Microschool First Impressions: Curious Mike & Spencer Blasdale Visit KaiPod

Microschooling Journeys with Spencer Blasdale (Edited for Clarity)

[00:00:00] Mike Goldstein: Hello, this is Microschools Journeys with Curious Mike. I am Curious Mike. We come to you via the Pioneer Institute in cold, blustery Boston.

I’m here today with my friend. Spencer Blasdale. Spencer is Chief Program Officer at The Calculus Project and previously, and importantly, the CEO of SchoolWorks.

SchoolWorks is a firm that, among other things, conducts school visits of traditional private schools and charter schools. And on Monday, Spencer, you and I hopped in your car. We only missed one exit. We drove an hour north to Nashua, New Hampshire, and we visited The KaiPod microschool.

So my question to you, Spence, is what was your big picture reaction as we spent a couple hours together in this microschool?

[00:01:14] Spencer Blasdale: I was sort of blown away. I did not really have too many expectations, but I should start by saying that I’ve never visited a microschool. I’ve read a little bit about, you know, in the educational media mostly.

My impression was, it’s sort of like when my daughters, who are now 20 and 22, were in Montessori school and I walked into the environment.  The reason why we chose the Montessori school for a few years is because it was highly individualized, it was safe, it was, uh, friendly, warm, loving, you know, felt like you’re in an extended family.

And that’s the impression I immediately got, and I also walked away with. It just, it felt like that. It felt like a place, like, I would want to be, and my daughters would want to be, etc.

[00:02:05] Mike Goldstein: Yeah, and you and I, who are veterans of visiting schools, the first thing we’re looking at is vibe.

It’s some version of, do I want to be here or not? Do the kids want to be here or not? Do the adults want to be here or not? We’re sort of cross checking on that before any other kind of instructional related goals. And so, very loosely, Spencer, we saw these two groups, each of about seven or so kids. One were the younger kids, which probably averaged around age 9.  One was the older kids, which probably averaged around age 14.  What did you see?

[00:02:48] Spencer Blasdale: It’s hard because normally when I visit a school, I’m looking for big classrooms and procedures and all of that. But what I saw was students who, some had headphones on, but they were all working in an academic block.  Individually working on stuff.

You could walk around and see math worksheets, some were doing other things. Also, students had tremendous amount sof freedom to choose to take a break, to choose to get help from somebody else, and things like that.

It was very calm. It was very focused. Every, you know, each one of the students had their own sort of purpose. And when we talked to them later on, they could also share exactly why they were working on what they were working on. At that moment.

[00:03:47] Mike Goldstein: Yeah. These kids are arriving to KaiPod essentially, with the self identity of “I’m a homeschooler; mom or parent is essentially in charge of my curriculum; I’ve got my plan.”

And the typical kid was showing up twice a week to this micro school, almost the way Spencer, you and I might go to a WeWork style office shared space. They were coming in, they had their academic plan.

And what was, what would you say was the number one reason why they wanted to be there to get their sort of mom assigned schoolwork done?

[00:04:43] Spencer Blasdale: Socialization. What was amazing to me is every student that I talked to, you know, we talked to some students together, but, you know, I probably talked to like eight out of the 14 one on one.  “Hey, so, you know, what do you like about it?  What’s the best thing, worst thing?”

It was all about socialization.  It was remarkable that they were, you know, you know, you have a. 10, 11, 12, 13 year olds saying “I’m a little bit worried that I’m a little bit introverted.  So we decided to go here.”

[00:05:25] Mike Goldstein: Socialization.  They might have, let’s say, an hour block.  “I’m going to do my schoolwork from mom. If I need some help, I can ask one of the two guides or another kid.”

But that kid might be working on something totally different and might not really know how to do my stuff. It’s not like all seven younger kids are working on multiplication or, you know, uh, dinosaurs or something like that. They’re working on different stuff.

Then they come together. Pretty frequently for break time, we saw kids playing like a board game. Everybody was engaged. And I think that’s the other thing that I came away with my KaiPod visit. If the first thing is the vibe check, the second thing is a productivity check.

Setting aside judgment about (curriculum quality)… I don’t know if that’s a good math assignment, or, I might quibble with whether I think that’s the best use of your time in learning English. Are they trying hard at something reasonable?

[00:06:36] And what did you see there, Spencer?

[00:06:39] Spencer Blasdale: Literally yesterday I was visiting a traditional independent school (elsewhere).  They had 39 minute blocks.  I was observing a math lesson and about 19 out of the 39 minutes were active.

This (Kaipod) is just so different because you had, the students were fully focused on their thing.

[00:07:29] Mike Goldstein: Compared to, you’re saying, compared to the math block at the traditional sort of, school that you just visited for your work as the Calculus Project.

[00:07:42] Spencer Blasdale: Correct.

[00:07:42] Mike Goldstein: And the kind of traditional, normal, they have a few hundred kids, the normal schools that you and I visit constantly. You’re saying the KaiPod micro school, you were seeing more engagement.

[00:07:56] Spencer Blasdale: Yes, 100%. Yes. Okay. Yeah, students would be focused, you know, the first hour we were at Kaipod and they were working on, you know, in that block of time, or maybe it was an hour and a half, I forget exactly, but that, you know, students were fully focused on, you know, whatever it was that they were working on.

[00:08:14] Mike Goldstein: So, I agree, and I would contrast it with another micro school I visited.

[00:08:22] In New York City, where they were going for the same thing as this Kaipod in New Hampshire.

What was happening, instead of seeing seven kids productively working, the Guide was less sure about:  am I giving kids a lot of freedom, or am I sort of teaching the class?

Two out of the seven kids I vividly remember were totally off the reservation. They were loudly goofing off.  They were getting in the way of the other five kids from getting stuff done.

The exact same microschool model is in place, but the execution isn’t working. You’ve seen that throughout your career, Spencer, where you can see, like, a good charter school and a bad charter school. A good traditional private school and a bad traditional private school.

What drives that? What’s your guess?

[00:09:45] Spencer Blasdale: I would assume that the homeschool parent behind the scenes created this sort of mindset or helped cultivate a mindset with each of these students, right?

So that they’re coming in, they understand how to manage their own time, prioritize work, how to actually focus without.  There were no rules about cell phones or whatever, but you didn’t see students like checking their cell phones /

My second hypothesis here is those 2 coaches were really good with those age groups of students. They knew them individually, you could tell they had a great relationship.  They were just sort of nudging kids in the right direction very subtly, but it was not a very overt thing.

Most of it came from whatever these students are doing with their parents at home.

[00:10:57] Mike Goldstein: Yeah, like just to double click on that, Spencer, you’ve probably seen a thousand plus teachers over your career in action. And so Megan and Zach, Megan was with the younger kids, Zach was with the older kids.

If you were going to sort of say what percentile were they as adults in their Skill relative to other teachers you’ve seen in your career, at connecting with kids, where would you place those two?

[00:11:32] Spencer Blasdale: Super high, 90 above, they’re super high in connecting with kids, absolutely. Yes.  They were fantastic.

[00:11:45] Mike Goldstein: Yes, and so there’s a couple things in play here, at least in my head. Like, one is, you know, this is Microschools Journeys. We’re going to be talking about microschools. It’s a different kind of model. And I would expect to see, and what I have seen in the past, is variants. Just in the same way that you see it in schools, a lot of the variance comes from teacher quality.

So sometimes people get excited about a model. They say: I really think charter schools are the way. Or: I really think micro schools are the way. Or: I really think back to basic schools are the way.  They have a model that they love.

People like you and me are sort of more agnostic on model.  We’re, we’re interested in when the model is working well.

Often what drives Working Well is some version of Teacher Quality. In this case, Teacher Quality requires really great connection to kids. What else do you think, that if you were going to try to clone and make your own version of a KaiPod, what else would you be looking for in your guides besides their ability to connect with kids?

[00:12:55] Spencer Blasdale: Well, I think it’s the Guide navigation of the student-parent curriculum relationship is just, it’s interesting to me, and it’s all new to me, frankly, where the parent is setting the curriculum and grading the work, etc., and then the guide or coach is working with the student.

You need someone who can navigate that, when to nudge the student, how to communicate with the parents, so that everyone’s in sync moving forward, and both the teachers talked about that, and the importance of navigating that relationship between the different parties.

[00:13:36] Mike Goldstein: Yeah, we heard one concrete example. So you could imagine yourself with seven kids.  Loosely speaking, they’re all working on, let’s say math or science during a particular hour and they all have their own assignments.  Some are online and some are pencil and paper. And you kind of circulate a little, but your main message is: if you need help, ask me.

And yet we heard the story of a parent.  Homeschool Kid comes home from KaiPod.  Mom looks at the work the kid had done the previous day at KaiPod. Calls up the teacher and says, “Their math is all wrong.” In other words, the kid spent that hour nominally working on math, but they got everything wrong.

That parent said: “I want you, the KaiPod guide, to lean in more.  You should be checking the work during that hour.”  Meghan said: I can do that, but I need guidance from you, if that’s what you want.

But another parent might not want that, might say “Let my kid be; you don’t have to be constantly checking in.”  Navigating that is a weird experience for a traditional teacher, because the traditional teacher is calling the shots, not the parent.

[00:15:02] Spencer Blasdale: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:15:05] Mike Goldstein: Spencer, would you consider, if you were like going backwards in time and your girls were 10 instead of 20, would you consider a KaiPod for them?

[00:15:17] Spencer Blasdale: Absolutely.  I would say my hesitation is that’s just a burden on the parents, and a burden in a good way and a bad way.  Would I want to be in charge of my daughter’s curriculum? If I were, of if my wife were in charge of that, I would send them the Kaipod for the socialization and the connections and everything else.  100 percent.

[00:15:53] Mike Goldstein: You would visit this Kaipod, which has these particular teachers, if it were the one sort of near your home, and you might say, “Okay, I’m down for this.”

However, let’s say at the end of the year, Megan and Zach choose to change.  They don’t stay with this particular KaiPod. Is your 100 percent highly conditional on whether you feel like your kids connect well with those guides?   They could substitute those guides for Mr. and Mrs. Average, and you would immediately lose all your enthusiasm for the microschool.  True or false?

[00:16:35] Spencer Blasdale: 100 percent true.  That’s what I do remember when we were looking at three Montessori schools (so many years ago).   Each had a different vibe to it, a different system.  We chose the one that we liked the best for those exact reasons, the teacher vibe, the culture, the school leaders, etc.

[00:17:07] Mike Goldstein: Yes, and what’s interesting to me about microschools with two or even one adult.  The change in culture could happen very quickly.  From one year to the next, a typical traditional school is not going to radically change its culture, right? Because maybe, you know, 20 percent of the teachers would depart, but most of the faculty are still there year over year.

Here with one or two teachers, you could have 50 or 100 percent turnover, which really means the microschool becomes an entirely brand new institution. That will be interesting to track as these micro schools continue to grow in the U. S.  Spencer, thanks, buddy. Thanks for joining.

[00:17:59] This was Micro School Journeys with Curious Mike and with Spencer Blasdale, our guest. Thank you again, and we’ll catch up in next episode with Meghan, the guide from this KaiPod in New Hampshire.