The Future of Education: AI-driven learning, personalized education & building life skills early

17 Nov 2025 · 1 h 3 min · 24 chapters

Ask about this episode

Ask anything about it. ChatGPT or Claude reads this page and answers with the times it was said.

Connect VO and ask about every podcast you hear, including the moments you saved. Add to ChatGPT · Add to Claude

In short

How to redesign education using AI-driven personalized learning and early life-skill development (leadership, public speaking, financial literacy, “learning how to learn”), plus how parents can apply similar tools at home.

Guest

Mackenzie Price, founder of Alpha Schools (Austin area). Background: dissatisfied with her children’s local school experience (boredom, passive classroom model), partnered with another parent, and started Alpha Schools. She has two daughters and previously worked with a school principal.

Key claims

Traditional classrooms can’t meet different skill levels; AI tutoring can assess knowledge and personalize lessons so kids learn at the right pace (“zone of proximal development”). At Alpha, academics take about two hours in the morning; afternoons are project-based workshops teaching life skills. Students report high engagement (95% love going to school; over 50% would choose school over vacation). Alpha avoids “cheat bots” (no chatbots writing papers).

Notable examples

AI reading tied to interests (e.g., Avengers-themed stories); public speaking “in the wild” using Talk Me Up, then presenting to cats at a Humane Society, assisted living, book people, and TEDx youth. “Rejection training” via emailing 50 experts. Financial literacy via “Alpha Bucks” and a credit-card system (a 5-year-old learns interest/debt and pays it off by January).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Mackenzie's Journey to Founding Alpha Schools

1:13 to 3:54

Mackenzie shares her motivation for creating Alpha Schools after frustrations with traditional education.

“I think our listener base is learning with us on this.”

The Value of a Positive School Experience

3:54 to 5:48

Discussing how to make school enjoyable and engaging for children.

“I think that is such a cool story to take the problem and then solve it, right?”

Integrating Technology in Education

5:48 to 9:39

Exploring how AI can personalize learning and improve educational outcomes.

“I think that's where the info session was.”

Integrating Technology in Education

10:24 to 10:42

Exploring how AI can personalize learning and improve educational outcomes.

Integrating Technology in Education

10:48 to 11:31

Exploring how AI can personalize learning and improve educational outcomes.

“also offers caffeine free options for all-day wellness support neuro's memory and focus gum are made with American ginseng to support mental clarity minus the jitters.”

AI in the Classroom: A New Approach

11:31 to 14:01

Discussing the benefits and misconceptions of AI in education.

“Because I think thinking about AI could be daunting in the classroom.”

The Exciting Future of Learning

14:01 to 16:46

Explore how AI can personalize education and engage young learners.

“So I think that's one of the things that is often a misconception.”

Challenges in the Education System

16:46 to 19:27

Discuss the current state of education and the potential of AI tools to help struggling students.

“because AI is going to totally revolutionize the way that school is done.”

Challenges in the Education System

19:50 to 20:17

Discuss the current state of education and the potential of AI tools to help struggling students.

“Our next partner makes serving healthy meals much easier for me and way more enjoyable for my kiddos and for Harrison too, because we all benefit from this.”

Challenges in the Education System

21:06 to 21:18

Discuss the current state of education and the potential of AI tools to help struggling students.

“And this is the best way to give them a gift and give them some time back.”
Show all 24 chapters

Innovation in Public Schools

21:18 to 22:38

Discuss how parents and schools can work together to innovate education.

“And so would you encourage parents to take that on themselves?”

Developing Life Skills with AI

22:38 to 26:51

Learn about using AI to foster life skills like public speaking and creativity.

“And then, again, open up more time to practice some of those skills that we need to be successful in the world.”

Rejection Therapy and Learning

26:51 to 28:00

Discover the concept of rejection therapy and its importance in education.

“out there who, you know, don't have a better option for what's going on at their school.”

Teaching Rejection Therapy to Kids

28:00 to 32:10

Learn how rejection therapy helps kids develop resilience and life skills.

“talked about public speaking and then we got wind of your rejection therapy where people, we, we did that.”

Framework for Teaching Life Skills

32:35 to 37:10

Explore various frameworks and techniques to teach kids essential life skills.

“I think what's so amazing is how many of these practices can be implemented across the board, right?”

Future of Education and Accessibility

37:10 to 42:01

Discuss the vision for accessible education and innovative learning methods.

“You can go into ChatGPT and be like, hey, come up with some things that would teach these life skills that would be fun challenges for a kid to be able to practice and work on.”

The Impact of Screen Time on Learning

42:01 to 46:08

Discussion on the effects of screen time and fostering creativity in children.

“One was a mom doing just mundane house chores and the other was a Cocoa Melon episode.”

The Impact of Screen Time on Learning

46:23 to 46:34

Discussion on the effects of screen time and fostering creativity in children.

“Cyber Monday deals is their best of the year.”

Personalized Learning and Student Interests

47:00 to 56:04

Exploring personalized education and how to nurture children's passions.

“And I think that's the other thing is just oftentimes we don't take the time to ask our kids questions to find out information.”

The Impact of a Young Filmmaker on Education

56:04 to 57:18

Learn how a high school student used a documentary to influence education policy.

“Eventually, she started kind of getting down the road of epigenetics, which is that maybe your environmental factors, your food you eat, things like that could have something to do with cancer.”

Redefining Education for Personal Growth

57:20 to 58:27

Discussing the need for education systems to focus on personal development.

“And it's just like the opposite of the box that I grew up in with my high school.”

AI's Role in Modern Learning

58:28 to 59:27

Exploring how AI enhances educational outcomes and learning efficiency.

“I don't think it is done as well without AI.”

Resources for Parents on Education

59:28 to 1:00:30

Providing tools and resources for parents to enhance their children's education.

“We just got a million followers like a month ago.”

Future of Education Discussion

1:00:31 to 1:01:24

Reflecting on the potential for exciting changes in education over the next decade.

“The other thing it allows is information that you can send to your school administration and to your state and local government to say, hey, let's look into this style of education.”
Hear the part that matters, and keep it.Open this episode in VO. Double tap your headphones to save a moment as you listen.
Get VO free

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:01I'm not giving up. I am selling the building. The final season of FX is the bear. The restaurant is flooded. Everything's either going to be okay. No, stop. Or not. We are outgunned and we are outmanned, but we have each other. FX is the bear. The final season. All episodes now streaming on Disney+. Right now, get up to 15 % off select storage solutions. Put heavy-duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you. The solid, impact-resistant design prevents cracking. And the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and tote storage up to 15 % off at the Home Depot to organize every room in your home, from your garage to your attic.

0:54Visit homedepot.com, how doers get more done. Welcome back to another episode of Two Parents and a Podcast. Today we are joined by Mackenzie Price. Hey, hey, how's it going? Good, how are you? Great, thank you. Three parents now. Three parents and a pod. One podcast, three parents. Mackenzie is the founder of Alpha Schools, and that's something that we did an episode on. I heard. Thank you, by the way. That was cool. Yeah, well, no, thank you. We were blown away. We had no idea. I think our listener base is learning with us on this. And the first thing, your bio on Instagram says it all for me.

1:35I have it written down. I was unsatisfied with my kids' school, so I started my own. That is absolutely true. I read that. I was like, got it. Yeah. Well, it was really cool. I actually heard your podcast shout out and listened to it. And I didn't know you guys lived in Austin. So I love it. We're like very close neighbors. So that was really fun. But yeah, I've got two daughters. And way back in the day when it was time for them to go to school, my husband and I sent them to our local school, which is, by the way, one of the very best districts in the state. It's a phenomenal school system. But just so quickly, I was finding myself frustrated because as you can imagine, and we all grew up like this, you know, you go to class, there's 20 kids in the classroom, and it takes the teacher a little bit of time to understand, okay, well, you know, this kid can read, this kid's never seen the alphabet before.

2:23Or let's get kids sorted and kind of done, you know, going through that. But what happened is my girls were just kind of getting more and more bored. Like they'd come home every day from school and it's like, hey, what did you do in school today? Nothing. You know, what was the best part of the day? P.E., recess. You know, that was the kind of thing. And I just found myself getting frustrated. And finally about halfway through my oldest daughter's second grade school year, she came home one day and she said, Mom, I don't want to go to school tomorrow. I looked at her I'm like what do you mean you love school and you know my daughter is like a really goody two shoes kind of school kid and she looked at me and she's just like school is so boring and I just had this moment of like oh my gosh like in two and a half years this was a kid who's like passionate and engaged and curious which by the way like all kids are right your your daughter's totally that way the new one in the oven is going to be that way kids come out curious and excited and it had just kind of wiped away that intro and I just realized, okay, something's got to change.

3:24And I was good friends with the principal of our school, phenomenal woman. And she looked at me and she's like, Mackenzie, I totally get it, but this is like trying to change the Titanic. We just can't do it. And so I knew at that point, something should be done differently with education. And it wasn't about a private school or a different public school. It was really about the model of a teacher in front of a classroom. And I didn't really see anything that was meeting that need. And so I got together with another parent and we started our own thing. I think that is such a cool story to take the problem and then solve it, right?

3:58And for our listeners, because a lot of you guys listening might, number one, not know what Alpha School is, we're going to tell you. Number two, might not live near one. It might not, you know, your kids are probably sitting in school right now. And so what we're going to ask McKenzie also are things like, what do you recommend people do? Why are you pro AI? What are your goals for the education system? So it's not just go to the Alpha School. That's not what this conversation is. I want to be very clear about that. But as somebody who saw a problem in school and then changed it. And the one thing that stuck out when we went and listened was they showed us a statistic on how happy the students were at Alpha School.

4:43And it was 95%. Love going to school. Like loved it. And it was the kids that did the presentation. And it was so impressive. And so I think that in and of itself, why are kids loving school? And what is it about it? And how do you approach things is valuable for any parent. You know, we actually take it even further. We asked, would you rather go to school or go on vacation? Did either of you ever prefer going to school over vacation growing up? Nope. I maybe did. He definitely would not have. Okay, you did not. Well, then you and I would be like kindred spirits. I hated school growing up. I was good at it, but I didn't like it.

5:16but we believe that school should be a place that kids love when kids love going to school it allows us to help them do like challenging things take on big projects do hard things it doesn't mean that every day is Disneyland but when you have like this fire and passion for being in school and you know that you're going to get supported by awesome adults who are helping you do hard things you get to hang out with your classmates it makes really cool magic happen and And so actually over 50 % of our kids say they'd rather go to school than go on vacation. And actually you were at the high school.

5:49I think that's where the info session was. Last spring, in the spring of 2025, the high school students came to us and said, can we please keep school open for the summer? Well, I didn't do that. And so, yeah, so we literally had school. That's kind of the big claim to fame is that that is something that I think we want kids to love going to school because they're going to spend 13 years doing this as their career, it shouldn't be miserable, right? And I think a lot of times people think school is like spinach. It's good for you. You maybe don't like it. But think if that's the way we talked about careers, which is like, you're going to get ready for a career that you're probably going to hate.

6:26You're not going to really like. It's maybe going to be boring, but you just got to get through it. It's like, no, let's help kids find that thing that's awesome. And they should start when they're five. Yeah. What you're saying really lands with me. Like school was miserable for me growing up. managed to figure out how to get good grades, but every day was just a slog. And I felt like my life from a happiness perspective turned the day that my last class was over. I totally am with you. And so when you talk about schooling needing to be done differently and education needing to be done differently, it really resonates.

7:03And I think that's kind of a good parlay into you recognized things should be done differently. How are you doing them differently? Yeah. Yeah. So let's just talk about what we do. So what we've really been able to take advantage of is technology and specifically artificial intelligence to now be able to help kids learn at the pace and level that is just right for them. So actually, Harrison, one of the, you said you hated school. Did you hate it because you were bored? Did you hate it because you didn't understand it? I hated it because, funny enough, I just hated being in the classroom all day.

7:44Okay, yeah. I loved to be out and to adventure. And, yeah, I didn't like just sitting there and listening. Yeah. I like doing. Well, and think about it. School really is a very passive situation. You go, you sit down, you listen to a teacher kind of generally lecturing in front of a classroom. And so what we've done is sort of taken, I think, the technology that allows us to make the academic part of the day that you thought was a little too restrictive so much faster. And so we basically use an AI tutor to be able to assess what a child knows and doesn't know when they come into our school system and then be able to personalize lessons that match their level and pace so that they're kind of in that what we call it, it's technical kind of learning science term, zone of proximal development where it's not too hard and it's not too easy.

8:42and what we find is when kids are using these personalized learning plans where they're getting like a tutoring experience, they only spend two hours in the morning doing academics. And then by lunchtime, we release them out into the afternoon to be able to go do these really cool group project-based workshops. So to be clear, it's an all-day school because guess what? Parents don't want their kids to come home after two hours of academics, right? It's all-day school, But they're only spending a couple hours in the morning doing the academic part. And then the afternoon, we're teaching life skills, things like leadership and teamwork, grit and hard work, public speaking and storytelling, socialization, relationship building.

9:24And so kids are doing things like building businesses, running races together, podcast development, all kinds of activities that help build those life skills. And so I think we've taken kind of the best of both worlds, which is rigorous academics where kids are crushing their academics, but they're getting time back to go do all these other fun activities. And most of all, find that intersection of like your passions and your talents. What are you interested in? Because I think school should be a place where kids are given opportunities to explore and then develop those, right? Yeah, it's the meme like another day without using the Pythagorean theorem or whatever it's called, right?

10:03It's like, you know, it's all you spent. We traditionally spent all this time in school but I do podcasting all day and it's like I didn't learn anything about that so to be able to exercise that part of my brain early on would have been so fascinating yeah ever feel like you're running on empty staring at your screen hitting that afternoon crash and debating another coffee or energy drink that you know you will regret especially this time of year you guys it's holiday parties it's go go go enter neuro gums and mints neuro energy and focused gum and mints give you clean focused energy without the crash sugar or sketchy ingredients it's time to switch to good energy you guys neuro energy and focus is powered by natural green tea caffeine vitamin b12 and b6 for better mood and metabolism no sugar no aspartame no crash you guys neuro also offers caffeine free options for all-day wellness support neuro's memory and focus gum are made with American ginseng to support mental clarity minus the jitters.

11:05Neuro's sleep and rechargements offer you melatonin and chamomile to help you unwind and rest without pills or sugary gummies. So for a limited time, you can get 20 % off your first order at NeuroGum.com by using code 2PARENTS. That's NeuroGum.com and use code 2PARENTS for 20 % off your first order. You can also find Nero Gum at CVS and on Amazon. I think for the listener, the question we should ask right now is about AI. Because I think thinking about AI could be daunting in the classroom. I think there's the screen time argument. I think just there's AI in general. Yeah. So I think the question I have for you is why do you think AI belongs in the classroom?

11:48I think when people think about AI in education, they picture this dystopian, like, Terminator robot teacher in front of the classroom, no human interaction. There's all kinds of, you know, scary ideas that come with it. And it's absolutely not true, right? What we're using artificial intelligence to do is, again, be able to assess what a child knows and doesn't know and then create these lesson plans. And so a kid comes in the morning and they sit down in front of their computer. And when it's time for them to do math, let's say you've got an eight-year-old kid who's ready to go do math. He doesn't have to be just sitting in the third grade classroom that he would be in a traditional school.

12:27He can be going at whatever pace is right. So that eight-year-old might be doing algebra. Or he might need to go back and be revisiting fast math. Like what's six times three? What's five times four? Should I quiz you guys on your fast math? Absolutely. You guys remember it? Seven times three is my favorite, but other than that, it's not good. Okay, good. And so that's what kind of works. Now, the screen time thing, that comes up all the time. And here's the biggest thing I would say on that. There's a huge difference between doom scrolling TikTok all day or playing video games or just watching YouTube and getting like a one-to-one personalized learning experience where you're doing math at the level that helps you understand like, okay, I'm learning this concept.

13:10I'm understanding it. If I'm struggling to understand it, I can revisit it. I can slow down to do that. Or if I'm ready to cruise through to the next concept, I don't have to sit and wait. And that's, I think, the challenge with a traditional classroom is, you know, you've got a teacher trying to teach 20 plus kids in a classroom. And, you know, at the beginning when she's first explaining a concept, there's a third of the kids that already know the concept. So they're just sitting there kind of bored. After she's done explaining the concept, there's a bunch of kids who have no idea. It's like completely over their head what she's taught.

13:43And in any case, you move forward. And so students, when they're utilizing this AI technology, they're delivering it on screen. But it's like having a personal tutor that's saying, hey, Alex, do you understand this? OK, great. Let's move forward. Oh, you want to revisit something or you have another question? Let's spend time on that. So I think that's one of the things that is often a misconception. perception. But here's the other thing. And parents, I think one of the things I always say is there's never been a more exciting time to be a five-year-old because there are so many cool opportunities that now we can leverage.

14:19And you can do this at home, right? There are all these cool apps that can help kids really fall in love with like being able to learn at their pace and not be kind of bored. The other thing that's cool about AI, let's talk about like reading. so you know you've got that seven-year-old boy who maybe doesn't like reading very much he's like it's a pain i don't want to sit and read a book but with ai tools you can now say okay buddy what is your favorite movie you love the avengers who are your best friends the kids on your soccer team all right now you're going to read a book that has you and your friends from your soccer team as the main characters in an avengers save the world kind of story and it's at the exact level that's like not too hard for you to read, but not too easy where you're learning.

15:07And suddenly that boy will spend an hour just going through and reading a book. And that's what technology allows us to do. And where we're getting to is things like, let's say you wanna learn some math and combine it with your interest in fashion design or baseball statistics. Like there are so many cool ways that we are going to be able to personalize education to match not just like the knowledge graph of what a kid knows, but also their interest graph. So that's kind of a fun thing. So to me, is this like a fair way to think about it? You started things off there talking about parents thinking or people thinking AI in school can be scary.

15:45But it very much feels like in 10 years, AI learning will be the general base case of learning. But today, it's in the early stages of implementation the same way 15 years ago, using the internet for learning probably would have been viewed as different and potentially scary. And a kid may want to learn about the Olympics, but they don't want to have to go to the library, find some book on the Olympics and figure out the page. They just want to be able to search it and see the Wikipedia page about it and and learn. So I think, like, is it, do you feel like the practices that you're implementing very much will be widespread in a five to 10 year timeline?

16:40Yeah, I think that's why it is so exciting to be a young person now in this education model, because AI is going to totally revolutionize the way that school is done. And, you know, our model of a teacher in front of the classroom, that's been around for a couple hundred years. And it was really great when we had to figure out how do you educate the masses? Because before then, the wealthy basically were able to have tutors and the rest of people were kind of up the creek. The Industrial Revolution sort of brought in this idea of let's do mass education for people. And now what AI is able to do is give us that tutoring experience that also is at scale and that kids can do.

17:24And so, you know, you can do that like at our schools, our full-time schools, but kids can be doing this at home as a supplement. There's so many different ways that I think what you kind of get to, Harrison, is like in the palm of our hands, you know, with technology, we have all the information we could ever access in the world. And so that's the other thing that we're working with our kids. And I think this is such an important skill for parents to teach our kids is the skill of learning how to learn. Because we really do. We have so much capability of accessing information. So it's up to us to learn how to become experts in whatever kind of interests we have.

18:00So I feel like that's a good transition into what are you doing at the APA school that you would suggest public schools do? Yeah. Well, I think the public school system has a gargantuan task, right? They have to educate you know millions and millions of kids just in the U.S. alone that all come from totally varied backgrounds different levels of knowledge all that so it is a hard challenge however what AI can do a great job of is helping fill holes in knowledge have do you guys know that like only a third of students in our country are reading or doing math at grade level no you know that it's so bad and I pulled up some statistics beforehand to look at the state of the education system.

18:47It's pretty terrible, right? Yeah, I think I saw 26 % of eighth graders being proficient in math. And then the other thing that jumped at the stat that jumped out to me was US scoring relative to rest of world. It's really not good. Yeah, kind of sitting anywhere between like ranking 19 to 31 between math, English and some other. Yeah. Well, and that's I mean, the state of education is not good and and it's shown that it's not getting better but what i think we can do is use ai tools to provide basically like interventions so if you're a parent who's listening to this and your child is struggling in math or reading there are apps that they can go use uh to help them kind of catch up or you might be a parent who's got a kid who's bored stiff in school because they're just like i already know this i do that there are so many different tools that you can give them to allow them to go and learn at a faster pace for what they're doing.

19:47As a parent, I don't need to tell you how busy you are because you know, and you experience every day. Our next partner makes serving healthy meals much easier for me and way more enjoyable for my kiddos and for Harrison too, because we all benefit from this. Little ones are wildly picky around new foods and you get desperate for a good way to introduce them to a healthier variety of meals and in a convenient way. Mealtime with my toddler has become increasingly difficult and I know you can relate. So this podcast is sponsored by Nurture Life. Nurture Life is a meal delivery service that makes nutritious meals and snacks your kids actually want to eat.

20:27Nurture Life's whole menu is perfect for kids aged 10 months to 10 years old. Their fresh meals and snacks are delicious, nutritious, and the best part is you You guys, they are fully cooked. That means they're ready to serve in just under one minute. Bubz is obsessed, obsessed with their meatballs. It's so cute. She gets so excited whenever we're making them. So you guys head to nurturelife.com slash two parents and use code two parents for 55 % off your first order plus free shipping. That's right, you guys, 55 % off plus free shipping. Once again, that's nurturelife.com slash two parents and make sure to use our promo code two parents.

21:05Even if you aren't a parent with young kids, you might have a friend who struggles with mealtime. And this is the best way to give them a gift and give them some time back. Remember, put your little ones first with healthy meals from Nurture Life. And so would you encourage parents to take that on themselves? Or would you encourage students to go and work with their schools to implement? You know, I think the answer is both, which is if we as parents can let our schools know, like, hey, there's other things we should be looking at. There are better ways to look at doing education and encourage that kind of innovation to come into schools.

21:46I think that we're going to start to see some action. And, you know, Alpha School is getting a ton of attention. We've gotten attention from a lot of educators and administrators, from government officials who are seeing, like, okay, there's the possibility of doing this. And I think if parents also reach out and they're saying, hey, you know, what are we doing to kind of try to provide this? And I think schools are trying to do this. Teachers are trying to get training around how to use AI tools. The challenge I see with it is I don't think that AI technology should just be this little Band-Aid on the model of a teacher in front of the classroom.

22:25I would love to see a way where they can really flip the classroom on its side and allow kids to truly get that one-to-one tutoring experience that helps them catch up, learn better. And then, again, open up more time to practice some of those skills that we need to be successful in the world. Like, you know, even just learning how to work with AI tools. Like, learning how to prompt, right? Learning how to build things with AI. and you know currently the problem in education today is that most ai in education is for cheating right like a chat bot yes write my paper for me yeah chat bots are cheat bots in education so actually at our schools we don't use chat bots that's one of the things that we don't use this is not like a little you know chat bot that gets up and says okay alex i'm going to teach you history today um that's not what it's used for and that's i think getting back to that whole skill of learning how to learn.

23:20We want kids to be equipped to use AI tools to help them do even bigger things, not as mechanisms to just cheat. And so what AI tools would you suggest parents look at from an education perspective? At home? Yeah, at home or wherever. I think at home. Yeah, at home. There are so many cool tools that are out that are very, very inexpensive. Like I'm talking$10 a month type of things that they can do. For example, math. There's an app that we love at Alpha called Math Academy. It's a great, great app. Kids enjoy doing this math. And it can do a great job of kind of filling holes as we talk about in terms of knowledge.

24:04That's another one. But let's talk like we're on a podcast here, public speaking. Did you guys know public speaking is like one of the biggest fears that people have, right? Yeah. I saw that you guys do a thing for, third graders where they have to read the news in front of the class. And I just like love that in terms of life skill development to being able to digest what's important and then speak publicly in front of in front of the class. They take they take a newscast. So here's an example of an AI tool that we use at our schools that parents can use at home. So we did a workshop. And that's something we spend our time in the afternoons doing.

24:38But you could totally recreate this at home. It was called public speaking in the wild. And so these were our fifth and sixth graders were tasked with coming up with like a six to eight minute talk that they were going to give. And first of all, you're learning writing. And this is something you could totally do where you say, all right, come up with a talk of something that you find really interesting. And then they're learning about writing. Then we use an AI app called Talk Me Up. And it's a way that kids could practice just by themselves. It gives feedback on, okay, how is your intonation?

25:12How many words per minute? Are you using filler words? What are things we could do to make your talk more engaging? How can we change it up? Then our students, as they practice their talk kind of in an unintimidating way, just with themselves and this app. Then we sent them to the local Humane Society, and they went and they gave their talks in front of the cats. Turns out like cats who get interaction at the Humane Society become more easily adoptable because they're socialized. And it's also like a pretty unintimidating audience for the kids. After that, the kids went and practiced their talks at a local assisted living home.

25:47So they gave their talk to the old people there. Then they went right around the corner to book people and they gave their talks at an event. And eventually the kids flew to New York City and they went to an open mic night and gave their talks. And then after that, we had a few of the kids who were so excited about what they had what they had created and they'd gotten really good at this. They ended up submitting to be a part of the TEDx convention. And we had nine students who spoke at TEDx youth. And so that's an example of like using this very easy AI app. There's a ton of different ones. There's something called Ori as well.

26:25And that's like a fun thing to get your kids excited like at home. And I used to do this with my kids, you know, just for fun. It's like, let's come up with a play or a skit or something that you can do, which you can use AI to do things like that, or a storyline, let's act it out. Let's practice public speaking and storytelling, we kind of call it. And those are just fun things that can happen. Because I totally empathize. I know there's so many parents out there who, you know, don't have a better option for what's going on at their school. The school that their kids are going to is a school they've got to be at.

26:59There's only so much you can do as far as making a difference. But what you can do is at home, help kids find that thing that they're interested in. So for example, you know, taking your, you know, your eight year old and saying like, okay, what's, what's like something you want to learn about? You're interested in how rockets are launched. Let's go research that together. Let's, let's go into chat GPT and learn about this thing. Then how about we create a graphic novel with you launching a rocket up to space. And there's tools that they can use for that as well. Just anything that gets kids kind of excited about diving into a subject and becoming an expert and learning about it and then talking about it, I think is really fun.

27:43I love giving people like the way you just said that some people don't, and a lot of people don't have a better option. They're at the school that they're at. But being able to lean into some of these tools at home, I think is, I think it's magnificent. Um, one thing, okay. So you just talked about public speaking and then we got wind of your rejection therapy where people, we, we did that. We do this things we DMed segment. And one of the things we DMed each other was kids going around doing this rejection therapy. So what of the tools of the thing, the life skills you guys teach at Alpha School do you think are the most important for kids in general?

Read the full transcript

28:22Okay. Well, that's an interesting example. And we actually teach this. It's rejection training. We teach it kind of early on. So for example, our third and fourth graders will dive into a topic that they're interested in. Let's say it's marine biology. They're interested in the ocean. And we encourage them to go and learn everything they can about this topic and then find 50 experts in the field and reach out to them. So they have to learn how to write a professional email that would maybe interest this person. So, hi, so-and-so, I read your book about marine biology and I found this really interesting and I had a question about these things and they sent it out to 50 people.

29:06Well, out of 50 people, maybe three people will respond, but we're teaching kids that skill of one, being able to go research and find experts in your field and then reach out. One of the things we find is that successful adults love helping ambitious young people. And so that's a skill that they're learning. And if you're going to be building anything, whether it's a business or a product or you're doing research, you're going to have to get used to being rejected. But more importantly, you have to get used to putting yourself out there. Right. I'm sure you, when you were starting podcasts, would ask for guests and you're like, there's no way this person's ever going to come on.

29:43Right. Totally. You'd email 50 guests and you get one person who says yes to you. But that's where you have to start. And so we want kids to start practicing that. Here's another one that's really important. Giving and receiving feedback. How do you give and receive feedback in a way that's constructive, helpful, supportive, and critical, you know, and is able to help? Or here's another one. Both sides. This is something that we have and this is something parents can totally do at home. So we'll start this with our kindergartners and we'll say, okay, kindergartners come up with something that you are passionately advocating for and get ready.

30:19Are you guys ready for this? It's pretty serious stuff. Okay. Why should I have a later bedtime? I should have a later bedtime. And then what they do is they will come up with a presentation that goes into an argument for here's all the reasons I believe I should have a later bedtime, which, by the way, you can help them use tools like Canva to create their PowerPoint presentation on that. They present that to their parents. Then we say, now you have to come up with a presentation that argues why you shouldn't have a later bedtime, why you shouldn't. And then we use both parents will grade this and we'll actually run it into an AI tool to say, did you put your all into both sides of the argument?

31:03And what a skill that would be. Think how many adults could benefit from being able to, you know, rationally and passionately advocate for multiple sides of any topic. That's stuff you can teach to a five-year-old. Are you looking for something simple and delicious to add into your wellness routine? Well, you guys, I used to put regular honey into my coffee, but I have switched to Manukura honey, which is rich, creamy, and the most delicious honey I have ever had. It's ethically produced by Manukura's master beekeepers in the remote forests of New Zealand. Manukura honey contains powerful nutrients to support immunity and gut health, you guys.

31:45It's a game changer. All you need is one heaped teaspoon each morning and you get the most out of the amazing bioactives, which is in Manuka honey. Additional usage throughout the day is completely fine because trust me, you will want more, especially helping cut out the other sweeteners in your life. Now it's the best time to try Manukora honey. They're running their biggest sale of the year from now until December 2nd. Head to ManuKora.com slash two parents to get$150 off your first order with their Black Friday starter kit, which comes with an MGO 850 plus Manuka honey jar, 35 travel sticks, a wooden spoon and a guidebook.

32:27That's ManuKora, M-A-N-U-K-O-R-A dot com slash two parents for$150 off your starter kit. I think what's so amazing is how many of these practices can be implemented across the board, right? Like they are available to everyone. I think what, though, is lacking is the kind of guidance on, okay, what do you do? How do you come up with the idea? When is the time right? And so you've obviously given some amazing examples right now, but are there any tools out there that could give parents a general framework of, okay, if your kid is 10 years old, here's a great thing for them to be doing, or 11 or 12 and so on and so forth?

33:14Yeah. That's one of the things we've spent a lot of time doing because, again, I think so much of the magic of our school day is in our afternoons where we're doing these workshops and teaching these life skills. And so we have examples of like what does financial literacy look like for a five-year-old versus a fifth grader versus a high school student? Like what does that look like? And those are things that can be built at home too. So one of the things that we do at our schools that's very controversial, we pay students for hitting their academic goals. What? Yeah. Did you know that? We have a school currency.

33:48No. Kids can earn alpha bucks when they hit their goals. So they learn to earn. They also then can spend. We have a school emporium where they can spend on that. They learn to save because some things they want to buy might take 200 alphas versus five alphas. Are they digital currencies? So we have the ability to do that too. We've got coins, but then they have a credit card system too. And I got to tell you a story about that. We had a five-year-old boy last year, and he decided with his credit card that there were two toys in the Emporium that he wanted for Christmas. He didn't have enough alpha bucks to pay for those, but he did have a credit card.

34:27And he was like, I'm going to buy these toys. And his guide, it's basically his teacher, we call it. We call our teacher's guides. But his guide sat down with him and was like, okay, just so you understand, you know, you're going to go into debt. You're going to have to put this on your credit card. And he looked at this guy dead in the eye and he said, but it's Christmas. Oh, you guys ever been in that situation? Yes. That's so cute. So he bought these toys. Christmas came and went. And as we're all used to, sometimes that post-holiday reality kicks in. pretty soon it's January and this kid's staring a 15 % interest rate on his credit card.

35:05And his parents were like, oh my gosh, he's going to be so like frustrated and he's going to be trying to work his way out of debt. He's not going to be able to spend any alphas because he's going to be paying off this credit card. And our guide said, hey, you know, don't worry. We are a super high support culture where we're really like, we're coming alongside learning. Well, on the last day of January, this little boy was able to pay off the final amount of his credit card debt, and everyone cheered for him. His class was like so excited. You know, they were good. And I'll tell you what, how cool is it to learn a lesson like that at age five and not age 25?

35:41In my jaws on the floor. Incredible. Yeah, the amount of friends I still have, you know, today figuring out the interest on credit cards or the debt or what it means, you know, so how to do that. So getting back to it, Harrison, like you can sit down and think about, okay, what is the financial literacy we want to teach, you know, for a five-year-old? And also, by the way, we teach them to donate, you know, and save and invest. Those are all skills that you can do. And you can do those with like random chores around the house, right? Or getting their homework done, you know, like, you know, doing well in school.

36:15I actually, I don't love the idea of paying for grades because I think grades have become kind of meaningless. But I do like paying for effort that results in good things happening. They've learned something. But there's so many ways you can do that and then teach kids to kind of build on there. And we have something else at Alpha that a lot of parents I talk to have adopted at home. It's called a check chart. And it's basically a list of different life skills things. So, for example, our fifth and sixth graders have to know how to change a tire as part of this check chart. They have to, you know, have basically been able to go and do a lot of different kind of examples of grit.

36:53We have one where you have to be able to solve a Rubik's Cube. You have to be able to run a mile. And you have to be able to juggle three items for 30 seconds. It's like a grit triathlon is what we call that. And there's so many fun things that you can plan for your kids. And by the way, when you're asking about the framework, you know what's really good at that? ChatGPT. You can go into ChatGPT and be like, hey, come up with some things that would teach these life skills that would be fun challenges for a kid to be able to practice and work on. And one of the other things I really believe about kids is fundamentally everybody loves to learn.

37:29They may not all love learning science or math or how to diagram a sentence, but they love learning something. and the key is find that thing that your kid gets interested and excited about and help them explore to find that and then go deeper in this and ultimately I think that's what I care about with my own two girls and with the students that we're serving is help them find that interest and that passion that gets them excited when they get up every day and they're like I'm ready to take this on even when it's hard, even when I fail, even when I have a challenge, I still am like excited about what it is that I'm doing versus just kind of like I get up every day and I just show up and I do what I'm supposed to do.

38:11And maybe school isn't providing that experience for your kid, but there's things you can do at home to help with it. Wow. Change attire, juggle, Rubik's cube. I can't do those, but I could run the mile. Yeah. So the focus on life skills is like really what is music to my ears and I felt like what lacked in my education experience growing up and I think most. And I do really love what you're doing. But what keeps – and to me, it just makes all the sense in the world. But what I keep coming back to is like, well, this just isn't what most schools can do. And so what's your long-term vision or hopes or goals for the U.S.

39:04education system? And do you think we can get there? And how can these alternative ways of spending your days be accessible to everyone? Yeah. When I started the first school many years ago, I started it because I wanted to help my own two daughters. but it has become so much bigger than that now. I really believe that we're going to get to the point where we're going to help a billion kids around the world. And scalability is really important, but accessibility is important. Like how do you make sure this can be accessible for everybody, not just kids who can afford to go to one of our alpha schools or who happen to live in a city where there is an alpha?

39:46How do you make it for everyone? And so there's a bunch of things that we are doing to try to help with that. One is we're building a lot of different types of schools at different tuition price points. And especially in states where they've implemented education savings accounts, like in Texas, where we all live, starting next year, kids will be able to go to some of our schools for as little as$5 ,000 a year, which makes it dramatically more accessible. Now, there's people who still would say, I can't afford$5 ,000 a year either. We've got to get this in a public system. And there's some progress that we are making where we've had some public schools reach out to us to say, hey, we want to try this.

40:27We want to pilot it in our school system. So I think that is something that's going to get there. The other thing is there's a lot of other school models that are starting to pop up that are saying, hey, we can do something similar. I think it's going to be a while before the public system as an overall institution says, hey, let's do this. But I think schools should offer a lot of options for kids to find that model that a family likes. And so what I can see happening is in the public system, there'll be the ability to opt in to this type of learning. And so if you're a family who says, you know what, no, I fundamentally believe the best way for my kids to learn is with a teacher teaching in front of the classroom.

41:09Those schools are always going to be around. But if you're someone who says, you know what, I think it would be great to try this more tutoring experience and do that, I think those are going to become available too. The other thing that we're doing that's actually pretty amazing, we are actually working with a video game company to build a video game on top of our learning platform. And that video game is going to be free to play for anybody around the world. And we believe it's going to help kids get to the 90th percentile or above in their academics all while playing a video game. And so when we talked about screen time, sometimes all screen time is not equal.

41:50Video gaming can be a waste of time. We are working to create a video game that is not, that will actually help kids learn like crazy. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I love the difference in screen time. Like we're very anti-Coco Melon. Like poor Coco Melon takes a lot of ricochet shots on this podcast because we saw how she or how they, when they were creating it, put a bunch of different – they put kids in front of – they put 100 kids in front of two screens. One was a mom doing just mundane house chores and the other was a Cocoa Melon episode. And anytime somebody looked away, they marked that part of the episode and went back and added more lights.

42:23Oh, my goodness. So it's very addictive. And so that's what we started talking about. But then people say, no, but there is there is good screen time. We can't make screens the enemy. And so I love I really love this point that you're making. We were you know, I was a I was a screen free house for my kids, too. Even while my kids were doing their academics on screens. It was like outside of that we weren't. But here's another example of a life skill that I think is so important. And this really starts kicking in in middle school. In middle school, you guys remember what it was like. It's awkward.

42:53You're trying to figure out where you fit in. You start wanting to like find your group and be a part of it. And what happens a lot of times in that stage is middle school students will tend to become consumers. And what we want to create instead is creators and contributors. so instead of becoming addicted to watching tiktok or playing video games how about you learn that you're going to build your own tiktok you know channel that's going to go spread a positive message out in that universe or instead of playing a video game you're coding and building your own video game and then shoutcasting and hosting live tournaments and practicing public speaking skills there are so many things and i i think kids want to become creators they just aren't often given a clear understanding or path of how they can do that.

43:39So they fall into consumer mode. And that's one of the things that we create at Alpha. And I think it's something parents can do at home as well. Hey, if you're super obsessed with Fortnite, and you're playing Fortnite all the time, let's learn what is it that you're interested? What's fascinating to you? And then let's figure out maybe you could like learn to vibe code, which by the way, is so much easier now with AI, you know, go vibe code and build your own video game or host a tournament and plan an event around that. There's so many different cool life skills that can be learned by giving kids opportunities to take a passion they have and then grow from there.

44:11Yeah. And I think that that really does land. And that is what has changed today versus 10 years ago is like now the parents, we do have the tools at home. And so we can implement a lot of these, a lot of these ideas. And it, as you spoke to before, it all can start with chat, where if you don't know what app to go to chat can refer you to to that app or it can it can give you the um the the different ideas um what another thing that like popped into my head was no one ever you asked me earlier in this podcast like why didn't you like school i've never been asked that question like i talked about you know i've i've i struggled with school for however many years but no one ever asked why and because at that point, you really couldn't change anything.

45:06And so this ability to bring personalized learning through technology, it is an amazing point in time that we're at to be able to do so. What if you could give a gift this holiday season that brings your favorite holiday traditions and memories to life every day, you guys? Well, with AuraFrame, you can. The thing about AuraFrame is it's the gift that keeps on giving. You get unlimited free photos and videos. You just have to download the Aura app and connect to Wi-Fi and then you can upload your photos and it can play for whoever you gave your AuraFrame to. You can preload photos before it ships so when they open it they can plug it in and they can see the photos.

45:50You can personalize your gift. You can add a message before it arrives if you're not there to give it to in person. You can share photos and videos effortlessly straight from your phone all year long. And there's a gift box included and nothing is easier than that. So for a limited time, visit Aura frames.com and get$45 off or as best-selling Carver map frames named number one by wire cutter by using promo code two parents at checkout. That's a U R a frames.com promo code to parents. This exclusive black Friday Cyber Monday deals is their best of the year. So order now before it ends. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout.

46:31Terms and conditions apply. So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Get ready to save big with up to 60 % off brands like Rag & Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts. Shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. And I think that's the other thing is just oftentimes we don't take the time to ask our kids questions to find out information. Like, for example, what are you passionate about? We had a student that I had on my podcast the other week who said she had shadowed at our school, basically gone and spent a day attending the school to see if it was something she liked.

47:21And at the end of the day, one of our guides sat down with her and said, so what are you passionate about? And she just looked blankly and she's like, I'm in eighth grade and no one's ever asked me that question. And she said, and I realized I get up every day. I go to school. I go to tennis. I come home. I do homework. I go to bed and I repeat. I don't even know what it is I'm passionate about. and we had a student as well at the beginning of freshman year. We do this exercise and this is, by the way, another thing parents can totally do at home. It's called 168 hours. The reason it's 168 hours, there's 168 hours in a week and we have kids chart how they spend every hour of their week.

47:57How is it that they spend their time? So this girl comes back at the end of her exercise and she says, well, I've got bad news for you guys. I'm basically going to be the world's best TikTok scroller because that's what I spend my time doing and I also like think about boys a lot. You know, she's like an honest 14 year old, right? I love it, I love it. She's like, I think about boys and I TikTok. Well, our guide, instead of saying, hey, get your mind out of the gutter. These 14 year old boys are not like fully baked yet. You need to work on other things. We said, okay, how can we take that interest that you have and do something different?

48:27So three years later, that student has created a large TikTok audience. She's got a few hundred thousand people that she has also built a chat bot that gives teen dating advice that has been vetted through researchers and psychologists and all that. She's also done research to see if her advice that she gives through her GPT is better than a licensed counselor's advice or a suburban mom's advice. Suburban mom. And guess who did the worst in those things? A counselor. Nope, the suburban mom. And you know why? Here's the reason why. because let's say your 15 year old daughter comes home to you and she's like mom um he left me on unopened uh and it's been two hours and i saw that he was and and here here's me i'm like sorry what's unopened mean exactly like what is this um he didn't snap or he snapped but it was only part of his face and yesterday he had actually texted hi and you're like this is all so dumb i don't even know what to tell you right right and guess what that's not good advice right like how do you actually connect with a kid and so now she's done research and has submitted that research to the number one science journal in the world it's called nature they took a kid who is interested in tick-tock and boys and has created this incredible movement around actually help helping make teen dating healthier you guys should have her on your podcast I'll connect you crazy yeah you totally should she has some insane data like one of them is like you You know, more than half of boys age 18 to 24 have never asked a girl out on a date.

50:0618 to 24? 18 to 24. You got to work on that, Harrison. That is a problem. I literally just sent this stat into the things we DMed. That? The lack of guys asking girls out for dates. And that statistic above, you said it was 18 to 24? 18 to 24. Yeah. I think I sent that exact statistic. What I love about this is, well, number one, from a social media standpoint, the way that she's approaching things differently is the way it has to be done. Like if you get on and do what everybody else is doing, now you fall to the wayside because it's saturated. And I think that's important. But I love that what you're talking about is things kids love doing anyways.

50:43Just taking real life things that kids are going to want to grow up and be and making it accessible and making it interesting. Make it productive. Yeah, make it productive. And you know, this was another example. And this is a conversation that parents probably have all the time with their kids. My daughter Sloan, when she was 13, she came to me and she's like, mom, please let me be on TikTok. And I was like, no, TikTok's bad. I've read all the things. We're not doing that. Please, please, please. Well, we had a lot of conversations about it. One of the things that I said is if you are on TikTok, first of all, you need to understand what you're putting in your brain and what you're like reading and absorbing.

51:18You need to be thoughtful about that. You also should think about how you can be a creator and a contributor, not just a consumer. and what are you putting out? Well, she joined when she was a freshman in high school. She's now a senior. She's got two and a half million followers. Wow. And she gives out basically what I would call kind of like strong empowerment advice that it's not about your looks. It's not about where you're at. You can be a good kid and do things. And she has built up this, really, if I say so myself, an incredible following that's helping young girls feel strong. The other thing she's done is she has created like basically like a Y Combinator for other teen influencers.

51:59So, for example, she's just helped launch an app for a girl who does curly hair stuff. And so basically this girl who's the other influencer, instead of just like having to hawk hair products on her TikTok videos, she is now becoming a business owner by building this app with my daughter that's going to help and kind of extend that and turn it into a business. There are so many things that you can do where you take a kid's interest and then just help them figure out how they can widen that into something productive. So I think that's always – a lot of times parents will ask advice on things of like what can we do to help our kids with this?

52:36And I would say don't poo-poo their interests. Find what they're interested in and then help them develop that into something more, into more than just an idea or a waste of time, something that's productive and useful. and it can be anything. But also where you kind of play the trump card here is a lot of kids are going to come home because TikTok is the thing. So a lot of kids are coming home right now and they're saying, hey, mom, dad, I want to get on TikTok. And their parents are saying what you said initially, no. And they want to get on it anyways, they're going to get on it anyways. But for you to sit here and say your daughter is on it, but doing impactful things, empowering things.

53:13And there is that side of TikTok. TikTok helps me all the time with motherhood. I learn a lot from it. You know, it kind of can be what you make it. And of course, there's the risks and concerns. But as with anything, there's the same thing walking down the street, right? So I love that you're taking things and you're making them productive. Interests. Social media is a tool. It's a tool. And by the way, it's going to be there. There's no way around it. What we need to do is we need to equip our kids to know how to use these tools for their benefit and not as crutches. And that's true with AI.

53:40That's true with social media. It's true with so many things that we do. And again, it gets back to that idea of giving kids the skill of learning how to learn and go become experts and really self-driven learners. And that's the magical thing. And that can take that kid who sits in a school all day long where maybe they are bored, but they've got something that they can get excited about and, you know, and pursue. I think that at the end of the day, as parents, that's what we want our kids to have like an interest and a desire and a passion and engagement. And again, I think there's so many ways that you can help foster, foster that in kids, even if it doesn't show up in their, you know, sixth grade math class.

54:23Totally. I think that this is, I thought we would have a good conversation, but you've given us a lot of things people can do at home. It makes me excited to parent now because I did find, I found social media to be daunting. I found education to be scary. Like I do think that, I think Alpha School is at a really interesting time where parents feel confused and lost, a little hopeless, but the thing that all parents that I talk to have in common is we're interested. Even with vaccines, people are asking questions, right? We see it all the time when it comes to breast milk force formula. People are curious.

54:59Dads are more involved than ever. This is such a trend that we're seeing people wanting to do things differently and do things more purposeful. And I think you're very much on the forefront. And I'll give you one last example. We had a student who, as a junior in high school, she got interested in cancer because her grandfather died of cancer. So she got interested in understanding what's going on with that. I think if she'd been at a traditional school, somebody would have said, well, you should go and become a doctor. You should go to medical school at some point. You can study cancer. And maybe she wouldn't have gotten a five on her AP bio test.

55:34And so she would have been like, I guess I'm not a science person. I shouldn't do this. Well, instead, her guide said, why don't you go and learn everything you can learn? Go down what we call a rabbit hole. They'll spend two weeks just learning everything they can about something. So she starts learning and researching. And then she opened an X account. And she started following experts in cancer and kind of learning about this. And then she would post like, oh, I read this journal article. I actually put it through ChachiBT to explain it to me like I was a 16-year-old kid, which she was. Here's what I found.

56:04Eventually, she started kind of getting down the road of epigenetics, which is that maybe your environmental factors, your food you eat, things like that could have something to do with cancer. She continued researching. She started interviewing experts. She eventually built out a documentary where she filmed and edited and interviewed and all of that. In the meantime, she had started building up this audience on X where she was talking about epigenetics and cancer and things like that. By the time she released her documentary as a senior in high school, she had over 2 million views within 48 hours because she built an audience.

56:41And again, that was just saying, hey, as a 16-year-old, you can be interested in something and go deep into it and end up creating a film, which again, this is stuff that a kid could do at home, you know, outside of school. Instead of saying, you have to wait until you've graduated from medical school to go learn about cancer. No, you can start that right now. That documentary has now been seen over six million times. And that student has gone on to change laws in multiple states around the kind of food that's being served in cafeterias and schools. You know, what's enabled. And she's had a huge impact.

57:17And she did it as an 18-year-old. Wow. Yeah. No, it's amazing. And it's just like the opposite of the box that I grew up in with my high school. And I went to a private school as well. And we were told or we were guided to, like, you're going to be a doctor, you're going to be a lawyer, like cure the four or five different career buckets and just little to no focus on the personal development and the personal interest of the student. And so it's so amazing that you're doing that and you're having the success that you are and the longer-term mission of making it more accessible but also providing the tools for parents to do this outside of the classroom, wherever your kid goes to school.

58:14So I have maybe a random question, but this concept of two plus six learning, so two hours of advanced academic learning, followed by six hours of life skill development. Do you think this would be possible without AI? I don't think it is done as well without AI. What AI has helped us do is make sure the kids are really learning well and efficiently. When I started the first school back in 2014, we were using apps to do the learning. So that was true. We didn't have the AI component. What happened is in 2022, when AI came out, we were really able to take that and supercharge our results. And that's why our classes are top 1 % in the country in all grades and all subject levels.

59:02And so I do think there's a way to absolutely do this at home. If you're trying to do this as a homeschool parent, there are ways to do it. AI has just made it kind of that much better and easier. And the other thing is if you're on social media, we have Future of Education. We're always giving examples of some of the things that kids are able to do. Oh, that's good. So yeah, go check out Future of Education on Instagram. Is there a the or no? No, it's just future of education. And yeah, it's fun. We just got a million followers like a month ago. And who would have thought like education, but I think education is the most important thing that everybody should care about, whether you're a parent or not.

59:45It is absolutely key to like the wellness of society. And there's a lot of exciting things happening in education. So it's fun to be on this ride. It's yeah, it's our future. And so it's incredible. You're the first. You make education feel optimistic. So thank you for that. I think a lot of people will listen to this and feel, I'm like, okay, I'm excited. I feel empowered. You know, being a parent is hard, right? We have so much we have to manage. Like just getting through the day sometimes is a challenge. But what I've tried to do is help give parents some resources and some ideas. I have a website called thefutureofeducation.org.

1:00:22If you go on that website, you can download free resources that give everything from here's some AI tools that we recommend. Here's different apps that are great. The other thing it allows is information that you can send to your school administration and to your state and local government to say, hey, let's look into this style of education. Let's understand where technology and AI can be helpful for providing more personalized learning. Amazing. Both free. Again, there's never been a more exciting time to be a five-year-old. So lucky future baby and lucky Tate. It's going to be awesome. And so, yeah, there's just so much cool stuff happening.

1:01:01And these next 10 years in education are going to be wildly awesome. Thank you very much for coming. For us, as we are already thinking about education, even though our daughter is very young, it's great to know there are people that are doing it so differently and really speaking to a lot of the pain points that at least I personally experienced growing up. It's been great to meet, you know, parents like you guys who are just like, I know education can be better. It doesn't have to be like, you know, just the same as when we grew up. So love it. Thanks for having me, guys. Thank you so much. You're awesome parents.

1:01:42Thank you. So are you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Two Parents and a Podcast powered by Just Media House. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to like, subscribe, comment, rate, and review. Stay connected on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook at Two Parents and a Pod. Welcome to our home. Sorry it's so messy. New episodes Mondays and Thursdays.

1:02:07Pandora Jewelry brings the sparkle to your summer. Now with even better prices. Enjoy up to 50 % off select styles From personalized pieces to must-have favorites Made for the summer Timeless designs that shine with you through every moment Wherever the summer takes you Shop in-store or online Now through July 6 Terms and conditions apply Visit Pandora.net for details

From the publisher

This week on Two Parents & A Podcast, we’re joined by MacKenzie Price (founder of Alpha School) to talk about the future of education — and what parents can do at home right now to help their kids love learning.

MacKenzie is a mom who noticed her daughters going from curious and excited to totally bored in a top-rated traditional school. Instead of accepting “that’s just how school is,” she set out to understand why—and ended up building a new model that puts passion, curiosity, and real-life skills back at the center.

We talk about the practical things parents can try at home: simple ways to make learning feel engaging, how AI can support reading and math by making it more personalized, what “good” vs. “bad” screen time looks like, and why paying attention to your child’s natural interests can make such a difference.

Then we zoom out and talk about what school in the U.S. could look like over the next decade as AI becomes part of the classroom — more personalized, more flexible, and potentially giving kids valuable time back for the skills they use in real life. MacKenzie shares great examples of what happens when kids have a little more space to explore, from public-speaking projects to creative deep dives that turn into something bigger.

Timestamps: 

00:00:00 Welcome back to Two Parents & A Podcast

00:00:36 Meet MacKenzie Price (Founder, Alpha School)

00:06:05 How is Alpha School doing learning differently?

00:10:32 Why does AI belong in the classroom?

00:15:28 Will this style of learning be the norm in 5–10 years?

00:17:02 What can traditional schools borrow from this model?

00:22:30 What are easy ways to make learning more engaging at home?

00:37:27 What are MacKenzie’s long-term hopes for U.S. education?

00:40:48 Rethinking screen time vs “good” screen time

00:43:45 How can parents help their kids discover their passions?

00:52:58 Why doing things differently matters

00:56:51 Could this learning model work without AI?

00:58:45 Parent resources, apps & where to start

01:00:18 Thanks for listening!

#twoparentsandapod

---------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you to our sponsors this week:

*Neuro: Clean, focused energy without the crash. Get 20% off your first order at https://www.neurogum.com with code TWOPARENTS.

*Nurture Life: Nutritious, ready-to-serve meals and snacks for kids ages 10 months to 10 years. Get 55% off your first order plus free shipping at https://www.nurturelife.com/TWOPARENTS with code TWOPARENTS.

*Manukora: Ethically produced, creamy Manuka honey packed with antioxidants and prebiotics. Get $150 off your first Starter Kit at https://www.manukora.com/TWOPARENTS.

*Aura Frames: Give the gift of unlimited photos and videos. Get $45 off the best-selling Carver Mat frame at https://on.auraframes.com/TWOPARENTS with code TWOPARENTS.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Listen to the pod on YouTube/Spotify/Apple:

https://www.youtube.com/@twoparentsandapod

https://open.spotify.com/show/7BxuZnHmNzOX9MdnzyU4bD?si=5e715ebaf9014fac

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/two-parents-a-podcast/id1737442386

---------------------------------------------------------------

Follow Two Parents & A Podcast:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/twoparentsandapod

TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@twoparentsandapod

Follow Alex Bennett:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/justalexbennett

TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@justalexbennett

Follow Harrison Fugman:

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/harrisonfugman

TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@harrisonfugman

Find our guest:

Website | https://www.draribrown.com/

Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/futureof_education/ 

TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@aribrownmd

---------------------------------------------------------------

Powered by: Just Media House – https://www.justmediahouse.com/

---------------------------------------------------------------
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More from Two Parents & A Podcast

All 142 episodes
The Future of Education: AI-driven learning, personalized education & building life skills earlyTwo Parents & A Podcast · 1 h 3 min
Listen in VO