Episode 60: Providing A New Form Of Education Through Modular Learning | Manisha Snoyer, Co-Founder and CEO of Modulo

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Hey everyone, welcome to the Next in Time podcast. I'm your host, ST and today our guest is Manisha Shroyer, who is the CEO and co founder of Modulo. Her mission is to build a movement around modular learning and the technology to Support a decentralized K12 education system where families can customize their child's education, socialization and childcare through a unique combination of in person and online resources. So, Manisha, welcome to welcome to the show.

Thank you, st. It's so great to be here and great job pitching my startup.

I know it's impressed. I know it's such a lengthy description that I was just reading through and just say, okay, I just want to make sure I don't botch this.

You did a fantastic job. I should take you around with me now.

Maybe you can make me the spokesperson of the company.

Absolutely.

But no, just out of curiosity, so what I see that you're trying to really focus more on homeschooling and really just delve deeper into it. Like, what's the reason behind it?

I would say that most of our focus is homeschoolers and a specific subset of homeschoolers that I call modular learners. So I was a teacher for many years and got increasingly frustrated with the state of education. I think one of the main things I realized is that our education system is so inflexible that it's incapable of changing throughout time and it's incapable of individualizing it so for the needs of unique students. And so what I discovered was this movement of homeschoolers who weren't homeschooling for religious reasons and who weren't homeschooling because they didn't want to get vaccines. They were actually homeschooling for more proactive reasons and that they really wanted to customize their children's education. So I got really interested in this specific subset of homeschoolers and was really inspired by the way that they had shaped their children's education and the way they were sharing information and resources and even evolving their methods over time. So to be the exact opposite of the school System, which is very inflexible. They had built this incredibly flexible system. And so I wanted to make it possible for more families to adopt this approach to learning through a platform that would help them find curriculum and resources and support so that even people who weren't trailblazers would be able to easily adopt this type of learning with their children.

And so why is it that your typical school, either public or private, is pretty inflexible with the way it's. The way it's done?

Right. So traditional school didn't even really come to being until the beginning of the 1900s, when there was a decision that all schools should be the same for every child. And I think that people had good reasons, for the most part, that they wanted the state to be accountable for children actually learning. But in fact, what happened is they created a system that was very rigid. And we see this with standardized testing, et cetera. We're trying to make something where we have tons of people who are using the same method, and it can pretty much be okay for everybody, but it's very difficult for it to change. And so the skills that we're teaching today are already really irrelevant in the workforce. Like, for example, a lot of schools are just beginning to teach kids how to code, and we don't even know that these kids are going to need to do jobs in coding. But with homeschooling, you can really customize your education for each individual child and. And you can keep changing it as the world changes. But it's very hard when you have, you know, the Department of Education on a federal level, on a state level, administration, and all of you have to go through all these different levels to get anything changed at all. So there are good people in education. It's just really hard for them to make change.

Yeah. There's a saying that education alongside construction is one of the few industries where it takes about 60 years to make a change compared to, let's say, like a tech company, because, you know, they just require, like, if you want to make changes, you only have like a year and a half, like, like half a year to a year to make that change. Well, education, you got to wait 60 plus years for any sort of change.

To happen, and it's too late, because the best kind of learning happens when children are learning at their own pace. So ideally, educational changes should be happening at a micro level every second, and instead it's taking a hundred years.

Yeah, because I can do it. Because, you know, I'm like the product of a combination of private school until high school and then post and the public education, like, post, like from high school till graduate school, let's just say because it was publicly funded in terms of the schooling I got. And I got the experience. I got to experience like the very rigid. The rigid nature of it because I'm not someone who likes to sit in class and just like taking information and then study for tests. Because I. Those. Those are not.

Those Weren't those going to do that? No.

Well, those were not my most memorable experiences in school. Especially when you got. Especially when they say, okay, you. There has to be a rigid curriculum because I'm falling behind in classes. That means more testing, more this and more that. And I couldn't really deal with that kind of stress and pressure. And for some reason I just was. I don't know, I was always like what you call A. Like what do you call a C student in. In middle school, then a B student in high school and beyond. So I never could hit those marks. And it's like I had to put double the effort and like really sacrifice my personal. To be able to really tackle those for sure.

And it can create kind of an imposter syndrome as well. When you look around the room and you say, hey, I'm as smart or smarter than all these kids, why are they doing better on tests than me? I must not understand myself when in fact that way of learning isn't working for you. It's not exciting for you. I bet a lot of those kids are getting eight pluses, don't have their own podcast right now and aren't changing the world in the way that you are. So it's a very limited way of holding society accountable for children's learning.

Yeah. And one more thing I wanted to add was it was. It was only until after I went to college and I was away from all that, the rigid nature of scheduled classes and like constant testing that I decided, I think once I stopped putting expectations of hitting the high grades and just like, let me just learn for once. I think at least it may. I may not have gotten the best scores, but at least I was somewhat learning more than I was than I wanted. I was actually more. I was. I learned more when I went. When I started going to college and I was away from the typical college curriculum and I was just trying to do some self learning.

Sure. You know what works for you when you want to learn.

Yeah, I know in a way it's like, you know, that's the reason why I started bring you on was to really talk about this other way of education that could really be personal because you know, this could be beneficial. If I had to restart education all over again, I would have tried a modular approach and just like had some, had someone at least give me a personalized curriculum rather than, you know, all.

That, someone to support you in knowing how you learn and what your interests and your passion. And you also mentioned testing and grades and one of the problems, although I, I did quite benefit from grades and in some ways I liked that. But one of the problems is it's an extrinsic reward. You're not actually learning whether you have mastery over the subject. You're just learning that you have completed it in the way that your teacher wants you to know it or that the school board wants you to know it. It doesn't demonstrate that you have deep understanding. And if you want to become a better learner, you need feedback on if the way you're is actually working. Like for example, I'm sure that you researched different tools and technologies to use with your podcast. And sometimes the sound is clear and sometimes the video is clear and sometimes it's not. So you're all the time getting feedback on whether you've mastered this art form because you're or not. And so that's also one of the big problems with the standardized tests and the grades, the bells and whistles and stuff.

Right. And so in. Before we go into modulo, how about let's get to know more about you as a person. Like what made you decide? You mentioned you were a teacher, but before that, what was your life like where you decided to really become a teacher, then become more of a person, really focused more on modular education.

Sure. So modular education and tech. Also I always tell my friends, I feel like I fell into this by accident. I never dreamed of becoming either a teacher or a tech entrepreneur or had any interest whatsoever in Hong Kong schooling. And it's, it's very funny in fact how our life leads us. I, my mother was a teacher. It was the last thing I ever wanted to do was become the same profession as my mother. But I moved to Paris when I was in my early 20s. I always dreamed of being an actress and learning acting in Paris. And I got there and I needed money and what I knew how to do was tutor. So I started coaching a 14 year old boy for this test called the SSAT, which helps get you into private school in a boarding school in America is where his parents wanted him to go and, and I taught him. And then the next job I Got was tutoring to Australian kids at the American High School in Paris. And that was kind of a whole other set of learning challenges. Their personalities were very different. And I ended up tutoring them three or four hours a day when I moved back to New York and again I was pounding the pavements trying to become a famous actress and started acquiring all this teaching experience. And then I started subbing and teaching in private schools. And that was incredible because I got to see tons of different schools in New York City. I got to see failing public schools, successful public schools. I got to teach, you know, at these private schools that costed $60,000 a year. And I wasn't at all attached to being a good teacher. I was, I love children, but mostly I was just there to support myself. But as I got more and more into it and kind of started gaining all this experience, I just was appalled at what I saw. Just an education system broken at every level. From these children going to the best schools that money could buy, who were having pan attack panic attacks. Their parents were having panic attacks, they were throwing up, all because of a grade and SAT score. Like I, you know, I would see, you know, the, one of the world's biggest banks. I tutored their kids, the president of the bank. And I was like in the kitchen with the mom, like sobbing about the sat. I'm like, what is going on here?

You know, welcome.

Hey.

This was my life when I, you.

Know, I like, I think, no, I really, I don't want to sound hippie dippy, but this test actually really does not equate to your child's future success. And then when it just got worse, even with tutor Me, they're like, their kid would be off one point in the SAT and they wanted verbal score to be perfect score, not one point off. And just atrociousness. And then you go into these public schools where, I mean, it's just a nightmare. You can't believe how harshly the children are treated. They're not really learning anything at all. The classrooms are so overcrowded. You have no preparation about the different needs of the children. And that was absurd. And I'm thinking, okay, in New York City, every kid gets $22,000. In the state, every single kid, 22,000 times 30 kids. And my children were getting more because it was an IEP class where one third of the children has been diagnosed with learning disabilities or behavioral issues. So even more, 22,000 times 30. What I could do with that money? Is there anything I could build the Taj Mahal of Schools, you know, I mean, it's just absurd. Where is this funding going? So, and again, I was still kind of on the outside and not really thinking about doing anything about it, but I started kind of this idea of, well, if you just have a teacher and a space and a group of students, you can form a great education. So at the same time I was working as a, yeah, I guess kind of working. I would become a host on Airbnb and I got really into their model. I went to the first Airbnb conference and started learning about tech and the sharing economy and marketplaces. And this idea formed, okay, well, what if we could do for education what Airbnb does for travel, where you have a teacher, you do their payments, marketing, and then all they have to do is run a little school. So I started my first startup, which was Cottage Class, which was a marketplace for Microsoft schools. And that was really exciting and great. And we started lots of homeschool co ops all over Brooklyn and then. But as I kind of got deeper into the homeschooling movement, I started to feel like you could build something even more modular. And I started talking to hundreds of homeschooling families and I saw there were certain patterns in the way their children were learning successfully where they did one or two hours of mastery learning, they took classes out in the community, they often did one or two days at a high grid school. And the parents were very involved in the education. But the communities were diverse and inclusive and the kids were doing incredibly well. And so that's why I decided to start modulo was to build a platform to support more families to customize their children's education.

Right. And so why, in a, in a way, in your mind, why do you think that, you know these, this type of customized education was like, is much better than, let's say a, a typical classroom.

So I'll just give you a figure. 20% of children have been diagnosed with special needs. You already have to be pretty affluent to even for someone to even notice that there's a problem. So imagine how many more children have adhd, are twice exceptional, are gifted or profoundly gifted, have autism. I mean, there's just so many different ways that children learn. And in a classroom, they're all there learning the same curriculum, the same way. And because there are divergent thinkers, they're doing poorly. So these children with so much potential are not learning well. But when you're homeschooling, it's one parent and one child. They all the time in the world to learn at their own Pace, go slow, go fast. And as we know, one on one mastery learning, where you're learning one on one, you're moving forward at a rate that makes sense, is just incredibly more effective than group instruction. There was a study by Benjamin bloom in the 60s about and, and what he described is any this group of students, if they're learning in a group versus learning one on one, it doesn't matter the quality of the teaching or anything. The children who are learning one on one at their own pace will do 90% 2 sig, the two sigma factors they called it than the peer. So to me it's just, it makes sense. If your kid is struggling in school, most parents get a tutor. Why do they get a tutor? Because they know their child is going to do better. When your child is doing poorly in math, if you had an option between sending them to a private tutor or enrolling them in a group math remedial class, which would you choose? Pretty obvious.

Yeah, definitely. It's just like those that personalized education really matters for.

It's learning. The key factors are one on one and at your own pace. And, and I think the other thing that a lot of people don't think about when they're thinking about this is that homeschooling is not that hard. You don't, in school, you're, I guess, learning or sitting in a class six hours a day. When you're doing this one on mastery approach, it's, you know, an hour of math, an hour of language arts, you're done. You already know so much more than the other kids in school. So parents can really do their thing if, you know, they just have to spend maybe one or two hours with their child. And as their child grows, they become more and more independent. So it's actually not that difficult to homeschool your child.

And so how does modulo really provide that opportunity for what you call flexible homeschooling?

Yes, great question. The first way that we support parents is by helping them choose a curriculum that's a big blocker for a lot of people. I mentioned the term mastery based and because homeschooling is new, there's just so many different curricula available. Lots of them are religious, lots of them don't say that they're religious. Most of our families want secular learning. So we've kind of vetted all the curriculum and then the other thing we've done is identify different child's, different children's archetypes. So for example, let's say your child has autism and they Love playing in nature. There's a specific nature based curriculum that we found has worked really well with autistic children or if they're adhd. But unlike other adhd, they actually do really well with video games. They love video games. There's maybe an adaptive learning app that we would recommend to them. So we help families create a curriculum plan, takes 10 minutes and then they feel a lot more confident that they're able to do this. Another thing that we provide with them is a community of resources and support. So a lot of the homeschooling groups that exist are kind of. There's a lot of people giving their opinion and it's really great to connect with other people and share ideas and advice, but you're not necessarily getting expert advice. So our community has parents, but it also has certified child life specialists who can advise families about learning about all aspects of their child's development so they can get really concrete advice. The other thing we do is help families find vetted tutors and vetted classes either locally or around the world, and also figure out where to get assessments that really help them get a deeper understanding of where their child is and need support. So it's a whole world of homeschooling to make this. Basically what families were doing before is going through thousands and thousands of comments from other parents and Facebook groups about about which curriculum is best for their child to a 10 minute process they can go through to get a full curriculum recommendation for what their children will love and then real support where they're getting accurate information in a way.

Because, you know, nowadays you see that public schools are breaking down. You see a lot of teachers leaving their professions in this. Because I see a lot of stories about teachers leaving their professions and then leaving their posts at public school because either lack of funding or is it just because lack of more lack of support. But do you, do you know, has your platform been attracting some of those teachers who have left the public school system?

Absolutely, on two fronts. So as you mentioned, I think there was a study recently that 48% of teachers are thinking about leaving the profession. They have very little autonomy over how they teach. They are underpaid, undervalued. It's exhausting. And so they are coming to our platform to teach. Yes. So some of them are teaching online and some of them are actually coming to us at as parents. A lot of people who are homeschooling their children are teachers who have taken a look at the public education system and said, I can do this better myself. Why not?

So What? Yeah, in a way. Why are. Is in a way, why were they restricted? Let's say why? It's like what was the situation that made them want to leave the public school space and just join this platform? I just want to. I'm just curious.

So there are a couple reasons. One of them is simply pay. They're not getting paid enough to support themselves. And the other thing is pure exhaustion. You're thinking about these two teachers are getting up six or seven in the morning every day, getting to school non stop classrooms of 30 children who are in these confined spaces, which results in severe behavioral problems. I mean, I know teachers who have been injured in school from children who have oppositional defiant behavior. You know, cracking a chair over their head. It's, it's a really, it can be a dangerous place. I mean, gun violence, that's another reason not to be at school. And it's exhausting. And then after school you have to spend all your day writing curriculum and planning. And when I was teaching public school, what I saw is that a lot of the teachers energy was just focused on preparing their children for standardized tests. They had almost no wiggle room in the curriculum and their career in some cases was on the line. You know, we do talk about teacher tenure, but there are other ways you can, you know, if a teacher doesn't have tenure, you can move them around to a different district or a place they don't want to teach and they just, they don't have any room to be creative or to play.

Right? Yeah, it's a very major issue happening all over. And what was. Well, so how does Modulo really empower some of these people in giving them the resources to be able to teach?

Well, one thing is that it can be really enjoyable to be a teacher on modulo because you have such power over what the children learns and how the children learns. And you're also in communication with the parents. Parents. So one thing we might do is connect a teacher in Palo Alto with a family who wants their child to learn math or how to code. And then there's also the opportunity to teach online, which if you're ill, you know, and you can't really go to a classroom anymore, this is a problem for a lot of people. It can be very easy to teach online. You just sign into Zoom and there you are with the kids. And so it's really gratifying and fulfilling. You build a much more intimate, close relationship with the child. You can watch them grow and you really feel like you have agency over their education.

And so do you feel that the future of education is this personalized homeschooling?

100%. I am confident that this is the future of education. There are a couple signs, I think. First of all, the homeschooling population is skyrocketing. It has grown three times what it was before the pandemic. And we're also seeing that there are niche communities that have grown even more. So the black homeschooling community has grown, grown five times than what it was before the pandemic. People are just not learning what they need to learn in school or they have social emotional problems. If there's any kind of learning disability, it's just forget it at school. And so we're seeing the homeschooling population grow. And I believe that if more people had the resources, such as modulo, it would, more people would join. The other thing is that when it comes to socialization, people are really concerned. If I homeschool, my kid's not going to be well socialized. The first thing is that I think this is a complete myth. Homeschoolers are so social. The social environment is much better than traditional school in many ways. But as the homeschooling movement grows, all these people who are worried about socialization have less of a worry because there's all these people who are doing it that they can connect with in communities. Their peers are doing it so they don't feel like the odd one out if they're not an early adopter. Right. So that allows more people to come on. And then I think that schools are also seeing that the system is just not working. I mean, before COVID hit, I said, you know, an inflexible system breaks. And that is exactly what happened. The moment COVID pandemic hit, this whole school system collapsed. So this system is not flexible. The attrition rate, you know, is out the window. People, teachers are leaving, students are leaving. There's all these kids who are unaccounted for. So everybody knows there needs to be a better way. Other factor is technology. You know, before, if you were a parent who didn't understand advanced math, you had a real problem helping your kid learn that. But now you both can just go on YouTube and learn the concept or. Or Youth Khan Academy or one of the other great resources. So technology enabling this movement, also remote work used to be that you, you know, if you're a family, you want to travel all around the world, the only thing holding you in your area is your child and their school. So why not be a world Schooler and travel around and then just decentralization, it's happening in travel, transportation. Education is going to happen too. I'm sure of it.

And so what if there are, what if there are kids that need like personalized, like in person kind of help? Does modulo really support them that 100%.

So everything is modular. It's a combination of in person and online. So for example, let's say a family wants to find a, let's see, what would be a good example? A piano teacher in their neighborhood. They can go through modulo and we'll connect them with an exceptional teacher nearby. They can specify if they want the teacher to come to their home or not. And we're, we've already vetted that teacher based on reviews from other families and understanding kind of what are the nuances of that teacher and the kid. And you know, for example, let's say a family just wants to find a group of in person friends. We can connect them with a group in their area of families with similar interests. So there's all these opportunities to kind of connect with others in their area or online, if that's your preference. And ideally it should be a mixture.

Of both in a way that's, that is how I think the future of schooling is a mixture of online and in person.

And different children do better with different forms. It's not one or the other.

Right. And so, so how many students, how many people are using module at the moment?

Right now we have 5,000 people in our community. They're all over the world. It's primarily focused on the information and supporting families in the community and finding curriculum. And we're working one on one with families for the in person connections. But we're building generative AI that will help make those connections through technology.

And so in a way, let's just say what is your biggest success story with, with a student that has used modules so far? I know it's a lot, I know it's a lot of. It's a loaded question.

But there's so many wonderful stories. I mean I had a student who was on the verge of having a heart attack because he had so much anxiety in school and then his parents pulled him out. We connected with him with a homeschool co op and within six weeks he was just totally normal, fine kid that, you know that social emotional growth is really important to me personally. And then during the pandemic, one thing that was really interesting is that we, we looked at what was going on and said rather than resisting the fact that we have to do everything online. Let's lean into it. Let's not do school online. Let's figure out how we can take advantage of this. So we found the best YouTube videos, like the most high quality production content you could ever imagine, the best adaptive learning apps, and we combined those with, with tutors. So what we would have is kind of a group of students who were learning math. They were all playing, they were all doing Beast Academy, which is one of my favorite adaptive math apps. And every now and then they would have a question and they would ask the teacher. We did, we used some different apps. We actually started with Homer, which is an early learning app. These kids were around four or five, six. Then we, in a few months we transitioned to Math Tango and then we used Prodigy Game at Beast Academy. So we were laying around all these different, different apps. Within six months, all of these children had gone through the entire K through 8th grade math curriculum. Just by pairing adaptive learning apps with a tutor. You're thinking, oh my gosh, there's so much time being wasted in school when kids learn at their own pace, with support. It's just the world of difference.

Right? And so in a way, because you know, one thing I've always noticed, like everyone who has started these educational tech platforms are trying to revolutionize homeschooling. They always try to go for like one or two things that can make them different. And compared to like a whole, let's just say we want to specialize online education through this or online education through that. So yours is more of a very holistic process. Right. That's completely different from your typical educational tech platform.

Yes, and it's very different than your typical tech platform. So normally when you're on the path to raising venture capital, you choose one vertical. Maybe your focus is going to be on tutoring or online classes or building a curriculum. It's a very, you know, very neat problem, very neat solution. But I want to change the world. And I think that if you want to do that, you have to have the courage to build an ecosystem. And it is harder and it is a bigger bet, but there are successful companies have built an entire ecosystem. And so it's kind of a question of like, do you want to have an easy formula that's very investable or do you want to actually change the world? And you know, we've seen that these companies that are choosing on vertical often skyrocket, but we're going after the bigger fish.

It's a long, it's a long term plan. It's a you playing the long game rather than like the quick, like, let's, let's raise some extra money from these VCs and investors so that we can, you know, exit out quickly kind of thing. But yours is more of a, I want to solve the biggest problem.

I want to solve this problem. And I think that we do have to build an ecosystem if we're going to do that.

All right, cool. So where do you see this going in the next, like 10, 20 years?

Great question. So right now we have a community that's growing and our next phase is going to start building generative AI that can do a couple of things. First of all, make it really easy to register to homeschool. There's all these different types of homeschooling laws in different states that are very complicated and archaic. And there's quarterly progress reports, all this stuff. So it's like the turbotax for homeschooling. And then we're going to kind of integrate it into that is the curriculum finder. So we have some curriculum we really vetted and different archetypes, types. We're going to be bringing in much more curriculum and making it easier for teachers to create new curriculum. So there's this whole marketplace of curriculum. And then from there we're adding on classes and tutors and getting really sophisticated about how we match tutors with students. And then the big final piece is assessment and accountability. So we're going to get really, really nuanced about giving real time feedback to families and students about how they're doing relative to their own goals and also state standards and such. So even someone in private school can go on our platform and see how their child is doing academically, socially, emotionally, and get very specific recommendations to improve. And even, you know, building all that data together. We can see, okay, other children with ADHD have done well with this particular curriculum on, you know, and there, there's just so much we can do to show also the effectiveness of homeschooling through that data. So it's going to be this place that you can find all the information that you need and get support and also get this real time data about how your child is doing.

Cool. Ma, I think we're running low on time. I wish we could go into like a wider discussion about this whole topic of homeschooling and really the transformation of education. But we can have another, we can have another. Another episode? Well, yeah, we'll just have another episode on it, but yeah. I just want to thank you again for coming on the next entire podcast and yeah, I really, that's such a.

Rich conversation and I just so appreciate you being curious about the topic.

Yeah, don't worry because I've been through that phase once and I really wanted to, I really want to turn the wheel feel in one in a different direction in the coming for the, for the coming generations, I guess.

Awesome. Well, the future of education is yours to build.

Yeah. Cool. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you so much. St have a wonderful day.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the next in Time podcast. We hope you enjoy diving into the intriguing vision of our guest today. Don't forget to subscribe. Subscribe and follow us on social media to stay updated on future episodes. If you have any suggestions or feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Until next time, stay curious and keep exploring.