0:00Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich and the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and I have a woman on today who I have admired and been curious about for a very long time. Founder of Two-Hour Learning, MacKenzie Price, welcome.
0:13Ginny, I am right back at you in terms of being a fan. 1000 Hours Outside is, I think, epitomizes what childhood should be. And actually, I think adults should take advantage of getting outside and enjoying as much time there as possible. And so, that's one of the things that I love doing with our education model is get kids out in the world.
0:34Absolutely. And I think this is one of the biggest problems is that childhood has just gotten sucked up by so many adult-directed things. The time piece is really the biggest piece. I talked to this man, Dr. Peter Gray, and he talks about how school used to be way shorter.
0:49It was hours shorter. And recess was a third of the day. So, if it was a six-hour school day, two of the hours was recess. And kids were being able to socialize and go home and go sled. And like have time to eat their lunch. And this has really changed. And so, you are bringing it back with this two-hour model. So, let's kick it off with your story. This is a solution that you're providing for your own children. You have been working hard on this since
1:20I I started my daughters I have two girls. They're awesome kids, which by the way, I think all kids are awesome. And when it was time for them to go to school, my husband and I sent them to our local public school district. We were both public school products and that's just what you did. We have a really great public school in our area.
1:40But, I just so quickly found myself frustrated by watching the experience that my kids were having in school. It's just so hard for the traditional school model and I'll talk more about what that is to me. But, to meet kids where they're at. and as you mentioned, kids go to school from 7:30 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon.
2:02They're going to spend 13 years of their life, 5 days a week, 9 months a year. I think school should be a place that like unlocks potential, and what the experience that I saw my girls having was it was just holding them down and shrinking what was possible for them, and most importantly taking that fire and passion and engagement and curiosity and dimming that. And I just couldn't watch that happen. I myself was one of those kids I was good at school growing up, but I
2:31hated it. And so I was like, I can't watch my girls go through the same experience. And so back in 2014, I realized that it was a problem with the traditional industrial revolution teacher in front of a classroom model, where when you think about that, Jenny, that was implemented to help create factory workers who would learn how to be compliant, do as they were told, follow directions. And that's just not what the world needs anymore. And so I didn't really see another option
3:00available. So I got together with some other parents, and we decided to reimagine what school could be. And the answer that came out of that was Alpha School.
3:09Okay, so talk about it. So So now, at this current point, and we're going to talk about this cuz I know you get a lot of pushback on it. This is an AI-driven individualized learning for these children. And you've got all the data to show that in 2 hours, and then for some kids who maybe are a little bit behind, they're a couple grade levels behind, maybe it takes them 3 hours. But it is a very short period of time in comparison to the traditional school day. How they are learning faster, going farther in
3:38the short period of time because this is right in line with where they're at. But in 2014, but I could be wrong, what were you doing then? Because was the AI available?
3:50Yeah, we I didn't even know what AI was in 2014. What we were doing back then was we were using apps and doing app-based learning that allowed kids to go at their own pace.
4:02The big unlock for us came in 2022 when generative AI came out and we realized that we finally had a tool that could allow us to very specifically and precisely assess and understand what a kid knows and what they don't know. And then develop personalized lesson plans that would take them to meet them at exactly the level and the pace that they needed to be led at. The other thing that's been really amazing about what AI
4:30has enabled us to do is we can take all of these learning science principles like the science of how people learn best and we can now finally incorporate them into the way kids learn. And then when we combine that with our motivation model, which by the way Jenny is the key to make learning great. That's where we're seeing that our kids are not just getting their academics done in 2 hours a day, but they are crushing their academics. Our classes are top 1% in the
4:59country in all grades and all subjects. And really what that speaks to is the magic of being able to receive lessons at that level and pace that matches a student and having our teachers, we call them guides and coaches, be able to focus on motivation and connecting with students and helping them learn growth mindset techniques that enable them to be successful.
5:24Yeah, and one of the things you say is you're also on the cusp of being able to do academics based around a kid's interest. So if a kid likes the Dodgers I think that's a baseball team, then they could learn [clears throat and laughter] their math through all Think about all the math that's in baseball. It's like the earned run average and all of that that and that is like the individual part of what would make learning so exciting for them and they could go deeper. And what you say, and I just love this, is kids get
5:54back their time. So, they learn as much in 2 hours a day versus 6 hours a day plus homework. So, actually it's not where we live the bus comes at 8:00 and doesn't come back till 4:30 for elementary school. That's 8 and 1/2 hours.
6:06Well, and remember Yeah, and remember, Ginny, school is a bundle like a parents send kids to school in part to be a daycare, right? It is a babysitter. Um but just because kids are maybe gone all day at school, it doesn't mean that time that those kids are in school should be wasted time. And that's the problem with the traditional education model is there's so much inefficiency and so little time spent. And I'll give you an example of that. When you think about a traditional school year, there's about
6:34180 days of education. So, you know, think 180 hours uh of time spent in math class. What we found, for example, in sixth grade, you can get sixth grade math done in somewhere around 30 hours.
6:50So, when you're able to just go at that pace that you need, and not only that, but take a fifth grade student who maybe needs to go back and review third or fourth grade lessons, or take that fifth grade student who could be doing seventh, eighth, ninth grade math, and meeting them where they're at, you can do it so much more efficiently. And then the magic part, and what we call this time back, is the rest of the school day is spent learning life skills and doing all these really fun, cool,
7:17project-based workshops where kids are able to grow and develop and spend time with each other and get mentorship. And I think that's really the magic of what families have really enjoyed about our school system is that these kids are getting prepared with future-ready skills, and they're getting time to just be kids and enjoy life.
7:38Yeah, and they're doing so many fun things, like running food trucks. What in the world, you know, can you imagine being in fifth grade and being able to run a food truck and like then PBS comes and does a whole story on your food truck. I've certainly seen the kids on your podcast. They're doing real world things and I think every parent, like I want my kids to have the basics. I don't want them to know nothing, but I also don't think that 15,000 hours of their childhood should go to sitting in a seat. And so you have come up with this alternative. Now, let's talk about the
8:08AI piece because I am Okay.
8:10I too am freaked out to a degree about AI. I'm going to tell you what I'm freaked out about. I'm freaked out about the job changes, but also that's part of life. You know, this has happened before. Nobody sets up bowling pins anymore. That used to be a job. I'm freaked out a little bit about that. I'm definitely freaked out about the data centers and I think that's something completely different. I'm like I'm hoping that, you know, at some point all of our data is not completely collected and like I don't know. But I've so that's I think separate. But I read this book. So I used to think like I will
8:40take a stand, you know? Like but I what changed my mind was I read this book by Jack Carr. It's called Only the Dead. It It comes from this phrase Only the Dead will see the end of war, which is a pretty interesting concept.
8:54It's a fiction book and the whole book was about using AI in the military. And when I read that, there's a new book coming out called Cold Zero by Brad Thor. Same thing. It's all about like AI and military. You read those books and you're like, this is not going anywhere.
9:09Like this People are going The train has left the station. This is not going anywhere because even if it was just needed in military, it's like people are pouring all sorts of resources in them to make sure that they're not behind. So you talk about how like, look, the internet's got not going anywhere and there's awful things on the internet and there's also really good things on the internet, too, right?
9:30You can become addicted to really awful things on internet and there's you can go down really bad rabbit holes and also you can have businesses and do all sorts of things. So, can you touch on I mean, I just think there's a lot of nervousness about AI.
9:46There is so much nerve around just what does this world look like and I think the question fundamentally that it causes people to ask is how is this going to affect my life and how can I adapt to it? And I think that's why it's so important that we teach our young generation and we ourselves need to learn how to adapt and be able to be well versed enough to learn to use AI as a tool and not be controlled by it. And so that is one of
10:15the other things that we teach our students to be able to use AI to give them superpowers and help them because as you can guess, our jobs are all going to change. Like the majority of jobs that our kids are going to be doing in 20 years literally do not exist yet and so it's even more important that we're teaching kids how to be adaptable, how to be creative, how to be great critical thinkers, how to communicate and be able to work with others. Those are the
10:43skills that need to be taught and I also will say, you know, a lot of times I I hear from parents who say gosh, in a world where everything you could learn is right there at the tip of your finger fingers and you have this ability to do that, what do kids really need to know?
10:58And my answer is that with AI technology, it is so easy now to provide a tailored education experience to make sure that we're filling kids brains with good information because let's face it, Jenny, let's make kids minds an interesting place to hang out for the rest of their lives. And so when you can do that in a couple hours and then use all that academic knowledge to draw from to be great critical thinkers, that's the key. And so I know it seems scary, but you are right, the train has left
11:28the station, it's going to be here and the thing that's going to set people apart is knowing how to adapt and use those tools well.
11:34Mhm. And I think you do a great job of bringing up all sorts of other things like the calculator and the internet itself and even the printing press where people are like this is going to ruin such and it is in some ways it does ruin certain things but then it does enhance other things. And so if you look at this as to to be able to have an individualized education. So we're a homeschooling family and even we've got five kids. It's hard to keep up with five kids at five different levels.
12:01But the I think that the the reason why home education often works even if like they say even if the mom hasn't whatever parents doing it the mom or the dad even if they haven't graduated high school themselves their kids tend to do really well. It's because it's personalized. And so that is what this is able to do.
12:22So you talk about how this traditional teacher in front of the classroom 25 students it's never really worked that well.
12:30I it it it hasn't worked out and I think the other thing that we're seeing is there has just been this decay in standards uh across our culture and our society.
12:42Grade inflation is rampant and you know when you and I were young you used to be able to get a C or a D that showed you didn't know material. Now teachers give out A's and B's like candy. Actually in our local public school district that I used to have my girls in they have changed it in elementary school that they're now only going to going to issue M's for mastered or A's for approaching mastery. Now there is a long space between approaching mastery and knowing
13:11nothing at all and that is what it's going to do and I think it's been one of those things where the traditional model has been shown it's impossible to meet 20 plus kids that are at completely varied levels. A teacher has the most impossible job in the world and then you add to that the fact that teachers are leaving the field in droves because it's such a hard tough industry to be in.
13:33That's been part of our problem is they just can't make education work and you know, it's interesting. I think there's so many other industries that have been quick to change and move forward. Think about healthcare. You know, we're now at the point where people are realizing that you know what? You can use an a scan and have AI be able to tell if moles have changed on your skin and if you you know, should look for skin cancer. Why would we not want to do the same thing when we think about what a kid is learning and how they're learning? And then you add to that the
14:03fact that there's so many different learning styles. One of the things that our students love in our model is that they are getting auditory support.
14:10They're getting visual support. They're watching videos and explanations of something that meets them where they're at. One of the common questions I get especially from journalists who are really trying to poke holes in this is they'll say, "But eventually, what if a kid just isn't understanding and they need a teacher to teach them?" And there's two things I say to that. The first one is I think you have this mis-memory of what's happening in a regular classroom. You think that teachers are like literally sitting next to every kid saying, "Do you understand that? Would you like more help with
14:39that?" That's not true. They're moving forward no matter what a kid understands or doesn't. But then the other thing is I say is just look at our results and I think that would show that obviously it's a great way for kids to be able to learn. And then when you add to it the fact that we free up kids to learn all these other great skills. And one of the things that I was just at one of our schools in Santa Barbara, California and the kids spent an 8-week workshop where they were growing their own food. Then
15:08they were actually using AI to teach them recipes for different food that they were they were cooking. They they started out making homemade salsas. They were making homemade spices. Then they learned how to sell their food at the local farmers market. and with the profit that they made, they donated um that money to the central uh Santa Barbara um food bank and were able to give money back, you know, to the community for for food. And when you get kids, first of all, out there getting their hands dirty, learning about
15:37gardening, and then being in the kitchen learning how to cook, and then figuring out how to package and sell their goods at the farmers market and getting that customer service experience experience, and then going and giving back to their community in that way, I'm just like, those are the kind of things that we need to learn. I think adults should go back to school and learn that kind of stuff.
15:58Yeah. And they're nailing their test scores. So, it's all of it. You are totally shaking up education by giving kids their time back. And I think we just become so accustomed to like their time has to be taken up by all of these things that adults tell them to do that we can't even imagine that when you have a 12-year-old and all their time is not taken up with classwork and then homework, they are cool people and they're going to go do exciting things and they have interests and they're going to skateboard and they're going to
16:27plant things and they're going to try and make money and and they're going to have the time and the bandwidth and the energy to do those things. And you have all of these stories about You have one girl, she's 16. She's built a skincare empire. Why? It's in how? It's because she has the capacity. And that's what I feel like we've taken from kids. They just don't have any margin. They're so tired and it's all their time is taken up. So, this is an actual building.
16:55Because you talk about, you know, this is part of it. It's There are always going to be parents who are going to need to drop their kids off at the actual building. Can you talk about the I just read this book. It's called Joyful Learning. Her name is Kerry McDonald and she's talking about similar to what you're doing. It's like parents are coming out of the woodwork and coming up with alternative ideas because they're like, "The system is not working for my kids and we need more flexibility."
17:17And, so she was saying obviously, you have your standardized test scores, but she said there should be other things that we measure performance. Do the kids like it? Is there unmet demand? Are they sharing it with friends? And one of them was teacher satisfaction. So, I could imagine I taught in the public schools, and I remember when I I taught math, I remember distinctly having a ninth grade student who didn't know what division was.
17:47Like, don't know. I don't know what that is. And I was like, okay, we're that's the way is back. And you have to have that foundation to move forward. So, you got all these kids that are all different levels. Some of them are really shy. They don't want to ask questions. They're embarrassed. It's so many things going on. And it is the most exhausting, never-ending job.
18:07I would imagine that if you get to hang out with the kids, and got, you know, you're not taking away the jobs of these teachers, you are like enhancing.
18:16Yeah, I think that's something that I talked to teachers a lot, and especially when they're first learning about the model, they come with fear, and they're scared their jobs are going to be replaced, and they think how in the world are we going to be, you know, able to serve students, you know, in this futuristic dystopian AI world. And then what they start to hear is, okay, there's never going to be a world where we want to replace the human connection with kids.
18:43Instead, we're transforming that connection. And you mentioned surveys, we are fanatical about surveying and understanding how, um, you know, parents, students, and our guides are are reacting. And I actually just spent a lot of time, um, yesterday going through our guide surveys that we did at the end of December, and hearing about this. And one of the common themes was, I am able to get to spend my time in the classroom connecting with kids. I was just at our sports academy today, and I
19:12walked by uh one of our students and his uh guide having a limitless lunch meeting that they were doing where they got to bring in a special meal and they're just connecting and this is times when the guides are asking questions, just understanding what is it exciting for this kid in this moment?
19:28What is he struggling with or what's he what's he passionate about? And using that time to get to know people and I think that is so critical um for kids, but also it's making that job of the adult who chooses to spend their career in a classroom, which those people are heroes, right? And they should be treated as such. Um really special. Um but the other thing is yes, we're measuring things like how kids are doing on test scores, but we also measure things like how are they learning on their life skills development? Are they
19:57able to um show that they have grit? I was just talking to one of our um coaches at our Texas sports academy.
20:03She's a former WNBA basketball player and a coach for the New York Knicks and she works with our kids on uh basically mental performance and understanding of that and she was talking about uh one of the life skills workshops is an agility combine where kids are doing all these agility races and they're learning atomic habits, the idea of getting 1% better and they're basically timing themselves at the beginning of the eight week they're timing themselves at the beginning of the eight week session and
20:31then every week thereafter and able to see their measured progress on how they're doing and add to that they're learning how to make sure they're saying the right things to themselves. Like understanding, you know what? I can put in the work. I can uh constantly improve. I am good enough and you know, being able to understand, you know, what is it that they say to themselves uh when they're challenged and how can we make sure that we're creating kind of healthy um habits and mindsets and those
20:59are things that I do believe that a school should provide an environment that helps kids develop all of those skills. Yeah. And then, you know, the other thing I think is important and you know, you understand this as a homeschool mom and probably even more when you were a public school teacher, you know, when my girls were first in the traditional school system, what I tried to do as a parent was supplement with time outside of school. So, I I would run after school science clubs for the neighborhood kids and I I was having
21:27kids, you know, work on these things outside of school and at a certain point, it just becomes too much, right?
21:34It's too much for the parent, it's too much for the kids to, you know, get picked up from school and go to piano lessons and then soccer practice and then, you know, work on a little supplement project. Where's time to eat dinner together and just play and be outside? Those are the things and so, I think one of the things that I'm excited about, you know, our schools are opening all over the country um and that's great, but it's a small number of people that we're serving, but I think what's happening is we are inspiring systems
22:02and organizations to realize, you know what? It's time for school to be shaken up a little bit. It's time for us to take advantage of uh technology that allows us to, you know, help serve kids better and I think we are on the cusp of seeing major change. I always say, there's never been a more exciting time to be a five-year-old than right now and it's going to get better and better, especially if we as as parents are willing to open up and say, you know
22:30what? Education can be different than what we grew up with.
22:35What a beautiful thing to say, MacKenzie, because I think a lot of people would think I'd be freaked out to be a five-year-old right now cuz we don't even know what jobs are coming.
22:44That is a beautiful thing to say and I love hearing you talk about, you know, the WNBA player and the gardening and the these kids that are podcasting and trying different businesses and you can see videos online. These kids are up and about and they're moving and they're interacting and they're interacting with people of all different ages and this is the unlocked potential piece that you talked about at the very beginning for your own kids. It's like we all want kids to have a childhood that has this unlock potential where they leave and they're not just like apathetic and
23:13drained and depressed and with tons of anxiety.
23:17So, can you explain for the for those who um you know, are trying to grasp what's going on here?
23:24Where are the locations? This is rather new even though you've been working since 2014 with them. AIPCE working with apps and now the AI is helping you just to guide really guide. You talked about we could talk about this soon, but there's a whole dashboard with the Genghis thing and this is what the kids are doing. But like how many locations are there? I know you've got one that's outside.
23:46We like I said, we started the first school in 2014 and it was very much just a homegrown school. And then in 2022, that's when we realized we had the ability to scale and it's been a learning process, right? We've had to work through, but what we found is that in 2024, we really had cracked the code on how to provide this experience where kids love school and where they're learning faster and they're able to develop life skills. And so at that point, we started expanding and so we've
24:14got four different schools in Texas that are Alpha schools. Plus we have an outdoor school, a gifted and talented school. We've got sports academies throughout Texas. And then we have Alpha schools in Florida, in New York, Virginia, Arizona, California. And we are continuing to open more and more.
24:32So, I think we're at like probably 22 schools now around the country. And really what that's a testament to is that parents are realizing like it's time for something better and different.
24:45And that's what we're working on. We're also, you know, opening up schools at we're private school and we're opening schools up at lower price points. And like one of the things that I think is really exciting is, you know, imagine how many families love sports and our sports academies that we've opened up around Texas um with the educational savings accounts that are coming to Texas, parents will be able to send their kids to these schools for a couple of hundred dollars a month and that is going to help make this more scalable and more accessible
25:15to families, which is really an important thing to do. Um and then at the same time, like our Alpha schools, which are really a a supercharged experience, kids are getting to do things like learn adaptability and goal setting and teamwork from sailing and rock climbing and then going and doing, you know, V2 courses in Italy and you know, sailing regattas. Like there's just so many cool things that kids are getting opportunities to do and I think I don't know, growing up for me, I grew up on a
25:44farm. I loved being outdoors. I think about how many skills I learned from all of those types of practical things, you know, more so than just sitting in class kind of going like this, listening to a a teacher drone on. And uh and so it's really been fun and and the best thing is just getting to talk to students. I was talking to one of our students today. Uh the workshop they're doing is called money machine and what they've done is they've um they've taken out a
26:11loan for a vending machine and they have to go and find a business that's interested in hosting this vending machine and of course depending on the business, then they have to decide what they're going to stock, how they're going to you know, price it. And um they have to earn money and so we're at the sports academy, they're going to go to a gym and you know, at a gym, you can't put candy bars in a gym. You got to put protein bars and waters and Gatorade zeros and uh you know, they have some energy uh you know, goo and things like
26:41that that they're learning how to do.
26:43Plus of course they're having to call up businesses and say, "Hey, we want to see if we could host a host a vending machine." And there's just so many things that they learn and it was so cute cuz this kid I was signing up, he's a fifth grader and he's we're learning entrepreneurship and we're learning how to build an LLC, you know, and those are just fun things that kids really enjoy.
27:01Absolutely. And one of the things you have to deal with rejection, someone's going to be like nope, we don't want your vending machine. This is incredible. I really can't wrap my head around the fact that you said generative artificial intelligence, this comes out in 2022. I think there is a good portion of the population that haven't touched it, never done anything with it. And then other people are like, I've used it to make a silly video or whatever.
27:25In that short period of time, you have 22 locations up. This joyful learning book by Kerry McDonald, she's demand is surging for alternative education options. Are you How are you even figuring out like how do you do that?
27:42Just expand, it's like an explosion.
27:45Yeah, it has really been and it's been a lot of fun. I'll tell you what, we're very fortunate that we have what we call our founding families in each city because here's one thing, Jenny, that I think you'll find probably not to be surprising, um, which is everybody wants to go to one of our Alpha schools, but they want to go when there's 50 kids.
28:03And it's a special family that says, you know what, I'll be one of the first 25. And I think the reason is because parents generally equate socialization with a quantity, right? The better socialization with more kids that you have. Now, I couldn't disagree with that more. Uh, especially when you think about the way traditional school works. When you think about socialization, they just throw kids in and say, "Good luck.
28:30Hope you figure it out. Figure out your place in the pecking order." And actually remember many years ago, right before we were getting ready to start the school, I read this book called unschooling rules. I'm sure you've read it. And in unschooling rules, one of the things it talked about was so much of the social learning that happens is actually negative social learning. You have to You have to learn how to deal with the kid who pushes you up against the locker or the mean girls that are rude to you in class. And instead, I
28:58think that socialization is something that can be taught, can be coached. We help our kids learn how to build relationships, how to be interested in other people, and how to be interesting, how to read body language, how to make eye contact, how to play games fairly and take turns. Like all of those kinds of things that are so important in creating relationships. And so, uh what's really been fun is to get to know these families throughout the country that have said, "You know what? I'm
29:26willing to jump into what starts as almost a one-room schoolhouse experience, right?" It's mixed-age kids, they're connecting and mentoring each other. And then, of course, as our schools get bigger, um we're able to have kids be able to hang out in their same peer group. But I'll tell you what, it's really cool to walk into a classroom and, you know, have two 7-year-old kids sitting right next to each other. One of them is working on Fast Math, and the other is doing algebra. And they're con- you know,
29:55they're hanging out, they're connected, but they're getting that tailored, individualized learning experience.
30:01Yeah. And if there's multi-age experiences throughout the day, Dr.
30:04Peter Gray would say that is one of the worst part about the traditional school education is that kids can only hang out with people of their own age. I mean, he would rail against that about how there's so many wonderful things that happen when you get to rub shoulders with people of different ages. And the bullying is such an important part, too, because of all the books I've read, they talk about how bullying primarily stems from lack of control. These kids have nothing that they can control. And so, what do they do? They are mean. They're
30:33mean to other kids. They can control that. They're going to gossip. They're going to do all of these things. And what everyone says is you can't change that. You can bring in every anti-bullying program that you want. The baseline problem is that these kids have no control over their daily life. And so, when you take away this top-down standardized approach, there's no need to bully. Because you have freedom.
30:57And I'll I'll tell you actually something that um is really cool this to go in and see in our schools. We've implemented um a system where kids have a lot of agency and ownership over their culture and their environment. One of the ways that we do that is kids have what's called a town hall. It's a weekly town hall experience where they come together and they're able to basically, you know, bring up here's an idea I have for our community or here's a here's a challenge that I'm seeing in our community. Here's a change that I would make. And then they're able to have
31:27discussions about that. We implement a philosophy called both sides. If a person has some sort of a suggestion for, you know, something that they want to implement in the community, they have to be able to argue coherently why they think this is a good change and they also have to be able to give the straw man argument for and here's the disadvantages of it or here's the other side of that coin. And then the community can discuss and work together to decide what is going to be the right thing. And um one of the things that we found that's so interesting and I'll
31:56never forget the first time I saw this in action. Um we had a group of our our fifth and sixth grade students in their town hall. They had made an agreement that if they hit a certain number of academic units as a group um on average, they would earn the ability to go to an escape room at the end of an eight-week session. And um they the the head guide came out of this town hall meeting and she said, you know, they set the academic units at 16 for the week. And our academic team was like, that's way
32:24too low. That's not enough. They could do so much better. And she said, don't worry, just let it be for a second. That was first meeting was on a Friday. The next Tuesday they called an emergency town hall and they said, you know what?
32:35We set the goal too low. 16 is too low.
32:38Let's go up to 22. And then by the next Friday, 1 week later, they voted to move up to 28 as their goal. Now, if our academic team had been in charge of the units, they would have gone at 24. So, in the end, the group called themselves to a higher standard than even adults would have. And that's the kind of thing where kids really do call themselves and each other to a higher standard when they feel a sense of ownership. Um and everything we do is
33:06with that in mind. You know, at our schools, you're never going to see the, you know, the parent-led Valentine's Day party. Instead, it's like the kids are going to say, "Hey, we're building this or we're planning this or we're doing these things." Because you want to have kids feel that sense of ownership. And it's great practice for them. And you know, it also just lets them be creative.
33:30Think about how many parties you throw as an adult, seriously. To be able to start to practice that when you're a kid, all the agency. That's what kids are going to need in this day and age.
33:39You're going to have to be able to to adjust to like what life throws at you and can you figure it out? And I just think that in this day and age, if you have 15,000 C hours where you are told what to do, you are going to have a hard time adjusting to this world. So, if someone is listening and they're like, "Okay, I don't live in Texas or any of the states that you mentioned, what is their process for connecting?"
34:04Yeah, there's a couple of different options. We've seen um so much demand for our home school program. It's called Alpha Anywhere. And so, um we have a lot of families that are plugging in uh to that program because they're able to say, "Okay, you know, we can do our academics." And I think the other thing, and you know this very well, there's a lot of families that I think would like to home school, but they themselves are like, "I'm not a home school teacher, right? I can't do this." It's actually one of the reasons I started a school because I knew I
34:32couldn't homeschool my own kids. I was like, I need someone who's working day-to-day in the classroom. And so, it's opened up a larger group of parents who said, "Now I'm seeing finally we have the flexibility that we need and the academic rigor to do this." Um and then the other thing that's happening, our founding families from around the country are joining together to say, "Hey, we've got enough people. Let's bring an Alpha to our city." So, that's actually what's happened in several of the cities that we've opened in. We came because a group of parents got together
35:01and said, "We will help bring this school to, you know, this." And I always say, "We can bring the academics, we can bring the incredible guides, we can bring the life skills workshops, but we can't bring the community together. The community needs to come together on their own." And so, that's been one of the things that's exciting. And I will tell you, I'm just amazed at what our parents will do. I've had parents who have been able to help us find real estate, and parents who have said, "I'll host info sessions at my house and get people together to watch your videos and learn about this." And um and so, then
35:31by the time uh families come to one of our schools, they're coming really to just get to meet each other and to get to know our guides and other families and, you know, hear from students. And I think that's what's really special. You know, our idea The other thing I will say, and you think about this This is so true in so many towns. There's always some private school that's like the great private school of the town, and they're very exclusive, and there's only this much room for this many kids. And if you don't get in, you're in trouble.
36:01And they only take kids who are already the best or whatever. And I'm like, "Why in the world should we gatekeep great school experiences?" And so, that's the other kind of different philosophy that we've taken, which is if there's demand, we'll get a new building, and we'll open another building, and we'll keep growing and building that out versus keeping it tiny and exclusive. Um and I think the other thing that I just I I do like to get this out, because I'm really proud of this.
36:27A lot of private schools won't accept a student unless they're already great academically. We can take kids wherever they come to us and we can help them.
36:37And I was just looking, we're doing mid-year map assessments right now. And you know, we had a kid who came to us in the fifth percentile and he's up to the 60th percentile in 4 months and he'll be on track to be at 90th percentile by the end of the year. And in a traditional system, that kid would have been written off. That's No, sorry, that kid's just not that bright. He's never going to catch up and it'll only get worse and worse the effects as you move up through grades. And I just think it's really important that we meet kids where
37:06they're at and help them because you know, it's there's just no world where you should say, "Sorry, third grader's screwed because they didn't learn to read." And the Yeah, exactly. A division. And exactly the other thing that we see is that as you build competence and knowledge, you build confidence. And there's nothing, you know, more beautiful to hear than when I'll have some student who says, "I used to hate math cuz I was bad at it and I thought I was dumb. And now I realize I
37:34just didn't understand it and it's actually really interesting and really fun." And that is cool to help people fall in love with gaining knowledge.
37:44That young girl that had is a ninth grade student who did not know how to divide, didn't understand the concept at all. That's a third grade skill. So, she had gone through fourth, [clears throat] fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade and no one was able to connect with her about about about getting up to speed. What an awful experience for that child.
38:01Well, they just they just can't. Anyway, a 50th percentile senior graduates with as much math knowledge as a 99th percentile third grader. Um so, that's the other thing is kids, if you're a 50th percentile coming into high school, you basically waste 4 years of life in school learning almost nothing. Now, you're getting pushed through precalculus and geometry and calculus, but you don't know anything and I think that's one of those things that's really
38:28hard and and honestly, I just think kids are capable of being 90th percentile or above when they're given that right level of knowledge and um you know, and and it's important to do because there's a lot at stake when we think about what our future needs to be and you know, we're going to need people that are again equipped to use AI to help us build out the new frontier of knowledge, right? What is it that's going to be possible and I was actually just at one of our schools um last week and they're
38:57doing a workshop that's basically colonizing Mars. So they're doing everything from, you know, growing plants, building um rovers, you know, and doing radio lessons and food and they're recording um sound because, you know, in Mars there's no sound and so they're creating music and sound that they're going to be doing and um their test to pass at the end of this eight eight week workshop is they're going to go out and they've got a dome that they built. They're going to go out to the desert and they're going
39:25to be staying for two days camping and they're going to have radio contact with our guides, but you know what? There's going to be a 20-minute delay in communication because that's how long it would take to get a message from Mars to Earth and so in real time they're going to be getting to do that. And talk about how fun is that? I would love to go do a campout with all my classmates where we've put all these skills to the test on top of it. They're learning to build fires and they're learning to cook food and all that kind of thing.
39:54Wow. My favorite quote I think is my favorite quote. I I've said it before. It's by John Holt and he says, "Living is learning uh and when kids are um what Oh, I'm messing it up. He says like when kids are living energetically and fully and happily, they are learning a lot. I may have botched it. It's something like that.
40:18[laughter] Even if we don't always know what it is.
40:22And that's the trade-off. It's like I would rather have a happy, energetic kid who's living fully and is learning all sorts of things. You're not going to be able to test what they learn from that unit. There's going to be so many things that happen in that unit that they're going to take with them that you're never going to be able to fully know what they learned or how it changed them or what they learned about themselves. But you can know that children who live fully are learning.
40:48And that's the difference. I would say that the majority of kids today are not living fully because there's so much of this top-down standardization. So, who is coming up with these workshops?
40:58That's really an exciting part of what our guides do. Our guides are able to spend time coming up with what are these cool workshops that they want to focus on.
41:07How fun And that's everything. And then we also Are you kidding me? What a different experience for a teacher. And I know you call them guides.
41:15But like otherwise you're like you have to teach this on this day.
41:19It is fun, but you know what? It's hard, right? Because one of the things that you have to do when you're building these workshops is you got to make sure you're teaching a life skill. What are the life skills that you're actually teaching these kids? And the workshop also be has to be something that kids enjoy because our first commitment is that kids love school. And so there's a lot of things and you know, this is the other thing that's interesting. Adults have a lot of ideas of what they think kids should like. You know, kids should fall in love with Shakespeare and kids
41:47should love the opera. And it's you know what? Kids should absolutely get exposure to all of those types of things so that they can develop an appreciation, but you have to do it in such a way that you help kids fall in love with with all these interesting things. And so our guides are really good at that. We have a a workshop team that also centralize comes up with that.
42:08And then we have a lot of things among this network of schools. For example, our our our money machine vending machine workshop is taking place in a lot of schools around the country that we have. Um we have a really fun uh self-driving coding car workshop that kids love. We're doing a go-karting workshop that's happening around the country. Um Navy SEAL training. This was a really funny one, Jenny, that you'll appreciate. Um I was talking to one of the parents at one of our schools, and
42:35she said it was magical to watch the what we call a test to pass for this workshop. It was a Navy SEAL training workshop, and the kids had to, um you know, swim across the pool, and then they had to drag a body 25 yd, uh take it out, do life-saving measurements, then they had to go free dive down 13 ft, get something up off of there, do a math logic exercise while they were treading water, you know, and solve this math problem, and then, you know, deliver that to the end. And it was
43:04judged by a retired Navy SEAL. And um here's the other part of it is that this one parent she had three children in this in this workshop, and one of the kids failed the workshop. He wasn't able to get it in the time that he needed.
43:17And you know what? There is so much that is learned through failure. And failure is something that traditional school does not encourage kids to get comfortable with, right? When you think about just you don't want to learn to fail. You you're having to practice being good and getting a grade.
43:35approaching mastery.
43:37[laughter] Isn't that crazy? Approaching I will tell you, Jenny, I saw that on a Facebook group page uh for a bunch of parents who were saying, and it was everything I could do to not just feel like you need to check out Alpha. This is great, what you're doing, but I I decided to let that go.
43:52So, my kid got all A's.
43:55[laughter] Approaching mastery. Let's hit one more subject. So, this is really helpful. You are a disruptor. I mean, you always hear about disruptors. You know, like the a thing that's been the same for a hundred years, compulsory education laws I were complete in 1918 in Mississippi.
44:11That was the very last one. So, it's been over a hundred years that we've had these compulsory school laws, and you're coming in and saying, "Look, we can do this a different way." For the parents, and I think this is humorous, they're like, "Oh, it's too much screen time."
44:23I'm like, "Okay, first of all, kids are on screens for five to seven hours a day." And in the traditional classroom, I have heard, because I speak about homeschooling, there are parents that will come up and say, "The reason we pulled our kid is they were on a Chromebook the entire day. It was out on their desk. Their math textbook is on the Chromebook. They're reading. Every single thing that they did was on the Chromebook, and we pulled our kids because they could not stand it." And that's an entire school day, basically.
44:50Yeah, Wall Street Journal Well, the Wall Street Journal just came out with research in May of 2025 that showed that the average student is spending about two and a half hours a day on a screen in class. That's not even counting what they're doing outside of school.
45:05And the worst part of it is that they're using technology just for technology's sake of being able to say, "Here's your textbook on a screen. Here's your Google Classroom thing on a screen. Here's what you have to do on a screen." And my argument, Jenny, is that there is a huge difference in quality of what screen time is.
45:25Our students are getting this one-to-one mastery-based tutoring experience that's keeping them engaged at the right level of interest for them. And that's different than, I would argue, sitting in a classroom live zoned out, you know, watching a teacher.
45:42I understand that. And it's not just being on a screen for screen's sake. And our kids are spending, you know, their their 2X learning results Last year we measured they were actually spending about 1.7 almost 1.8 hours a day on screen. So, it was even less than the two hours we say.
45:59And then, again, you know, screens are a part of our life. They're going to be a part of them. And one of the things that we also want to do is teach our kids how to be creators and contributors, not consumers. So, again, there's a huge difference between doom scrolling Tik Tok all day or playing video games and learning how to vibe code and build your own video game and then host a tournament or, you know, creating some sort of a, you know, a a platform on Tik Tok that actually spreads a positive message. Those are the kind of things
46:28that we want to teach our kids to do. And you know, I was one of those families, we were screen free when my kids were young. And a lot of our families also implement that at home. But again, you can't just take a phone and lock it away from a kid forever. You need to teach them how to use these skills and create them as tools, not, you know, something that they can't be controlled by.
46:50Yeah, and this is a 25 minutes of this, 20 minutes of that, you know, they're going from one thing to the next. It's all these subjects in 1.8 hours. And then they don't have to use it again.
47:00They don't have to have homework. I can't imagine trying to do my math with a textbook on a screen. So, you can actually go on your website and see what this looks like. The other thing is that it gives insight to the parents. And it's a very specific. You have said that 90% of parents think their kids are at grade level. And they're not. They're like it and then they need to get a tutor. It's too little, too late. I When I taught, this was I taught like right before the programs came out where you
47:29could constantly see what your kids grades were.
47:32It was called like Skyward or Anyway, I'm sure there's all sorts of programs like that. So, I was like right on the cusp of that. And I called home a ton. Anytime a kid failed a test, I would call home. Anytime they were missing three assignments, I would call home.
47:44And the kids actually did really well, I felt, because there's a lot of communication with the parents. And then And but the parents didn't know. They Oh, I didn't know and I'll help them with whatever. So, this is like even way more in-depth that the parent not only is the kid getting individualized learning. And that's really what we've been after from the very beginning.
48:06That's I think what helps homeschoolers be so successful is individualized learning as well as parent insight.
48:14Yeah. And you know, traditional school, it's a black box. There's not a lot of understanding or insight into what it is. You know, you get grades that are sent home by teachers and you get you know, you get a parent-teacher conference you know, every 8 or 12 weeks.
48:30What we are able to do is our parents are able to log in to the learning platform and they can literally see what were the math lessons that your our kid was learning today. What was the reading that they were doing? How did they do?
48:42How how focused were they? How much time did they spend? We have actually something called a waste meter on the corner of the screen where kids can even say, "Hey, you know, I'm wasting 15% of my time because I'm rushing through an explanation or I'm not taking my time to read something."
48:56And we're again teaching them that skill of learning how to learn and you know, take control of that learning because I think ultimately we want to have kids be self-driven learners. So, that's one of the skills and then you know, parents are able to see this but I'll tell you a crazy scary statistic that we saw first hand in our schools. We had hundreds of students transfer into our alpha schools this year and these are kids who are coming from nice private schools, you know, good public schools
49:24and these are A and B students generally on their transcripts. And what we found on average that they were 2.2 grade levels behind. Now, that's a scary wake-up call for parents and for the kids but all of those kids are on track to be ahead of grade level by the end of the first school year and that just speaks to the magic of of being able to handle that but I think parents want to have more say and more transparency and more insight into what their kids are
49:52working on. And then I also think they want what they appreciate about our schools is we're giving kids a chance to try out a lot of different things to figure out what their passions and interests are.
50:07So Jenny, you've been you've been so nice to me. Are there any skepticism your own school or what?
50:13I have none. I think that the biggest problem of our time is that we have stolen kids time. I would be I'm fired up about that. I think that the kids are having awful childhoods because we have stolen all their time and we tell them what to do in every single almost moment of their day and then we expect them to adjust to a rapidly changing world. I think it's ridiculous. So I've just been so drawn to the vibrancy of what I see
50:40from your students. And this is even new. You've hardly been around and you can see like with the social media growth and to watch a kid be so well-spoken in a podcast or an interview or to talk about their skin care company or to talk about they're setting up these different vending machines. You're like that is what childhood should be.
50:57It should be equipping them to to go after life and not just sit around in some apathetic environment where they hate it. And so I love what you say. We give students their most valuable resource back. Time.
51:13It is the most valuable resource that we have and we have co-opted so much of it in the name of an antiquated system. And so it is such an honor McKenzie to be a disruptor. Someone who is like totally changing it. It's incredible and I wish all the best to you and all that you're spreading that it does not have to be this way and that there are other ways.
51:35Whether someone is like I'm going to do two hour learning or not at least they're hearing, you know what? There are other ways to do childhood and hopefully this challenges people to think maybe differently. At the very least I say this all the time, don't do the homework. Could maybe just take that step. We're going to skip that. We're going to play after school. We're going to We're going to just really embrace life. We're going to spend time as a family. We're going to read books.
51:57Because you're doing in 2 hours what other people are doing in six plus homework. So, huge congrats to you. It's called the Future of Education podcast where people can find more They can find more at the YouTube channel. There's also Alpha Alpha Anywhere and 2hourlearning.com where you can go and just get a sense and you do a great job.
52:15There's a 20-minute uh that video that I watched that really explained it very well and you could actually see what's going on. And you see these kids and they are not sitting on their rear ends just zoned out. They are doing really cool things and we get one life, so why not do cool things with them.
52:32McKenzie, it's such an honor to get a chance to meet to meet you and to talk about all that you're doing. We always end our show with the same question and you talked about it a little bit earlier growing up on the farm. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
52:45Oh, I'm a horse girl. I basically came out of the womb just in love with horses and I was just thinking about this the other day. I used to go swimming with my horse Tails all the time. We had a great river with a with kind of a a creek um lagoon that it started and my horse loved to go swimming and so we would go bareback and swim and it was it was so much fun. I had a fantastic time. Uh so, yeah, I have so many great outdoor memories um that are a lot of fun. I will tell you a
53:14gross one. My brother and I have an older brother and he had me do crazy things, but we lived, you know, on a farm and there was a hog lagoon, pigs, and we used to think it was fun to go play in the mud, which was not actually mud. And then my dad would get so upset with us and we'd always say, "How did he know that we had done that?" And it turns out the smell sort of lingered.
53:39But at At five and nine, we didn't quite realize that the smell was as strong as it was, but I do laugh cuz I used to play in pig stuff when I was a little kid, and it was fun.
53:49And you probably have an incredible immune system because of it.
53:53You know what? I must because it is uh it's actually pretty crazy that I didn't catch something really bad from that.
53:58But yeah, I remember we'd wear big rubber boots and you know, we'd be walking and then the rubber boots would get stuck and we'd you know, get out and we'd just be I mean, we it was bad. It was really bad. We were Porky Pig from back in the day, that cartoon. So, it was fun. Ginny, high five to you and everything you're doing. I I love um listening to you and I just think it's you also are just so inspiring to show families like what's available and get out in the world and I'm going to do that right now. I'm going to go hang out outside.
54:23I love it. McKenzie, thanks for being here.
