7 Education programs transforming the way kids learn
When you ask parents what they want for their kids, what is the most common reply
They say, “I just want my kid to be happy.”
The biggest problem with traditional schools today is that they don’t empower kids to find and explore what makes them happy. In traditional school:
Kids must learn from a designated curriculum instead of exploring what they’re interested in
Kids move through units in designated time frames which prevents them from digging deeper into what excites them
Grades, memorization, and standardized testing are the focal point instead of the learning itself. Kids are taught to do the minimum to meet the grading threshold instead of pursuing their best.
We need to give kids the autonomy and psychological safety to go explore, go deep, and go as far as they can in their interests. If traditional schools are not doing this, then parents need to look elsewhere for options.
In 2022, there are numerous education programs on a spectrum from supplementing to replacing traditional schools. These education programs have different approaches to learning and focus on real-world skills that aren’t developed in traditional classrooms.
Here is a list of online programs, accessible anywhere, that prepare kids for the real world.
After-school programs
For students that want to stay in traditional school by day, after-school programs are a great way to experience a different way to learn.
For younger kids 6-14, there’s Synthesis where kids meet once a week to learn life skills through playing games. The games are designed as simulations for kids to practice real-world skills like making tough decisions, teamwork, and being wrong many times before being right.
BETA Camp is a real-world learning experience for 12-18 year olds to use entrepreneurship as a means to build life skills and discover different kinds of work and careers. The best way to learn is to learn by doing. Kids are challenged to solve real problems and monetize their startups. This requires them to talk to users, build and iterate on their product, and communicate their ideas to customers and team members.
I built BETA Camp for my 15-year-old sister when she was at a crossroads on what she wanted to study post-secondary. She loved art but thought the only path forward was as a starving artist.
To show kids like her all the possibilities out there, we bring in industry leaders at each stage of the startup journey. An early engineer at Doordash runs the MVP workshop where students not only learn about how to build a great MVP, but also get to see the kind of work early engineers do. Through building a startup, students build the confidence that with the right skills, they can create new paths for themselves.
After BETA Camp, my sister started her own design agency. She outreaches to small beauty brands on Instagram and designs logos, product packaging, and other creatives for them. She now has a small team of 4 working for her agency and is heading to college in the fall to study human interaction design!
For middle school and high school students, I also recommend TKS and gt.school. Both are great programs that go beyond the academic curriculum and help kids explore what really lights them up.
Alternative Schools
Traditional schools are churning out factory workers when our new world demands self-learners who are creative and resourceful.
“If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, he will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.” — Seth Godin
Alternative schools are not trying to fix or improve upon the existing education system but to completely transform how students learn.
Schools like Prisma for grades 4-8 and Sora for high school are bold new alternatives working to build an entirely different school experience. Here are some features found at Prisma and Sora:
Use independent study assignments and project-based learning so students have more autonomy to choose what to learn
Flipped classroom model where knowledge transfer is done through asynchronous videos and synchronous live sessions are used for engaging activities
The teacher’s role is to mentor, inspire, and provide feedback, not lecture
Personalize each child’s learning plan. A child can study 6th-grade math and 10th-grade reading. Kids don’t advance in all subjects at the same pace, so why do traditional schools expect that?
Creative interdisciplinary lessons that reflect the real world instead of siloed school subjects that don’t connect.
There are no grades or quizzes. Mastery is demonstrated through building projects
In high school, most things I learned left my brain as soon as I finished an exam. What I do remember is building a children’s rights foundation, going door to door hustling for sponsors, working with vendors, coordinating volunteers, and getting interviewed by the local news.
What if every subject in school required students to build something they were interested in? What if kids had the option of learning AP history through building a board game instead of memorizing an encyclopedia of dates? What if writing was taught by starting a newsletter or copywriting a sales page instead of quoting Shakespeare?
Interdisciplinary and project-based learning is the best way to cultivate creative, free, and independent thinkers ready to tackle tomorrow’s challenges.
100% Self-Directed Learning
As a digital nomad who is thinking about having kids soon, I have been down the rabbit hole looking for how I can educate my kids while still being on the road.
The two methods that stand out to me are:
Worldschooling: children learn by experiencing and interacting with the world around them.
Unschooling: Where children learn through life experiences that they, alone or with the help of a parent, initiate without following any standard curriculum.
Both worldschooling and unschooling are forms of self-directed learning where learners take charge of their own learning process, needs, goals, strategies, and resources.
In traditional schools and alternative schools, learning goals are set by the school board or the teacher. There is a defined mastery level to be achieved and subjects determined to be useful (no matter how interdisciplinary and innovative these topics are).
But with true self-directed learning, the student decides what to learn, how to learn it, when to learn, what is enough learning, and what is best for them.
Self-directed is how we learn as toddlers and how we learn as adults - based on our interactions with people, the world, and by seeking information out of interest.
Galileo is an online school for 8-18-year-olds that fully embody self-directed learning. The student and parent work with a learning coach to set goals and define success. After that, the only structured time is a morning meeting with a facilitator and a pod of students to stay accountable and share what they have been learning. Beyond the pod, students get to choose how to spend their time, truly designing their own learning experience.
The best thing we can do for our kids is to help them develop a love for lifelong learning. That starts with empowering them to choose what they are interested in (even if it’s guitar and video games) and guiding them to dive deeper and find their own purpose in their passions.
Every child deserves to reach their fullest potential and be excited about what they are working on. With so many options available, parents have the responsibility for making well-researched, intentional decisions.
I hope more parents see this as an opportunity to explore and experiment with different programs, schools, and methods to see what works best for each kid.