadership and teamwork. We're teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship. Think how many great lessons come out of trying a business, right? And then, public speaking and storytelling, being able to communicate well with others and get your point across. Those are the skills that we're gonna need to have kids be ready to go do.

• 1:11:44Mike Rowe?

  But does that teaching occur in the time you freed up?

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:49Mike Rowe?

  Like, in the afternoon?

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the afternoons.

• 1:11:51Mike Rowe?

  Because I get a little confused going back and forth between what I'll just call extracurricular kinetic

• 1:11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Mike Rowe?

  tactile teaching. But take me back to those first two hours, right? And because I'm not quite clear, like, what happens in the second grade, the fifth grade, the eighth grade, seniors, are you still teaching a rigorous kind of curricula? At what point do you let the student go, "Look, I'm curious about this. I want my guide and my AI proctor to tell me?" Take me in a deeper dive, maybe toward a humanities.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Mike Rowe?

  Right? I mean, how do you like?

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're not really doing that. What we're doing is we're saying, all right, let's get all of the core content that you need. So if that's whatever kindergarten and first grade, that's, you know, learning how to read and, you know, math, numbers. And then in high school, that's things like AP US history and AP English literature and, and biology and chemistry and calculus, all of the same kind of classes. Advanced placement.

• 1:12:55Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  Which is something that, you know, basically it's kind of an honor student track that can give you college credit, earn college credit. And so our students are taking the same kind of curriculum that students in a traditional class are taking. They're just able to ingest it more efficiently and more effectively. And then in the afternoons, they can take whatever their interests are. So I'll give you an example. We have a fourth grade girl who loves physics. She's very fascinated by physics. She certainly loves science when she's doing science in, in the morning. She get, does her academics and she has decided she wants to create a podcast that teaches quantum physics principles to other kids

• 1:13:35Speaker 02

  in a way that's relatable. And so her podcast is called Quantum Plations. And in the afternoons, she's spending the time learning how to be a podcast host. And that's doing everything from figuring out what's my subject material? Who am I going to interview? How am I, how am I going to communicate this message around quantum physics to an audience for ages 10 to 15? That's an example of a kid taking an interest that she has. Here's another example.

• 1:14:02Mike Rowe?

  And applying it to something.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  To something practical.

• 1:14:05Mike Rowe?

  That is, and relevant.

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Well, maybe not practical, but yes.

• 1:14:08Mike Rowe?

  No, it's practical.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's practical. Not to say it's not practical, but yes, taking something and go, oh, I have this interest and I'm going to go, I'm going to create a podcast around it.

• 1:14:15Mike Rowe?

  10 years ago, there were 10,000 podcasts. Today, there are 4 million. I mean, that, I would think is, you know, to be able to see that whole ecosystem. Evolve and explode right in front of me. Of course, they're going to be interested in that. And, you know, back when I was in high school, I couldn't even contemplate such a thing.

• 1:14:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Mike Rowe?

  We just never had anything, I don't think, blow up quite that quickly.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:43Mike Rowe?

  Which is back to the tech. I mean, this is where, and back to drinking from some sort of metaphorical fire hose.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Mike Rowe?

  There's just so much crap. I wanted to ask you about apps and how they differ.

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  Well, you were mentioning, like, what does this two hours look like?

• 1:14:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  And here's what it is. I'm going to walk you just through a very quick day at one of our schools. 8:45 a.m. Kids all come in and we do a 15-minute limitless launch. Think Tony Robbins for kids. This is a time where kids come together. They do some sort of, usually a challenge. Sometimes there's a physical component. It's like, figure out as a team, how you're going to build a tower out of these things that, you know, goes the highest. What we're doing during that time is, first of all, we're getting the kids just kind of pumped up and excited. And then our guides are usually incorporating some sort of growth mindset technique or strategy that these kids can then take into the rest of their day and their life. Then, at 9 o'clock, it's time for our students

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  to go into that two-hour core learning block. This is when they're doing the math, the reading, the writing, the, you know, language, the history, the science.

• 1:15:48Mike Rowe?

  Chemistry.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Whatever it is. Chemistry depends on it, whatever it is. And by the way, whatever they need to do. So, for example, I mean, we had a kindergartner who's doing 7th grade reading. Now, whole other thing that apps allow, she can be reading 7th grade hardness of reading. That's not the content that might not be appropriate for a six-year-old, right? And that's another example of the benefits of personalized adaptive technology. But they spend basically 25 minutes in what we call Pomodoro session, right? 25 minutes of focus time, working on their computers, all hanging out together, guides are nearby, and they're working with them. Then, they take a break. They get outside and they play. They go do recess. They come back. They do the next thing. They do that basically for

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  120 minutes. You know, they have 120 minutes of focus time. Then it's lunchtime, get outside, play. Have some lunch and then they jump into their workshops in the afternoon. And so these are workshops like, you know, learning how to code self-driving go-karts, where you also learn how to build a go-kart. I mean, how cool is that, right? In fact, one of the really fun events we did at the end of that session was we had a contest between the parents and the kids where they had to do, it was like called pit stop. And they had to go and do a full, you know, change of tires, do everything within a certain amount of time. Spoiler alert, the kids beat the parents at it. You know, it's things like that. They're getting to go out and build. They're doing, you know, physical activities.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  They are learning some sort of life skill in some sort of way that is exciting. We did an adaptability and teamwork life skills workshop where the kids were learning to sail. And at the end of this event, these kids, final test to pass was they sailed from Florida to the Bahamas, manning a boat, right? These are things they do. These were fifth, sixth, seventh grade kids. Here's another one that we just did.

• 1:17:37Mike Rowe?

  Got a guide on the boat with them?

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  We had guides kind of around in there. I mean, we were making sure it's safe, but these kids were doing everything. You know, they're working through that. Here's another one that was really fun. It just, it happened in, in Orange County and in Palm Beach this year. This was a Navy SEAL training. And so the test to pass for these kids, and I'm talking second, third, fourth grade level kids. These kids had to be able to, to swim two laps, dragging a body with them. In some cases, an adult or a baby. Then they had to perform CPR, life-saving measures on them. They had to dive to the bottom of a 13-foot pool and bring up a lockbox and use, actually do a math logic puzzle to open this lockbox and do this. They're learning, they're having, first of all, they're learning to swim, they're learning CPR, they're learning, learning life-saving techniques.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  But they're also learning how to work under pressure. They're learning grit. You know, they're, they're doing all that kind of thing. There are so many ways you can teach kids these life skills that are super fun.

• 1:18:33Mike Rowe?

  That's called the Boy Scouts.

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:18:35Mike Rowe?

  That's called merit badges, at least when I grew up.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. We have, we have a school in, in Texas that's a wilderness and outdoor school. And so kids are learning everything from fishing to building, lodging, to growing, actually, we do this at all our schools. Growing, growing food, selling it at a farmer's market, donating profits to a local food bank. There's so many cool things that kids can do and get out, work hard. And you know, for me, that is something, I grew up kind of a country girl. I worked at hog farms every summer. My mom had a very strong belief that I should spend part of my summer doing hard work and she equated that to manual labor, which I think there's so much that comes out of knowing how to get dirty.

• 1:19:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, you're from North Dakota.

• 1:19:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's that. And, um, and so it's like, things like that, when you give kids a chance to go, in fact, uh, this past session, uh, one of the themes we were focusing on is that the key to happiness is contributing to your community. So when kids are out there building, you know, homeless packs and, and working with kids or building, uh, tiny housing for, you know, one of our, our communities, for formerly homeless people, like, there are so many awesome skills that kids can learn. And again, all of this can be done between the hours of eight forty-five and three thirty. They don't have to be saved for weekend activity, or I hope you figure out time when you're at home to, you know, get, get out to do this. Give kids their time back to then spend their evenings just hanging out with their friends and their family and getting sleep.

• 1:20:01Mike Rowe?

  What's the data say?

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  The data so far is, uh, very positive, but it's small, right? We are, we're private schools that are just spreading around the country. Um, and what we're seeing is that our test results, um, are crushing. And one of the common criticisms we'll get is, well, you're a private school and, and Alpha School, which is what we're most known for, is a super high-end private school, right? Tuition between forty and seventy-five thousand dollars. You know, less than one percent of the population is even considering going to this. Uh, but here's what I would say to that is, great, just compare our results to other high-end private schools. How are we doing compared to Harvard Westlake?

• 1:20:38Mike Rowe?

  That's what I'm asking you.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  Compared to Spence?

• 1:20:39Mike Rowe?

  How you doing?

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  We're crushing them. You know, this is what I think works. Now, add to that the other factor, which is, if you're really going to change education, which I truly believe we are, you have to get it out to the world, right? You can't just serve the top one percent. That is not going to do anything, right?

• 1:20:55Mike Rowe?

  No, actually, it will.

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  Well, it does help, but it's not going to get to a billion kids. And so here's what is, though. When we're doing things like we're taking our Texas Sports Academy schools in Texas. Texas is a state that recently passed school choice. So families are able to apply for education savings accounts. And this first year that it's doing, all of the applications, basically the ESAs are going to go to families that make less than $65,000 a year or have kids with special needs. Texas Sports Academy will be the largest recipient of those applications for kids. And so we're going to be able to serve families who are getting the exact same academic model that our Alpha students are getting for free. And that's the kind of thing. And go get to play sports in the afternoon.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what's going to make a lot of people excited when they realize, wait, my kid can get out on the field or the court starting at noon? That's amazing. We've got a guy, Jermaine O'Neal. Do you know him?

• 1:21:52Mike Rowe?

  Jermaine O'Neal?

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  You know him? Okay, great.

• 1:21:54Mike Rowe?

  He owes me money.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  I have to say, well, great, you're joking with me. He is a, what, how many time NBA All-Star? Basketball. Basketball All-Star. He's super great. He runs one of the schools called Dynamic Prep outside of Dallas, Texas. And his kids are doing our academics in the morning. And the afternoon, they're out on that court. And I'll tell you what Jermaine O'Neal knows how to do. He knows how to coach. He knows how to get kids motivated. And he knows how to teach kids to have high standards and work hard.

• 1:22:22Mike Rowe?

  Well, let me tell you about Jermaine O'Neal.

• 1:22:31Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive, pre-apprenticeship program that Get you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 1:23:13Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 1:23:56Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/americasworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/americasworkforceacademy. It's like a boy named Sue. Somebody named Jermaine. You gotta step up. You gotta be great.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  You do.

• 1:24:16Mike Rowe?

  Because you're gonna take a lot of crap.

• 1:24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Well, I think, I don't think he took a lot of crap because he's like six, seven. The first time I met him, I was like, okay, this is pretty cool.

• 1:24:26Mike Rowe?

  But it's very, it's very powerful for a kid to get essentially a lesson from an undeniable expert in his field.

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  Sure, but you know what? You don't even need to have that. That's a unique situation. How about this? How about having a caring adult who you know is in your corner come alongside of you and say, "Okay, this is something you're interested in pursuing. Let's go figure it out together." Right? And that's why our guides and that role doesn't require them to be a subject matter expert in, you know, science, or eighth grade math, or whatever it is. Instead, they are gonna say, "All right, I'm gonna get to know you. I'm gonna understand what it is that you're interested in developing or pursuing, and we're gonna work through this together." And that brings back that skill of, again, learning how to become an expert in anything that you do, which we have to have in this day and age, when these kids, you know, the jobs that they're gonna do haven't even been created yet.

• 1:25:19Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, for sure, we need experts, but... But I think we really need generalists. I mean, isn't that what the humanities are? Like a broad-based understanding of a lot of different disciplines that might not have any real practical use for me day in and day out. But nevertheless, look, I spend a lot of time defending my foundation because in a soundbite world, a lot of what I say gets translated as anti-college. Or, you know, anti-four-year degree. It's not true. My liberal arts education, I think, served me pretty well. But in 1984, the whole thing cost 13 grand, right?

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:02Mike Rowe?

  So like, I'm gonna get back to the money too in a second. But this just has to do with the idea that I don't... I think skills-based training is certainly at the heart of what my foundation is all about. But I never meant to suggest or imply that a person ought to enter the world with no appreciation for a liberal arts degree or no understanding for the humanities. Because to your point, if we want people who can think critically, you know, they have to pick up Kierkegaard. They have to read the Stoics. They have to at least be able to hold up their end of the conversation around the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy, right?

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  Well, you know, E.D. Hirsch has this concept, 5,000 core knowledge, basically. 5,000 facts, ideas, concepts that an educated person needs to know. And that's one of the things we're able to start incorporating into these learnings. So when kids are learning reading comprehension, right? They're able to get exposure to Shakespeare, to Kierkegaard, to those types of things, and give people that exposure. Here's what I fundamentally am trying to do with the kids that come through our system. When they graduate high school, I want them to be prepared to go do whatever it is they want to do. And if that means they want to go to a four-year degree at an Ivy League school, or they want to go to their big state college, or they want to go straight into the working world, they have the skills and the abilities to go do that, whatever that is.

• 1:27:29Mike Rowe?

  Can you teach virtue? Can you teach like, you know, nature and nurture and all of that stuff?

• 1:27:37Speaker 02

  So that's one of our kind of five pillars. We've got five pillars that we focus on at our school. You know, again, love school, learning, our guide, relationship, life skills, and character, classmates, and culture. And I actually think as a parent, at the end of the day, what I really care about with my kids is that they're good people. I want them to be virtuous. I want them to be kind. I want them to be thoughtful. And I think there are a lot of things that you can teach. And it's everything from, you know, our kids give 360 feedback to each other, right? And there is nothing, which I didn't have this growing up, but the power that has when you can read, okay, this is how my classmates see me. Am I uplifting to the community? Am I contributing? We ask kindergartners,

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  would you trust Mike to take care of your favorite stuffed animal? You know what? And if it's like, no, I wouldn't. It's like, okay, well, what can we do to to earn that trust? How can we show that we are respectful of other people's things or of our things, right? It's everything from learning how to play a game fairly and not cry. I had a parent come up to me the other night and said, Alpha has been so transformative for my kid. And here's one reason why. Game nights with my seven year old used to be kind of brutal because he'd throw a fit if he didn't win, or he'd want to change the rules or whatever. And we're having a game night the other night, and he loses, and he high fives his brother, and he says, failure is fuel. We'll get them next time, you know? And those

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  are the kind of things that I think do start reaching towards virtue. The idea of looking outward and contributing to your community. I was at one of our schools where the kids were doing a workshop where they were connected with senior citizens from a senior center. The goal at the end of the seven weeks was they surprised their senior citizen grand pals with a graphic novel book that they used AI to create that had the stories that the grand pals had been telling them. So these kids are learning interview skills. They're learning to connect with someone from a different generation.

• 1:29:33Mike Rowe?

  And they're making something. They're totally unique.

• 1:29:36Speaker 02

  Oh, totally unique. And they'd painted, they'd done painting together. So we're doing art stuff, and we're doing that. And then to have that kind of connection and for kids to walk out and say, "Well, that was really special." And you know what? Sometimes it's great to sit down and talk to somebody that I wouldn't think. We have a great video on my future of education where this old guy's telling them about how he used to keep a chipmunk in his pocket, you know, and take him around there. And this kid's like, "Huh, okay." And those are skills, by the way, that I think have almost become lost arts. You know, the idea of learning from a different generation and connecting with people that aren't just, you know, in your immediate family.

• 1:30:10Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Getting feedback. Here's another one. Rejection training. How many times have you had someone say no? You know, when you're, "Well, you're better off than I do. I have not figured it out." People say, "I was lucky I got my husband to say yes to me," right?

• 1:30:25Mike Rowe?

  I'm in the entertainment business. My entire, the entire rubric is based on rejection.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  And here's the thing. We have to make sure that kids are willing to go put it out there. So one of the things that we have our kids do, and this is true for 4th, 5th graders, they have to go become an expert in something that they're interested in. And then they have to reach out to 50 experts in their field. So we had a boy who's interested in ornithology. Birds. Loves birds. And so he's learning all about birds. And then he goes and he's researching, identifying who are all the experts in ornithology. And then he has to learn how to create a professional, well-written email that reaches out that doesn't just say, "Hi, Professor So-and-so, can you please tell me about birds? Actually, I have an intelligent, you know, question. I was reading the paper you wrote on this, and I was curious, how did you collect that research?"

• 1:31:15Speaker 02

  Whatever. And guess what? Out of 50 emails, he got probably six responses. So you're starting to learn that, you know what? You just keep trying. You just keep going. You don't take no for an answer, right?

• 1:31:25Mike Rowe?

  See, Chuck takes it real personal. You know, we might have guests here that we want to come on and we reach out.

• 1:31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Mike Rowe?

  And sometimes he doesn't hear back from their people.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm so sorry.

• 1:31:35Mike Rowe?

  And you would think somebody just like took his blankie and kicked him in the throat.

• 1:31:38Speaker 02

  Well, come spend a week at Alpha and we'll teach you that. You know, this is another thing. One of the checks we have for our kids, for our kindergarten... Is that you can receive feedback without crying? And I'll tell you what, we have high school students who come into our school, who cannot pass that kindergarten check. They they're like, I get feedback and I cry. And you know what? We believe feedback is fuel. Feedback is great. How are you going to get better if you don't have feedback? You know, how do you get better if you're not building whatever it is you're working on in public? So that you can find out what do they want? What are they needing to make your product better? We have our students in middle school go through an exercise. It's called Dream Launcher. And here's what they do. First thing they do is they do an Ikigai Values Chart. What do I love? What am I good at?

• 1:32:23Speaker 02

  What does the world need? Right. And they look at those things. Then we have them do something called 168 Hours, where they track the 168 hours of their week. And they see, how do I spend my time? And then what's really amazing about that? When they have their Ikigai Values Chart, and then they actually see how they spend their time. There's a realization that can happen there. And we'll have kids go, wow, I got bad news. I guess I'm going to be the world's best TikTok scroller. Because I spend a lot of time doing that. And they start seeing, wait a second. Who I want to be is not matching up with how I spend my time. And what can I change on that? And then we have them go through and say, alright, let's take this interest you think you've identified, and go spend two weeks going down a rabbit hole and learning as much as you can about that. And you know what?

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  Sometimes at the end of that two weeks, kids are like, oh, yeah, it turns out I'm not interested in that. Or wow, I really am interested. We had a kid this fall who had said to us, you know, he goes, if you told me that you'd pay me $100 an hour for the rest of my life to play video games, I'd be like, sign me up. And months later, he's like, I am so busy learning how to code and build and create video games. I don't even have time to play video games anymore. Boy, I'm glad I can move this mic around because I'm about to eat from the fire hose, I guess. And and so

• 1:33:37Mike Rowe?

  Imagine being me.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so this is what I just think that, you know, these are the kind of opportunities we want people to have. And I think I think adults should spend some time going through that Dream Launcher exercise.

• 1:33:48Mike Rowe?

  Heck, yeah. What's that called? The Japanese word?

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  Ikigai Values Workshops. Ikigai Values Charts.

• 1:33:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I've heard of that with a Masagi. Are you familiar with that?

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  I don't, I need to become more of an expert on that.

• 1:34:00Mike Rowe?

  It's the it's the deliberate attempt to do something that has

• 1:34:08Mike Rowe?

  A high likelihood of failure.

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  Hmm, yeah.

• 1:34:10Mike Rowe?

  Right? And it's this idea that it's failure is so important that the only way to truly challenge yourself in a meaningful way is to get the stakes high along with the failure rate. So you've really got real skin in the game. You know Fred King, this teacher that I I mentioned earlier, he would do this thing. I mean, this, these are high school kids and he would say, okay, this year for the big concert, we're going to do the Hodye by Ralph Vaughan Williams, which is a mother. I mean, it is 10 10, 10 beauty, 10 difficulty. No

• 1:34:53Mike Rowe?

  high school has any business. Same thing, box mass and B minor.

• 1:34:58Speaker 02

  By the way, I heard you were an opera singer.

• 1:35:00Mike Rowe?

  Ah, yeah. I mean, it was.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  I did a little of my own research too. So, cool.

• 1:35:04Mike Rowe?

  Well, I sang in the opera.

• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  That's, that sounds like an opera singer to me.

• 1:35:07Mike Rowe?

  Not really. You know what I did once too? I went down a hill on skis, but nobody says, here comes Mike Rowe, the skier.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  Ah, I disagree. I think that we need to.

• 1:35:15Mike Rowe?

  I went golfing once too.

• 1:35:16Speaker 02

  We work through your identity, which by the way, that is a huge thing too. Just one, to go back to your story, but when kids start doing hard things and they start having success, it builds competence and confidence and it changes the way they see themselves.

• 1:35:30Mike Rowe?

  But it's like the Russian judge, you know, who sits there like, God, he's so strict, you know? It's like my old Mrs. Backshider, A minus, never give anybody more than an A. Doesn't matter what you do. There's something, it's all connected in some weird way. The feedback, the fuel, the failure that you're talking about, those things are so important. But if we, if we grade on a curve, who are we helping?

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:57Mike Rowe?

  If we pass that kid to the fifth grade, who still doesn't know when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, what are we doing?

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  No, it, well, it's lowering the standard and actually Chuck, if you want me to give you a connection for a great podcast guest, there's a guy, his name's Dr. David Jaeger. He is like the rock star of the psychology community.

• 1:36:16Mike Rowe?

  Call him now.

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  University of Texas. And he wrote a book called 10 to 25, The Science of Motivating Young People. And basically, it's looking at how do you motivate this age group, which again, 10 to 25, but you can take this all the way across, which is he has found that the secret to motivation is holding people to high standards and also providing that high support to help them be great. Now, the other opposite thing is you can have low standards and high support. Oh, honey, everything's perfect. You're perfect no matter what. Or you can have high standards and no support, and then you're just like a military drill sergeant.

• 1:36:50Mike Rowe?

  But you mentioned, you mentioned the SEALs. BUDs training, that's a great example of a thing that only matters because the majority wash out.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:04Mike Rowe?

  I mean, how awesome is that? I talk a lot about the different ways the military will recruit. It's really telling when you think about what the Navy is offering. It's an adventure. And the Army is like, hey, be all you can be. And when you come out, you'll be that much smarter and you'll kill it in the civilian world. Coast Guard has their thing, so forth. You know, the Marines, probably not for you.

• 1:37:27Speaker 02

  And you know what, though? They have their backs, you know, they have each other's backs, too. That's the other thing that you're creating when you get back to that whole classmates and culture and virtue, right? And sometimes doing hard things together, right? That's the thing that that gets kids excited when they know they're part of a of a bigger team. And we put our kids in situations like this all the time at our schools, where they know like, hey, I gotta show up and do my best because my team's counting on me. And isn't that what we want?

• 1:37:54Mike Rowe?

  Well, look, if failure is the fuel, and you also said feedback. I guess everything's fuel over there.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  I think a lot of things are fuel.

• 1:38:01Mike Rowe?

  Okay, well, I just, it just seems like such a fundamental point to make. But so many parents are afraid that when their kids fail.

• 1:38:13Mike Rowe?

  The cost will be nothing less than their self-esteem. So many others believe if their kids don't fail, the cost will be nothing less than their self-esteem.

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:23Mike Rowe?

  Somebody is not just wrong, they're really wrong. I mean profoundly wrong. And it goes back to the beginning of our conversation. Something is profoundly wrong with our knee-jerk desire to make sure we don't wind up with, you know, a 16-year-old in the 4th grade. I get it, that's bad. That won't work for a bunch of social reasons. But the solution can't be no child left behind. Because that just is another way of saying, no idiot doesn't get a diploma.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:03Mike Rowe?

  I'd like to talk about initiative, if I could, for just a moment. Here at MicroWorks, we value it a great deal. In fact, it's the most important quality we look for in our work ethic scholarship applicants. But everybody wants it. I'm talking about the quality in a Lyft driver that inspires him or her to carry your bags to the door without even asking. Or the grocery clerk who shows you where an item is on the shelves, or a doctor who personally calls you to explain your test results. If you're hiring, you want to encourage initiative because it's invaluable. And ZipRecruiter has a way to allow a candidate to tell you, in their own words, why they're interested in your job. Not just why they're qualified, but why they're interested.

• 1:39:48Mike Rowe?

  This is a way that allows the best candidates to distinguish themselves from the competition. And a great way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. ZipRecruiter is the number-one hiring site, in large part because of this new initiative that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within one day. Try it for free, ziprecruiter.com/row. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  Recruiter, try it free. And I think that's something that hopefully we are an example of a new way of thinking around that. And, you know, we come back to sports, you know, no coach has kids work on their dunks if they can't dribble the ball down the court, right? And mastery learning is such a big part of sports development, of music development. I'm sorry to interrupt your amazing opera story we were going through.

• 1:40:59Mike Rowe?

  I didn't bring it up, really. That was your story.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  But it's like, these are the things, we've got to bring them back into academics. Here's another thing we do. Our kids actually go back and they review kind of their game film from their academics. Like, okay, today I didn't hit my goals, and here's why. I was struggling with focus on here. I had an extra hard concept that it took me a little while to like, go back and find. And when they have that attitude where they're like reviewing game film, you know, think about in sports, how often the coach has you go back and say, let's go look at what happened in this game and where we could go better. For some reason, in academics, that's not a thing we do. And I'll never forget, I was in a classroom, in our kindergarten classroom, and at the end of the day, as part of the payouts, when they're paying the kids their alpha bucks, our guide gives each kid, here's

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  how much you earned. And this little boy stands up and he says, you know, okay, today I hit only one of my four math goals and two of my four reading goals. And the reason was I've struggled with being focused. And so tomorrow, I'm not going to sit next to Gus. This kid's five years old, five years old. And not only was he able to articulate, here were my goals, and here's how I landed in comparison with my goals. Here's where I've struggled, and here's what I'm going to do differently. And I think that kind of lesson is just critical. You can bring that into so many other places. And we have to get academics in a place where kids feel that sense of ownership.

• 1:42:24Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:42:25Speaker 02

  Where they're actively.

• 1:42:25Mike Rowe?

  No, I'll buy that. On the other hand, it does sound like Gus took it in the neck there. I mean, what the hell did Gus do wrong? Gus was just trying to live.

• 1:42:33Speaker 02

  Gus was poking, poking him, they're playing, and you know what? By the way, sometimes you don't sit next to your friends when you're in, you know, I've learned this. I, I'll tell you what, if I ever go to an opera or classical music thing, I know to not sit to my, next to my best friend from college, Zenobia, because she and I, we crack each other up and once we get started, it doesn't end. So I, like, we go to things, I'm like, you're sitting over there, I sit here.

• 1:42:54Mike Rowe?

  Hey, I was Gus, man, I get it. I was, I was, I was that kid. I want to be respectful of your time, I know we've been at it for a bit, but I gotta, I gotta come back to the quasi-douchey thing again right here.

• 1:43:06Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I've been waiting all this time.

• 1:43:08Mike Rowe?

  Well, you brought it up, it's money. I love what you're doing, and I don't want the audience to think, you know something? This is way too precious, it's way too bespoke, it's way too pie in the sky.

• 1:43:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:21Mike Rowe?

  But if you're gonna pay your guides a hundred grand, and if you're gonna charge, would you say forty to seventy-five thousand dollars a year?

• 1:43:28Speaker 02

  For one of our particular schools.

• 1:43:30Mike Rowe?

  Okay, but in general, like, what, how does the tuition sort of net out at this point?

• 1:43:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we'll have, actually, starting this fall, we will have about three times as many students that will be paying no tuition for our school model as we currently have. That is thanks to education savings accounts that have been made possible. We are also starting to see some interest from some public districts. And, you know, one of the things that's kind of crazy when you think about how much money school districts are spending per student, they have a lot of fancy ways where they'll kind of take the math and say, well, we take our administrative budget out, we take, you know, our building budget out or whatever, but it's basically between about eighteen and thirty-six thousand dollars a year that goes towards an individual student in our country.

• 1:44:20Speaker 02

  Again, results questionable, and so we've got the results on academics in our country.

• 1:44:27Mike Rowe?

  Oh, you're saying questionable as dubious.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  There are, there are schools, yeah, there are.

• 1:44:30Mike Rowe?

  I'm saying, no, they're not questionable.

• 1:44:32Speaker 02

  No, no, no, they're terrible.

• 1:44:33Mike Rowe?

  They're crystal clear.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, you've got, I mean, there are schools in Illinois, $36,000 a year per student. It's like, less than 8% or something are doing math or reading a grade. Or actually, there were things, no one was proficient, right? And so, there is money to go out there, it's got to be allocated differently. And so, we've got school models that are as, you know, as low for tuition base as $10,000 a year. And we've also got some interest from the public sector. Now, here's the thing, the public sector is going to need time. They're going to want to see data. I actually applied for charter status in 10 states and I got brutally rebuffed. I got major rejection training in that nine of the 10 declined, to use this.

• 1:45:17Speaker 02

  And so, it was a way, okay, we're not going to go in this path. What I'm trying to do is just build a distribution model, make it as open to as many people as possible. And we're kind of starting with that Tesla business model, which is, you know, we've started at this high end, I think we're getting a lot of attention, a lot of traction, because a lot of people in the United States, you heard about it from, you know, Stand Together, from all these things, that are hearing about this, and what's going to happen is we'll build more and more models that are going to spread and be able to do this. And I had the Secretary of Education at my school this past fall, and I got to tell her something.

• 1:45:50Mike Rowe?

  McMahon?

• 1:45:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, McMahon. And I got to tell her something that I'd said many times before, but I said, you know, if you put me in charge of, you know, education in our country, here's what I do. And then I got to say, Secretary McMahon, here's what I do. So, everything I just talked to you about, motivation, connecting with kids, you can take kids, put them on this academic plan, and at noon, instead of maybe, I mentioned that, you know, we had kids sailing to the Bahamas, we've got rock climbing trips to Italy, we're doing all these crazy things, you could also put kids out on the sports field, in the debate team, in the performing arts thing, in the music class. The things that public schools are doing with kids, starting at 4 o'clock, they could start doing at 12. And guess what else they already have? They've already got coaches and teachers who are...

• 1:46:37Speaker 02

  Playing in that field around motivation connecting. It's going to require a transformation of, you know, how they spend their time. They're not going to be teaching science, but they're going to be focused on, hey, let's go do the robotics workshop. You know, or the lab in the afternoon that kids are really excited for. I believe that so much is already baked into the system. That could be a way for kids to go find that thing they get motivated about and enjoy learning. If they're willing to say, hey, school doesn't need to last all day from an academic perspective. We could fit it in this way and we're willing to let AI and technology do the academic teaching. Instead of assuming a teacher has to be the one disseminating information.

• 1:47:16Mike Rowe?

  Are we going to live to see the public schools saved by AI?

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  I very much hopeful and I am waking up every day to work to do that in the best way I can. Now, it's a big battle. There is a system that does not want to die. I think there are so many great devoted people that want to see change. And really what I hope is that we can be that example. That helps people say like, wow, this works. And I'll tell you, Mike, there's never been a more exciting time to be a five year old. There's never been a more exciting time to be a teacher. If you're willing to say, wow, there is potential for change. And just like every other industry that we're seeing change, you know, five years ago, if you've, you'd have told me that. I was going to have some computer do a scan of my body to test for, you know, moles, you know, and skin cancer.

• 1:48:03Speaker 02

  Instead of a doctor look with her magnifying glass, say, this one looks good, this one looks sketchy, whatever. I would have been like, what are you talking about? There are so many other places we're now accepting that AI can do a better job. And I think education is that mountain that we need to get through. And so what we are continuing to do is just be transparent, show our results. We've got more, a big result thing will come at the end of the school year in June. We'll publish our results and we believe that as we continue to learn more and more about how kids learn. How we can develop the best systems, we're attracting incredible talent. We've got the best learning science team in the world assembled. And they want to work with us, not just because we're this one little school doing something, but because. We've got the ability to go make a big difference and.

• 1:48:47Speaker 02

  Fundamentally, what we're seeing is we're igniting an interest in families who are going, "Oh, my gosh, school doesn't have to be spinach. I don't have to send my kid to a place that he's like, "I don't want to go. Why is the week so long?" You know? Instead, it can be this place that kids are excited about and that they're learning these useful skills that will take them through. And that's going to be a fundamentally important question that we ask, you know, as we're going into this next stage of our society.

• 1:49:13Mike Rowe?

  Why do you give a damn? Why do you care so much about this?

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  Well, I started because I am a mom of two girls and I love these kids ferociously. And I couldn't watch them go through the system that, you know, that exists. So when I farted, whoops.

• 1:49:29Mike Rowe?

  Uh-oh.

• 1:49:30Speaker 02

  Can we cut that?

• 1:49:31Mike Rowe?

  Cut it. We're gonna, yeah, we're gonna cut it into the open.

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. When I-

• 1:49:35Mike Rowe?

  Up next, it's Mackenzie Bryce, working through some issues.

• 1:49:39Speaker 02

  When I started the first school, when my girls were in first and third grade, you know, I just knew I wanted to see them lit up and excited. And the first day of school, they get in the car at the end of the day and we had had them do a boys versus girls lemonade business war. And they were like, "Oh, my gosh." They're like, "The boys made more money." Now, here's what they did. It was a five-day challenge. The boys started on the first day and they were selling a lot more volume because they were able to make a lot more lemonade because they were using hose water. Whereas the girls were like making pictures and running back out and doing this. What happened? So they were mad because they're like, "The boys sold so much more. We didn't have enough." But then their repeat customer business was way better for the girls because it turns out

• 1:50:23Speaker 02

  hose water, lemonade, which you and I probably grew up on-

• 1:50:26Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  Not great. And so that was an exciting thing. Now, you know, it's been 14 years. I've got a 20-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old who's going to graduate from Alpha this year. And what's been so cool is to see these thousands of other kids around the country who are having the experience that I saw my girls have and have that, I just want to say like that fire in their belly and that glint in their eye that's like, "I am excited. I'm engaged. I'm passionate about something. I know how I want to use my talents and make a difference in this world." And could we- Ask for anything more than to wake up and feel like you're living what you're supposed to be doing, your purpose. And so it's a fun place to be.

• 1:51:05Mike Rowe?

  What happens to the universities as a result of this?

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  Ah, that's a really exciting thing. We're actually doing something pretty cool. We're going to bring down about 100 Stanford and MIT freshmen and sophomores to Austin, Texas this summer. And they're going to run through a program that we have that's basically going to help make them AI first. We believe that in that 10-week program, they'll develop skills that will be more valuable than a four-year computer science degree from Stanford or MIT. I think the higher ed system is going to be ripe for change. And I've actually talked to university presidents from around the country who are starting to reach out and realize like, huh, we got to do something different. And so the very quick version is that imagine if you could use

• 1:51:46Speaker 02

  an AI tutor, similar to what we're doing, to teach all of your base level, you know, classes and get kids up to a certain level. And then you could have students spend time with their professors who don't really want to be teaching those basic classes, doing the discussion seminars and the research and the development and building businesses and working on startups. That is something that I think will become a lot more valuable. And by the way, the Gauntlet program that our college kids are going to go through this summer, that's something we started originally for adults and it's free. And companies at the end hire these people and they pay that recruiting fee. And I think that changes, again, how are we going to upskill, you know, our people?

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  And it shouldn't be with a bunch of debt that they walk out with and no job prospects.

• 1:52:33Mike Rowe?

  Amen. Final thought, back to the money for a sec, because I suspect there are a lot of people listening or watching who are just like, look, awesome, but the bottom line is I don't have 10 grand. I need a free solution. I want my kids properly educated in accordance with the social contract that we all signed on for. I want my public schools to be better. I want the free option to have this. And I imagine some of those people, you know, probably feel left out of the conversation. And I would just say you You hit it, but you glossed over it. The Tesla model, right? I mean, so people really understand.

• 1:53:14Mike Rowe?

  The first microwave was $68,000 that Raytheon accidentally built. You know, it took a long time to get a microwave in the homes of the very people I'm talking to now. I did a story 10 years ago with a woman, a French chef, kind of famous. Ariane Dogan was her name. She had this chicken. What was it called, Taylor? What kind of chicken was it? Like green ranch, circle ranch? Yeah, green circle chicken. These are all organic, you know, like free range chickens, living their best poultry lives, right? And they were just all just wonderfully cared for.

• 1:53:55Mike Rowe?

  And then by the time you eat them, you know, it's literally like a $70 chicken.

• 1:54:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:54:01Mike Rowe?

  Like first served, like on a menu, it's 70 bucks.

• 1:54:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:54:04Mike Rowe?

  And people were like, what's the fricking point, man? It's chicken. Why are we, you know, why are you showing me something that I can get for free over here?

• 1:54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:15Mike Rowe?

  And it was the same basic answer. Like all good ideas come in the way you're coming into the market. It's not cheap. And to get it to scale, to get it in every classroom, to get it in every kitchen, you know? That's the trick. That first Starlink was pricey. And.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  And now you see people walking around with them in their backpacks.

• 1:54:38Mike Rowe?

  Precisely.

• 1:54:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:39Mike Rowe?

  So the final question is, and I won't hold you to it, but when will there be a guide in every public school instead of a teacher? And when are, when is the average kid going to have access to this?

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  I don't think there's ever going to be one model that fits all. So I don't think that, you know, the traditional school. Model will ever die, but what I think will happen is more and more options will become available that families can then decide what is right for them. So for example, we are starting to move into the public school system, which again will be free. Families will have the ability to decide if they want to go into that system. It's got to be an opt-in

• 1:55:19Mike Rowe?

  Will they?

• 1:55:20Speaker 02

  ...type of thing.

• 1:55:20Mike Rowe?

  I mean, school choice, it's a thing. Some people don't have the choice.

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  No, this is different. School choice gives money to go towards private education. We're going to be going into public education. So these are public schools where in these situations where superintendents and the boards have said, "We like this idea and let's try it and let's give options to families in the district who want to be a part of this." And I think that's going to be an important thing to do. And you know, I think more and more people will start to see this. But one of the things we've got, futureofeducation.org is a resource website that we've created that gives free resources for not only things that families can do outside of school to help their kids learn, whether it's adaptive apps or AI tools and training, but also the ability to reach out to their leadership,

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  to their politicians, to their school board to say, "Hey, we want to see this type of education come in." And as we start to just get people more and more comfortable with knowing that we're not going to replace teachers, we're not going to take humans out of, you know, the equation. There's a lot we don't know about what the world's going to be like, but here's what I can tell you, Mike. In 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, parents are still going to want to drop their children off in a building, surrounded by other kids, and loving, caring adults.

• 1:56:38Mike Rowe?

  And then pick them up, six hours later, smarter.

• 1:56:41Speaker 02

  Now, what they do during that day may not look the same. You know, like what they're doing at Alpha does not look the same as what you're doing at a school right down the street, you know, a traditional school. But I think when people realize, okay, and we have teachers, you know, who come to work for us, and they're just like, it's like the most wonderful ability to finally empower them to do the things they care about doing in terms of impacting kids. And I think as we start to share that, you know, the teachers' union, I'm sure hates us, right? They're not there, but as teachers start To realize, no, no, this system is going to allow me to do a better job at my job. It's just going to look a little bit different. And I think more and more families are going to see this. We need to have a bottom up approach. You've started that, right? A bottom up idea when parents come together and say, hey, we want this.

• 1:57:26Speaker 02

  And that's part of what we're seeing at our schools around the country is we're having parents who are leading the charge to say, hey, we'll help you guys find a building. We'll bring the people together. We'll, you know, we'll bring the community in. And we are going to start to see that at different models and in the public sector. And then I will say, Mike, you might want to have me on in a year or so. Cause we've got some other pretty fun, exciting things up our sleeve that are going to work on that.

• 1:57:50Mike Rowe?

  This Jaeger guy, Chuck, have you booked him yet?

• 1:57:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he's gonna be here tomorrow.

• 1:57:54Mike Rowe?

  Excellent. Is that the website where you want people to go?

• 1:57:57Speaker 02

  There's a lot of ways. I've got Future of Education. I think I'm another one of those four million podcasts, along with Quantemplations. And, and the way I heard it, Future of Education podcasts, Instagram and is Future of Education as well. I'm on X under Mackenzie Price and I've got a Substack called Future of Education. And then of course, Alpha School. And I think we're the most talked about school in the world right now. And it's because kids are doing cool stuff. And by the way, there's a lot of things that families can say, you know what? I can incorporate this idea of a workshop into what we're doing at home and acting that way.

• 1:58:34Mike Rowe?

  Is that true? Cause if it is, that'll be the title of this episode. The most talked about school in the world?

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  I believe it is. You should do a Google search to make sure I'm not lying on that.

• 1:58:42Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, gosh, if the AI says it's true.

• 1:58:44Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what, we have, we have a lot of that.

• 1:58:46Mike Rowe?

  I'll check with my guide.

• 1:58:46Speaker 02

  It's very highly talked about. And again, it's because, you know, I think when you're willing to just say, hey, let's bring some optimism and some results. And allow kids to be limitless and unlock their potential. And that's what a school is supposed to do. And I'm really honored to get to be a part of, of doing that and want to do it for more people.

• 1:59:04Mike Rowe?

  I'm glad you're on the case. Thanks for changing the world. What did I just call it? The most talked about school in the world?

• 1:59:10Speaker 02

  I think it was the douchey part.

• 1:59:11Mike Rowe?

  No, no, that's not going to be our title.

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  No, yeah, you said the most talked about school.

• 1:59:15Mike Rowe?

  The most talked about school in the world. I love it.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  But it's also thefutureofeducation.org. Thefutureofeducation.org.

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  Sorry, yes. You can also go to thefutureofeducation.org. And we've got all these free resources for families to be able to learn about ways they can incorporate adaptive apps and AI tools. And they can reach out to their politicians and their school board to say, hey, we want to see this in our schools.

• 1:59:39Mike Rowe?

  You're on the verge of being late for your next appointment. You know that. Jay's dying to get you out of here. He's chomping at the bit.

• 1:59:45Speaker 02

  Looks like it. He's pretty excited, so.

• 1:59:46Mike Rowe?

  Thank you for your time. I mean, it's really, it's consequential, important, and I'm rooting for you.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  Thank you, Mike. Appreciate you.

• 1:59:56Mike Rowe?

  See you.

• 1:59:57Speaker 02

  Open the whiskey.

• 1:59:58Mike Rowe?

  Like it's not already.

• 2:00:38Speaker 03

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• 2:01:11Speaker 04

  What's that?

• 2:01:12Speaker 05

  My fresh detector.

• 2:01:13Speaker 04

  Uh, your what?

• 2:01:15Speaker 05

  There it is.

• 2:01:16Speaker 04

  What is it detecting?

• 2:01:17Speaker 05

  Fresh produce, fresh meat.

• 2:01:20Speaker 04

  Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 2:01:25Speaker 05

  Apparently, we celebrate.

• 2:01:27Speaker 04

  At Food Lion, you can count on fresh food at fresher prices when your fresh detector is going off. Head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.