Yeah, there it is, busted pencils, fully-ledged education talk, educated educators, talking
education, Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, Jacob Chairman of the board, me, Dr. Tim Slecker. Here we are
on a Saturday. I will say, Jacob, welcome back from the beach. And, you know, I had to call you
out there on the beach just because, you know, wanted to make sure that had you eaten, that you
waited 15 to 20 minutes before you went back in the water. And that's what I was doing for you.
I really appreciate that, Tim, because I was out there on the beach, couple of surveys,
a couple of chicas, and unfortunately, here comes my phone. Oh, it's Tim. Yeah, by the way,
these are the only days I've taken off of this job. In the entire time I've been your producer,
it's the first time Tim has ever called me. So thank you very much, much appreciated. But I'm
excited to be back because there's a lot of cool learning we're going to do and a lot of
interesting things to learn. So Tim, please. Yeah. So, John, Johnny, though, you're laughing, man.
I appreciate it. We missed Jacob, you know, we did a lot of pre-recording so that
this fine producer could actually take a couple of days off of several months of putting
into the grindstone. But we missed him. He's back. You know, the big dog at the desk, we got him back
in his gear for this week. So I'm with him though. I'm excited about this broadcast and
having our guests with us today and learning from him and about the awesome programming and work
that he's a part of. He's got an awesome team. So Tim, without any further ado, introduce our
guy for our listeners. Well, you know, and we have been talking about the, is it a phenomenon?
I don't know, but, you know, two, two hour, two hour learning, you know, Mackenzie Price out there
putting this together and, you know, and I have been knocking on this door for listeners and,
you know, people that have been paying attention and Johnny, you know, kind of going back. I'm like,
Johnny, what do you think of this? I'm like, I'm like, man, there's something here that tickles me
because I really, really feel that what they're doing and what we're talking about is the alpha
school. We're talking about two hour learning. Yeah, we're talking about, yes, that school that
you all have heard about where two hours a day, the kids plug in, learn everything they need to
learn and then the rest of the day, they actually get to do really cool, meaningful things.
Well, and that's actually what we're going to find out about today because we have the head
of the schools in Austin, the high school, Chris Locke, Chris, in fact, that's your title, right?
And welcome to Boston pencils, my friend. Thank you so much, gentlemen. Yes, that is my title.
I am the head of the high school and I've been a part of this alpha school experience for the last
five years. I'm starting my fifth year and I'm really excited to share some more about what we're
trying to do, how we're trying to a little bit disrupt a little bit innovate education, but most
importantly, give kids a better experience so that they will truly love school and leave school
with not only just the knowledge that they need, but more importantly, the life skills that will
prepare them and propel them into their professional future, university, wherever they choose to go
after they leave the alpha school. There it is. Okay, so Chris, let's go, my framing of introducing
you to quote, to our learning, the academics, students plugged in, the rest of the day doing cool
things, entrepreneurship, you know, learning out the woods, doing all these kind of, you know,
whatever it is with, with not teachers, but with guides. Is that accurate?
It is accurate. That's definitely accurate for K through eight, Tim. With high school, we actually
talk about it as three hour learning because the vast majority of our high school students are
taking more accelerated curriculum. They're in honors type work and AP work and we haven't figured out
how to whittle it down to two hours yet, but ultimately for our high school students, they finished
their academics by lunchtime. And of course, there's times if they're not as focused as they need to be
there. They're going to have maybe 30 minutes an hour and so of work outside of school, but it's not
homework in the sense of do this worksheet or finish these problems. Each student, whether they're in
kindergarten or they're in high school, has a dashboard of what they need to get accomplished in
their different subject areas every day. And if they don't hit that at school, our expectation is
they'll close that out when they get home. Nice. So let's go to the let's address the issue
because I know busted pencils listeners are like, you guys are public ed people. You know,
alpha, it's a private school. I mean, it costs a lot of money. What do you guys do? And
you know, I will say right now to our hardcore fans and listeners. Yes, we are absolutely public
school. However, Johnny and I have always been though, when there's something awesome about
teaching and learning something that's out there, we want to bring that forward because I'm going to
go back to the paraphrase of the do we quote that, you know, great people have used in different
ways, but whatever the most affluent, the most incredible people offered to their children should
be the standard of what we offer to all children. And so because what's happening at alpha, yes,
it's private. We know that and Chris, you're there. And we'll talk about potentially public
opportunities that I know your founder at least has been trying to explore, but yes, it's a private
school, but it's it's this concept of what you're talking about, Chris. And I'll kind of frame this
from my own saying, understanding in my sense of the world is is that there's a there's a really
startling statistic that when we quote, measure engagement, whatever, you know, however you want
to put that, but measure engagement from K through 12 that that engagement, you know, from kindergarten
to second grade kind of starts to go up and then every year after second grade, students'
engagement decrease. So that by the point of ninth grade, you're kind of like going, okay,
that's a reality. And and I think what you guys are trying to do is kind of start there and say,
that's something we want to take a head on to say that school shouldn't be for every year you
spend in school, you feel less engaged, less like you want to be there, less important. But every
year should be an increase in why you really enjoy school. Is that what's happening at alpha schools?
100%. So everything we do at alpha school is viewed through the lens of our three commitments
that we make primarily to students, but of course the families and that shifts from parents to more
to the students as they get into high school. And the first thing is is we want kids to love school
and we don't mean that they will love everything they learn, but we want them to love being in the
environment that they're in. And it's not because it's easy because it's Disneyland actually quite
opposite. We believe that when you hold kids to high standards, but you provide a lot of support,
and that's where the role of the guide comes in that kids can do incredible things and they can
develop this love of school. Love of school also comes from having them have a greater sense of
autonomy and control over their education. In high school, of course, you've got to take your four
years of English, you've got to take biology and chemistry. But when we start to match the elective
courses with these alpha x projects that will get into a little bit, it really allows them to create
an academic foundation, which supports what their passion is. To give you an example, and we'll
probably talk about her later, Grace Price, one of our most successful students. You know, most
schools will say you really should take physics. You got to take physics. I was like Grace, but your
project is on cancer and the metabolic effects of cancer. Wouldn't it really solid understanding
of anatomy and physiology makes sense? Yes, so now you give her this academic foundation, which
supports the research she's doing with AI and all of a sudden she's developing a level of expertise
which is incredible. So that's where we find some of that love of school because the kids see
that what they're learning really allows them to feed what they're most passionate about where
they're spending their afternoons and that's where the magic happens. Johnny. Yeah, I love that, Chris.
And thank you for sharing this with with our listeners. Again, it's the alpha school. You know,
it's a program thinking like Tim said about really kind of queuing into what our learners needs are
and how some of the assumptions we had about how we do school, you know, for a century or more,
you know, about like we go to school in the morning and we go home in the afternoon and we filled
the day with, you know, better or worse, seven hours or so of like, you know, math reading,
math reading, math reading, maybe a little social studies, maybe a little science, and they're
more math reading, taking lots of tests and, you know, doing the whole rickum a roll of can I go to
the bathroom? Can I get a drink of water where I like to say my favorite phrase is everybody who
went to school in that model, which is most you listeners out there including all of us probably
here, you know, we went into a traditional schooling model. You know, we got we all shared a similar
experience. We got great at watching a clock. We got great at watching a clock. Now we learned
some other stuff too. That's not me just smashing schools, but you know, one thing I know everyone
I've ever talked to who went to a traditional school can can share some camaraderie around is what
it was like to glance over at that clock and to know exactly where the little hand and the big hand
needed to be for either the next transition or for the end of the day and, you know, by and large
school like Chris is sharing our learning, the passion that we develop around that, the social
experience we have with each other, you know, it probably can be done better. We can better use
everyone's time and we've been saying that whether you're in a traditional school or not, we've
been saying that for decades and decades as educational researchers and as teachers,
like how can we better make use of this time we spend together, right? So Chris, this is exciting
to share. We have a few minutes before we go to our breaks. I think for our listener who's like,
wait, what are they even talking about? Can you kind of you walked us through a little bit of it,
but can kind of tell us about like how you came into this, you know, your role in education and
sort of the origin story of you, Chris Law, involved with the Alpha School.
Great. Yeah. So I got involved with the Alpha School through a connection that I had at my
previous school. I was fortunate to spend 17 years at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida,
one of the largest boarding schools with a focus on sports. So I've been fortunate for the majority
of my career to be around really passionate kids. And with athletes, they use that athletic ability
to unlock opportunities at great schools there. And so when I found out about Alpha, I was like,
you know, I'm not sure that I'm the right fit. I'm not, you know, I'm more of a traditional education
guy. And um, Grandfrey who recruited me to Alpha is like, no, you've been taking kids from around
the world and figuring out and helping them do that. And so I said, I want to see it in action.
And he said, come see it. And the first thing that blew me away about Alpha School was the quality
of the people that were here. The recruitment process was just outstanding educators,
people that had really diverse backgrounds. They were open to people that weren't always traditional
educators, but had incredible professional experience that you could share with people.
And I remember when I first visited, I'm like, gosh, I'd never fit in. These guys are too smart,
too impressive for me. Um, and but I was just intrigued by this idea that, you know what,
academics can come first because let's be honest, I am, jeez, an amazing place, but
the kids go there because they want to become a D1 athlete. They want to be the lucky few that go
grow. And we worked really hard in my time there to make the academics as good of an experience.
But when I came to Alpha, we never had to sacrifice academics came absolutely first. And then instead
of sport being the differentiator, being able to give kids their afternoons back to explore what
they cared about and develop deep subject matter expertise and something, all the colleges and
universities talk about, they want kids that spike now. They're not looking for that well-rounded
student. They're looking for the students with deep interest in an area that, and that's what
our program allows them to do is find that thing they love, what lights them up, and then using
now the power of AI to be a superpower for them, they can do things as teenagers that you needed a
PhD or a master's degree before. And it's really, really an exciting environment. And that's ultimately
what drew me to Alpha was that opportunity to put academics first and let the kids explore their
passions. Man, first segment done already, our guest, Chris Locke, head of the high school of
the Alpha schools. Yeah, two hour learning. Well, three hours. We got a lot more questions for Chris
when we get back.
Yeah, welcome back. Busted pencils fully led. Education doc educated educators.
Here we're talking education, Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, Jacob chairman of the boards,
me, Dr. Tim Slecker, and our guest from Alpha School, Alpha High School, head of Alpha High School,
Chris Locke gave us a great intro to what's happening there. But Chris, right before the break,
you kind of hinted and you went the AI superpower. And just so you know, here in Busted pencils,
between Tim and Johnny here, there's a little bit of a push in a rub. As Johnny will point out,
Tim worships at the school at the church of AI. In fact, Johnny, I've now been promoted to
potential minister of my own branch, AI church. And Johnny, you know, kind of tries to bring
me back to reality most of the times. But superpower, I'm all for it. Chris, tell me about it.
Yeah, so I think it begins with we use AI very differently in our academic mornings versus our
experiential workshops in K3 and then what we call our AlphaX projects in the afternoon. But let's
talk a little bit about the morning. Basically, what we've done is we've been we've created a platform
called Timeback, which has been built by some of the best learning scientists, AI, LLM experts,
cloud developers, and ultimately, those of us that are really obsessed in love education.
And what that's allowed it to do is we use AI in the morning to be an academic tutor. Think
back to when we first started education where you have, you know, the in the Greeks, the Socrates
is being that one on one tutor, they're asking those types of questions. Our AI can do that for kids.
It's not giving them the answer, but it's prompting them with the right questions. But what it does
most effectively is it can start to generate personalized content for them. Let's talk about reading.
Obviously, our philosophy at Alpha is read what you love until you love to read. So let's say we've
got a fourth grader that really doesn't love reading books. Well, the beauty of AI can say,
Chris can say, give me, I love basketball, you know, Kobe Bryant's one of my favorite players.
And I want to include my three or four friends. And now the AI can start to generate sort of almost
like a choose your own adventure where I'm reading, but it's at the right lexile for Chris. And if
I'm two grade levels below, it can adjust. And as I work up, it can constantly be tweaking the
vocabulary. We can start to then ask the right questions that are getting beyond the D.O.K.
ones and twos, the facts and the summaries into how can I start to analyze patterns and connections
and things. And we've really amped up our reading. It can do that with our proprietary AP programs.
We've trained it on all the college board rubrics. So now it can start to generate a line types of
questions and kids can work through it. So they don't run out of the database of questions if it's
in an MCQ. We've also spent a lot of time investing in training the AI to provide really good,
almost instantaneous feedback on a free response question using again, the appropriate rubrics with
a ton of specialist department chairs giving feedback that have been AI graders and things to be
able to give that correct feedback. We still have human interaction. We still have people that are
on final exams and full practice tests. We have both the AI graded but also a human taking a look
at it because look, their AI isn't perfect yet. It's getting better every single day. But that's
where we can allow that learning to be more personalized. And you know, we start with very robust
diagnostics. We're big proponents of map testing by the NWA. And that then gives us a real starting
point. And we're not looking to, you know, cherry pick the desk and the bride. It's kids we want to
show how well this can work when you target the learning based on the skills that the kids are
missing. Take them back. I will tell you right now in high school, I have kids doing fifth grade
math pre algebra, algebra one, even if they've already done algebra two at other great public and
private schools, especially since COVID curriculum are shrinking because you've got to keep and it's
it is a huge challenge to in both the private school world and the public school world to be able to
differentiate to that range of learners in your classroom. And again, the AI doesn't care what
your SES background. They don't care if you're a non native speaker of English. It's going to reach
you where you are. And then when you personalize that learning and you're targeting whether it's
Lexiles at the right level or figuring out, oh, you never really mastered fractions. It's going to
do that. And then we call it slowing down to speed up. And it's really effective in getting kids
caught up missing feeling in those learning gaps and allowing them then to accelerate. And everything
we do is in a mastery based model. Sorry, guys. No, no, no, I this is this is really really good
Chris and said, and you know, this this is segment is the one that flies. But I really appreciate
what you're saying because what I see in this when, you know, when I'm at the Church of AI,
it's actually what you're talking about is what I see the possibilities, particularly having been
a second grade fifth grade seventh grade teacher, you know, back in the 90s. When I was supposed to be
individualizing instruction for all 20 to 29 of my kids and realizing I could never do it. And
is a fifth grade teacher, you know, in particular, I had second grade level readers and ninth grade
level readers. And, you know, yeah, you kind of teach to the middle to try to compensate for that.
And as you said, I now could imagine myself being back in that fifth grade and taking quote the
fifth grade reading passage that I had for that day, popping it into AI, saying, look, I got,
I need is I need this rewritten at the second grade level. I need this rewritten at the 10th grade
level. And you threw in the other little part there too that I wanted to go. And you know what,
these two kids really love Harry Potter. So let's reframe it in a Harry Potter style.
And these kids up here are really into field hockey, throw some field hockey content in there.
That wow, look at, can you believe it? Hey, though, we got to talk about guides or teachers when we
get back. I also want to talk about AI in the afternoon. And obviously, we're not going to get
everything. It's busted pencils. We'll be let it. It's Chris Locke Alpha Schools to our learning.
We'll be right back.
It's the head banging music as we come into the third session. Yes. It's busted pencils fully
let it education doc educated educators talking education, Johnny the Bonacci, Jacob chairman of
the board, me, Dr. Tim Selecker, and our guest head of high school, the Alpha Schools, Chris Locke,
here talking about, yeah, two hour, well, now three hour learning in the high school AI and all
those things. But Chris, we should say, we know busted pencils. We've got a huge teacher listener base.
I mean, you know, they're out there. And I got to imagine a few of them are kind of going,
yeah, Tim, but they don't even have teachers there. They have guides. Chris, help us out with that,
man, teachers guides. What's going on, man? Yeah. No, we are truly guides. When I first started,
we had a guide that had an English and literature background, a science background. AI has changed
that for us. We now are not responsible for any content delivery. But that doesn't mean we're not
directly involved in the student's educational journey. We look at ourselves as coaches and
motivational support. When you can unlock motivation for a student, they can do anything. A motivated
student will find the appropriate resources. And so our role as guides to be those coaches and
motivational support is to really get to know that student, understand more about them. And we
get to do what I think most teachers, and I've been an education my whole life, we got into it
because it's the relationship of working with students that's really important. It's what,
you know, you mentioned when you had 20 to 27 kids and you wanted to be able to differentiate
to those students, that's what we get to do as guides because we don't have to do the content
delivery. We're not the sage on the stage. We're teaching the kids to be self-directed learners.
And even if our apps are something happens and it's not good, if we're teaching them to learn to
learn and to be able to go out and find it because even the best teacher, there's probably somebody
on YouTube that can deliver that example or that lesson even better. So we teach them to be able to
do that. Again, it's our role to be able to coach and motivate them because the system's hard.
Learning everything in two hours or three hours is really challenging and difficult. If we can be,
I like to think of ourselves as sort of the trusted Sherpa. We're not going to carry their bags up,
but we're going to be there with them. We're going to strategize when a student's struggling.
We're not going to immediately tell them you do this. We're going to be like, okay,
let's work it together. Let's work the problem. Let's figure out what we can do so that, again,
the student is the one that is self-driven and can move forward in that environment. So even though,
a lot of people think, oh, with the AI tutors, this is like, you know, our principal likes to say,
we're not building AI robot terminators. But what we are doing is using the best of AI to be that
tutor and we'll talk about what it can do in the afternoon so that we can play the role of really
getting to know that student having those deep personal relationships so that when they're
having a bad day, we know what motivates them and we help them realize, oh, you want to get to
this university? Well, this is the pathway. This is how we're going to work through that.
And also, our guides need to create really engaging opportunities for them to be fired up. We're
really proud of our launches in the morning. We want it to be sort of like Tony Robbins for kids
where they leave that fired up so they can get into their apps and get into their two hour learning.
So there's definitely tons of human interaction, the biggest differences. It's not in we're
delivering continents that we're coaching them. We're motivating them. We're figuring out what
lights them up, especially our role is big time in the afternoon as they work on choosing a project.
Okay, before Johnny jumps in, I got to ask a question. If you're doing Tony Robbins mornings,
do your guides? Do you get big teeth to show it? Tony Robbins gets some big hands and big teeth.
Big hands. Tony, you're out, man. Oh, well, no, Tim, I like this and I appreciate this kind of
question and clarification because I think every educator out there and you touched on this, Tim,
talks about the expectation and the limitations that we have as teachers. And what it is we do in
classrooms in our labor and how ideally, we taught in the same era and still teach, but for decades,
it was differentiated instruction and individualized learning pathways in meeting learners where
they're at and identifying gaps. And Chris has talked about this. Sometimes what brings us to
teaching is that obviously, but also as, you know, being present at those opportunities where kids
are learning, kids are socializing, they're developing, you know, they're identifying their passions
and interests. And we're kind of connecting those learning opportunities and facilitating that,
you know, together and often times stretched way too thin. So I love like Chris sharing the experience
at Alpha School and the power of like AI tools, you know, to helping us truly do this to really
making it a manageable task for teachers to be guides, for teachers to be teaching to really hone in
on those moments where we say, oh, I see you're really engaged here. Let's push to the next level.
And anybody learning anything, whether it's, you know, correcting your golf swing, you know,
throwing a baseball, shooting a hockey puck, you know, taking that next step in your reading levels
or learning a new language, everybody learning, you know, it's so important to know what you don't know.
And sometimes that's the hardest thing to know what we don't know is a really difficult thing.
So I love Chris sharing that those those tools and the way that AI and also the guides,
what I'll say the teachers and the educators in Alpha Community are really cute into that.
When we know what we don't know, we can, like Chris said, slow down to go faster.
Right. And we can really focus in on that. So I love those things, man, and what you're sharing, Chris.
And, and I, you know, Tim, I know the worries like, hey, teachers out there, we hear about AI and we
think we're being replaced. Well, that's not the case. Certainly, you know, Chris has shared that.
And, you know, we keep hearing that over and over again that the teachers are in this context.
The guides are really excited about the learning taking place, you know, in their context.
So excited about this program, Chris. And if I can, one short story before we end up losing you,
man, because I think we could go on and on and we should definitely have you back, man.
But tell us just a story. One that pops out of just something that really makes Alpha special.
And that you want educators to hear as they're thinking about possibilities for their districts,
for their schools, and for just improving education. So give us a story from Alpha.
You know, I want to give you a story of the afternoon and how somebody can really make a great
example of it. And so I have a young woman. Her name's Grace Price and she is a graduate of Alpha.
She's now in her sophomore year at the new University of Austin, the first new private school in
Texas in 40 years. And Grace was impacted and her lost her grandfather to cancer. And it became
really deeply personal. And she started researching about cancer. And, you know, she was reading
articles and things that she didn't truly understand. Again, at that time when she first started,
she had just finished chemistry. She hadn't taken anatomy and physiology. She wasn't in, you know,
biochemistry. And so she started reading these journal articles. And when she didn't understand
something, she ran it through chat GPT and had to distill it down for her. So there was one of those
ways that it gave her the power to truly understand. And she kept building her expertise. And in our
afternoons, we use the afternoons. So first concept is they need to be an expert. And in this
age of AI, it can give you sort of the superpowers to whether it's distilling it down. The new deep
research features being able to do. Look, I went to college. We were on microfilm and microfeesh,
right? Now, everything's at their fingertips right away. And she just started absorbing
information. She started learning more. And what we found is really ambitious kids when they reach
out to successful adults, they will give their time to these teenagers. And so she reached out to
some experts. One was Dr. Seafried, who's at Boston University. And she called him. She called
them. And he said, you know what? I'm going to send you these three articles. Give me a summary.
And I'll see if I'll have a conversation with you. She did it. Her work gave her her opinions
within five minutes of emailing. And he called her back and said, how soon can you get to Boston?
She then created a documentary called Cancer, a foodborne illness. It's now had over five million
views on X. She has translated that into an internship with Cali Means, which got her to be a part
of the Make America Healthy Movement. And if you take politics aside, I'm not about politics.
But I think we all can agree if you go to Europe or even fruit loops in the United States is very
different than in Europe. The ingredients is a mile long. Well, she got involved in that Make
America Healthy Movement. And as a college freshman, she testified in the U.S. Congress.
She's then translated that into opportunities where she just recently was part of
passing three big bills in Texas. Snap reform, taking sugar out of it,
removing additives in school cafeterias. These are things that across the border really bipartisan.
And that's the type of impact that she can make. She's been in Arizona testifying.
She's part of the Maha girls, which CNN did a piece on. And again, showed that this is not
a right left issue. This is an American issue that we need to help improve the quality of our
lives, improve the chronic diseases and so forth. So, and again, it was made able or excuse me,
it was able to be done because of what AI was able to do for her and allow her to then build
this network of people, build that expertise. And to me, that's a huge success story.
I would actually add more to that, Kristen, say, one just AI. It was your ability to see
AI as that means to help her get there. But then you as guides and being in that place. And
Johnny talked about it to so many times we we got into teaching to be those people and spend so
much time wanting to get there that when we get those moments, they're so rewarding and we want
them so often that actually, yeah, the AI helped their Chris. But I would say that grace is
as successful because of AI as much as she is about having an opportunity to have that tool,
but then to have motivated people, teachers, guides, however you want to find them, who could
be there for her. As Johnny said, get her to the next level, get her to the next level.
Because man, I know teachers out there are going, that's what I want to do. Exactly. Exactly.
You know, I just thinking about this and Johnny, it's making me go back to my last, I don't know,
maybe 10 years, Chris. I have spent a long time really pointing out that we don't have a teacher
shortage in America. We have a teacher exodus in America. And largely, that is that teachers are
leaving the profession. Lots of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons, and I surveyed over 400
teachers across the country in 2018. The number one reason, they just want to teach.
And what that means, we've translated that, they want to be a guide, they want to be in a
relationship. They want to help a child understand that they are valued and loved. All of those
things that at the core of why they wanted to become a teacher, why they're leaving, because they
can't do that. And I, you know, I got to admit that for me, that's where I got kind of drawn to
what's happening with what you guys are going with alpha school. I know we wanted to talk to,
though, about the public private thing is we're coming up. As Johnny said, Chris, definitely
want to have you back. Great. We're about ready to let you go. Where should people go to find more?
Give us every promo you got. Yeah, I think you can follow our co-founder, McKenzie Price, on
Instagram, any of her socials, future of education, really, really powerful educational leader.
There's a lot of information about our program, our data results. We believe in being fully
transparent. So whether that's to our learning.com or alpha school, you know, alpha dot school is our
website. But we're getting a lot of publicity, you know, the secretary of education was visiting
last week. And so it's, it's starting to get polarized. But at the end of the day, we're, we care
about kids. And that's the most important thing we want to. And our principal, our leader wants to
transform education and bring it to the masses. And we just want to be one method of doing that.
Man, it's like he knew we were down. Chris Locke. Hey, here's what we say to thanks for
Boston pencils. When we get back to Johnny, we're going to break it down. Right back.
There it is. Spusted pencils. It's fully let it. And it's education talk. Educated educators talking education.
Wow. Great stuff here. Man, Chris Locke, alpha school, head of schools, the high school to our
learning. Yeah, that place McKenzie Price. That's who we're talking about. Yes, she's the founder.
We've got some, you know, we're going to have some more of them come back on. But Johnny, you know,
we said, you know, hey, Tim and Johnny, what do you, you guys are public school people? What are you
doing with the private school? And, and actually, though, actually, we've actually had on some
pretty darn good Wisconsin public school people, Mike Bigley, Brittany Walls from Cease of Four.
And they're involved with a program liftoffs. We've highlighted it.
They're doing this kind of the same stuff. Well, Tim, too, I got to just throw a plug out there.
Remember, only a Sith speaks an app or thinks an absolute or speaks an absolute. I butchered that
quote. But, but it's not public or private in the context that we've always kind of been polarized
in. We're in a particular moment. And we'll throw a shout out to Jonathan Garico, you know,
kind of regular guest out there and great education scholar and teacher educator himself.
But Jonathan Garico and his book publicization, right? Really, you know, nudges us to think
differently about what it means to be a public school. And that's not a plug for private schools.
He's saying, like, you know, in a democracy, we should move towards publicization, really
transparency, accountability, access, equity, all these kinds of things that we, like you said
earlier in the show, Tim, if it's good for some children, why isn't it available for any child
who it might be good for? And this is what we're talking about in terms of that there are public
charters and there are private charters and that the voucher system kind of undermines the
publicization of so much that's possible in education, i.e. when you kind of have a really good idea
like the alpha school is putting to practice or liftoffs in Wisconsin, right? They're saying,
hey, AI can be a powerful tool. Let's do the school day differently and let's really get serious
about engaged learning and let's really get serious about liberating our teachers, you know,
from the, from the chains of traditional school day and you know, reading math, reading math,
worksheet, reading math, reading math, you know, test, test, test, and really engaged in learning
together. So love that stuff because I just had to throw that out there, like, we're not here
of buster pencils slipping into the, well, that's public. Well, that's private. It's like, well,
let's dig in a little deeper. Let's get into the ideas and let's see how public education truly
can be in an increasing privatized country that we're in, which is a big problem. We're an agreement
here as listeners probably are like, hey, the privatization of learning writ large, huge problem.
But this is one of those interesting opportunities, Tim, and you highlighted it, alpha schools,
our guest Chris, you know, the whole idea that we can do more with the day than we've been doing
and we know too much about what works for different learners and how to now help teachers
do that work. And it's like exciting, man, because this is where, for me, rubber hits the road,
if we want to use that metaphor, where we can do some of the things that by golly, we've been talking
about, reading about for years. And then we take a deep breath and we're like, how in the world
can we do that in our schools? Well, change is not just on the horizon. It's here. I think Tim,
you were saying the, the, the future is just an infinite secession of the present. He got to fill
a sock on with us. And I love it. But Tim, I think this is exciting. We're going to continue to have
these conversations. And I love that you connect these thoughts to our great programs across the
country, especially shout out to liftoffs over in Jacob. What district is that? Again, I know
you've got it on quick draw. I do. Is it white, white hall? That's right. Yes. Yes, it is.
You said it. Dog might, white hall, white hall. Yeah, love it. Pulling my memory. Am I roll
the decks of past shows? So just big shout out, because that's similar to what, you know, Chris
was sharing here today. And Tim, big props for you for pulling this together, because this is near
and dear, you know, to your heart. And you've been really pioneering this as a not only parishioner.
But now you said, you know, moving up into the clergy member of the church of AI. Well, you know,
I don't know what kind of vows I'm going to have to take. You know, that could be the make or
break there because, you know, celibacy in the human world. Oh, let's not go that. Yes. And again,
yeah, what we're doing here is we're really, you say, Johnny, liberating teachers,
educators, learners, because man, the power of education in schools. Let's keep doing it. But now
it's time for your moment of zen.
I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in
social action and that each enrich the other.
Oh, man, pencil buster. I want to thank you an extra big thanks for tuning into the broadcast
today or grabbing this podcast. If you want to grab more great podcasts,
chocked full with more fully-ledged education talk, we just head on over to Apple podcasts,
Spotify. Of course, you can always find a specific media website or on our website,
busterpensals.com. And don't you dare be late for home room on Monday and make sure to catch next
week's class and session on Wednesday. And you can always find us on Fridays. Of course,
just like today, you're going to catch busted pencils at three p.m. central time across all the
civic media networks every single Saturday across all those network stations for one hour of your
favorite blue color scholars. Tim and Johnny are keep busted pencils.