Are sports and rituals stand-ins for belonging?

Two past guests of mine—Tom Arnett and Tyler Thigpen—joined me on this episode for a wide-ranging conversation on what it will take for microschools, or low-cost private schools, to “go upmarket” and attract more high school students. Our conversation revolved around whether one of the key current stumbling blocks is too many of these schools don’t offer enough “Friday Night Lights” and prom-type events—and if the reason those things are important is because of the critical role they and other such traditions play in identity formation and community connection for high schoolers.

Our discussion dove into the challenges and innovations around helping students develop a sense of identity, community, and belonging within smaller, learner-centered school models. Tyler shared practical strategies from his perch leading the Forest School at Acton Academy, including student-led sports, theater, and flexible approaches to high school structure, while Tom reflected on the importance of supporting identity formation and building a strong value network around alternative school models. After listening, we’d love your take as well. What will it take for microschools and other self-directed learning environments to go mainstream? How might they tackle issues of scale, social connection, legitimacy, and supportive ecosystems without undermining the things that make them valuable to the students and families initially enrolling in them?

Michael Horn

Welcome everyone, to the Future of Education. I’m Michael Horn. You’re joining the show where we’re dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential and live lives of purpose. And to help us think through an aspect of that, today I’m bringing back two friends who’ve been on the podcast at least a couple times each, I believe. We’ve got Tom Arnett at the Christensen Institute, and of course Tyler Thigpen, CEO of the Forest School at Acton Academy and of course the leader of the Institute for Self Directed Learning. We’ve had Tyler on, talking about that in his fantastic book on the topic of self directed learning. So, Tyler, Tom, great to see you both.

Tom Arnett

Good to be with you, Michael, great to be with you.

Rethinking Education and Identity

Michael Horn

Well, we’ll see how we all feel by the end. But the topic I want to get into today is really this question of, you know, Tom and I have observed a lot of times that microschools have a lot of the characteristics of disruptive innovation. They look, you know, by traditional metrics in terms of the scope and breadth of services that your comprehensive schools can provide. They look primitive. They don’t have all the, you know, every single offering you can imagine, from cheerleading to football to volleyball to science labs to bands to choirs, you know, five different versions of beauty shop, quartet, et cetera. And so they come in at the low end, right? And the theory of disruptive innovation says for them to actually over time change or disrupt traditional schooling, they have to actually improve. And so the way disruptive innovations typically do that is by using some sort of technology enabler, they start to creep up the Y axis, if you will, and pack in more and more functions and features, but without replicating all the traditional trappings of the existing paradigm. They don’t replicate the cost structure.

They don’t replicate, in this case, we would think the time bound sort of nature. I would think of the existing school districts and sort of the grammar of schooling that David Tayak and Larry Cuban have historically written about when it comes to K12 schools. And I think a real puzzle, Tom, for us has been what will it take for these schools? And microschools may be the wrong word. I think that’s sort of too small an idea, no pun intended. But these new schools, like, how would they go up market, right, to start to displace the way of education that we’ve typically seen. And one of the things that we’ve both talked about is that in some ways they have to speak to in high school, in particular, this notion of identity formation, that a big part of high school, middle school as well, is sort of learning who you are. And so we can sort of joke, oh, those schools, these startup schools, they don’t have football and Friday Night Lights and they don’t have prom and things of that nature. But I think for an individual family looking to say, hey, am I going to make a jump to one of these schools, those sorts of things are actually very important.

Not just because of the traditions, although that’s probably part of it, but also because of the coming of age experiences that they provide and the way individuals sort of learn, who am I and how do I relate to the rest of my community? And these sort of shared experiences that you can talk about in the cultural lexicon. So we’ve been wondering, how do you tackle that? And we both wanted to talk to Tyler because we think he’s done such a thoughtful job of thinking about this in the context of the Forest School at Acton Academy, as they do run secondary schools. So, Tom, what would you add before we get Tyler’s voice to make us smarter here and we all sort of bat this around?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, I think I’ll just add an anecdote from my own family.

Michael Horn

And you’re telling your own personal story. Your son’s story.

Tom Arnett

Okay.

In that it’s really ironic. I spend all my working time thinking about studying, learning about really innovative school models. And my own kids attend the traditional district schools that they are assigned to based on where we live. And I have advocated to my kids for finding better options or creating better options. But the real holdbacks for them are there’s nothing that they’re struggling with to the point where they feel like they need an escape valve. Right. Like they’re getting good grades, their teachers like them, they have friends, they’re not getting bullied. None of those issues have come up for them.

And for them, they don’t want to give up that common school experience. In other words, they want to be on sports teams with their friends. They want to be in the band that their friends are in. They want to just be able to speak the same language as their friends so that when kids say, hey, did you, you know, did you see what happened at the football game last Friday night? Or did you, you know, what did you think of so and so’s class that they can relate to that they’re not like, I don’t know what you guys are talking about…

Balancing School and Sports Option

Michael Horn

Before you move on from that, just one question because like my observation is a lot of towns like the youth sports and stuff like that, it’s happening less at the schools. Like it is getting unbundled into various leagues and stuff like that. So I’m, I’m like. That still held sway for your boy?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, but it’s funny because we participate in both. Like they participate in leagues and they participate in the school sports. And so that does make a little bit of it. Like. Okay, so to get real specific, over this last winter break we had a conversation about like our district has an independent study program where you can do your classes independent study but still participate in the sports teams at the school or there’s an option through the community college where you can do something similar, but you don’t have access to the sports. And one of the things that came up as we were, you know, there’s different constraints and different challenges that each come with. And we talked about, well, you could do water polo just through the club instead of through the high school. Like he does both of them right now and a lot of his friends are at the high school.

So he doesn’t want to give that up. But he does have friends in the club league and it is an alternative. So I will say like the barrier is lower than maybe it was in the past. But it still is, there’s a sense of like I have to give something up if I want to do this. It’s not just all upside.

Michael Horn

Okay, Tyler, let’s bring you in on here because you’ve, as you all have operated your school network which goes K through high school, right? You all have thought a lot about how to run a thriving high school and get skeptical, maybe parents say, yeah, like I want the benefits of that self directed learning experience and not maybe give up some of these things. And, and you’ve thought about a lot of these identity forming rituals and some other pie it. So, so I, I don’t know where you want to take it, but I’d love to hear your opening reflections.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, well, we’re, we’re trying and we’re trying hard and once we get them, we’re trying to keep them. You know, I think one of the interesting, in my mind at least, differences between the league sports, the club sports and the school sports is the audience. You know, for so many of the league and club sports, you know, the audience is really just kind of parents, caregivers, you know, coaches, referees. But for the school sports, it’s their friends. And that’s just, I think that’s a game changer, you know. And I’ll say, I think the two biggest reasons why high schoolers would leave our high school at some point, is the, they sort of cite the social, you know, friends wanting to have more quantity because we are a microschool. So we got 45, 50 high schoolers on average at our school. And then sports opportunities, you know, that they may have.

So what we’ve done over the years to, you know, address this is. And it’s evolved, but number one is we sort of said, hey, if you want to start your own sport or start your own club, all you need is a critical mass and a parent volunteer and let’s do it. And so that’s how basketball got started. And they actually went to state in the first year.

Michael Horn

I was going to say you had a, you posted, I mean your, your team was pretty good. I saw the video you posted recently. There’s passes and shots there.

Tyler Thigpen

Well, and I’ll tell you, I mean I, and folks who’ve come into our environment from traditional environments will say something similar. But like, because it’s a school trying to really teach self direction, like they’re very resilient. And so even though they start out losing a lot, they have this mind, this growth mindset, you know, and they want to get better. And so like our volleyball team for example, which by the way, girls volleyball started because they saw the boys, were jealous of the boys basketball and were like, we got to start our own thing. Well, can we start volleyball? We were like, yeah. And so anyway, the first season they lost every game but one. Second season they lost every game but one. And then this last season they went nine and four and made it to state, you know, and just never gave up.

I mean they kept improving, you know, so I think that. But, I think the learners feel like they can start their own thing. And, and what’s cool in our state in Georgia is there is a league that accommodates small schools like ours. It’s called GAPS, Georgia association of Private Parochial Schools. A lot of them are faith based schools. We’re religiously diverse. But it’s awesome. And you can even have homeschoolers kind of play on your team as well.

Student Activities Encourage Growth

Tyler Thigpen

So some of our friends, some of our high schoolers have invited their friends, you know, to play. So that’s kind of how we’ve addressed the sports thing. We also, the learners have done shared dances, you know, and reached out to other partner small schools and you know, gone into downtown Atlanta. We’re trying to get them to come to us on the south side, you know, this time and, and that’s been fun. I think the apprenticeships that we do in an interesting way is an identity forming thing because the way they’re structured is you can sort of do it whenever and miss school and it’s not an unexcused absence. And you have to do so many of them that I do think they come to know themselves in a way that ends up being valuable. There’s no real comparison I think in the, you know, in the more traditional settings for that, that’s a one to one, but I think that’s valuable.

The other thing that’s interesting is when we launched the online school, we, our high schoolers now especially as they, because they really value the freedom, they really value going at their own pace, they. They don’t want to lose that and sometimes they only want to come into school. They’re just like, I want to get it done, you know, at home or at the coffee shop. And so they’ll actually jump into our online school for a while or make use of some of that online curriculum and then kind of parachute into the in person environment. Especially we see seniors doing this a lot, you know, which I guess is equivalent to working off campus, you know, working, doing an independent study or something off campus.

Michael Horn

That’s like a very interesting thing, right Tyler? Like they’re willing to, I mean, in some ways the gravitational pull, I guess it works both ways. Second semester seniors, you know, you got a lot of burnout and a lot of folks doing other stuff. But like that’s when a lot of the rites of passage, right happen. The connections to prom, college, right. Like all these things we sort of. All the movies in Hollywood, you know, down, down where Tom is, make us think are sort of America pie, right? Or apple pie and Americana. And so that’s interesting that you would see seniors going for that full online experience at that point and parachuting in when they want the connection.

Is that because they’ve sort of acclimate, right, like their, their definition of success has changed by being part of your community? Or is. Is it that you’ve, you’ve sort of cracked this nut of being able to provide enough connections into and sort of identity formation opportunities?

Tyler Thigpen

I don’t know. What my observation is is these learners who are older, some of them have the ability to drive, you know, and maybe have access to wheels or at least the ability to get around. They’ll see value in some of what’s happening in person and in groups at the school and they’ll want to be there for that. And then outside of that, they kind of really enjoy that independence of just being able to go, you know, vote with their feet and go eat where they want to eat, be at home if they want to be home. Just, you know, which I think is a good sign of independence. It’s almost like college. It’s almost like a college-like atmosphere in your senior year of high school, if you will. That’s my observation.

Michael Horn

But let me ask this question. It seems. So we went immediately to sports, I think, right? And then you brought in some of the other aspects. I’d love both of you guys to like jump in on this. It seems like sports, right, is often ridiculed among the educators of like ah geez, we also have to do sports. But it seems like a lot of these things are stand-ins, I guess is this is the, are we crazy for having this conversation, right? Because it seems like they are a bigger part of learning about who you are, building a community around you. Rites of passage, you know, it’s like we like to joke about the person who’s still living the glory days of their high school football, you know, game saving catch when they were, you know, 40 years earlier. But, but there is something about that that grounds you and, and, and gives you a narrative and connects you more broadly and, and look, story, you know, stories are part of life.

So, I guess I’m curious is, in your views, is there something deeper here like I painted and if so, what else, you know, do we need to be thinking about for high schools to sort of attract or these alternative student centered, self directed high schools. Maybe that’s a better way to call this movement. How do they start to attract more families and signal to them not only is it okay, but you won’t be missing out on these deeper things? Tyler, why don’t you jump in first and then Tom, go wherever you want to take it.

Tyler Thigpen

Communicating and actually living out the reality that the learners really can have agency and can create the kinds of experiences that they want. I think there’s a ton of value in sports. I agree with you Michael. The level of, you know, working on a team. I mean even just from a rite of passage standpoint. I remember our varsity and middle school girls this year and JV girls for volleyball got their, for the first time, like warm up jerseys in addition to regular jerseys and then a backpack, their name on it. And just that, I mean, that was an absolute core memory.

Michael Horn

Well, it’s like the letter jacket, right? I mean, the cool kids, quote unquote, had letter jackets.

Tyler Thigpen

Totally, totally. We actually are starting theater now, you know, in a similar viewpoint, we’ve got some learners who are interested in theater. That’s an incredible avenue for communication and for academics and just like, well being in general, you know, and, and so now like, and again, we’re in our eighth year as a, as a small microschool, but we now we have in the fall basketball, we have in the winter volleyball, and in the spring, you know, we’ll have, theater. But I think it’s about giving them choice, giving them agency. I mean, interestingly, you know, we’ll do field trips with them too. And it’s actually easy to do field trips.

Community-Driven Learning Experiences

Tom Arnett

Right.

Tyler Thigpen

If you could just get some volunteer folks to drive and they’ll go to colleges and museums, you know, and workplaces like some of our parents and caregivers who have interesting jobs. That’s also identity forming, I think, because it’s a great way for them to just rub shoulders and to figure out, oh, I might could see myself working here. And then interestingly, and I try and cultivate this as much as I can as a head of school. We’ll try and identify parents or caregivers who want to self organize some things for groups of high school kids. I’ve led field trips to colleges, like out of state. You know, it wasn’t necessarily like formally a part of the school, but it was like, hey, I’m doing this as a dad with my son, on my own. Who else wants to go sort of a thing. And you know, there have been rites of passage, like, you know, weekends that have been like literal rites of passage weekend that have been put together by men and women, you know, in our community.

And there’s things that we can do as school leaders to like, encourage that and to celebrate that and try and, you know, through celebration, cultivate the things that we want to see. But to me, it comes back to just helping them feel like it’s a blank canvas and that it is possible and to make creative connections. Tom, what do you think?

Tom Arnett

So what’s popping into my mind right now is, do either of you read David Yeager’s book 10 to 25? No, the book. Yeah, for sure. Great book. Yeah. So probably one of the most influential books.

Tyler Thigpen

On my list right now.

Tom Arnett

So that was. That was a book I read last year that really shaped my thinking about these kinds of issues. And on one hand, I think identity formation. I guess I’d parse it two ways. One is that even. Even in the conventional, traditional high school experience, there’s lots of kids who don’t have the traditional identity formation, you know, that aren’t all about wearing the leatherman jacket or being at the rally, because a lot of those spaces, like, there’s just not room for everybody. So kids have to form other identities. And I think there’s a lot of other healthy identities that people could form.

Like, I think of, like, the identity that you form when you work at an internship and you learn. Like, here’s my value in an organization is probably more value. I mean, I’m biased, but I would say that’s a more valuable identity than the identity of, like, I’m really cool because I wear the right clothes at school. So I think there’s a lot that could be improved on identity formation. But what Jaeger’s book makes me think of is he talks about how, just like, infants have developmental milestones of, like, you know, learning to have, you know, coordinate their limbs, learning to speak. He says the developmental objective of adolescence is to learn how to earn status and respect.

And the reason why is that people, like humans, thrive in society. Like, we, you know, we’re not all just lone wolves. We accomplish things as a. As humans by working together. But in order to be able to work together, you have to be able to figure out, how do I fit into a group? How do I show the group that I’m of value to that group? How do I essentially, like, that’s. You earn status and respect in a group by. By figuring out, like, what is my value to add, and how do I signal that to other people? And so to me, that’s the big question that you have to tackle for a lot of kids is how do you give them the experiences that let them earn status and respect, but in a context of other people? This is where sometimes I think, when we talk about learning, being really individualized, like, individualism, if you take it too much to the extreme, means, like, everyone’s doing their own thing, and it doesn’t matter to everyone, anyone else, because you’re just.

You’re doing your one thing you’re passionate about, but no one else cares. And I think a lot of kids, like, they don’t actually want to do that. They want to do something that they’re passionate about, but they also want to do something that others care about, that other people say, like, that’s cool, that’s valuable, you’re. Or you’re a valuable contributor to what the rest of us care about. So that’s, I guess that’s one way I frame this question of like, what, what kind of innovation and improvement needs to happen to make this more appealing to more people? So that’s one side. But then I’ll say, what about, I think for this to truly go mainstream, there are the people who are getting that fulfilled in a conventional setting. Like, you’ve got to figure out how to fulfill it for them as well. Not, you know, make it, make it a compelling alternative to them so it doesn’t feel like they’re giving something up.

And that raises for me the question of like, so is the future some kind of hybrid approach? And Michael’s, I see him squinting. Michael’s written a whole, you know, one of his first paper I read when I joined the institute was about hybrids and disruptive innovation. Like, is the future a hybrid approach where kids go to a conventional setting for some things and then they get other experiences elsewhere? Or is it, is there more of, going to be a tipping point where like these new identity forming experiences just become the new cool thing and people, you know, see that as the new cool thing and they want to do it because it is a new cool thing?

Redefining School Rituals

Michael Horn

Well, let me ask the question this way and either of you can jump in, because I think building off what you just said, Tom, which is interesting, Tyler, as you were starting to name all the things, all of a sudden I wrote down, like, oh my gosh, like, how do we provide all these things without becoming sort of the thing we’re trying to replace? Like, could, you know, could you accidentally fall back into the grammar of schools with all the trappings of it? And so it occurs to me, Tom, one of your points is a lot of these, I’ll call them artifacts of identity formation and figuring out how I add value to a group and so forth, have become more the artifact than the original reason that they were probably created, right? We sort of lost the, you know, the high school today. I suspect if you ask the average educator, you know, they might name at a surface level, like what athletics does or things like that, but probably not the depth or when thinking about dance or tradition, various traditions, right? Like they, they’re, they’re somewhat decoupled, I think, from this larger thing we’re trying to do with individuals as we help them build identity and awareness of how they fit in with others and so forth. And so I guess my, my thought is if, if there’s a more intentional building of these rituals and so forth, maybe you don’t construct sort of the, it looks different in some ways but like there will be some overlap and that’s okay, right? Like there will be some sports teams that are still there and, and, and there will be some dances that are still there. Or you know, as Tyler, you were saying, like, it doesn’t sound like you’re replicating everything yourself. You’re partnering with a few other schools to create a dance and think right. Like, it doesn’t mean you’re, you have to bite off the whole enchilada and then recreate, create the very thing that maybe had become too depersonalized and, and sort of unintentional walk through these rituals. Maybe that’s the way to think about it.

Michael Horn

I’d love your take on it, it resonates.

Tyler Thigpen

What you’re saying about some of them being similar, some of them being different. And even because we’re a small environment, even the ones that the rituals that we’re creating, you know, could be, I think they are uniquely set apart than the ones in the more traditional setting, but it might not be able to be discerned from the surface. Which reminded me one of the things that we did create that is fairly new and we participate in as a business fair and whether our high schoolers, almost all of them have participated in that, launched their own public business and sold stuff and made a profit or if they’re not participating, they’ll come, you know, and support their friends and buy stuff or whatever. But that’s just another example of a sort of, you know, they’re getting to know themselves for sure through that experience. But I think what further complexifies it too is especially in the more, you know, some of these new high school examples where they’re doing away with grades as we have, you know, and instead embrace the mastery, you know, a more mastery based approach, competency based approach. The, Tom to your point in Jaeger’s book for looking for status and respect, I’ve found it helpful to carve out with the learners and their families like new ways to be able to do that and even new ways to prove quote unquote rigor for college or employer audiences. And some of the ways we answer that are, you know, maximizing the number of things that you prove mastery of over your time in high school and going super deep, you know, in something and that being a real badge of honor. Another would be like really maximizing the number of independent studies that you create, you know, for yourself.

Another would be dual enrollment. You know, many of these progressive microschools or all schools, like, have the opportunity to participate in the state’s dual enrollment program and you know, get a taste of college and do it on a pretty flexible schedule. And I think that’s a nice opportunity. And then obviously you can, you know, for us, we. People can just do crazy and a ton of apprenticeships and then badges for. We use badges at our environment instead of grades. You can max out the number of badges and that’s a form of sort of status and what have you. So it’s interesting.

I mean, your question, Michael, is making me think that what we’ve done is some of it feels like the traditional, but there’s a. There’s one or two or three things about it that are unique and different, that are meeting a difference, like I’ll give you an example. So for our dance, you know, we created it for the high schoolers, but then the middle schoolers heard about it. We’re like, we want to do that too. So we actually created a schedule where for our fall homecoming dance, the middle schoolers come for the first hour and a half and then the high schoolers can come and then the middle schoolers have to leave. But there’s an hour of overlap, you.

Tom Arnett

Know what I mean? Oh, that’s cool.

Tyler Thigpen

School systems that have that kind of a. But that way the middle and high schoolers get to hang together for a little bit. But then the high schoolers get their own, you know, time and space, which they desperately want middle schoolers, like kick the middle schoolers out the door. They’re so, you know, like they want to stay, but like it’s just little nuances like that, I think that is when you just. I think it’s when you open up a conversation to kids and the parents and say, what’s the ideal? How can we create this? That’s when some really interesting stuff starts to happen for us.

Michael Horn

Well, and it strikes me like having dances like that that maintain continuity across generations, right? Like that’s a good thing. And then your spin on it, Tyler, is like a little bit more culture passing right between the different grades, a little bit more intentional mixing, which is in keeping with your general culture of how the kids are learning as they’re self directed there and not sort of. I’m a ninth grader, I’m a tenth grader. Right. And therefore I must be doing this. That makes a heck of a lot of sense. Tom, what are your reactions off that?

Tom Arnett

Well, the dance example, I was thinking of some ways that’s also a way that signals status and respect is like as a middle schooler, you’re like, this is, this is lame that I have to leave the dance early. Won’t it be so cool when I become a high schooler, I can move up and get to stay for the whole thing. I mean, in a lot of ways.

Michael Horn

Or will the high schooler dance with me during the hour overlap?

Tom Arnett

That would be the real, that’s the real status. Right. If they’re like, I can get a high schooler to dance with me. Yeah, yeah. But I think it’s, it’s funny because a lot of those are, you know, the idea of earning status and respect because we have like these age based rites of passage. Like that’s, that’s not an old idea, but it’s interesting to think, like, how can you take those old ideas and rebundle them in some new ways?

Michael Horn

Let me ask a question a different way, Tyler. I’m curious. Like, you’ve been recruiting families, right, for a long time. We’ve honed in on one of the barriers or a set, I guess, of the barriers. Right. That, high schoolers in particular are reticent to jump to these models. It seems like we have a lot of examples in the elementary school years, middle school, somewhat. I would have actually expected more because middle school feels like a time where most traditional middle schools work pretty poorly for most kids.

And they’re still very low stakes with the decision around college and things of that nature. But I think a little bit less than elementary and then high school. Significantly less, it seems like. So have what we’ve been talking about today. Does that feel like some of the biggest barriers? What are the other ones? And how are you all thinking about those?

Tyler Thigpen

Yep, it does feel like that one barrier. The peer pressure, you know, are young people wanting to, to, to be with their friends, to have more friends, to have the potential for more friends. You know, I think another dynamic there is when you are in a smaller environment, you know, you really do have, I mean, one of our pillars is learn to live together. Like they learn that, you know, you gotta. And that can be vulnerable and hard and frustrating. And you know, as parents and caregivers, we really value the learning that happens there for them, they’re like, it might just be a little easier to like ditch this friend group and go form another friend group or find another friend group, you know, and you don’t have that option at a small school. So I think that’s something that needs to be addressed.

And then, you know, a lot of these school founders, too, that will try and wrap middle and high school in together as they’re starting just from a financial model standpoint because they can’t afford, you know, a full staff for high, full staff for middle. And that’s not a great solution because at least in the United States, most high schoolers are like, I don’t want to be with these middle schoolers, you know, but that’s a barrier. Another barrier, I think, is founders’ fear and concerns. A lot of founders and school heads, you know, maybe don’t have the experience with high school and are concerned about legitimacy and making that connection between college and career and just the complexities, you know, that are involved in running a high school, that’s. That’s a barrier. I think parents are concerned about legitimacy. You know, a lot of the questions we get, that’s the first thing that they’re asking about our high school, like, what’s, what are the outcomes? What’s the legitimacy? What are the college career paths, you know, that sort of thing. And so parents are concerned.

And a lot of the coaching that I do with microschool leaders, too, is, you know, making sure that they are just being, you know, really clear about their own pedigree and experience because it’s so valuable, you know, and often they, like, shy back away from that and don’t want to talk about it. I’m like, no, you need to talk about it because you’re. You’re building trust, you know, and you’re building confidence with these, these families and caregivers. And then the last barrier I think I would name is, you know, some accreditation constraints where there, a lot of the accreditation processes that are in existence in the United States right now closely connect, you know, people and deep subject knowledge, expertise with expectations of, like, seat time and, you know, how many and which adults have to be in the room for a high school to operate, and there are creative ways to make sure that the expertise is there, but not in the traditional sense. And if you’ve got either an accreditor who has not bought into that, or if you’ve got a school leader who can’t quite figure out how to put the square peg in the round hole, then that could be a barrier.

Michael Horn

And are families asking for the accreditation? Like, are they, like, oh, if you don’t have accreditation. I’m not sure I want to do this.

Tyler Thigpen

They are. Most are, but only to tick that box. It’s not like they know anything about accreditation. There’s like, are you.

Michael Horn

It’s like a question I’m supposed to ask.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, that’s right.

Michael Horn

Interesting.

Tyler Thigpen

So it’s exciting to, you know, evolutions, like, you know, Middle States that has created, you know, an accrediting pathway for microschools and some other organizations that have, you know, have thought about it and are doing it. That’s exciting, you know, for flexible pathways for high schools. I think that’s going to help.

Michael Horn

Yeah.

Tom Arnett

Tyler, let me say thank you. Because as I think about from a research perspective, in disruptive innovation, you know, I think a lot about, like, okay, what are these little steps on the upward innovation improvement trajectory that disruptive innovations need to go. And you’ve just laid out, like, here’s a whole bunch of things we have to tackle. So that’s. Anyway, I was eating up what you were saying.

Michael Horn

We have a solution for the accreditation, one through Middle States, and now it’s the other. Okay, keep going.

Future of Microschools

Tom Arnett

Yeah. I was going to ask, going back to the very first thing you mentioned about, like, kids wanting to be with more friends, do you think that potentially means that microschools in the future will not necessarily be micro or that there’ll be some version of, like, getting the best of both worlds? Like, I could. I could imagine one scenario where microschools grow and they’re not micro anymore because they grew as a school. Another scenario where it’s like, microschools still say micro, but you find some way to, like, bring together groups of microschools so that you can provide those, like, hang. Have the big group of friends. Because let me be more specific. Like, imagine, like, 20 microschools all located in the same, you know, same geographic hub. And now you can have big experiences, you can run big programs that require that kind of scale, but you still have microschools because everyone’s still part of a subunit that’s small.

But anyway, I’m curious how you think about that. Not just in, like, what is. What is your school doing today or tomorrow, but, like, 10 years from now as this whole space evolves. Do you think we’re going in that kind of a direction?

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah, I mean, from your research, too, I’d be curious, you know, what you hypothesize.

Where my brain went when you asked, it actually had less to do with the building or the network or the connectivity between schools or even the size of schools. And it had more to do with decision making, power and agency, and whether or not the high school was self paced, whether or not there was freedom. Because I think once the high schoolers live and move and have their being in a space where they can decide, they typically do not want to give that up, even for, you know, the social, the component. Now, some will, but. But most are like, they value that more, it seems like. And maybe it’s because this developmental stage that they’re at, you know, where they’re really valuing that independence and that freedom, and they just don’t want to go back to an environment where they’re having to, you know, listen to whatever and follow whatever.

So that’s where my brain went. And so whatever. I guess my answer then would be like, where the fish, they’ll flow, the school will flow wherever there’s like, agency and freedom, you know, I don’t know.

Michael Horn

It’s interesting, Tom. I think John Danner is the one that wrote, instead of calling microschools microschools, we ought to start calling it the affordable private school sector. I frankly like that because it tags it more with disruptive innovation. And it doesn’t limit us. I mean, Con Lab school is no longer less than 100 kids. It’s like 300 kids. So is it a mic? It’s not a microschool, clearly. Right.

You look like you wanted to get in there, Tyler.

Tyler Thigpen

I did. I just had a conversation before our call today. We were coaching a microschool leader up in Canada, and we were talking about conservative budgeting, you know, as a microscope leader and the COO that I’ve hired, who’s been with me two years, who’s awesome. His experience prior to this was he was in IT in corporate America, and then he pivoted over to independent schools in Georgia. And he’s been at a number of different independent schools as a CFO and COO. And I was so excited about hiring him because he’s seen a lot of different options for, like, as we, you know, become more established, as Forest becomes, you know, even more efficient. And so this thing outlives me and all of us, like, how do we systematize? He’s seen a lot of options. And what’s interesting is to hear his reflections, coming from an established independent school background on the way that we have handled finances and the unique mindsets that we have brought to the table to budgeting, to admissions, you know, to all this.

And it’s very entrepreneurial. He keeps saying that word over and over. He’s like Tyler, I really appreciate the entrepreneurial approach that is being embraced here at Forest. He actually created a document that lists these mindsets that he’s now coaching leaders, you know, with. And I was like, I need to see that document, Johnny. That sounds amazing.

Like, I feel like I might need to remind myself of it, but I’m going to be writing on this soon and putting it out there. But I agree. I mean, and I’ve. I worked in one established independent school back in the day, and I definitely do not run the finances here like we did back there. You know, back there it was almost like we felt like we had, you know, endless money. It’s just not the case. But, you know, we very much bootstrap here.

Michael Horn

Well, you’re speaking to something else, which maybe we end up at this part of the conversation. And we finish up here, which is. So you all are thinking about identity formation. You’re thinking about how to tackle that list of five or six things you named, Tyler that Tom is now going to research around. How do you climb the Y axis of improvement and disruptive innovation, if you will. But you say you coach a lot of these school entrepreneurs and so forth, right? And so part of the thing that I’m interested in is it’s not clear to me that one school, you know, cracks this and magically disrupts all of American education. I think more likely the sector together comes up, right? And we have lots of different options and versions and flavors of what schooling in the future looks like in this sort of affordable private school sector. And you just named it a few times.

Like, that means coaching them. So it means coaching them to be intentional, to be forthright and not shy away from, hey, this is how we do X, right? This is how we think about college admissions. We’re not afraid of. We’re not running from this. This is how we do finances. And it’s actually not something that’s just a product of us being a startup, but it’s actually part of our DNA. It makes us different. And as we, as a movement scale, we’re not going to replicate, right.

Sort of the, the trappings of an Andover or Exeter or something like that.

That’s not the goal here. So. So I guess that’s where I, where I want to leave it with both of you is reflecting on, like, how do we take some of these things that you are doing in an entrepreneurial way? Tyler, how do we take some of these things you’re coaching entrepreneurs on and start to make it more systematic across the field. So more people are saying, like, it’s not good enough just to start that school that serves 30 kids. I also probably should start thinking about, you know, year two, year three, year four, how I start to fill these other voids that are meaningful and important.

Tyler Thigpen

Yeah. Resonates deeply, Michael. And our accelerator that we add virtually and in person, it, it addresses these things, it tries to do those things. And, you know, I really appreciate the National Microschooling center, you know, the work that they are doing to, to them, they care deeply about this same, you know, same question. And they’ve put together cohorts of folks that, you know, you know, what I like to call, share ideas willingly and steal ideas shamelessly, you know, from, from one another. But, but no how do we codify that and share it at scale and keep the learning going and continuous improvement. I think there’s still work to be done there for sure.

Michael Horn

Tom, what do you, what lessons can we draw from other fields, you’ve looked at disruptive innovation. Like what should we be thinking about that we haven’t talked about maybe?

Tom Arnett

Yeah, well, to nerd out a little bit.

Michael Horn

Yeah, let’s nerd out. Like, final word here. Got for it.

Tom Arnett

Well, so I spent a lot of time thinking about this concept from disruptive innovation called the Value Network. And Clayton Christensen talked about how the biggest, most transformative disruptive innovations. It’s not just about a new enabling technology or a new business model. You have this new Value Network that exists around those business models. And Michael and I, we had a colleague that used to be at the Institute, Horace Dediu, who he did a bunch of research on, like, why is it that some disruptions happen quickly and some happen slowly?

Michael Horn

I’ll give two quick examples if I can. Right. One was the dryer in your house that was slow compared to the refrigerator, which was fast. And, and Right. And I’ll, I’ll let you go to the punchline, Tom. I won’t ruin that one. But just to give people a mental model.

Tom Arnett

Yeah, good mental model. So, yeah, when you think of like a dryer or I think of like a washing machine is probably even more so. Like, those appliances required changing the hookups in a house. Right. Whereas a refrigerator could just plug into the wall. Houses at that time already had electricity, so they could just plug in. Whereas these other appliances required, you know, a new water line. Yeah.

Sewer line, a new venting system. Like you houses weren’t being built with those things. And so there was like a time, like the transition was much slower because the system sitting around the appliance had to be adapted for the appliance to really make sense and to really be easy and convenient to plug in. And so when I think of school systems, I think it’s kind of the same thing, is that we. There is a value network that sits around conventional schools. Think of like all the teacher prep programs, the accreditation systems, the higher ed system, state policy, like all those things have been designed for nearly a century to fit around a conventional school space. Right.

Building Networks for New Schools

Tom Arnett

And these new models of schooling, they really, you know, one big challenge for them is that there isn’t, you know, tons of teacher prep programs all over the country and policy on all the states and, and higher ed, you know, admissions programs that are all set up that are just accommodated to these new models of schooling. And so I think what’s going to make this slower as a, you know, as a disruptive innovation is the fact that we’re going to have to build that new value network around it. But I think that’s the exciting thing to look for is where do you see people like the National Microschooling center or Middle States as accreditation system, you know, these new things that aren’t necessarily schools, but they support the broader ecosystem like popping up to make it so there’s more plug compatibility for programs over time so that you can just plug into a new value network, a new system as you launch a new school, instead of having to figure out, well, how do we cobble it together with the limited stuff we have right now.

Tyler Thigpen

Well, just two quick anecdotes on that to be my final words. You know, one very promising, exciting as a partner of ours is the Indiana Microschool Collaborative. George Philhauer and Eastern Hancock just in August launched the MicroSchool K12 that has 68 learners. Eight of the learners come from the traditional environment. The vast majority of the others come from homeschool or an independent school. And they’re loving it.

And the school has a number of innovative features. And the children that go there feel like the school was designed for them. Because it is what George regularly says. And that’s the first of what’s going to be many. Right. And so George and his team are really thinking meaningfully about exactly that. Tom. It’s like, how do we provide that? So it’ll be fascinating to sort of watch what gets centralized and, you know, what doesn’t and then the other thing is our institutes leading a project in Georgia where up to 10 districts are going to be over the next three years designing new models that better meet the needs of parents and students who are currently like outside of the system.

And I think a lot of them will end up being, you know, microschools. It could be anything. Could be like an elementary school for dyslexic kids or early college, high school or self directed learning center, doesn’t matter. And you know, to see how they end up shaping and what flexibility they end up requesting, you know, and then what support they need to stay alive. That’s something that we’re super curious about too. But what’s cool to me at least is that like the leaders in these spaces are feeling the invitation, you know, to do something new and more innovative.

Michael Horn

That is a good thing. It occurs to me also you mentioned Mastery Transcript Consortium Tyler. Like that’s another one of these entities that I would love to see focus almost exclusively on this learner centered, self directed space as opposed to the old ground. And I get why they’ve played in both. But I would love these entities solving the problems of this new and being really focused on this value network because I think that’s where the more folks we have focused here, the faster I think this value network will grow around it to scale and grow together. I’ll name the other one. I was laughing when you were talking about all the different ways that people can prove mastery Tyler in your ecosystem. And I just got off a call where someone was like, ah, but we can’t do assessments around like, you know, bespoke things like we just don’t know, like the science isn’t there, blah blah, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, well you ought to write an article that explains to idiots like me why that’s true because I like, I mean, I think I see lots of examples of that and I can also point to plenty of microcredentials that have no meaningful assessment behind them and are worthless. Right. And so, but I just think, right, that’s another area of velocity of assessment that people trust in some way. And that doesn’t mean Scantron test. That means like authentic, you know, real demonstration of learning through, through some sort of, you know, product or performance or something. Right. And so the more and more though I think we get of that in this ecosystem, the more I think people will buy in and say like, oh yeah, I had a friend who went through that and it sort of starts to spread. I think as we get that and frankly the, the technology platforms, right, that are helping connect demand to supply in these ESA states, they ought to be listening acutely, I think, to the supply side as well, of like, what do you need to grow? It should be in their interest to help the really, you know, the really good providers there get scale and maybe connect to different services and create informal networks and things like that to better serve the demand side.

And so the more listening and cooperation I think we have in this value network right now, to me, all hands on deck because that’s a good way to go up market.

Tyler Thigpen

Well said.

Michael Horn

All right guys, huge thanks for joining us. We would love people to come in on the heels of this and tell us what we got wrong, what other ideas we ought to feature, what we ought to learn from, because I think it’s a really important topic that’s not getting enough air time. And so this is the first conversation we’ve had about this, but it’s one all of us are interested in further in. So appreciate you all and we’ll see you next time on the Future of Education.

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