How to Help Your Child Become Happy and Amazing

over at a friend's house, so she's unable to join.

Hey Logan, how are you?

Wave. Can you wave? You can wave.

Does he?

He goes—

I assume he waves sometimes.

No, he does, he does. Um, he's actually been a lot more expressive and, uh, seems to be growing like a weed, um, mentally, emotionally, intellectually.

Oh, he's big and alert. He's definitely watching us, checking to see you, watching me, seeing what's going on. So what's news? What's news this week?

Well, um, we applied to more schools, really thinking harder about what it might look like to put together a cohort. Um, got actually two other people who want to do it, so I don't know if that's enough, but it's a start.

Um, and do those two other families each have, uh, one child apiece or more than one?

They have one child each and they both live near me. One, and one child is about the same age as Alana, which is good. Her mom's an artist and I've known her for a while and she's really great and she's open-minded and she'd be down. And her daughter is mostly bilingual as well. Mm-hmm. The other child's a little bit younger, she's like a year younger, but she's Estonian and her family would is they just got here and they're looking for something interesting for their kids. So she might fit.

Are both families, are both families in it for probably several years, or what's their level of kind of alignment and commitment?

Well, I don't, I don't know about the family, uh, from Estonia. I don't know how long they're going to be in the USA. They plan to be here for a while, but that could change. The other family lives here and, uh They would want to do it as long as it's working, I assume. So would I.

And is, is the idea kind of a homeschooling co-op or possibly involving evolving into a small private school, or you haven't gotten that far yet?

We haven't gotten that far yet. Um, we're looking at maybe trying to start with like a part-time personalized education program, like doing a charter school program or a public school program in the other student's case. Cause I think she's there and mom likes it well enough, like 2 days a week and then 3 days a week. Do a cohort. That'd be more manageable, I think, for us, especially with just 2 or 3 children and only 2 or 3 sets of parents.

Does it— does the charter school— does the charter school let you go just 2 days a week?

Yeah, so most of the charter schools that we have looked at and are trying to get her into, you can do a 2, a 3, or a 5-day program.

Wow, that's really great.

Yeah, so that, that helps a lot. It gives her some structure and some society. I hate to use the word socialization. Yeah, yeah.

And do they, do they allow you to stick with your optional number of days indefinitely as you go up the grades?

I'm not sure. Um, it looks like you can. It looks like you pick those 2, 3, or 5-day programs no matter what grade you are. It's not like a kindergarten-specific thing.

I had no idea that charter schools had, uh, had that much flexibility or had evolved to that point. That's Really great.

Yeah, and there's actually a couple of charter homeschools that we've applied to where they give you a curriculum and a program and you meet like once a month with the teacher who looks at your work and whatnot. And I know a student in it and apparently it's quite easy in the sense of, especially for a kindergarten, it's like, oh, did you make 3 drawings? Here they are. You know, they're really pretty basic. So, but it gives you some structure. It gives you a school to go to visit. You can use their library and, Right, as much as you want, but you don't have to go there at all.

You know, the other thing is if, um, you went to one of these 2 or 3 day a week charter schools, once she was enrolled there, you'd have a community of parents who may want to do cool things on the off days together.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Do you know how large is the enrollment for— of these charter schools you're looking at?

Um, I don't— they don't really put that stuff on their website, um, at least that I've seen.

Um, Probably small, I would expect. Fairly small.

Yeah, and especially like the, the homeschool one, I assume, would be larger or could take a larger enrollment. Um, there's also a school that you enlist in— or that you enroll— enlist, same thing.

Freudian slip. Freudian slip.

Tell us how you really feel, right? Yeah. But there's one school where— and in fact, Jordan Shatter told me about it. They had their son enrolled in it. Wish I learned about it sooner. You enroll and they send you a check for $2,300, and then you go pick, uh, things for your children. You can do martial arts, you can do an art class, you can do, uh, language school, anything you want. Um, so there's a charter school that is effectively just handing you a check to go do things that exist in the community.

Um, fabulous. That is— I assume it's a virtual charter school.

Yeah, it's like a homeschool charter school. Yeah, Infinity Academy or something. Um, so we've definitely applied to that and we'll see what happens.

You know, just, uh, in terms of business model, um, I don't know what the per pupil is in California, but, you know, 15 years ago when I did it in New Mexico, it was $8,000. So, um, I bet even with giving families $2,300, that charter school is probably making money hand over fist. Virtual education, yeah, is nothing. Yeah, the marginal cost is zero. So, uh, yeah, and, and, you know, I think if, you know, if we could create something like that— my sense is usually the online stuff on these— I may have told you that, um, I'm in contact with somebody who wants to do a gamified middle school science curriculum and eventually a gamified free K-12. That would substitute for the garbage that a lot of virtual schools have. But it's— yeah, it's potentially a very lucrative market, and then it gives families like you the flexibility you want.

Yeah, and that's all we want is just flexibility. We want something stable and we want to build off of it. I mean, Alana can read at this point. I mean, her reading is just getting better and better. Yeah, she's starting to read subtitles like in real time.

Yeah.

Which is blowing my mind because we used to pause it and it would take her a minute to read a sentence. And now she's starting to recognize words, not just "and" or "but" or "to" or "the," the simple words that she's memorized for a while. She's memorized words like "liked," 5-letter words and 6-letter words that are common, "through." She just memorized them. Her reading is great and she has fun with it. When she's bored, she just grabs a book and she disappears and you hear her half an hour later reading out loud. Or I'll walk in and say, "What are you doing?" And she says, "I'm reading to myself in my head." Good for her. So proud of it.

And on the subtitles, Spanish as well as English?

Well, she watches shows in Spanish with subtitles in English because we always want her to practice her Spanish.

Got it, got it.

But pretty much everything we watch, we put on subtitles so that she can practice reading.

Yeah, that's great.

And it doesn't hurt for us. Sometimes he's screaming, so we have to look at the subtitles ourselves, right?

—right? You know, just—

Go ahead.

I was just thinking the 2 or 3 day a week option really feels so much different for me. I mean, one of my complaints about schooling, and this is John Taylor Gatto as well, is, you know, it sort of takes away life. But if you're only going 2 or 3 days a week, it's relatively harmless, you know, it doesn't do as much damage. Yeah. And she gets, especially insofar as Alana just, you know, really seems to crave that, that structure and belonging and so forth. I suppose you can't exactly talk to her about 2 days or 3 days a week, or do you have that conversation with her?

Yeah, no, we talked about it. You know, I don't think she has a strong opinion. She went to school 2 days a week last year, 2 half days a week. She's going to school 4 half days a week now. I don't even know if she knows that children go to school every day of their lives.

Well, I was going to say, I bet whatever you guys set up will just become the normal default to her, and it could be years before she, before she realizes. And especially if it's school where a lot of other kids are going only 2 or 3 days a week.

Yeah, and it'd be good for her. Plus that, you know, if she was in school the days where, where her mother was working and sleeping, because mom works at night, and I could put him in a babysitter for 2 or 3 days a week, and then I'd work those days, and then the other 2 or 3 days per week We'd either be one or both parents to really work with her, and he's found his tongue over here, so he's—

yeah, no, it's great, great.

But, uh, that would actually work well. We'd have time to travel, we have time to go do events. We could take advantage of things like, um, do martial arts for more than just a half— or for more than just one hour in the evening once a week. It could be a program. She could do a gym thing, which she's already doing. Yeah, do things like go fishing, go hiking, things that you know, we can do now, but we probably could not do at all if she was 5 days a week. So we're actually pretty excited about it.

Like, it would fit our schedule well. Does Marlo have, like, consistent days? So could she plan a whole academic year where, you know, she was working Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or whatever?

Um, her schedule is pretty variable. I think she sets it differently every month depending on what's going on. So we try and find something like But the good part is that Mona's schedule is flexible. She has to work some weekends, she can't work all weekends, so it's always gonna be different. But we're used to that. Like, we're not, I mean, we're all—

At least there would be some weeks that it'd work really well, and every once in a while you guys would just have to figure it out.

Yeah, but, you know, first world pain. So we'll figure it out.

There we go, there we go. Well, it sounds like you've got actually a bunch of pretty decent options in terms of in terms of Alana's education then?

Yeah, and when we applied to the different charter schools that have these 2 and 3 day options, we always selected those as our first priorities.

So is there anything kind of noxious about these schools that make you hesitate in terms of, you know, tone or control, or, you know, do you think they could be damaging or they look pretty benign? They look pretty benign.

You know, we'll see. But unfortunately, we don't have a whole lot of choice in it. You know, like, I mean, it's a lottery. So, you know, I could spend a bunch of time and brain cells worrying about it, or I can see where she gets into and then pick or punt. Got it. So that's just kind of the approach I'm taking.

Can you apply to several and then choose after you've gotten into 2 or 3?

So I've applied, we've applied to 8. I think we're gonna apply to a total of 12 by the end of this month. Wow. And yeah, I mean, depending— so they, they call you and say you're in, and then you have a relatively short period of time to basically accept. So we have a couple that are higher on the list than others that are lower on the list, others that we just applied to so that she could get in somewhere, so we'd have an option.

Um, do you know how, um, how hard these are to get into? Do they take, you know, 1 in 2 or 90% or it's all over the place?

More, um, depends on the school though. Uh, High Tech Academy in Point Loma, which is, you know, way up there on our list, and they've got a 2 and a 3 and a 5-day program, and it's awesome. It's— Point Loma is great, and there's a big, you know, it'd be a great environment. Um, I've heard that it's like 10% of students. They have so many applicants. Wow. Everyone's number one school. Wow. So odds there are pretty low. There's a charter school of average repute in Chula Vista that she probably has a 50 chance of getting into. Wow, it's up there on our list. Academy, which is started by Danielle Strockmann, which is way up there on our list, although we probably have to move for it. Hold on, brother, because it's, uh, kind of far away. But, uh, that's a pretty hard school to get into as well.

So it shows there's huge demand for, um, huge demand for these charter schools.

There is. I think that, you know, a private school option that kind of bridged the gap between the cost of Montessori and the charter school component project learning, that there was a $3,000 to $5,000 a year option. There's— I think there's a lot of parents, ourselves included, that would make so much sense for people who have a budget. They don't necessarily have $15,000. Yeah, they also don't want to be at the whims of the lottery process. Got it, got it. And even if there was a program that you did 2 days a week that you supplement whatever charter school your kid goes to. You know, that might be an option too, and that's something that we want to develop in any event. What does a $2,000 or $3,000 a year option look like for a 2-day-a-week personalized program?

Big time, big time. Um, well, maybe we can talk about that on another call. Looks like Logan's becoming impatient. I've got my other call coming up. All right, so, uh, give Marlo and Alana my best, and, uh, maybe we talk next week.

Sounds good. Thanks a lot, Michael. Okay, bye-bye, you guys. Take care.