Parents Changing the Game - A Conversation with Matt Barnes

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

Why would we expect to constantly push content on a child that they don't enjoy and expect them somehow to love to learn? It doesn't make any sense. The burden of learning moves from the teacher to the learner and to the parent, but it's a dramatic culture shift.

Welcome back. It's great to have you back for another episode. This week I'm speaking with Matt Barnes, who is the co-founder of The Education Game with Dr. Scott Van Beck. Matt believes firmly that the normal is broken in traditionally structured schools and wants to make weird the new normal. Over 25 years, Matt has distributed $500 million in philanthropy, led an education reform nonprofit, served on 9 educational boards, from pre-K to university and coached thousands of parents on navigating the education system. In 2020, Matt launched The Education Game, a platform that inspires parents to embrace a future-ready learning model that shamelessly de-emphasizes grades and academic compliance while radically emphasizing learning, problem-solving, and student engagement. He's the father of 3 teens who were themselves educated in alternative models. You can connect with Matt on LinkedIn @MatthewCBarnes and on Twitter @MattBarnes4Kids.

Hey, Matt. Good morning.

Hey, good morning.

Hey, how are you?

I'm great, how are you? So, I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is because I think this whole topic of the role of parents is just such an important one, right? And just, you know, seeing what you are doing and quite a strong voice advocating for the role of parents in learning and education. And I don't hear a lot of other people with that same strength of narrative about it. And I think it is a key role. And I think it's perhaps one that we sometimes overlook. There's perhaps an inward-looking discussion amongst educators and actually we're parents too. And we kind of forget that. And then we forget to talk with the parents about how we move this forward. So that's kind of why I wanted to get into this. So it's great. Thank you.

Yeah. Well, I, I would say that it's really quite odd to me that parents aren't factored more centrally. I mean, I think part of it is my own background. So I, I used to manage pediatric medical practices. And so in that environment, the parent is always in charge, right? We have to ask the parent, can we touch your child? Can we talk to your child alone? Can we give them this medicine? Can we poke them with this needle? We ask for everything, but in education, it's the exact opposite. Yeah. They never ask the parent, they never inquire about what the parent's seeing and their concerns. And in fact, it's quite the opposite where the school oftentimes actively discourages the parent from being involved. And I think that actually is a fundamental problem of why we are where we are.

Yeah, and that seems to be a pretty fundamental motivation behind the Education Game. I liked the question that you posed, how can parents improve their child's educational journey? Regardless of the functioning of their school. So I guess the question there is, what are the responsibilities or the limits of that role in your view, in terms of the way that parents can be involved? And of course, regardless of the school, but hopefully in collaboration with the school in an ideal scenario, I guess.

Yes, I, I would say that ideally it's in collaboration, but I would even change that language of collaboration again from my work in the medical environment. I would say that the parent has to be the head coach, right? They have to be in charge because the parent is the one that's going to suffer the most if the child doesn't do well. Likewise, the parent will actually celebrate the most if their child goes off and is independent and a healthy functioning adult. No actor in the school is going to feel that pain. So as a result, that, that responsibility needs to be set with the parent. Now, we'll get into, I'm sure, in this conversation about the parents that have a hard time dealing with that. But this shifting of ownership is what I'm actually advocating. That's why I think I'm somewhat unique in, in that I don't want it to be a partnership. I want the parent to be the head coach and the school to come alongside the parent as the experts around education.

Yeah, interesting.

I actually think this creates a much more healthy profession for teachers. I think it actually creates a much healthier environment for kids. So here's, again, from the health environment or the medical example I gave you earlier, if parents came to the school and looked at the school as an assistant coach to their vision, the parent's vision, they're going to ask the teacher, hey, here's what I'm trying to do, here's where I want my child to go, how can you help me? It elevates the teaching profession to that of a physician. They are a professional, they're an expert, and they're advising the parent on how to help the child achieve whatever the parent's goals are and the child's goals. So I think that's the real switching of how we think about this.

I'd love to— I mean, maybe we could break that down a little bit more because I think that's really fascinating and it's clearly drawing sports analogies there, right, with the coaching levels. But let's take the role of head coach first. So what are the significant differences then by using that analogy, the current kind of general expectation of the way you were involved in your child's learning? Of course, we all care as parents about how our kids are getting on at school and involved to some extent in their learning. But what would be the tangible differences for you then in that framing of head coach?

Yeah. So it would start as this. So every head coach, and again, I use the language of head coach because when I work with parents, it's a language that most parents understand, right? They've always seen a coach, they kind of get it. So when I talk about the head coach, first and foremost, they are strategic. They have a vision that they're trying to achieve and then they work backwards from that vision. So the responsibility, the burden and the privilege of shepherding a child or shepherding a team falls on the head coach. Right. Head coach can't blame their assistant coaches if things aren't working. Right. It's their responsibility. Head coaches also can fire their assistant coaches if it's not working out.

Yeah.

And I've had many conversations as recently as this morning, like literally 10 minutes ago, a parent, their child is going back into the school environment. The teacher is like browbeating the parent because the child's not completing assignments. They're backlogged in work that the child has and done in the remote environment, and it's really destroying this child's desire and enjoyment of learning. Yeah, right. If the parent recognized and kind of saw themselves as a head coach, they would recognize that this may be an assistant coach that just doesn't work with my vision for my child, and then move to either push back on that instructor or to actually find another instructor entirely, right? So the vision of the head coach drives everything. Until the student or the learner develops their own vision for themselves, and then that should drive everything. So it's a twofold strategy here.

Yeah, that was going to be my next question then.

Where is the child?

Yeah, where's the child in that equation, right? Because you've got— clearly there's a lot of talk about child-centered, you know, and focusing on personalized learning pathways that children are driving, self-regulation, you know, all of that stuff. Where's the child in that coaching metaphor?

Yep. So I have an image. I'll try to verbally describe it. Right. I'm better at showing the picture, but it's called the leadership learning curve. So when a child is born, they have zero authority or autonomy to do anything. Right. We all can agree on that. So therefore the parent has 100% responsibility for directing that child's learning. Now, at some point in the teen years, that child ideally should have 95, maybe 99% ownership of their own learning. And the parent now drops down to the role of a, of an advisor, a coach, right? Between birth and those teenage years though, there's the transition. And so in the early years of the child's life, the parent still has the majority of the influence over what the child is learning, you know, when they're going to bed, all these things, right? But the ideal model is that the parent slowly and intentionally shifts ownership to the child and shifts the responsibility of where the child wants to go from the parent's view to the child's view. So as an example, I think I mentioned to you that we traveled to Austin, Texas today because my daughter is in a swim meet. She is extraordinarily interested in swimming and she is 16 years old. And so we have negotiated a relationship where if she's interested in that, fine, that is her life. I want her to live it, but we also have, I know I'm driving her over there, I'm paying for bills, right? So we have to negotiate, but I want her to own her learning now. But back when she was 5 or 7, I would own it, right? So there's, that's the transition. And so I think it's unreasonable to expect an 8-year-old or a 10-year-old to really know where they want to go. But I think it's also unreasonable for a 14 or 15-year-old to have a teacher or a parent constantly telling that child where they should go. If we think about a traditional school, however, the school maintains 90%, maybe 95% ownership of the child's learning until they graduate, and then it drops to zero. And the, the student has to suddenly go from having someone else doing all of the deciding on what goals they will have, what plans for learning will be, evaluation of learning, et cetera. They have to go from zero to 100 in a very short period of time. That is not realistic. That's not fair for the child. So I would argue that the schools are actually inhibiting a child's ability to take ownership of their own learning.

Yeah, no, it's a really nice kind of gradual release of responsibility, right? And it's for different children at different times, that will be a different curve or a different release. But no, that's, that's a, yeah, interesting. There's also an interesting counter to that as well, that in a way there's more space for freedom and responsibility for the child when they're younger, right? In the early years and the early primary, there's a bit more space and actually it reduces because of the tightening of the curriculum and the requirements of the high school and the GPA and the transcript.

Absolutely.

There is almost a revocation of that responsibility because it's like, well, we can't trust the teenagers with something of this high stakes, right?

That's exactly right. Yesterday I had an interview with my podcast of a 17-year-old young man who at the age of 13 fell in love with magic, loved magic, and he went deep and I have talked to so many parents who would be horrified that their child was now at 13, was now wanting to do nothing but magic. Right now, this child is 17 and he has blended his interest in magic with behavioral economics. And he wants to study the behavioral economics of deception. And that's like him blending these two areas. Right. So unfortunately, most schools, and this kid was schooled in an alternative model because most schools, frankly, would have bottled him up. They wouldn't have given him time to do the things of interest to him. And it's really ironic because 13-year-old 200 years ago, he was a man, right? Or a woman. Fully responsible.

Yeah, absolutely.

And now we treat them very much like we treat a 5-year-old.

No, interesting. And then I guess a kind of connected question to that, as you talk about the time element for him to explore those interests, but then there's also the time element, you know, part of that responsibility package of being a head coach, right? As a parent. And of course, with the pandemic and with homeschooling, Parents have really seen inside the black box of education for good and bad, right? But yeah, but they also have taken on a burden of responsibility that they hadn't previously had. And that's, for some, that might have been great and really kind of enlightening as well as liberating in some fashion, but also on the flip side, it's been really stressful and hard work for other people who are trying to juggle lots of different responsibilities and work and Definitely. All of that. So how does that sit, you know, with you in the sense of advocating for this kind of idea of the head coach? But how does a parent balance that with their other adult responsibilities?

Sure. Yeah. So every family in context is different. I mean, that's why I offer free conversations with families because, you know, it so much depends on the circumstances. So for the families who learn that this model of parents having a greater sense of ownership children having more freedom. For those families, I would encourage them to go deeper into that space, actually push the envelope in terms of what is possible for a couple reasons. One, because the world has shifted on us. It's been a slow shift until the last year, and then it was rapid. And so now a kid has to learn how to learn. They have to be able and confident to walk into any situation, to recognize there's stuff that they don't know, and then to jump on it and learn it on their own within a short period of time.

Yeah.

You know, just-in-time learning is kind of one of the languages around that.

Mm-hmm.

So that's the first piece. The second piece though is the learner has things that they're interested in. And if you allow, like this young man I interviewed yesterday related to magic, if you allow that learner to pursue their interests, mm-hmm, you're actually having a twofer. You're giving them the reins over their lives and preparing them for when they are going to have to own their, their lives in a few short years when they, you know, reach their teen years. So for those parents who are doing well, keep on it. On it, for the parents that are struggling with it, here is where I spend most of my time. We have to diagnose the struggle. So sometimes the struggle is because the school's expectations haven't changed from when they were in the classroom 7.5 hours a day to now when they're at home. Yeah. So that's issue number one. Issue number two, the child is disengaged from the content, right? So why would we expect to constantly push content on a child that they don't enjoy and expect them somehow to love to learn? It doesn't make any sense. Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that we allow the child to become feral and just to roam the streets and do whatever he or she wants to do. That's not what I'm suggesting, but I'm suggesting a much more balanced— here's the content you need to learn, son or daughter.

Yeah.

Here's the content that you have expressed interest in. Let's do both. So when it's not working at home, you have to diagnose it accurately, just like in a medical environment, and then take appropriate action. Oftentimes, and if I could keep on with my soapbox here, but oftentimes I tell parents you got to negotiate with your teacher because oftentimes the content is so voluminous and in an environment that has no— none of the social stimulus, it's just exhausting, right? But parents are oftentimes afraid to challenge their instructor because they don't see themselves as parents as being in charge, right? So we're back to this head coach mindset again.

Yeah, interesting. So then I wanted to kind of explore then because obviously we're talking in the context of the pandemic to some extent, right? As you say, it's been a catalyst for this, but I'm assuming that your ideas and vision for this is not just pandemic, this is not survival mode, right? This is like, this is long-term. Yeah, long-term planning. So in that new world, and you've kind of, you said it a little bit already about the assistant coach role, but maybe we could break down a bit more what types of things will need to shift in the skills and the mindset and the approach of the educators themselves. And you know, what is that assistant coach role for the educator? Because obviously otherwise, you know, there's going to be a lot of butting up against an unresponsive environment if this head coach is taking responsibility, but there isn't this understanding of the relationship from the educator side. That's right.

All right. So for context, I've been on the board of 9 different educational institutions from pre-K, early childhood, 0 to 5, all the way to a selective public university. So I have seen the educational system from the governance side. Now I have not seen it from the classroom, although I have a ton of friends and family members who are teachers. So Given all this, what needs to happen in the school? One, it needs to actually foster and encourage the shifting of ownership from the school to the parent. The role of the instructor shifts in that model. And by the way, you'll, you'll see this in business. You'll see this in a variety of different contexts. You see it in the military, that training now doesn't look like training 30 years ago. Training now looks like helping the learner to learn, right? Putting it differently, a teacher role shifts to that of a learning coach, Yeah. And a learning coach has some content that they're trying to deliver, but they're really more interested in bringing forth that which is already in that learner, because they know that you bring it forth, that learner's gonna learn twice as fast, maybe 5 times as fast. They're gonna retain what they're learning and they're gonna be able to apply it. If I just essentially tell them what they need to learn, they'll learn it for the test and then immediately forget it and not be able to apply it later. So the role of the educator is shifting. And I have— my business partner built a school that was based on these philosophies, and it was hard to find an instructor or a learning coach that wasn't of the mindset that their job was to deliver content to the student. And so that's a cultural shift that would need to waterfall down into our schools, right? Or master's programs, et cetera. But it also needs to waterfall through the system itself. Where the burden of learning moves from the teacher to the learner and to the parent. And again, there's a ton of evidence that model of learning works best for everyone involved, but it's a dramatic culture shift.

It is, absolutely. And of course, I mean, there's a whole system-wide set of circumstances that need to kind of adapt with that, right? In terms of accountability and examinations and all of that stuff. But one of the things I find interesting about it is that actually these same conversations about the role of the educator and the educators shifting from delivery to support and learning coach type role has been around in education for decades now, right?

It has. Yeah. Are you going to ask why haven't we made the shift?

Well, yes, we'll get onto that. But all of the discussions around that are about innovation and shifting within the education system, right? And one of the reasons why we don't shift as educators I mean, there's many reasons, right? But one of the strong reasons that keeps coming up is that, oh, the parents won't like it. So that's why I find what you are advocating for so interesting, because it's the other side of the coin. And it's always been one of the reasons why we don't innovate is because we can't push it too, too far. We can't do too much because the parents won't appreciate it. And actually, if we can engage the parents more in this discussion, in quite a lot of places, there's quite a lot of alignment and agreement that actually this is the right place to step to, but we need to do it together rather than just educators trying to shift and then assuming that the parents won't like it.

Bingo. And so that is why I decided after looking at the system for 20 years, saying— I said, I'm going to go deep on the parent side because actually a lot of the conversations I have with parents is, whoa, parent, you can't expect your school to do that. That is not their job, right? Parents who say things like, you know, my child can't read and he's in 3rd grade. And I say, well, wait a second, what role have you played in helping them to read? Well, that's not my job. Whoa, it is absolutely your job, right? I can say that because I'm not an educator. I'm outside of the system. Any teacher that pushes back on a parent like that will get venom from the parent because the parent says in their mind, no, that's your job to teach my child.

Yeah.

Now, if we can switch this, ideally it happens at the same time. Here's the model that I, I actively promote and what I describe with families. A parent should become clear about the vision that they have for their child first, regardless of what happens in the school. That parent, day one of that child's entering of a school, should say to the teacher, hey teacher, listen, I know that you have the second hardest job in the world. Second only to being a parent, right? And I also know that you and I have the same goal. You want this child to have a beautiful future. Yeah, I do too. And that's why I have developed a plan of how I'm going to do that. Now, teacher, I need your help to help me support my plan that I'm moving forward on my child. And now when a teacher hears that, most teachers are like, holy smokes, finally, finally a parent is not looking at me and saying teach my child, make my child ready for adulthood. That is unrealistic. So, when a parent comes into the room and says, here's the role that I'm playing, I am now the head coach, I need your help as my assistant coach, teachers are absolutely like, thank you, what do you need from me? Right? They're much more flexible, they're much more able to go, okay, well, we can figure some things out because every teacher in their heart of hearts wants a parent to take the leadership. But we don't give any support or guidance or encouragement or even a kick in the ass for parents to realize that this is the role that they must have.

That's brilliant. It's such an interesting twist on the same story. That's kind of how it feels, right? A lot of the same narratives, but it's a different twist. And I agree, a lot of educators would just relish to hear exactly that. From a parent. I have to say though, I think there is also an interesting aspect of it that some educators would actually not want the involvement of the parents. And you alluded to this at the beginning, right? There is a feeling sometimes that we are the specialists, we know what education is, we know what learning is, what good climate for learning is, and we will create that for your child. Don't get involved. So I guess what would be the response there? And because, you know, we've got to encourage shifts on both sides, right?

That's right. But let's be clear, I mean, the reason that teachers have that perspective is because they've been burned, right? They've been burned many times dressing them down or insulting them or complaining about them publicly. I mean, so I can understand that mindset from some teachers. Yeah. At the same time, I'm working on the parent side. And so if I talk to a parent and they in good faith approach the teacher and say, this is what I'm trying to do, And the teacher says, I'm sorry, this is my class and here's the process and you need to get in line. That's when I would argue that the parent needs to actually now explore all of their options, every single one, not just a school choice option either, by the way, there's options all between homeschooling and a traditional model. Would that include creating a shadow school where you are teaching your children different things than the school itself? I mean, there's all sorts of structures in there, but the stuff that has to happen on the teacher side is that the leadership of education needs to understand and require some sort of constant feedback between teacher and parent, teacher and child. So there's a 360 kind of evaluation where we're monitoring the climate because the moment the teacher loses trust in the parent or the parent loses trust in the teacher, We have a breakdown and the child is going to suffer. So if we have these constant kind of measurements that are monitoring the climate, we can see a teacher saying, hey, I'm not hearing from this parent, this parent is not engaged. And that then should devote attentional resources to find that parent, figure out what's going on there. And the reverse would be also true. So to me, that's one of the strategies that could happen in an institutional setting. But I'll be honest with you, Tim. I've been on enough educational boards to believe that that's not going to happen, right? The system is built not for the student or the learner. The system is built for the adults.

Completely.

And the adults, meaning the parents as well as the staff, right? It's built to make their lives easier. So, and again, why I'm working with the parents is to say to a parent, I'm going to be really honest with you. If you continue in this pathway, it's not going to work. Your child is going to be in trouble. So you have the choice, parent, to decide if you want to make a change, and I'll be willing to help you. But if you expect the school to change to fit your child, or the teacher to somehow magically teach your child when they don't want to learn and they're not supported outside of school, then you need to know where this is leading. Yeah. And, and that conversation can scare parents, and I think rightly should, but it also can cause a parent to reevaluate their own behaviors and to re-engage in a different way.

Very good. And it's— I think it's funny because I've got like— there's so many questions around it, but I mean, one of the things— and we, we said there are so many reasons why the system is set up the way it is and, and that is resistant to change— but I think one of them, because you're painting a picture of a very communication-rich, personalized educational experience, right? Which—

absolutely—

which is brilliant. Sounds amazing. I'm in, right? As a parent and as an educator. However, we've got these factory schools which are 2,000, 3,000 students. You've got one subject educator who's teaching 120 students, 200 students or more. So I think that's one of the big challenges is purely a capacity and a time issue. There's not a will necessarily for that educator to engage, but you know, that educator with the best will in the world can't engage with 120 sets of parents. It's just not feasible, right? So there's a systemic issue of scale and size and all of those things, which is a challenge, right?

Yes, no question there's a system failure here. But the system— we have— let's decouple some things. So let's talk about the early childhood space, right? And really primary education. That does a reasonably good job, as you mentioned earlier, about supporting learning, helping the child love to learn, et cetera. In the middle years and the secondary years, we must go back to that model I described about shifting learning responsibility. At 12, at 11, a child is able to own much more of their learning.

Absolutely.

And by doing that, it reduces the burden, it reduces the cost because the teacher now is no longer in a position to say, okay, everybody get your books out, here's what we're studying. The teacher can say, okay, Johnny, You said you're interested in learning about dogs. What's your status on that? It's a completely different conversation, right? Johnny's now has responsibility for his learning. If he's not learning, that's kind of on him. And there again is where there's a role for the parent to play in that. But the moment the teacher has to be responsible for the child's learning— and this is a system failure again— teachers are expected to teach kids all the time, all the way up to 18 years old. The moment the teacher steps in that role, it reduces the burden that should be appropriately placed on the child's shoulder to love to manage their own learning, whatever their interests are. Magic, art, sports, video games. Okay. A learning coach would say, okay, you like World of Warcraft? Great. Tell me what you learned about World of Warcraft. Tell me what you're going to learn to get better. Tell me what your goal is for the next week. Tell me how you're going to evaluate that goal.

Yeah.

Tell me what you know about the larger institution of World of Warcraft. How much money do they make? Who's the executive or the CEO over it? You know, is it publicly or privately traded? You can ask these questions to begin to grow the learning regardless of the child's interest level, but it really requires a different caliber and different type of person that's ahead of the classroom.

Yeah, no, definitely. I was having a very interesting conversation with somebody who's trialed a very significant shift within a school, within a big international school just yesterday, essentially a microschool within a school, right? Which is a great model, really interesting, presents challenges, but also lots of good possibilities but one of the observations he made, which I thought was really interesting, was trying to recruit the families and the parents, the students primarily, for that program was initially quite—

It was really hard, wasn't it?

Yeah, initially it was like a lot of interest, but then later on, as the parents were observing what the other students were doing outside of that much more open space, you know, starting from the learner and what their interests were and co-constructing a curriculum, with the educator, you know, great idea, right? But also those parents were looking at the other students and thinking, well, are they missing out? They're missing out on trigonometry or they're missing out on learning about the Romans.

Yes.

You know, so they're looking sideways and thinking, oh, my child's getting left behind. And this idea of the curriculum and this race to somewhere, well, I'm not quite sure where, but there is this really strong force amongst everybody, educators and parents, that is about we're trying to get to this place and I don't want to get left behind in this race, let's say, or, you know, certainly a journey.

Yeah, let me speak to that because again, talking to parents, that is something I hear all of the time, right?

I'm sure.

I, you know, the parents saying, well, what if they don't get to college? Or what if this alternate path cripples them in their career path? Yeah. And to that conversation, I say, okay, parents, let's do a little bit of research. Let's explore what's happening at Apple and Google and Microsoft. And I mean, Walmart, a lot of these big companies are saying, you know what, we care less and less about the degree. We care more and more about what you can do. And we can tell what you can do based on what you have done. And so the conversations with families is around where is the world of work going? And if the world of work is going to a place where people are looking at the individual and looking at their LinkedIn profile and looking at the projects they've done and looking at what they've written about and looking at the consulting they've done when they were in high school, that is a completely different presentation of a portfolio to a university or to a job. And so most parents are saying, if I, I gotta make sure my child has an income stream, right? Yeah. I gotta make sure that they're not living in my home when they're 50 years old. Yeah. Right.

You're still the head coach.

Uh, that's right. I don't wanna be a head coach forever. Right. So that's a process of trying to help the parent understand that the world is changing. And if we still are in the mindset of 30 or 40 years ago, we're going to actually be corrupting our children. We're going to be damaging them by sticking to that which is familiar to us, but definitely not familiar to those that are kind of on the cutting edge of where the world of work is going. So that, again, it's a hard argument to make when you're in the system because it can seem self-serving. You know, parents will hear a teacher saying, this is best for your kid, and the parent might say, well, is it really best for my kid? Are you just telling me that because you want me to do what you think I should do, right? A third party can say, parent, you know what, I don't care what you decide, but let's just go ahead and study what's happening in the world of work. You decide, you're the head coach, you decide what makes sense for you, but don't make a decision without having all the information.

No, definitely. And there's a lot of engaging with parents directly. And that's just to maybe bring it back around practically to what you're doing with The Education Game. I'd love to give you an opportunity just to then describe, because I think there is a role for people to facilitate discussions and dialogue and support parents with advice and guidance or whatever that might look like and what they might need. So just, is that something that you're working on with The Education Game?

Yes. And so our work is doing a couple of things. One, we're really talking about a movement. We're not talking about We're trying to find an audience that is open to what we're describing and willing to make subtle changes along that pathway. So first it's really about just getting our message out. The second part is starting this spring, we're going to be having a regular series of workshops. We did it last summer. We're going to do it again this spring where we're just having— here's the conversation parents, you need to think about, right? Because the world of work is changing. Here's a conversation about what it means to be a head coach. What is your vision, parent? What does success mean for you? Have you ever thought about that? Or are you just using the success model that you used 40 years ago when you were in school? Right? What does it mean to be a learning coach? What does it mean to have a student-driven learning model? What does that look like? And why is that beneficial? Right? These are all the conversations that most parents, to my shock and horror, don't know anything about. So yes, our work is all about trying to help parents understand that.. And then we also do, at this point it's free consulting, meaning parents can call us. We will have a one-on-one conversation with them. It's underwritten by supporters to help them understand all of their options. In the United States, there's a whole conversation about school choice. And I say, you know what? That's not the conversation. The conversation is about learning choices.

Mm.

Nice. And there's thousands of learning choices that happen every single day. And the question is, are parents going to appreciate them and then begin to create a plan to make sure that they're moving their children in a direction that makes sense, and then empowering their child to be able to do the same.

Yeah, fascinating. I mean, there's something about access to the right information to empower that choice, but then I think there's probably also a part of it which is about an access to a community of other people who are also thinking about these things, which in historic narratives would have been the home— the kind of homeschool community, right? Slightly alternative subset. But actually We still need some kind of a community around what we're doing. And, you know, as a parent, it's very scary to step out into this space that you've never been before and take a risk and especially to do it on your own. So actually probably something around bringing people together around these questions as well, which I think is really interesting.

That's right. So the idea of these workshops is that it's actually a communal process, right? So lots of parents having the same conversations. In fact, it's interesting, just 2 weeks ago, there were in a 3-day period of time, there were 4 parents I talked to, all lived within a 30-minute drive of one another, all of them who had pre-K students, all of them who were frustrated with current, and none of them understood what a microschool was, right? And so in just 3 days, I talked to each of them, connected them, and they're now in the process of starting their own microschool. That sort of thing can happen. It can also happen virtually where you can get support from people in another part of the country or world around how do you support your child's learning.

Yeah, no, definitely. But there's something kind of wonderful about that. The locality as well and the, you know, the human contact and doing it in place. That's brilliant. Oh, fantastic. That's amazing. Well, thank you, man. I'm actually going to have to nip off into head coach mode and go and pick up my kids from their assistant coaches. But thank you, really. I'd love to talk again. You know, it's such an important conversation that, like I say, often it's quite insular, this conversation within education.

Yeah. And I would like to be part of that bridge. I am an advocate for teachers but I'm also an advocate for change. But ultimately I'm an advocate for kids and I don't believe that we can get kids processed well unless the parent is right there leading a charge. So yeah, more to come. I'd be happy to talk in the future.

Brilliant.

Very nice to meet you. Thanks, Matt. Take care, Tim. Bye-bye.

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